Self-discipline it is not 15 Now you can start to see why self-discipline is not a part of long-term change. To the contrary: if too much self-discipline is required to achieve what we want, chances are we are aiming at the wrong goal. In working with people to achieve long-term change, it has become crystal clear to me that while self-discipline has nothing to do with the process, there are other motivating factors. So what are the ultimate motivators? And how does all this relate to eating and weight loss? The ultimate motivators Ultimately, we are all motivated by pain or pleasure. Of the two of them pain, or more precisely fear of pain, is the more powerful. In our modern world, pain is usually emotional rather than physical. Pain may be that of humiliation or embarrassment. Such pain will motivate us to avoid, for example, speaking in public – the number one fear of the general population. But if we cannot avoid it, the threat of public humiliation will also motivate us to over-prepare the talk. Fear of pain and pleasure can masquerade as self-discipline. Let me give you an example from my own life. At medical school,‘ Swot vac’ was the few weeks before exams at the end of each six-month semester. How we managed our study time in these weeks could mean the difference between a pass and a fail for those of us who tended to leave things to the last minute. One year I found it really difficult to motivate myself to buckle down and study. I needed buckets of self-discipline and the bucket was empty. As with previous swot vacs, I started by developing a schedule of what I had to study and by when I needed to study it. I broke my days down into four study sessions of around four hours each. Then I worked out how many pages of lecture notes or textbook pages I needed to do per session. I realized that this time around, I was reasonably wellorganized and had plenty of time – and that was the problem. I knew from previous swot vacs that what really got me motivated was the fear of failure, the fear of the humiliation and the embarrassment of failing in front of my friends and peers. The problem this time was