How To Be Effortlessly Disciplined ► Explained With Dark Souls

I used to think in order to be disciplined, I needed to be super hard and aggressive and give my maximum effort. David Goggins sort of vibe. And so I thought I was just lazy. I would stay in bed instead of waking up early, constantly give in to my urges, and would never actually make progress toward my goals because I just didn’t feel like it. But now things have changed for me. The things I used to dread and have to force myself to do

Before, I now do automatically. And the craziest part is that it feels kind of effortless to me now. I didn’t become so much more tough and aggressive and disciplined in the way we all think discipline is supposed to be. It might sound just a little crazy, but it was actually the game Dark Souls that taught me what true discipline looks like. So I want to tell you how you can be effortlessly disciplined, and I’m going to explain it the best way I

Know how, with Dark Souls. But first, I need to give a bit of backstory because for me, when it comes to things like waking up early for school or work or friends, then I can be disciplined enough to wake up at like 5:30 if I need to. But when I’m not waking up for someone else, I’m just waking up early for myself for the sake of being more productive, then it becomes almost impossible, and I almost

Never end up getting out of bed at the time I said I was going to. When I go to work, then I’m able to power through an 8-hour long shift, no problem. Even though it’s tough, whatever, I can do it. But if I’m just trying to do my own work, I’m lucky to even get 1 hour of work done. I found that I actually can be disciplined, sometimes effortlessly, but only when it’s for other people. When it’s just for me,

Then I just can’t do it anymore. And so I thought I was just lazy and undisciplined. But then I played the game Dark Souls and my whole perspective of what it means to be disciplined changed. My first experience was with Dark Souls 3, and I made it past the first boss because he was kind of easy, but then I made it to this boss called Vordt of the Boreal Valley. I really didn’t like this part of the

Game. I kept dying on the run back to the boss before even getting to him, and the times when I did get to him, I didn’t have any more Estus, and so I would just die. I know, I know. How do you manage to die on the run back to Vordt? Isn’t it super short? Just give me a break, all right? It was a rough time. The whole time I was just thinking, “Wow, this is stupid. Game sucks.” I thought

It was too hard, and I just gave up on it. I actually uninstalled the game. Two years later, I got this weird craving to just try it out again, and for some reason, I loved it. I found out that this is actually the same case for a lot of people. They hate it at first, and then for some odd reason, they come back to it and glaze it like it’s the best thing they’ve ever experienced in

Their life. Now, I even have a YouTube channel about Dark Souls. You hate it at first because it’s so hard, but then you come back to it later for the exact same reason, because it’s hard. How does that make any sense? When I used to die on my first play through, it just used to be annoying and made me not want to play anymore. But on my second play through, when I was really giving the game a

Chance, I was almost happy to die, because I felt like with each death to the boss, I learned more and got just a little closer to eventually beating it. You realize that this is actually just how the game works, and so what felt like a chore in the beginning, you now actually enjoy. Dying isn’t as frustrating anymore. It’s meaningful now. But the difficulty didn’t change at all, only the meaning did. And I think this is the key to unlocking effortless

Discipline. People have started to think discipline is about forcing yourself to suffer. You have to be this rough, worn-down, manly man, and wake up at 3:00 a.m., take cold showers, and just be this stone-cold dude. But I don’t think that’s true. I don’t think discipline has to be this impossible challenge. I think anyone can be disciplined. Discipline becomes easy when the struggle actually means something to you. The reason people can spend 8 hours playing a game or building

Lego or working on a car, but can’t handle 30 minutes of studying, is because the effort and the time spent actually feels important and meaningful, and it just makes sense. Just being able to stay focused on these selective things for such a long period of time is already a kind of discipline itself, but we just never think of it that way because it feels kind of fun, too. In Dark Souls, you just want to beat the boss. You want to see

What happens next. It’s not always fun. Sometimes it can be pretty frustrating, but the struggle has a purpose now. You’re not just thinking about it like it’s work, even though it kind of is. You might call yourself lazy, but would a lazy person stay totally locked into the same Dark Souls boss for 4 hours straight? That doesn’t sound just like laziness. That kind of sounds like sheer focus and will. Maybe you’re not lazy. Maybe you’ve just never found

Something important enough to suffer for. And if that’s true, then the solution isn’t becoming tougher. It’s finding something that actually matters to you. You might actually be disciplined already, but your effort feels disconnected from anything you actually care about for most things. And I was able to use this mindset to become more disciplined in real life. I started connecting all of my actions to something bigger than just what they are. When I work out and try to gain

Muscle, it’s for my future wife and family. When I script a new video, it’s because I want to make an impact in the world and let the world know my ideas and hopefully help somebody and also just make something I’m proud of. I’ve seen a lot of YouTubers whose only goal is to just make money. And where are they now? They quit because YouTube for them wasn’t really about anything passionate. It really just felt like a

Chore. And so, why would they want to keep doing something that isn’t providing them the one thing that they wanted? It’s just annoying at that point. A person going to the gym for the sole purpose of losing weight will probably have a harder time than the person that just goes for fun. If you can make going to work something more in your mind, then it doesn’t seem as bad anymore. It feels more like Dark Souls. Tough, but fun. Tough, but I want to

Keep going anyway. The difficulty didn’t change. The meaning changed. Discipline becomes effortless when the struggle feels meaningful. So, if you have trouble being disciplined, now you have some things you should think about. Don’t ask yourself, “How can I force myself harder to just do the work like I know I should?” Instead, ask yourself, “Do I even care about what I’m doing or is it just annoying to me? What is on the other side of this struggle?

What would make this effort feel meaningful to me? What hard things would I actually be happy to do?” Write these things down on a piece of paper and really think to yourself, “What will make you actually want to get out of bed in the morning? What do you want?” Dark Souls taught me to understand why the suffering is worth it. Once every death becomes meaningful, I stopped wanting to just quit. And the same thing can happen

In your own life. When the struggle actually matters, discipline stops feeling like discipline and starts feeling like making progress towards something bigger. After you really think to yourself about the kind of life you would want to lead and what things you actually crave, it gets a whole lot easier to be disciplined. It won’t always be easy. Discipline is still a pretty tough thing to maintain. Sometimes it’s just really hard to get out of bed in the morning or go to the

Gym after work, but it will get easier if you actually care about what you have in your life. If you’ve been trying to wake up earlier like I have, but can never seem to do it, then finding something real and nourishing for you to do can make it so much more possible. I was never able to wake up early just for myself, like I said before, but now surprisingly, I actually can get up early for boxing and recording videos.

Because it’s like I have a mission and I actually have to get up early for those things that I want to do. I’m actually motivated to get up and go do it. Whereas before, I just wanted to get up early for no real reason other than I thought it would make me more disciplined. So, ask yourself the questions I gave you. Find something that actually matters to you. Don’t change the difficulty because just like Dark Souls, you can’t change the

Difficulty. Instead, change the meaning. That way, no matter how tough things get, you won’t go hollow.