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Hi everyone, welcome back. Today we are talking about discipline. If you look at my life, I think it's pretty easy to kind of lump me into the type A bucket. I am organized, I love structure, and I love a good routine, but I was not born this way. This is a completely learned skill. Just ask my mom. Things started to change when I started college and I was living alone. And specifically when I started my own YouTube channel, I didn't realize it at the time, but I was essentially running a business and it only grew when I
stayed on track and when I stuck with my goals. I think we love to assume that really disciplined people are just built different. Like maybe they're just hooked to an IV that drips self-control, but they're not. They're not using pure willpower to run their life. In fact, I want to break down three primary fuels that drive humans to do things. Shout out to Chris Williamson for framing this so beautifully in his podcast. So, first we have motivation. Motivation is awesome, but she's like a flaky friend. Like she shows up when things are fun, when you're on vacation, when you're ovulating, when you've had two cappuccinos, but the second your mood dips or there's a bit of friction, [snorts]
she's out. Then we have obsession. And I'm not talking about like, oh my god, I'm obsessed. I'm talking about like clinical obsession. And textbook obsession is friction inverted. It means that you don't have to force yourself to work because the work pulls you in. Like it follows you. It follows you into your car, the shower, your dreams. Like it's basically motivation, but on MSG. The catch with obsession is that it's non-renewable and it's unstable. And once it's gone, it's gone. It's like seeing a shooting star or like catching a big wave. And what's you're left with is discipline. Now, discipline is the only fuel that's reliable. It's that voice that says, "I don't give a
what you're thinking. This is what we're doing." It operates completely independent of your emotional state. But, the price tag is high. Like, raw discipline is very taxing on the brain. And if that's all you got, it's going to be like an endless grind. This is where defaults come in. I love defaults. My life mostly runs on defaults. And a default is essentially a decision that you made beforehand when your brain was chill, calm, and functional. Every morning when you wake up, your brain has like a limited battery capacity. And every micro decision that you make drains it. Like, what am I going to do today? What am I going to eat today?
What am I going to work out? What am I going to wear? If you do that all day, by 5:00 p.m., there's going to be nothing left. Defaults exist so that you don't need to waste energy on mundane life administrative decisions. So, let's take fitness for example. In the deeply philosophical words of Britney, you want a hot body? Look cute in a bikini? You better work She's not lying. And if you want to have it to stick, it needs to have the absolute lowest amount of friction possible. And when it comes to fitness, it's got to be easy for me. Like, I got to want to do it. And I think I've tried almost every fitness trend, Pilates, group classes, hit, hot yoga, regular yoga, YouTube videos. But, the main thing that's stuck for me
was weightlifting. Now, I'm arguably in the best shape of my life. Like, I'm no bodybuilder, but I feel lean, sexy, strong. I feel good in my clothes and at home in my body. And this is something that I'd never thought I'd feel after I gave birth. And I strongly attribute my fitness progress to Trainwell, who is today's sponsor. I have been using Trainwell obsessively since 2023. Like, I can scroll back to all my workouts, and I've logged 712 workouts. So, Trainwell connects you with a real-life human personal trainer. These days, it's very easy to lean on AI for everything, but fitness has always been so like physical and deeply personal to me. My trainer is Jill, and I hopped on a call with her just to go
over my updated fitness goals, which was to maintain. It's like I just want to keep the current body composition I have right now. I told her that obviously I love weightlifting, and I showed her the equipment that was at my gym, and then she designed an exercise routine that requires zero brainpower from my end. When it's time to exercise, I don't think. I just open up Trainwell, hit start, and I finish the workout. That's it. There's no mental load, and there is no friction. I message Jill whenever I want to tweak something. For example, she was like having me do this medicine ball exercise, and I was like, "Can we
tweak this?" And she did. And also, if I'm traveling, or let's say I just don't want to go to the gym, she'll switch my routine for something where I just can use like my body weight. I can even just take like a 15-minute walk and track it on the app, and it will count as my daily exercise. So, if you've been trying to lock in and you want to create your own fitness default, I highly recommend Trainwell. They're actually doing a 14-day free trial, so click the link. It will be in my description box. Let's move on to food. We are making three to four decisions a day just on our diet. And if I am hungry, I don't get hangry, I get anxious. That's hungry and anxious. It's a combination I
absolutely hate, and when I get into this state, and there's nothing in my fridge, like no ingredients, no leftovers, what am I going to do? My brain is going to find the fastest solution, and that's usually chips or chocolate. So, my default meal system relies on a few things. Number one, I have a short menu of consistent hits. I have like a running list of maybe three to five meals that I can cook under 15 minutes. Like, these are not fancy meals. Like, this is not a soufflé, if you will. These are quick, accessible, healthy, and they fit in with my maintenance calories. When I cook, I am bulk cooking. I want to make sure I can stretch this out maybe three or four
meals because I love leftovers. I am the queen of leftovers. It's because I'm a very impatient person, and when I'm hungry, I want to eat immediately. So, even if I'm craving like a burger or a pizza, if I have leftovers, I would much rather eat my prep chicken in my Tupperware than wait 45 minutes for a soggy pizza. I have a son, so I also keep default stand-alone meals on deck just for him. Obviously, there are meals that we both eat, but sometimes I don't want to force him to eat something that I have made because I don't want to fight. I just It's the end of the day. I am broken. I just want him to be happy when he eats, too. Parents
really feel me on this. Like, some days we are eating the same thing, and sometimes we are not. My default meals list is always rotating depending on the season or time of year it is. But, yeah, I'm like always pretty adventurous with my food. Every month when I'm feeling the itch to try something new or try out a new recipe, I'll go for it. Let's talk about space because our environment affects our mood and behavior more than we'd like to admit. Like, when was the last time you crashed out and your bedroom was like pristine and organized, right? Like, I feel like if you're on the brink of like a collapse, it's usually because your space is messy, too. Like, I feel like that is always the final straw.
When like your shit's a mess and you can't find something. I have been binge-watching Mikayla. Her YouTube channel is called Break Your Budget. She has this amazing video about how she tidies up her space, and she has a bunch of home defaults, and it inspired me to share my own home defaults. My first is everything has a home. Like nearly every object in my house has a designated area that they belong to, and I've tried my best to make it as functional as possible. Like my sunglasses and my sunscreen are by my entryway. My mugs live on top of my coffee maker. Like my hair products are next to the hair dryer. Sometimes when I'm putting things away, I play a little game with myself.
Like I pretend that the objects are alive. Like let's say like a purse is just out there. I will give the purse a little voice. It'll be like, "Oh, where do I belong? I miss my family." And I'm like, "Oh my gosh, I feel so bad." And I And then I carry my purse, and I put it with its purse family. And suddenly I am cleaning up. So even with like this battery, I'll be like, "Oh, I want to go home. I miss my brother. I miss my sister." And then I put it with the other batteries. This also works very well with children. Yeah. So sometimes it pays to have a vivid imagination. I feel like a lot of times people dread cleaning up because they're like, "Oh my gosh, I have to spend the
whole day cleaning." You don't need to spend the entire day cleaning if you just do like little 10-15 micro cleans every single day. And so this is where a timer comes in. I love using a physical timer because it's just like there. You can touch it. And so I like to put 10 to 15 minutes on. And I have trained myself to treat this timer like a small god. Like when this timer is on, I can do nothing but the task at hand. That's just the rule. And each time I'm just like purely amazed at how much I can clean up in just 10-15 minutes. It's It's astounding. I also have a section in my closet dedicated to default outfits. These are outfits that I have prepared in advance because I realized the only reason I'm ever late is because
I am just like trying to figure out my fit, you know? That's such a time suck. And so, to avoid this, I pre-plan my outfits the night before. I also save outfit combinations of outfits that I want to repeat. If I put something on, I'm like, "Ooh, this is good." I'll save it and I'll put it in my little default closet area. Let's move on to motherhood. I would say parenthood is the ultimate stress test for your system. You will quickly know if you have a good system or a bad system once you have kids because with kids, you never know what you're going to get that day. So, you want to make sure that you are prepared. So, my main default that I have is waking up at least 30 minutes before my son. I love him to death, but
like having him just burst into my room is just like not my favorite way to start the day, if I'm honest. So, that's why it's so important for me to have at least 30, sometimes 60 minutes to myself in the morning so I can ground myself and like orient myself. And I feel like it's really changed the way I show up as a mother because I am starting the day on my own terms. You feel me? Next, we have pre-planning outfits. This is like common sense, but if you have like a whole day with your kid the next day, just like have the outfits out already. Your outfit, too. Same goes for the go bag. The night before, I like to have all my son's essentials in my purse already. That's the water bottle, that's
the wipes, that's the antibacterial spray, the sunscreen. I want to have it all prepped beforehand. Sometimes when I come home after I have not seen my son for hours, he is so excited to see me. And so, this is when I will put a little timer on my phone for 15 minutes. I don't show him. It's a silent one, but during that 15 minutes, I give him my full undivided attention. That doesn't like cuz I feel like sometimes like when you get home like you want to like, you know, take your stuff off and start cleaning and you know, get adjusted, but that's when like the kid is like really like wanting your attention even more. I like to just give him the attention up front. Like I pay it first. And once I
do that, he's actually way more cooperative and chill for the rest of the day. I don't know. It's been like a big game changer. My final section is about planning and executing. Planning is like a delicate balance because if you spend too much of your time planning, you don't have enough time to execute it. And if you just execute it without a plan, then it feels overwhelming and impossible. Something that I do every single night without fail is to write a to-do list because honestly, like heading into a day with no plan horror film. Top five horror film. It's not for me. Like I need to know exactly what I'm walking into the next day. So, before I go to sleep, I'll look at my calendar and then I will just write out
everything that's going to happen. The things that are happening with my son, the things that are going to happen with me. It's almost like giving my brain a trailer to show like what's going to happen tomorrow. Now, if I'm planning for the week, that is when I have Monday. Monday is when my son's in school, the house is quiet, and I'll have like my little cappuccino and strategize my week ahead. I'll spend like maybe 30 to 45 minutes in the morning and it gives an overall structure of what's to come for the following week. I have like a dedicated space in my bullet journal that acts as like my to-do brain dump. Like whenever I have like a thought or a worry, I'll just jot it down in the brain dump. And
so, on that Monday or even the night before, I will look at that dump list and then I'll start adding when I can execute what I need to. Because I feel like if I don't write that down, it's just going to be this open loop that like floats around in my head. When I write it down, it almost silences that and I it just frees up my brain for other thoughts. I will select one to two high-lift high-lift tasks in a day. Meaning that as long as I finish one or two of these, I'll feel good. These high-lift tasks are the activities that use a lot of brainpower. For example, one high-lift task for me is like filming this video. After I finish filming this, I'm going to be like
good job. Like I don't expect to do more than one or two of these in a day. And then I also like to do this at the beginning of the day when there's a lot of battery juice in my brain. Later in the day around like 3:00 or 4:00 when I'm like kind of not running on fumes, but I don't know I can kind of turn it off a little bit. That's when I'll cross off like my low-lift tasks like doing errands or emails. That's kind of how I map out my day. Some days you're going to look at your list and be like I don't want to do any of this. I'm going to go rot. I'm going to relax. I'm going to party. And you got to honor that, too. Or else like what is the point of life? What is the point of living? Like defaults exist so that you
have something to return to after you've just been doing donuts in the parking lot. You come home to your default, you know? I think it's important to even have like moderation in moderation. I think the biggest reward of sticking to your defaults and staying disciplined and like staying obsessed with something long enough is that then it just like fossilizes into your identity. Like it becomes a part of you. So, whenever you see someone that is just like effortlessly excelling in something, it's not that they're like a superhero or like a unicorn. They were just so obsessed with something that it became a permanent default. That's it. I'm going to leave you with a James Clear quote because he said it
best. Your environment shapes your behavior. Your behavior shapes your identity. Your identity shapes your long-term results. So good. Period. Thank you again to Trainwellf for sponsoring this video. There is a 14-day free trial that you can try by clicking the link in my description box. Also, bigger thanks to you guys for making it to the end of this video. My voice [clears throat] is almost gone, but I would love to know what your guys' defaults are. I'm very curious to know other people's systems and to see if I can also apply it to my life. Anyway, thank you for watching and I'll see you guys in the next one. Bye.
