You don’t have discipline?
I had someone ask me the other day, “Rob, how often do you eat crappy meals or how often do you eat bad in general?”
I thought about it for a moment, then responded, “I don’t know maybe once a week, if ever really. But to be honest, about once a week.” His reactions were slight laughter and disbelief. He responded quickly, “Man I have cravings all the time, and I constantly want to eat junk.”
We both kind of laughed and he asked me how I do it. With a wife, kids, a family, friends, how do you do it?
I told him that it was easy, I have discipline. I thought about that for a moment and said to myself, that’s pretty much the way I try to live most of my life – with discipline.
Webster’s definition of discipline is: 1. A branch of learning 2. Training that develops self-control, efficiency. 3. A system of rules.
You see I don’t do much in my life at this point without discipline. Exercise regularly, eat clean food, wake up early, get to work on time and even write this content. I couldn’t do any of it without discipline.
I haven’t always been this way. I had to work at it a lot. Before, I was more of a crop duster instead of a fighter jet. I was young with no discipline in my eating or routine. I’d even make excuses to skip the gym and training.
I got tired of getting the same results all the time and constantly feeling like my world was in chaos around me. It made me feel like a failure because I always seem to continue to have the same problems without a solution.
Finally, I said to myself something has to change, obviously it’s not going to be the world, then it will have to be me.
What did I do?
I changed. Here are 5 things that help me still today:
- I decided that I had enough, and I wanted to change.
- I made small changes on a weekly basis that helped me make gains towards larger goals. That way, in time, I had made real progress.
- I write in my notebook/calendar how tomorrow is going to look for me. I schedule everything. Food, meetings, training etc.
- Reading – literally reading everything I could on discipline and structure.
- I stuck to it!
I started researching who were the most disciplined people I know. High level Muay Thai fighters, Military servicemen and women, CEOs of big companies, small business owners,stay at home moms, and law enforcement officers.
You see, each of these people must be disciplined to be the best at their jobs. Otherwise, progress does not happen.
What was the one thing that they all had in common? Discipline. That means if these people in these many different areas are accomplishing their goals, then I could too.
You see you get to decide, to choose. Discipline is a choice, it’s a small decision that you make every day. Every time you are asked do you want to fill in the blank? Or man I just want to go have fun. Those are choices.
How do I stay disciplined? I make one small decision at a time and keep moving forward. I’m not perfect. I do make bad decisions and it’s not easy, however I continue to move forward and don’t give up just because of one small setback.
Discipline is freedom, discipline will give you what you are looking for, discipline will help you achieve any goal faster.
If you are tired of getting the same results that you have been getting, then maybe it’s time to try a different approach. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result. Just something to think about.
As always, train hard, be a beast!