What comes first, the mindset or the discipline? Is a positive mindset the key to achieving all your goals or does achieving your goals lead to the positive mindset?
Imagine being able to make progress despite your mood. Think about how it’d feel to finally stay consistent on all your habits. What would your life look like if you started prioritizing your health and well-being instead of hoping for motivation and the energy to take action?
A lot of people say a “positive mindset” is the key to unlocking your dream life and achieving your goals. I believe thinking positively is bullshit and can’t be counted on if you want real results.
In this blog, I’m gonna dive into my thoughts on discipline, habits, and mindset. I’ll share why I consider a positive mindset to be a load of garbage, why discipline is the real driving force towards results, and how I’d start building consistent habits if I had to start from zero.
As always, I don’t have all the answers, these are just my thoughts. I do hope, however that my expedition to try finding the answers inspires you to do the same.
Thinking Positively is Unreliable
Consider the last time you were having one of those days – that day when everything felt like it was trying to piss you off. You woke up feeling groggy and angsty, the anxious thoughts consumed your morning as you prepared for work. All day you felt tired, frustrated at every little inconvenience, anxious about all the shit you had to do, and just wishing you could go home and be alone. Work ends and you go home, you have no energy to workout, cook, clean, or work on your hobbies. Instead, you lie on the couch, stare at your phone, order takeout, and waste the night away, hoping tomorrow will be different.
We’ve all had these days and if you’re like me, sometimes it feels like every day is playing on repeat. I can also say with certainty, when I have days like this, thinking positively does absolutely nothing to solve the problem. When I’m overwhelmed, rushing around making drinks, anxious thoughts filling my mind, pissed off and wishing I could go home – no amount of “You’ll be ok!” or “You’ve got this!” and “Just stay positive” leads to me feeling better. In these moments, a positive mindset is forced and usually just makes everything worse.
Trying to have a positive mindset tells your brain the mindset you have now is negative, unhelpful, or “bad”. You pull yourself from the present trying to look towards a future when you don’t feel like this anymore.
If you’ve been in the position where you feel like shit, you don’t want to do anything except lay in bed, you don’t want to talk to anyone, etc. you know there’s no way of changing your mind with a simple positive thought. I’ve tried, so many times, and it’s never worked. When I’m in the thick of negativity, there is no clear escape and hearing someone say “Just stay positive” changes nothing.
A positive mindset can only get you so far, it cannot be depended upon. The only thing you can depend on is habits you’ve built through trial and error, in the hardest days of your life. I’ll discuss a little later how to start forming those habits.
If you’re like me, you’ve had those days where positive thoughts come easy and they feel natural. You flow through the day with ease, you feel strong and capable, ready to do great work. On these days, going to the gym or performing your other healthy habits is easy – you don’t even have to fight yourself, it just happens. There’s a strong motivation to do the hard work and make progress on your goals. You want to improve your chances of living a better life.
But what happens on the days where these thoughts and the motivation is nowhere to be found? These are the days that separate you from the pack if you make the tough choice. If you can find the strength within you to do the work even when your brain tells you not to, you’re gonna make progress much faster. Not just on your health, but on your confidence, self-esteem, and peace of mind.
What is Discipline?
I define discipline as the ability to perform a task regardless of how you feel. It’s going to the gym even though you’re tired, it’s writing even if you’re sad, meal prepping when your brain says “order in”. Discipline can be a lot of things, but the main idea is that you set an intention for yourself and you stay consistent no matter what.
For some, discipline isn’t a choice. Their doctor tells them if they don’t lose weight and consistently exercise, they’re at risk of death from heart attack, organ failure, etc. These individuals don’t have much of a choice, but a lot of us are forced to choose between doing what we are now or make a change. To me, each of us has the same risk of dying if we don’t make the choice to improve, it’s just that the time-frame is on a longer scale. Many people choose short term pleasure at the expense of their future health and well-being.
Is there a way to force the discipline as if you had no choice? This is the question I’ve been wrestling with in my head and the basis behind my Accountability Program. My goal has been to create a system that bypasses self-negotiation and excuses to get you to build a habit through consistent, intentional progression. I wanted to build something for the person who knows exactly what they need to do ad how to do it, but can’t take the leap. The program is for someone who has tried to form a habit it the past, but always succumbs to inconsistency. If that appeals to you, consider applying for the program HERE
Doing it Alone
If I had to start from zero, how would I build my habits and form the discipline to do them no matter what? I’d start slow and grow once I prove I can handle it.
Whatever the habit is, I’d pick a manageable number of times I’d complete it during the week. I’m a firm believer that trying to do way too much all at once leads to burnout in the long run. The habit needs to be built slowly through trial and error. If you start with just a couple days, you can easily discover what works, what doesn’t, the excuses you keep running into, etc. Then if you do miss a day, you won’t feel terrible because there’s still time to complete the habit during the week.
Once you can consistently prove you can perform the habit the amount of times you set out to, you increase it. Rinse and repeat. Like with a lot of things, this is easier said then done. To accomplish it on your own is hard work and requires a burning desire to change as well as patience with yourself. It can be beneficial to have someone there guiding you along and holding you accountable.
If you try it on your own and find you struggle with staying consistent, the program I shared above could be a great fit for you. I want you to succeed and build the habits that will improve your life. Building my own discipline has lead to improvements in so many facets of my life and I want you to experience that. The goal is to prove you can build no matter how you feel.
Habit First, Mindset Second
If you can build the habit no matter the mindset, you’ll make immense amounts of progress. If you work on building the mindset first, you won’t be able to guarantee the habit. Even the most positive people have bad days, the most motivated feel tired, you can’t expect those days to disappear. So the goal is to still do the hard work even on those days. The only way to do that is by proving to yourself you’re capable of doing the work no matter what.
Every time I was tired, I went to the gym. When I was sad, I went to the gym. When I was frustrated, I went to the gym. We had a snow storm and I wanted to be warm and cozy, I went to the gym. Eventually my mind caught up. I trained my brain to ignore every excuse it has ever tried using. No matter the emotion, weather, or any other circumstance – if it wasn’t Saturday, my rest day, I was going to the gym.
Something pretty awesome happened when I did this for long enough, something I’d like you to experience. After about 2 months, the excuses just went away completely, but you know what stayed behind? The habit and the results were obvious. I have been feeling this immense sense of pride in myself for doing the hard work. I feel powerful, almost unstoppable. The confidence I’ve gained from prioritizing my habits has spilled into all aspects of my life. That 2 months of discipline lead me to writing and content creation again.
I built the habit, the mindset followed. When the mindset isn’t around, I no longer wait for it to show up. But I show up. I show up for myself every day, I choose to disregard short term pleasure in the present to create a better life for my future self. At first, it was hard to rationalize this because the self-negotiation was loud, but now there’s hardly an echo of those voices.
A positive mindset comes from an inner belief, it’s an identity. In order to build those beliefs and the identity, you need to do the things that person does and practice what that person preaches. Telling myself I’m a great guy means nothing if I don’t believe it deep down. I can say I’m a Stoic all I want, but how do I act when Nature tests me? Confidence comes not from standing up straight and making eye contact, but by having an unshakeable faith that I can do anything because I’ve done so many challenging things already.
You want a positive mindset? Build it through habit. Prove to yourself you’re willing to do the hard work, no matter what.
February 22, 2026
