How to break the cycle of "Hard times➡️Discipline➡️Good Times➡️Laziness➡️Hard Times"?

[BrunoRastablasta]

There this famous adage, "Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men and weak men create hard times" has been applied widely to history (i.e. the rise and fall of Rome, the path of the United States, economic bubbles, etc)

I'm seeing parallels in this to the personal development side of things. Things generally are hard, then because they're hard I get strong and disciplined, then everything is good, but these good times invite laziness, then that laziness makes things hard again, on and on. This pattern occurs on multiple timescales (hours, days, months, and years) almost like a repeating fractal pattern.
How does one break this cycle? Any books/things to look at tangentially or directly related to this topic?

There is an answer to this in the book called "The Lessons Of History" by Will Durant. The last chapter (three pages long) describes just that

 

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[ZCP]

What is a plan to you? Imo I think I already have a plan, isn't what I already described good enough?

@Get Right has achieved what you are trying to achieve many times over.
He said you have no plan. Assume for a moment he is right. Pull out a clean sheet of paper and make a plan. Put it in your progress thread. Keep throwing out plans until he (and others) say, 'good. now go do that plan.' Take charge of your own path.

 

[Filippos]

There this famous adage, "Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men and weak men create hard times" has been applied widely to history (i.e. the rise and fall of Rome, the path of the United States, economic bubbles, etc)

I'm seeing parallels in this to the personal development side of things. Things generally are hard, then because they're hard I get strong and disciplined, then everything is good, but these good times invite laziness, then that laziness makes things hard again, on and on. This pattern occurs on multiple timescales (hours, days, months, and years) almost like a repeating fractal pattern.

How does one break this cycle? Any books/things to look at tangentially or directly related to this topic?

There are 3 things you should keep in mind when it comes to this topic.
I've been trying to answer this question for about 5 years now and I've read a lot of books on the topic, so this is basically what I've applied since then and found that it works in real practice. These principles have helped find consistency far more than anything else.

1) The cycle between discipline and laziness is a clear indication of a lack of temperance
The best solution to this cycle you refer to was given already by the stoic philosophy in ancient Greece, although I'm biased due to my background (I'm Greek), but bear with me here for a bit.
The stoic philosophy is basically a set of rules or a mindset that helps you control your emotions and decouple your actions from them. Unfortunately, the mainstream confuses this with being robot-like, but stoic philosophy is not that, it helps you for example to avoid emotional extremes (which in turn create the cycle, when you deviate too much from discipline for example).
The basis of the philosophy says that the world around us is governed by natural laws and that everything can be described in terms of cause-and-effect relationships. They call this "λόγος" (pronounced logos), which reason in Greek. As you can imagine, this is the root of the word logic and it has the same meaning as in English. Their main argument was that if you understand the logic of things happening in your life, you will be able to approach in a way that brings you the desirable results. People tend to oversee that, but there 2 things you should take out of this argument:
a) You MUST stick to logic and avoid any kind of extrapolation and cognitive bias, which also means that if you haven't proven a cause-and-effect relationship in real life, you shouldn't consider it as a fact. This goes to the whole thing with the cycle you describe, but I'll come to this later again. What you describe is a possible interpretation that you found that could make sense, but you have no real-world evidence that proves that there is such a cycle happening to all of us.
b) You MUST accept that you cannot control everything, so it's still possible that you have to discipline yourself to do something again. Let's say you got fit after being fat for years and then you had an accident, so you had to stay put for a longer period of time and now you're not as fit anymore. All your muscles are gone, you have to discipline yourself to go back to the gym again. External factors can alway put you in a position where you will lose your gains and you have to work hard again to get them back.
So, long story short, there are 5 cardinal virtues (or as they called them "αρετές", pronounced aretes) you need to keep in check to apply the stoic philosophy in your life. These are wisdom (the virtue of educating yourself and trying to trace the chain of cause and effect, i.e. the logic), courage (the virtue of facing not only extreme situations, but also daily challenges with patience, clarity and integrity), justice (the virtue of treating others with fairness, even when they have done wrong) and finally temperance (the virtue of exercising self-restraint and moderation in all aspects of life).
The last vitue, temperance, has the answer, although people don't really get it the first time they hear it. DISCIPLINE IS A MATTER OF DECISION-MAKING, NOT A MATTER OF SELF-PUNISHMENT! This cycle happens to people who either have not enough experience yet to have really grasped the concept of discipline or they have lost themselves in a bad habbit of self-punishment and supression of their emotions. So of course, when you suppress your emotion to eat too much in order to lose weight and do a diet for a few months and lose all the weight, the emotion is still there, waiting until you let your guards down... That's why it's so easy to fall into such a cycle. You didn't deal with the source of the problem, you dealt only with the consequences temporarily...

2) Patterns are possibly self-projected
If you look at the 21 cognitive biases from Charlie Munger, you'll recognise that one of them is the bias we have to see relationships between things that don't really exist. The reason for that is that your brain is a muscle that has been trained to do just that. What happens if you ask for help from someone with a hammer...? He will see everyting as a problem of nails that need more hammering... That's your brain... Think of it as a dumm machine learning algorithm. If you give an algorithm random data of temperatures of a cold night and data of your wife's horniness, the algorithm will find a relationship between them just because you said the one data set is at the input and the other is at the output... In a similar way, you noticed that some times you have more and some times less discipline and you noticed a similar cycle in history, so the next logical step is to somehow derive that this is human nature... This is unfortunately a logical falacy. It can help you as an observation, but it cannot help you as a mindset.
So every time you think you see a pattern, think again and make sure you're not extrapolating, over-generalizing or theorizing. Make sure you field test the patterns to prove them in real-world.
There's also an entire discipline in psychology that deals with the fact that human experience is in a big part pure projection of our own BS models and assumptions. So in a few words, many of the things we experience, depending on how strongly we depend on theoretical models and assumptions, are pure self-fulfiling prophecy...

3) Asking why is procrastination by itself
Unfortunately the question of how to avoid this cycle, as with many other topics in personal development, can very easily derail to a discussion of why is there a cycle. Be careful for that! Anyone who derails to that either has no clue about the topic or he's a sleezy guru trying to mind-f'*&k you to get money... The reason is that going to a deeper level and asking why something happens the way it does is a mental mast*#?!ion that feeds itself with nice feelings of deepness and wisdom. It's not! Stick to reality and avoid theorising for the sake of theorising. Every philosophy and every model we have created, we did so to portray reality in a way we can understand. It's always been about creating maps to help each other and help ourselves understand what is the best reaction. But people have fallen in love with many theories and philosophies and spend more time talking about them and less time applying them

 

[Ayanle Farah]

@Get Right has achieved what you are trying to achieve many times over.
He said you have no plan. Assume for a moment he is right. Pull out a clean sheet of paper and make a plan. Put it in your progress thread. Keep throwing out plans until he (and others) say, 'good. now go do that plan.' Take charge of your own path.

I wasn't trying to argue that I have a plan, I just wanted to know how extensively I need to plan stuff for it to be considered a plan to him.

That's why I asked "what is a plan to you?", personally I prefer to figure things out along the way but I'm open to advice whatever it may be.

 

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[WJK]

I don't really hate money, I hate that money or lack thereof limits what you can do in life, it stands in the way between you and everything you want.

Most people never get past the "need to pay bills", "not enough money for this" phase and they die before they truly lived because money boxed them in and killed them long before they were buried.

Getting rich will allow me to put that stuff behind me, so you're right, it's just a means to an end.

I've read this whole thread. I'm baffled by your conversation. I think what you're saying is that you don't like to work. You don't want to work. You don't seem to have a good work ethic nor daily habits. But, you want the fruits and rewards that come from working? How can you expect positive results without paying the toll?

 

[Ayanle Farah]

I've read this whole thread. I'm baffled by your conversation. I think what you're saying is that you don't like to work. You don't want to work. You don't seem to have a good work ethic nor daily habits. But, you want the fruits and rewards that come from working? How can expect that result without paying the toll?

You're right, but I'm changing that, today has been a good day by my standards when it comes to work.

 

[WJK]

You're right, but I'm changing that, today has been a good day by my standards when it comes to work.

This probably sounds weird to you, but I enjoy working. I tried retiring, and I hated it. Standing still is boring. The charm of my life is that I get to chose what work I do most of the time. When I was young, that was not the case. Those early hard days built my character and built good habits.

 

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[Mattie]

You can read books, but at the end of the day, the answer lies in your question. DISCIPLINE is how you break the cycle.

I agree with this. We don't really need books to understand our own behavior and emotional patterns. We know we have habits, if you're paying attention to your actions, you can always recognize what patterns to break and work on. I don't believe anyone has to tell you what they are. You know. Discipline is simply the answer to break habits.

 

[B. Cole]

@Get Right has achieved what you are trying to achieve many times over.
He said you have no plan. Assume for a moment he is right. Pull out a clean sheet of paper and make a plan. Put it in your progress thread. Keep throwing out plans until he (and others) say, 'good. now go do that plan.' Take charge of your own path.

This! Admittedly, I struggled with it, because product development that leads to e-commerce with an invention was completely foreign to me, so making a plan for something that I didn’t know the makings of kept kicking my a$$.

What finally created results was to take a notebook and just write down questions. I began with “What do you want?” This led to “What is there to want, what are the possibilities?”, and more questions that could be answered by researching and looking at people who were where I wanted to be, though I didn’t know how they got there until I knew the questions to ask. As the plan developed, the questions began answering themselves, and I slowly began to understand what the plan needed to outline.

Sounds crazy, but you don’t know what you don’t know you don’t know. So ask a question, find something out. Make a plan to find out, then make a plan to do it.

 

[BlackMagician]

I will be following this thread. Somehow i feel this thread will give me the boost i am lacking.

@Get Right you are right. I will prove that you are right.

 

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[HackVenture]

There this famous adage, "Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men and weak men create hard times" has been applied widely to history (i.e. the rise and fall of Rome, the path of the United States, economic bubbles, etc)

I'm seeing parallels in this to the personal development side of things. Things generally are hard, then because they're hard I get strong and disciplined, then everything is good, but these good times invite laziness, then that laziness makes things hard again, on and on. This pattern occurs on multiple timescales (hours, days, months, and years) almost like a repeating fractal pattern.

How does one break this cycle? Any books/things to look at tangentially or directly related to this topic?

First thing I thought of after reading this isn't personal development but more of the situation my country Singapore is currently facing.

Hard times created my ancestors, my ancestors created good times and now we are all enjoying the fruits of their labour.

Many of us work hard in our own domains and many others are also complaining about how it was "much easier" to become successful in the past, "much easier" to own property in our fathers' days, "much easier" to own a car in other countries etc.

Fearing hard times, but hopefully the good times will last.

 

[HustleHard]

Build Resiliency by Taking Control of Your Life | The Art of Manliness

https://www.success.com/if-youre-searching-for-purpose-ask-yourself-these-5-questions/

View: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=z3ScszkzJqk

View: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Wcbv0GTLaS0&t=37s

View: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=g-jwWYX7Jlo

View: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_oUtJxE4sjs


^ Example of being resilient, courageous, tough, disciplined. Good luck my friends, and Godspeed.

 

[RazorCut]

[QUOTE="I wasn't trying to argue that I have a plan, I just wanted to know how extensively I need to plan stuff for it to be considered a plan to him.

That's why I asked "what is a plan to you?", personally I prefer to figure things out along the way but I'm open to advice whatever it may be.[/QUOTE]

"personally I prefer to figure things out along the way"

This is called drifting and will see you go in all directions. You will be very susceptible to shiny object syndrome, procrastination and lack of focus. All the attributes needed to pretty much guarantee certain failure.

The saying fail to plan, plan to fail (attributed to Benjamin Franklin) has become popular for a reason, a plan of some kind is critical to success or you are gambling on sheer luck getting you through.

There is nothing wrong with adjusting your plan 'along the way' but you need a good reason for it (better information as your research goes deeper, market position changing. An unknown caveat you were not aware of before etc..) A ship will adjust its course as the pull of the tide and strength of the wind affect it. These are called corrections. However it is still making for same port that was set out in its detailed passage plan in the first place.

The plan is your chart to your destination. The more in-depth your plan the greater chance you have of staying on course, avoiding the rocks and succeeding. Therefore surely the wise person would want as detailed plan as possible?

How many successful people do you know when asked how they made it said "I just winged it, and here I am."

 

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[Fassina]

Build habits and systems.. That's the answer, if you depend on willpower to do things you can't win in the long run.
Read atomic habits. It's a good book on this subject.

 

[Chris25]

I have also struggled with this problem a lot in the past. And I'm still working on imporving to this day, even tho I've made a lot of progress in the past couple of years.

I must agree with everyone that says it basically comes down to habits. And if you're looking for a good book I reccomend "Atomic Habits". You won't regret reading this one, even if you've previously read other books on this subject!

Another thing i've noticed that is important in this cycle is the gap between action taking and the big result. Most of the time it takes a long period for actions to turn into results that matter, and this can be a buzz kill. Once you get those results tho it becomes much easier to keep doing the work and strive for more.

So just make sure to form habits, and than stick to them untill you get the feedbak results. It will make things much easier from there on.

 

[VIVEKSINGHJADONS]

I've been hearing discipline my whole life, I still don't understand what it is, I've tried being disciplined and I failed everytime.

I don't know about you guys, but it's just not something I can sustain for very long. I might be disciplined one day, the next day I'm back to being lazy.

Discipline relies on willpower and willpower gets depleted quickly, it doesn't always work.

I think there is more to this discipline stuff than what everyone is saying. There is no way you can just force yourself through whatever, you're not superhuman, there has to be another answer.

What I think is discipline is not an exclusive thing. Discipline comes from passion and passion comes from your well-defined goal. Discipline fades away the moment you lose the sight of your goal. So discipline is inclusive of your goal and your passion.

 

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[Ayanle Farah]

What I think is discipline is not an exclusive thing. Discipline comes from passion and passion comes from your well-defined goal. Discipline fades away the moment you lose the sight of your goal. So discipline is inclusive of your goal and your passion.

Can you give me an example of a well defined goal?