If you’ve broken the same promise to yourself ten times, try making a smaller one you’ll actually keep.

After enough broken promises, the problem stops being discipline and starts being the size of the promise. Something you have failed at ten times is not a test of character, it is a badly set target, and each miss makes the next attempt less believable to you. Shrinking it is not giving up. It is picking a version your own track record can support.

Take the thing you keep failing at and cut it until it sounds almost too easy: ten minutes, two pages, one run. Hold it there for two weeks before you let it grow. What you are rebuilding first is the habit of believing yourself.