your diet. Discipline is about going through the temporary discomfort required for the long-term benefits. Making a habit of embracing discomfort will benefit you in all areas of life. It will give you the mental agility required to thrive regardless of your circumstances. Discipline isn’t concerned about your feelings —it doesn’t care that you feel as if you can’t take another step because that’s when you need it the most. Practicing discipline is a brain training exercise, equipping it to default to perseverance mode. URGE SURFING There is no doubt that it is difficult to develop discipline, but there are ways to make the process easier. One of them is learning how to reduce the strength of temptations and urges. An urge is the physical and mental impulse to engage in habitual behavior. The term “urge surfing” was pioneered by psychologist Alan Marlatt, an expert in the field of addiction. He compared urges to waves in the sea—waves rise up and down in intensity and eventually meet the shore and crash. What he was saying is that you have the ability to surf over those urges until they crash. Urge teaches you how to resist temptation and embrace discomfort. I want you to take a moment and think about an urge that you have recently experienced, think about how it made you feel physically and emotionally. Can you remember how those sensations evolved? As you are thinking about that urge, focus on your breath and imagine that the urge is a wave you are riding on. It’s the norm for us to identify with our urges, but urge surfing helps us separate ourselves from the bad habits we desire to correct. Instead of thinking, “I feel like eating cake,” say, “I have an urge to eat a piece of cake.” In this way, you are not fighting yourself but the sensation you are experiencing, you can then allow it to pass. It’s difficult to fight urges, but observing them without identifying with them increases your chances of overcoming them. The average urge will peak between 20 and 30 minutes if you fight with it. Fighting urges doesn’t work because it makes them stronger and longer-lasting, which, in turn, diminishes your confidence about your ability to fight them. You give your urges power through your willingness to indulge in them. There is actually no power in the temptations and the addictions. When a drug addict goes to a rehab facility and has no access to their drug of choice, they experience significantly few urges and cravings compared to when they are not in a rehab facility.