Regulation: The Foundation of Discipline
From Director of Health Alex Maples
Deadlines, social life, 10,000 steps, the world is on fire, what’s for dinner?
Life is stressful, no matter who you are or what you do. And, we often don’t realize how much of it we’re carrying.
As stress accumulates, our brains nudge us toward relief. We feel the urge to scroll, grab a snack, reach for a substance, or let out a long sigh. These strategies are built over a lifetime, shaped by family, culture, peers, and personal experimentation. Over time, we each develop a set of small, automatic behaviors that our nervous system deploys to let off just enough steam to keep going.
These impulses aren’t inherently good or bad. They are attempts at regulation. In the short term, they serve an important role: alleviating stress so we can continue about our day. The issue arises when the strategies we rely on most often for momentary relief lead to outcomes we don’t want over the long term.
I grew up in a family that largely relied on food and alcohol for comfort. A tasty treat to feel good for a moment, or a glass of wine after a busy workday. Neither is problematic in isolation. But when these become the default strategies over years, small negatives compound into meaningful ones. When baseline stress rises or a major stressor appears, those short-term solutions can go into overdrive. A glass of wine might become a bottle, reaching for food might become binge eating, and what once soothed begins to create real problems. For me this led to being 350 lbs at 22 years old. Food, alcohol, and video games were how I navigated stress. I needed new tools that led to better outcomes.
One of the first things I did was start walking. Initially, the goal was simple: lose weight.
What I didn’t expect was how it affected everything else. The more I moved, the more regulated I felt. The constant pull to eat for relief started to fade, not because I was exerting more willpower, but because I didn’t need that outlet in the same way anymore.
I thought I was walking to burn calories. In reality, I had found a reliable way to regulate my nervous system. That shift turned out to be a critical piece in overcoming binge eating.
I never intentionally gave up video games. I just found playing in the real world became more satisfying. Walking turned into running. Running turned into biking. Biking turned into mountain biking, then rock climbing, triathlons, martial arts, hiking… I found the gamification of the real world scratched the same itch for adventure and progress that video games had been occupying. The more I played in the real world, the healthier I became, eventually losing 150 lbs.
That experience taught me something important:
What Looks Like a Discipline Problem is Often a Regulation Problem
Emotional dysregulation drives impulsiveness. When the system is ramped up, it looks for the fastest, easiest path to regulation. That default tends to determine what we do next until we return to a more regulated state.
Discipline becomes easier when regulation is handled upstream. When we’re trying to be more disciplined in any area of life, the real work is learning to operate from a regulated state. I think in terms of building a toolbox for regulation and deliberately diversifying how I manage stress, both proactively and reactively.
The goal is to use tools that not only relieve stress in the moment, but also support health, resilience, and long-term goals. And, those tools have to be personal to you.
I’ve found it useful to think of regulation strategies along two dimensions: when they happen and what they cost.
Some strategies are proactive, things we do regularly that keep our nervous system regulated before stress builds up. Others are reactive, things we reach for in the moment when stress spikes.
The second dimension is the long-term consequence. Some strategies improve our health and resilience over time. Others are neutral. And some come with real costs.
| Reactive | Proactive | |
|---|---|---|
| Supportive | Deep breath, stretch, walk | Meditation, prayer, gratitude, exercise, meaningful connection |
| Neutral | Snack, short scroll, moderate substance use | Movie night with the family, cooking a special meal |
| Costly | Binge eating/drinking, doomscrolling, substance misuse | Having a couple of drinks with friends* |
* Note that even social drinking sits in “costly” because the framework tracks long-term physical impact, not occasion. Plenty of people would slot it as neutral; this is a deliberately conservative read.
You might find you spend the majority of the time in the bottom left of the chart.
The nervous system will always choose the fastest available form of regulation,which is why people tend to default to:
Phones
Substances
Pornography
Food
Distraction
Practices like walking and breathing can work quickly too, but you have to practice them proactively before they become your reactive strategy.
And, things can fall into more than one category. Exercise can be a great proactive or reactive strategy, but if it becomes compulsive and exceeds healthful amounts, it can start to break you down. Same goes for consuming media, a treat food, alcohol, or cannabis. The right dose in the right context can be neutral or even supportive, but taken too far they can become detrimental.
This is where a well-rounded toolbox becomes valuable. It allows you to notice how strategies are affecting you and call on different modalities at different times to best support your health and longevity.
There is no one size fits all prescription, and different seasons of life call for different strategies. Some patterns warrant professional support. If a coping strategy feels truly out of your control, the right tool is often a therapist or doctor, not a better matrix.
The goal here is to become aware of the strategies we have, build a supportive toolbox, and then monitor and adjust based on outcome. Turning from subconscious habits towards conscious systems.
“The Ditch is Never Far Away”
Rewiring subconscious patterns takes time, and the process is rarely linear.
Lapses happen. The ditch is always near when you’re driving down the road. When you find yourself there, don’t panic. Correct calmly and get back on the road.
The deep neural grooves of your habits (the ditches) don’t disappear overnight. Under stress it’s easy to slide back into them.The real skill is having patience with yourself, noticing it quickly and steering back toward the strategies you’re working to cultivate.
Over time you get better at both staying out of the ditch and getting back on the road.
Build Your Regulation Toolbox
Before trying to change anything, start by noticing what you already do.
Take Inventory
Think about a typical day or week. When stress shows up, what do you reach for?
When you’re bored:
When you’re overwhelmed:
When you’re anxious:
When you’re tired:
When you’re avoiding something:
Write down your most common strategies.
Map Your Patterns
For each strategy, ask:
Is this something I use reactively or proactively?
Over time, is it supportive, neutral, or costly?
Most people will find that many of their defaults fall into the reactive, neutral-to-costly range. That’s normal.
Look for Signals
Which strategies do you rely on most?
Which ones leave you feeling better afterward?
Which ones solve the moment but create problems later?
Upgrade, Don’t Eliminate
The goal isn’t to remove coping strategies. It’s to improve them.
Choose one or two supportive strategies you’d like to use more often. Keep it simple and realistic.
Make It Easy
The nervous system will always choose the fastest available regulator.
If you want to use better tools, they need to be just as accessible as your defaults.
Can you reduce friction to use the tools you want to cultivate?
Can you increase friction on the ones you want to rely on less?
Make One Small Commitment
The next time I feel ________, I will ________ instead of ________.
You already have a toolbox. The goal isn’t to build one from scratch, it’s to shape it so that the strategies you reach for most often are the ones that support you over time.