Discipline doesn't work if you have mental illness. Here's what to do instead.

If you have depression and desperately want to change your behavior, but no matter what you do, you just can't develop discipline, this video is for you. You'll discover why you're struggling so much and discover four techniques that will actually help you make progress.

Watch the video below, or read on for the full transcript.

For the best advice on getting unstuck, being productive and living your best life with chronic illness, trauma, and mental illness, subscribe to my channel and hit the bell to be notified when I post a new video every Tuesday.

I talk a lot about this topic here on my channel, but that's because helping my clients and audience make consistent progress toward their goals is one of my biggest priorities. And today I'm going to talk about a few things only my clients inside my coaching program have heard.

So let's get started. By the way, welcome to my living room floor, as there is a heat wave outside in the Pacific Northwest of all places, and my office is an oven. The first concept I want to teach you is a metaphor I like to call the Swiss Alps. It's similar to the wall of awful Jessica McCabe describes on her channel, How To ADHD, but with a few key differences. Basically when we're facing a task, no matter how simple the wall of awful is the cognitive and emotional barrier in front of starting that task. I love this metaphor, but it wasn't nuanced enough for what I and my clients experience.

My Swiss Alps metaphor started as a pun tastic joke that I have come to love because it makes room for more complicated experiences. Instead of imagining a wall between you and your task, imagine a massive mountain range with steep peaks and even pits of despair. Hence the Swiss pun: pits holes... Swiss cheese, Swiss Alps. Sorry, not sorry.

Depending on where you're starting from and the task ahead of you, your path through to the other side of the Swiss Alps can vary widely, and often the simpler the task, the more treacherous the journey because when we perceive a task to be simple and or easy, we expect ourselves to have absolutely no problem accomplishing it. So when we see the Swiss Alps looming ahead of us, we feel overwhelmed and not up to the seemingly simple task, and then feel immense shame for not being able to do something so simple and easy. I am here to tell you that the Swiss Alps are always real and it always takes time and effort to traverse them.

Once you've had a lot of practice trekking over the Swiss Alps, it can be easier to do at times, but it doesn't mean that the trek will never be hard. Again, it all comes back to self expectations. The more you expect of yourself, the more intense your perfectionism, and the seemingly simpler the task, the more daunting your Swiss Alps are likely to be. Always.

As for how to traverse them, pretty much everything I do in my coaching is designed to help with this. My first recommendation is to take my Butt In Chair Time masterclass, which you can learn how to get access to for free at the end of this video. My second recommendation is to simply allow traversing the Swiss Alps to be difficult and to take time and effort. Allow it to take a part or even all of your time scheduled for that day. Allowing things to be harder than they quote unquote should be, will do wonders for you.

Now here's a doozy not enough people talk about. Sure, you've heard about accountabilibuddies and support groups and you'll likely understand that they're helpful, but do you know why they're helpful? Among the many reasons, one little discussed reason stems from the concept of relational trauma. If you feel safer being fully independent, if you have ever had a relationship with a friend, family member, or authority figure that made you feel unsafe in any way, if you have social anxiety or struggle to trust people, please listen closely. Relationship wounds can only be fully healed through relationships. I am not saying to go back to your abuser and heal that relationship. I'm saying that if you've been in an abusive relationship, you need a new relationship that is safe and trustworthy. If you have experienced any form of trauma in relationship with someone else, no matter how severe or not you perceive that trauma to have been,if it still affects you to this day, you deserve relational healing and support. This is a larger topic that I could discuss at length, but today we're talking about why discipline doesn't work for you if you have mental illness.

So what does relational healing have to do with productivity? If you ever had a friend, family member or authority figure abuse or shame you around your capability or productivity, you're going to find it incredibly difficult to offer yourself the compassion, encouragement, and support you need and deserve in order to take action. Is it possible? Sure, but it's incredibly hard. It took me almost a decade to figure out how to do that for myself. This is where relational healing comes in. If you can find yourself a supportive friend, family member or authority figure like a coach, such as myself, or a therapist, or a community to consistently offer you and role model the compassion, encouragement, and support you need, you'll not only start to heal, you'll have a much easier time taking action and making the changes you want to make in your life.

If the idea of relational trauma and healing is new to you, let me know down in the comments. Was this a light bulb moment for you as it was for me when I first learned about it?

Mental illnesses, such as depression, have a habit of keeping you trapped in your own personal Groundhog Day where you're always waiting for tomorrow to be different, but tomorrow never comes. No matter how much you want to change your behavior, you just can't seem to get yourself to do anything different. If you want to hear more about my personal decade long Groundhog Day, watch this video next, the longer you're trapped inside your Groundhog day, the bigger your hopes and expectations for yourself become. You spend your days, bingeing Netflix and scrolling Tik-Tok, doing nothing productive and valuable, all the while dreaming of waking up early tomorrow, exercising, eating a healthy homemade breakfast, doing four hour deep work session toward your goals, meditating on your break, or having lunch with a friend, doing another four hour deep work session, making an elaborate and healthy home cooked meal for dinner, spending a loving and fulfilling evening with your partner or your children, or going on an amazing date or spending a night out with your friends, then come home, have a luxurious and restorative evening routine before falling into bed and getting a restful night's sleep. Ooph.

The details of your perfectly productive and fulfilling dream day are probably different. But the core issue with it is likely the same. You expect too much of yourself right now. If your depression has you trapped in your own personal Groundhog Day, hell you need to make what will feel like painfully small changes consistently in order to make actual lasting change. I'm talking 5, 10, or maybe 15 minutes a day doing something different. Max. I know that doesn't feel like enough. I know that's so small, you're wondering what's the point. I know the deep shame of recognizing that that's all I'm capable of right now. And I'm here to tell you it's okay. And it is enough. It's your way out of your Groundhog Day.

So how do you pick your time goal? Start with an hour and ask yourself does an hour of work toward one of my goals feel so doable it's actually absurd that I'd have no excuse whatsoever to not meet that goal. If the answer isn't a full body yes. You lower the number and you ask again, 30 minutes, 15 minutes, 10 minutes, 5 minutes. You'll likely feel ashamed by the number once you arrive at your yes and that's okay. The way you address the shame is by picking a small enough goal that you can stick with it consistently for a long period of time. Eventually you'll trust yourself to always get back to work the next day. And you'll slowly be able to increase how much you work. And then the day will come that you realize you're not ashamed anymore. You don't know when it happened because you were too busy going after your goals to notice. I promise you that's possible. And it all starts with one small consistent time-based commitment that's a thousand percent doable.

Side note: The only time I let my clients work harder than this is if they have a big school or work deadline that's looming, and they have to push in order to meet it. But once they've met that deadline, I guide them back to slow and steady progress so that they can permanently change their relationship with productivity in a healthy and sustainable way.

And one more thing that can make this goal even more doable that allows it to become a habit even faster is habit triggers. Your Groundhog Day itself is a habitual routine. You do the same things every day and likely in the same order. The trick is to pick one short part of your Groundhog Day routine that happens every day--like getting out of bed, eating breakfast, going to the bathroom, checking your notifications--to be your habit trigger. The way you make that part of your routine habit trigger is by doing your 15, 10, 5 minute goal. Immediately after that part of your preexisting routine, for example: eat breakfast, then write for 10 minutes; or get out of bed, then job hunt for five minutes; check notifications, then draw for 15 minutes. By attaching a new desire to have it to a preexisting habit, it will make the new behavior become habitual faster than if you weren't using a habit trigger at all. It's very sneaky and very effective.

There you have it. Four powerful techniques that will actually help you make progress instead of focusing on being disciplined.

Earlier, I mentioned I was going to tell you how to get free access to my Butt In Chair Time masterclass. So if you struggle with procrastination and resistance, I highly recommend checking it out. You'll learn three mindset shifts and one simple three-step system to help you get procrastination to the curb. All you have to do to get access is go to this link and sign up.

By the way, I'm doing research to develop the perfect productivity course for people, chronic illness, mental illness, neurodivergence and trauma, who just feel stuck. If that sounds like you and you enjoy my work, I'd love to talk to you. Click this link to book a time to chat with me on zoom. Thank you for your help.

Check out this video next if you have a habit of buying planners, but not using them fully. And if you liked this video, hit that like button and subscribe, and be sure to share it with your friends. I'll be back next week with another video. See you then. Bye.