What is the difference between a habit and discipline?

When it comes to fitness, these two words are used together so often, and usually in a way that is incorrect. Habits are not disciplines, and having discipline is not the same as having a habit.

The textbook definitions for these are:

HABIT: a regular tendency that is difficult to give up

DISCIPLINE: training to achieve controlled behavior, often using punishment to correct disobedience

Habits are tendencies, and can be either good or bad. They are always set off by a trigger. An example of this is: you eat lunch, and that is a trigger for you to seek out something sweet to have after lunch (a cookie, a piece of candy, etc). It's not that you're still hungry, or really NEED something sweet. It's a bad habit that you got yourself into. The good news, you can get yourself out of it.

Fixing habits is all about looking at triggers, and changing the habit at the source. Sometimes this also means introducing new triggers and habits, which ultimately can end up replacing the old ones over time.

Creating discipline is all about forcing yourself to adhere to a new set of rules and guidelines. Being disciplined means sacrificing a little of bit of something at a time, and steadily increasing that amount of sacrifice until it's a lot. However, by the time you get to a high level of sacrifice (bad food, beer, junk, laziness, etc), you will have done so in a way that doesn't feel like you're giving up a lot. It takes discipline to build new habits.

The best part about discipline and habits is that they feed each other, and both map to your end goals, whatever they are. The more good habits you add to your lifestyle, the more discipline you create, which allows you to continue to add even more good habits and build a healthy lifestyle on top of all of that.

Ultimately, by doing this you create a powerful cycle that allows you to absolutely CRUSH your fitness goal, starting with your daily habits and the discipline to see them through.

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