12/28/2025
This is interesting. It’s a vicious cycle because, according to this article, you need to be emotionally well to be disciplined. It’s challenging to stay motivated if you are not in the right mindset. Makes sense, I get it. At the same time, if one is not disciplined, this too, interferes with emotional health. Regardless, let’s work on your emotional health, as well as your physical health, to help you stay motivated and disciplined.
If discipline keeps failing, the problem might not be willpower, it might be your wellbeing.
Why Self-Discipline Collapses When Well-Being Is Low
We’re often told that discipline is the key to everything. You just need to push harder, be stricter, more consistent, more resilient, and you’ll get your life together and then happiness will magically follow.
But recent psychological research (link in first comment) suggests that this relationship works the other way around. Well-being predicts self-control, not the opposite. In other words, when people feel psychologically well — more emotionally balanced, less depleted, more positive and optimistic — their capacity for self-discipline and temptation restraint increases. When well-being is low, self-control tends to collapse, no matter how strong your “willpower” is supposed to be.
From a neuroscience perspective, it makes sense. Self-discipline isn’t a moral trait, it’s a cognitive function primarily driven by the prefrontal cortex (PFC) - that part of your brain that makes you do the hard thing, that tames your impulses, helps regulate emotions, and gets you focused on long-term rewards rather than immediate gratification. But the PFC depends on energy, stress load, sleep, and reward processing. When the brain is under chronic stress, exhausted, inflamed, or emotionally overwhelmed, the PFC is much less engaged and executive control drops. Impulse regulation is no longer managed effectively, long-term planning that discipline relies on becomes harder, and effort feels heavier than it should. You may recognise the scenario where you slept poorly the night before and, the next day, all you want is chocolate. In that depleted state, your brain prioritises immediate comfort over long-term goals, and restraint naturally disappears. Temptation becomes stronger to resist.
So when someone is struggling and we tell them to “just be more disciplined,” we might be asking them to do something they currently don't have the resources for.
However, this doesn’t mean discipline is useless. It means discipline is an outcome, not a starting point. It's also not permanent, it is dependent on the internal resources you have available. The start should involve restoring wellbeing and reducing stress, improving sleep and recovery, engaging in activities that make you feel good. When you're feeling safe and energetic, you have the resources to invest in effort and the capacity to develop an intrinsic motivation by creating meaning and value in the task.
When those conditions improve, discipline tends to re-emerge on its own. So instead of asking: “Why can’t I stick to plans anymore?” A more accurate question might be: “What has drained me or what's preventing me from having the reins over my self-control?” Sometimes the most disciplined thing you can do is stop blaming yourself and start rebuilding the conditions that make discipline possible.
