5 Ways to Build Self-Discipline: Impulses, Sleep, Gratitude

Nikkiey: What's up, WarriorBabe? Nikkiey here. Happy Saturday. I hope everybody's having an awesome morning so far, and I'm stoked, as always, to be here with you and do our Saturday WarriorBabe Revolution rally call. We're going to get started in just a few minutes. Go to the Facebook group right now, leave a comment for all of the other babes in the group and let them know that this call is starting, because they don't want to miss this topic today.

It's another fire one. It's one of my favorite ones to talk about. I actually talked about it two weeks ago and I didn't record it, and I'm so mad at myself. But I'm going to talk about it again today, and it's being recorded this time. So go to the group right now and let them know we're getting started, because it's going to help you tremendously.

If you're new to WarriorBabe and new to this rally call, we do these every single Saturday at 11 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. So mark your calendars and set your alarms. You don't want to miss out on these. They're loaded with motivation to help you remember your goals, keep moving forward and get fired up for the week ahead.

Really quick, before we start, I want to run through some quick updates. The blast-off emails, which I talk about every single week for anyone who's new: make sure you go through those blast-off emails. They are so important, because coming into something new can be extremely overwhelming. Everybody gets started on something new and they're so excited, but as soon as they see all the content, they're like, oh my God, what do I do first? That's why I built out an 11-day blast-off email sequence, so that you only complete one task per day. That way you don't feel overwhelmed, because I don't want you to give up after two weeks. So make sure you go through those blast-off emails.

Now, questions. Don't be the person who asks questions that can be answered inside of the application. Take the time to search there and listen to everything I'm sharing with you. If the question you're seeking isn't answered inside the application, that's why I built out the Frequently Asked Questions page, which is an entire platform with all of our most frequently asked questions. If the question you're looking for isn't answered in those two spots, then head to the Facebook group and ask the other fellow WarriorBabes. You can also tag Kate. For anybody who's new, Kate Holly is our community manager inside the Facebook group, and she's more than happy to help you with any questions you have. She's been a WarriorBabe for two years now, has had tremendous success, and wants the same success for you too. So Kate and I are here. If you have any questions, tag us specifically. That's what we're here for. We're here to help you.

And I can't stress enough how important progress pictures are. You've probably heard me say this over the past couple of weeks. Progress pictures are so important, because even though you don't want to take them now because you're not happy with where you're at, that's the whole reason you need to take them. In a month, two months, three months, you're working towards the after selfie. When you put those two back to back, you're going to be like, holy shit, my body has completely changed.

And they're not only important for you, they're important for everybody else in the group. I highly recommend you share your progress pictures so everybody can see the journey you're on, and you can motivate and inspire everybody in that group. That's what the group is there for. It's a community. We're all on the same path together. We're a team working towards the same goals, and we're there to inspire and motivate each other. It's a safe place. I need to say that loud and clear: that Facebook group is a safe place for everybody.

Now, really quick, the updates inside the application. We've added 100-plus new recipes: breakfast, snack, lunch, pre-workout and dinner. There are 20 different recipes in each of those, which adds up to 100 different recipes across every meal you could be eating. And they're broken down into macronutrients as well. That's new inside the app, so make sure you check it out. It's under WarriorBabe Meals. We're still on the same workout program. That gets updated the last Friday of the month, so on the last Friday of every single month, a new workout program opens up inside the application. I think those are all the updates I wanted to talk with you about, so we can get started on our call today.

Let everybody know inside the Facebook group that we're starting. Come on. No, really, this topic is one of my favorite topics to talk about. Again, it's what I talked about two weeks ago, and I'm so bummed I didn't record it, because I got a lot of feedback from you inside the group saying you loved it. So if anybody missed it, we're going to talk about it today. And if you heard it, you're just going to get wound up with more of the same motivational push. I love this topic. These five strategies I'm going to share with you have helped me tremendously in developing the self-discipline I have within myself.

So today's topic is the top five strategies to develop self-discipline. I get asked every single day, Nikkiey, how are you so motivated? How can you do this every single day? How do you plan out your meals every single day? How do you hit your macros every single day? And it's not just about diet and exercise. I don't know how many times I've stressed this before. That is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to getting to your fitness goals. Those are just the bare minimum tactics. That's it. The basic tactics are diet and exercise. What it comes down to is the bottom of the iceberg that nobody sees. That's where the hard discipline comes into play. That's where the success happens. That's where the mindset shifts take place. That's where you have to show up every single day for yourself. And the way to do that is to develop self-discipline.

So the first strategy I want to talk to you about is resisting impulses. Resist all urges to eat, drink or snack when you know you shouldn't, or to grab a treat when you know it's not cheat day. How many of us have urges to do that when we know we shouldn't? We all have those impulses, like, oh, I just feel like a snack, or I just feel like a drink, or ooh, chocolate. Or I feel like checking in on this group on social media, or checking my posts, my comments or my emails. You have to learn how to resist those impulses, and I'm going to show you how in just a second. Or seeing how many people liked your posts. You've got to resist it. Just keep practicing. You have to keep practicing resistance.

Then what happens is you have that thought and that impulse, but instead of immediately reacting, you'll actually catch yourself and be like, nope, not today. You could be sitting on the couch thinking, oh, I'm going to check my email right now. But it's just an impulse. It's just something to make the time go faster. Then you find yourself in this loop, you're on social media for 10 minutes, and you're like, what the hell?

It's funny. People have trained these loops in their minds so well. I'm sure you've done this. When people unlock their phone, they immediately go to Facebook or social media. People have a specific app routine. They open Instagram, then their email, then Facebook, in the same exact order every single time. I'm guilty of this. How many of you are guilty of that? You unlock your phone because you're bored or you're just making the time go faster, and you go to Instagram, then Facebook, then your mail. And you may not even notice you're doing it. It's automatic. You arrive there and you don't even know how you got there.

Then you realize five or ten minutes have passed, and you're like, what the fuck did I just do? I just sat on my phone for no reason, mindlessly scrolling through everything. It's because your body is moving without it ever consciously passing through your mind. That's how strong these impulses are. So when you practice this more, you're going to unlock your phone, have the thought to go to social media, and say no. That's not what I'm doing. That's not what I'm here to do. Then you're controlling yourself. You're not your impulses. You are controlling yourself.

The same thing applies to snacking and eating chocolate. How many of you walk into the kitchen, or used to walk into the kitchen at night, open up a cabinet, and next thing you know you have M&Ms stuffed in your face? Or you're eating cookies, or you're eating chocolate. How many of you have done that and thought, how did I end up here? It's because your body is moving automatically. Your body is in control. But you have to have your mind control these impulses.

You need to embrace the resistance you're going to face and recognize that these actions aren't going to help you. It's going to be hard at first. You're going to stay on your phone, open up the app and be like, oh, but I want you so bad. Same with food: but I want you so bad. But you have to resist, embrace that resistance and recognize that if you do that action, if you cave, if you give in to the temptations and the impulses, those actions aren't going to serve you. They're not going to help you. It's like taking two steps forward and then five steps back. Once you embrace the resistance and recognize how those actions aren't going to help you, from there, you are in control.

So that's the first one: resisting impulses. So important. Once you can identify these and get control over them, which you just have to keep practicing. It's not going to be an overnight thing. Like, Nikkiey, I talked about this yesterday and I tried it, but I couldn't do it, I had to cave. It's not going to happen overnight. The society we live in is so messed up. We expect everything to be a quick fix. It's not going to happen overnight. I have to be realistic and blunt with you, because you deserve to hear the truth. You just have to keep practicing. If you mess up, you're going to fail forward. It's okay. You're going to fail. Expect to fail. But don't beat yourself up over it. Learn from it. If you can learn from your failures, that's how you get stronger.

The second one is loving pain. Most people avoid pain. I don't mean the pain of breaking a leg. I mean the pain of physical exertion, when your heart is racing so fast, your muscles are so tired and sore, and you're dripping sweat in the gym. Most people avoid this. And I have the perfect example. I don't care if she's on this right now or hears it later. It's my mom. She tells me all the time how much she hates to sweat. And I'm like, how do you expect to grow? How do you expect to experience this pain that's going to make you a better person, or that's going to grow the kind of muscles you want? And she runs marathons. How the hell are you not going to sweat in a marathon? But she freaking hates it.

When you don't experience this pain, when you don't experience your heart rate racing, your muscles tired or sore, your body dripping sweat, a lot of people end up saying they don't feel challenged enough. But what I just described is the only way you're going to build a strong body: by learning to love pain. If you're not sweating at the end of your workout, if you're not tired, if you're not sore the next day, you need to challenge yourself more. You need to love and embrace being sore. You need to love pain. Embrace the sweat. Because when this is happening, you're creating a challenge for your body that it's not used to. I don't mean you should be crippled afterwards. What I mean is that the pain you're experiencing is only temporary, but the results you gain from it are absolutely tremendous.

For example, the way I like to step up my game, the strategy I use to work hard and how I've gotten to where I am today, is to take my mind to the darkest alleys, the darkest experiences in my life. To be completely vulnerable and transparent with you, my upbringing was not easy. So I channel those pain points to generate the warrior that's inside of me. And I push that warrior mentality inside the gym, in each of my sets, in every single rep. I push through the dark energy to see the light of my pain.

How many of you say the gym is your therapy, or your sanctuary, or where you go to relieve all your stress? This is the perfect opportunity. If you had a bad day at work, your kids are driving you nuts, your husband is pissing you off, instead of taking it out on your kids or your husband, this is where you go into the gym. You channel those darkest points where you just want to rip their heads off. That's how you see the light of your pain and the love of the struggles you deal with every day. This is where you learn to love the pain you deal with, because the pain you deal with on a daily basis is only helping you become a better person. How are you going to handle that situation next?

Exercise helps you get out of that feeling like you need to explode, because you're going to explode in the gym. It helps you embrace those situations even better. That's where you grow into a stronger person mentally and physically: when you learn not to hate the pain. Don't hate feeling like shit. Don't hate being sore. Don't hate being tired. Don't hate getting in arguments. Love it, and then see how you can make it different for yourself. So love the struggle and go take it out in the gym. I've heard millions of times people say it's their sanctuary and where they go to relieve all their stress. So that's the second one: love pain.

Sleep is the third one. And honestly, this is one of the most important of all five. Sleep is self-discipline. Making sure you go to bed and wake up at the same time every day is self-discipline. You do not want to waver from this. It is truly one of the best tests of how disciplined you are. To make sure you go to bed and wake up at the same time every day, you really have to push yourself. You are the creator of your life. Everything you do for yourself is action, then it comes back as feedback, and then you take different actions based off of that.

I talked about this last week. You have to wake up with your alarm and actually do it, not hit the snooze button. How many of you are guilty of that? I know I am. But you have to wake up with your alarm and not do that. Back when I used to hit snooze, I would grab my phone and just run out into my kitchen. I would do a lap in my kitchen. I don't care what my neighbors think. But it helped me wake up. So you get up with it. You don't hit the snooze button.

Then you really have to get yourself to go to bed. Even if you're in the middle of watching a movie or reading a good book, you just have to do it. You have to say, 9 o'clock, that's it, I'm going to bed. And if you can get your sleep cycles down, this helps your body and your chemicals stay balanced. If you're going to bed and waking up at the same time, your body learns this. So it spikes dopamine, melatonin, cortisol and all of these different chemicals at different times, so you get sleepy at the right time and fired up at the right time to go to work and work out. And your digestive system also learns when it's going to get food and how best to digest it.

I'm sure the people who get up early in the morning have a set routine. Your body wakes up and spikes that dopamine at the right time, consistently, on a daily basis. If you wake up at 4 a.m. and go to the gym at 5, you're in a routine. You go to bed at 9. At 4 a.m. and 5 a.m. you're spiking your dopamine. At 9 o'clock you're spiking your melatonin, because your body recognizes it, because you're in a routine. But if you start screwing with this, you throw the chemicals in your body completely off track. You're going to spike cortisol and not be able to fall asleep. You're going to spike melatonin in the morning and feel like a zombie walking into work. That plays havoc on your body. If you don't get strict with your sleep cycle, everything's going to get fucking wacky. You don't want that.

I can't stress this discipline strategy enough. Sleep is the most important of the five I'm teaching you today, or at least one of the top. They're all really good. But sleep is so important, or you're going to mess with the chemicals inside your body and everything's going to spike at different times. So that's the third one.

The fourth one is gratitude, and this one's really important as well. Always looking to the future can cause fear, anxiety and stress. I talked about this on, I think, the very first rally call we did. You want to detach yourself from that future, the person you're trying to become, so that you have a good, healthy relationship with it. I don't mean completely detached, but you don't want to keep looking at the future, because it's going to cause more fear, anxiety and stress.

You need to practice this daily to balance yourself. If you're constantly looking into the future and you're never grateful for anything you've got, you start to get anxious and your mind starts to worry. How many of you have done this? Oh, I'm not where I want to be. Or I'm not seeing results fast enough. In reality, right now, in the moment, you really are, but you're too hooked on how things should be and not grateful for what you've accomplished so far.

Where you are right now, you've probably accomplished so much up to this point. How many of you have lost 50 pounds and are now working on the next stage of your journey? You've accomplished so much. Just because you're not in the future yet and you don't have that body right now, you're still making progress, because every single day you're showing up for yourself, and every single day leads you toward the goal you want.

Right now, you have to be grateful for where you are, because if you keep running it in your head, oh, I'm not where I should be, I'm not seeing results fast enough, you're going to create anxiety and stress over where you think you should be. But really, in the moment, you're creating the results you need right now. You have to be grateful for that. So make sure you practice gratitude as well as all the other strategies I've mentioned. You should want things in the future. You should think about the future. But you should also be grateful for what you've got right now.

Again, this stems from the detachment I talked about in the first rally call. If you didn't listen to that, go into the app and listen to that first rally call. I think it was March 9th, maybe before that, but it's the first one in there. Detach yourself from the outcome and love where you are right now. You should be grateful that each day you're given the ability to work out and you have the option of eating healthy food. Not many people can do that, but you can. So be grateful for that.

A little exercise you can do every day to work on this gratitude muscle is to start writing down five things you're grateful for in your journey. Instead of focusing on lack during your day, on not being happy where you are or with what your body looks like, because lack attracts more lack, start your day in gratitude. When you do this, you will attract more things to be grateful for. If you write down, I am grateful for my body, I am grateful for my health, I'm grateful for my kids, I'm grateful for my husband, you'll look at things from a different perspective than if you're thinking, oh my God, my kids didn't clean up their room, my husband didn't take out the trash, he didn't clean up after he made a mess in the kitchen. That's just introducing more lack into your world. So be grateful for where you are, no matter what, in this moment. The more grateful you are, the more it triggers your mindset to look for more things to be grateful for. That's the fourth one.

Now the last and final one, which is another very important one. I haven't ranked these in order. They're all really good. They're the best ways to develop self-discipline for yourself. The fifth one is relentless persistence. This is how I got so far and so far ahead. It's planning your days and months for your nutrition and your workouts ahead of time. And you need to stick with it, and you need to say no to everything else that does not serve you.

Saying no is the most powerful boundary-setting exercise you can do for yourself. Say no to what does not serve you, and you will welcome more opportunities into your world that do serve you. There were so many times when I worked in the ER and all the doctors would bring fucking pizza and soda and shit like that in the middle of the workday for lunch. And I'm standing there on the side eating my planned meals. And they're like, Nikkiey, aren't you going to have pizza? I'm like, no. And you know what? Half an hour later, I'm the one buzzing around the ER, chatting with my patients and loving life, because I'm high off the energy from the healthy food I put in my body. And I'm not sitting at the fucking computers like all the other nurses who are slouching and feeling gross.

Be better than what you did the day before, the week before and the month before. Because there are two types of people in this world: people who make excuses and people who make it happen. People who make excuses get nothing. People who make it happen get everything. So every single day moving forward, starting today, ask yourself: which are you going to be today? Ask yourself that every single morning to get your day started.

So that was the last one, relentless persistence. Let's recap. We did resisting impulses: becoming aware of an impulse, embracing the resistance and recognizing that the action you're about to take doesn't serve you. Like walking into the kitchen at night, when your cravings are probably spiked ridiculously, and resisting the impulse to put your hand in the M&M jar.

The second one was loving pain. Use the gym as your sanctuary. Any stress you had during the day, at work, at home, in any part of your life, use that pain to push yourself through and see the light of that pain. See the love of your struggles, because when you see the love and the light, you're going to realize the struggles you're dealing with are so small.

The third one was sleep. Sleep is self-discipline. You have to get regulated with your sleep, or else all the chemicals inside your body are going to be whacked out. Your melatonin is going to spike at the wrong times, your dopamine is going to spike at the wrong times, it's going to cause more cortisol to rise in your body, and you're just going to feel totally stressed out.

The fourth one was gratitude. Be grateful for where you are right now. Don't keep looking into the future and cause more fear and anxiety. Don't question where you are and feel like you're not where you should be. Be grateful for where you are right now, in the moment, because where you are, you're creating changes for yourself. You may not be able to see them every single day, but you're doing it. So practice that gratitude muscle with the exercise I told you about: write five things down in the morning that you're grateful for.

And the last one was relentless persistence. Say no. Say no to what does not serve you and your goals. When you say no, you welcome more opportunities into your world that do serve you moving forward.

I hope you absolutely loved that topic. It's one of my favorites. It gets me fired up every single time I talk to you about it. So practice these every single day. Make sure you write them down. Make sure you listen to this recording. Go into the Facebook group and let me know how you enjoyed this topic and what you thought. I'm also open to hearing any other topics you want me to talk about on these rally calls, so leave those comments inside the group. All right, have a kick-ass weekend, and I'll see you for our Q&A on Wednesday. Bye, everyone.