And the classic advice seemed to just be, to just force yourself. It was missing that piece about discipline really being this whole process of training yourself to take yourself seriously.

Aristotle quote to the point of all of this, is that the reason that all of this is worth the effort if it wasn't already obvious, is that, "Freedom is obedience to self formulated rules."

So from this, we have our first formula for creating self-discipline. One, create standards for your behavior and two, follow through with them no matter what. Through this, you're building respect for the sanctity of your own commands and you're building respect up for yourself by following through with what you said you'd do.