The Mental Skill That Makes Every Goal Easier to Reach
5 surprising ways mindfulness builds lasting discipline
This article is brought to you through a collaboration with Derek Lakin, who writes about how mindfulness can help you find—and maintain—balance between life’s ups and downs.
We believe that mindfulness and discipline aren’t separate, but are instead different expressions of the same commitment: to come back to yourself, even when it’s hard.
“It’s too difficult. I give up.”
For decades, whenever I encountered challenges to an important goal, this was my default response.
As a result, I missed out on countless opportunities to show up for myself, grow, and express my authenticity. In other words, I kept myself stuck.
It wasn’t until mindfulness helped me stop running from my uncomfortable emotions that I aligned with disciplined actions. Ones that moved me closer to who I really was, and away from ingrained, knee-jerk patterns and behaviors that no longer served me.
I don’t want this process to take you years (or decades), too, so here’s how you can also implement mindfulness awareness to remember who you are, what you want, and how to maintain the discipline to get there.
Let’s begin by defining what we’re talking about.
What Discipline Is—and Isn’t
In a nutshell, discipline involves compassionately aligning your present actions with your future goals when facing temptations, discomfort, or competing desires. Thus, achieving discipline involves a combination of:
Self-regulation – Managing your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors in service of larger objectives.
Delayed gratification – Sacrificing the short-term to benefit the long-term.
Consistency – Repeatedly showing up, especially when you don’t feel like it.
Internal locus of control – Taking responsibility for your outcomes.
However, mindful discipline is not about self-criticism, punishment, perfection, or a joyless existence. Actually, it’s the opposite.
By setting boundaries and guiding yourself toward the vision you seek, you give yourself innumerable, priceless gifts. You gain profound wisdom from setbacks, increase your resilience, improve life satisfaction, and free yourself from things that no longer serve your higher purpose.
Ultimately, maintaining discipline enables you to regain control over your life, rather than surrendering to default reactions, impulses, or external circumstances.
If discipline provides so many foundational benefits, though, why do we resist it?
Why It’s So Difficult to Maintain Discipline
When it comes to cultivating and preserving discipline, you have a lot of factors working against you.
You’re Wired for Present-Moment Survival Instead of Long-Term Achievement
Evolutionarily, addressing immediate (versus long-term) threats and survival often determined which of your ancient ancestors survived.
Your system also rewards you with dopamine when you anticipate achieving a goal, rather than accomplishing it. As a result, your brain consumes a ton of energy, so it’s programmed to conserve and default to “autopilot” mode, rather than relying on conscious decision-making.
Visible Progress Takes Time—& Setbacks
Along these same lines, the benefits of disciplined behavior can take weeks, months, or even years to manifest, creating a gap between effort and results that tests your resolve, causes frustration, and can lead to giving up.
In addition, you likely expect any advancements to be linear, whereas there will almost certainly be peaks and valleys in your progress.
Your Ancient Brain Manages a Huge Cognitive Load in Modern Life
You make roughly 35,000 decisions per day, in addition to having your attention overloaded by 24-hour news, constant advertisements, and instant entertainment, making undisciplined behavior the social norm. And you evolved to be a social creature, so you unconsciously mirror those around you.
Your Feelings Have an Outsized Impact on Your Success
You might wait to feel motivated to take disciplined action, but the reality is that motivation often follows action, not the other way around. In other words, one of the biggest determinants of inconsistency is waiting to “feel like it.”
Also, changing your deeply ingrained habits and becoming a new, more disciplined version of yourself can open you up to a lot of uncomfortable feelings; ones you’ve avoided in the past by giving up. Subconsciously, you might sabotage your success because known suffering can feel safer than unknown discipline.
Based on firsthand experience, mindfulness can address these common challenges and provide the mental space needed to maintain discipline and achieve goals.
How does it work?
The Top 5 Ways Science Shows Mindfulness Strengthens Discipline
Neuroscience research reveals that regular mindfulness practice enhances self-discipline and self-control in the following ways:
1. Strengthens the Brain's "CEO"
Executive functions—those regulating information processing, emotions, and behavior—are processed mainly by your brain’s prefrontal cortex, which is why they’re often referred to as the CEO.
Some studies show that regular meditation can enhance the activity, density, and cortical thickness of gray matter in the prefrontal cortex, leading to improved attention, better focus, and enhanced executive functions. This structural change can provide the neural foundation for enhanced self-control and more disciplined behavior.
2. Enhances Attention Control Networks
The part of the brain that helps you learn from experience and adapt to new circumstances, instead of getting stuck and operating on autopilot, is called the anterior cingulate cortex.
Evidence suggests that mindfulness training alters activity in this brain region, resulting in improved attention control, enhanced impulse regulation, and sustained focus on long-term goals.
3. Counteracts Self-Control Depletion
You might think of your self-control capacity as a fuel tank: Each time you remain disciplined when presented with an opportunity to do otherwise, you use a little bit of fuel. And eventually, if you don’t replenish your reserves, your tank will run dry, causing you to revert to your old ways.
Research shows that mindfulness acts like a "reset button" for willpower, helping to restore cognitive resources that are depleted through sustained self-control.
4. Reduces Amygdala Reactivity and Stress Response
Another region of the brain, known as the amygdala, is often referred to as the brain’s “alarm system” and is responsible for language, memory, and emotions.
In some instances, meditation has been shown to reduce the size and activity of the amygdala, thereby decreasing reactivity to stressors and emotional triggers. This can help create the mental space necessary for disciplined decision-making rather than impulsive reactions.
5. Enhances Brain Network Connectivity
Mindfulness can help improve connectivity between key brain networks, which enhances coordination between the intention-setting (prefrontal cortex) and execution (motor and limbic) systems, leading to better self-regulation.
With these benefits in mind, here’s a quick and easy mindfulness practice that, when consistently repeated, can help you naturally solidify your discipline and achieve your goals.
A 3-Minute Mindfulness Practice for Discipline
Paradoxically, the way to improve your discipline through mindfulness is to stop thinking about discipline at all. Self-awareness is achieved through decluttering, not adding.
In other words, discipline (and many other potential benefits) is a natural outgrowth of self-awareness, but not a goal itself.
With this in mind, there’s nothing to “achieve” with this practice. The only goal is to give yourself the space to pause, breathe, and return home to your authenticity.
Beginning Breathwork
Find a comfortable position and gently close your eyes or soften your gaze. Take a moment to arrive here fully. Feel the gravity pulling your shoulders downward. Settle into yourself.
Over the course of 30 seconds, take three deep breaths, completely filling and emptying your lungs. With each inhale, imagine cleansing white light entering your body, and with each exhale, picture darker, heavier air exiting.
Returning to Your Breath (1 minute)
For the next minute, pay attention to your breathing without trying to change it. Feel its natural rhythm, the ups and downs, the ins and outs, inviting you to return to this moment again and again.
When your mind wanders, simply notice with gentle curiosity. No judgment. Just a soft return to the breath, like coming home after a long journey.
Dropping Into Authentic Presence
During the next minute, shift your attention beyond your breath. Expand your awareness to encompass your entire experience, including thoughts, feelings, sensations, and sounds.
As you experience different stimuli, recognize that this awareness isn't trying to achieve anything. It's not disciplined or undisciplined. It only witnesses with equal acceptance.
Resting in this presence, ask yourself: "Who am I beneath my habits, patterns, and stories about what I should or shouldn't do?"
Don't seek answers with your mind. Instead, feel your aliveness. The consciousness reading these words. This is your true nature—naturally present, naturally aware, and naturally at peace.
Integration and Remembering
Finally, repeat the three-breath pattern from the beginning. As you breathe, recognize that you’ve remembered what it feels like to hold space for yourself, remain present, and align with your deepest nature.
Carry this remembrance with you. When you feel scattered or undisciplined, you can return to this same place.
Not to fix yourself, but to remember who you are.
Authentic Presence Can Determine Your Success
The most profound indicator of discipline is presence.
When you know who you are beneath the onslaught of distractions, desires, and aversions, actions become clear because they naturally align with your innate wisdom. After all, what we call "discipline" is simply the natural expression of an undivided life.
Whenever you feel the desire to force discipline upon yourself, instead of pushing harder, return to this practice and allow the right actions to emerge from being, not from doing.
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Self-awareness is achieved through decluttering, not adding.
I got this 💯
A good read with practical, simple strategies :)