Three Keys to Unlock Greater Discipline

Three Keys to Unlock Greater Discipline – YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63SzTEEl_eY

Transcript:
(00:00) when we’re going through the process for the vast majority of whatever we’re doing whether it be starting a business investing or starting a new fitness program when we’re starting out we have to do so at 80% of our capacity not 110% this is the lie that we’re told when we look at many of the different Fitness influencers or business influencers the people who are existing in this hustle culture they’re they’re they’re bullshitting us they’re saying that we need to give everything we’ve
(00:35) got when that’s not true that’s not part of discipline that’s part of willpower and willpower dies when our force of will ends we need to hold back and it’s counterintuitive it’s difficult as hell when you’re in the midst of discipline but that’s what that’s the biggest part of discipline that people Miss we have to slow down hello everyone and welcome to to the flow over fear podcast where it is our mission to help you to rise above fear and realize your ultimate potential in leadership and life I’m your host
(01:11) Adam Hill and it is my goal to share with you the human side of high performance my guests share their experience with fear anxiety struggle Challenge and most importantly despite all of it how they Rose above it to achieve incredible results so if you’re ready to rise up let’s get started hello everyone and welcome to flow over fear I’m so glad you’re here today thanks for joining me I want to talk about discipline no no no no not the discipline that implies punishment or you know some kind of weird fetish no no
(01:48) no not that kind of discipline what I’m talking about today is the type of discipline that we all have trouble with where we want to pursue a dream or a goal or something that we want to achieve and we struggle to achieve it because we don’t have that dword discipline and I heard this a lot when I started getting into Triathlon or telling people about my Triathlon Journey they said wow how do you stay so disciplined and of course that you know that question made me have to think back on my life on areas in my life where I
(02:19) did have discipline where I didn’t because I have lived in both extremes I’ve lived in my life where there are certain things where I did have discipline and certain things where I just couldn’t practice discipline and remembering back that that’s that’s what allowed me to kind of as as I reflected on my life and reflected on where I had discipline and where I didn’t have discipline it allowed me to really identify those key components those key things that help can help us to maintain
(02:51) and and build in more discipline into our lives in the directions of our achievements and um and I think a lot of us have some good ideas on where that did discipline comes from but we tend to muddy the waters a lot when we talk about discipline because we we say that we need more things we tend to confuse discipline with willpower which is just not true discipline and willpower are two completely different things uh willpower is when you are pushing as hard as you can or pushing to the Limit despite the fact that your effort level
(03:23) has some limitation there and So eventually you succumb to your effort level and your willpower goes away so you cannot do that anymore but discipline comes in where we’re actually building our capacity building our our Energy building on all of this stuff so that over time that discipline that we’re practicing is creating vaster energy so discipline can be infinite willpower is finite but um but yeah looking back on my own life I I look back on this because I and and I realized that there were you know a few
(03:55) simple things three in particular that uh uh that go into dis IPL that are wildly important and I think we intuitively know know one or two of them but there are a couple of the these ideas that we don’t implement we ignore or we neglect to our Peril in fact we Al often go the opposite direction and so I want to share these key components of of them because if you can Implement these three things these three important components of discipline um I mean then you can you can start to start to build on that um now I remember times in my
(04:32) own life where I was able to have discipline in my own life where I was able to stay disciplined and areas of my own life where I wasn’t able to stay disciplined and um and you know particularly in my younger life before I got sober which was a big transformational moment for me um I remember two distinct you know kind of opposite ends of the spectrum for me the first was when I played cello in high school um you know there was a period period of time distinctly before my sophomore year of high school where I
(05:04) just wasn’t into it I wasn’t into playing music or the cello or anything like that and I wasn’t very good I sat in the last chair of the orchestra and and just kind of shadowed by my way to you know to high school last chair stardom but um but my sophomore year or right before my sophomore year something clicked and I realized that hey um I see somebody in that first chair that is doing something amazing they’re incredible they’re making it to the all National Youth String orchestra they’re
(05:39) going to Berkeley next year because of the cello maybe this can open up some doors for me if I actually applied myself that was the thing that clicked in me and that first thing that clicked in me was this idea of now there’s a meaning behind it now there’s a purpose behind wanting to get good that actually meant something I had a chance to go to college there was an achiev ment oriented goal to it so I began to apply effort I got a coach a teacher somebody who could teach me how to uh uh Play The Cello correctly teach me how to be
(06:11) disciplined teach me how to practice and I put in the discipline and it and it worked and I got really good and I got into college um and so that was the success story of what discipline could do for me and and it all required before we even get into the three things that discipline requires when you’re in the midst of it the very first thing that you should think about is does this Pursuit have a significant meaning behind it and that meaning by the way has to be more than just I want to be rich or I want to have a Maserati I want
(06:44) to have the things it has to transcend the the the things the the uh uh the tangible assets so to speak it has to have a meaning behind it that brings you into this space of like of of purpose so that when you look back on that achievement that Pursuit you can look back on it think of yourself on your deathbed or or 20 years from now or whenever you can look back on that achievement or that not not just the achievement itself but the pursuit and say man I’m so proud of myself for doing that I’ve heard of very
(07:21) very few people that look back in their lives and say man I’m very very proud of that Maserati that I was able to buy but they do look back on man I was really proud of that business I was able to build so I because I employed so many people man I’m so proud of that podcast that I started because I shared my message with people man I’m so proud of those relationships that I built because I was able to have meaningful connection with someone else those are the kinds of purposes we need so when you’re thinking
(07:48) of that meaning you have to have a meaning behind it before I I looked at the idea of the meaning that I wanted behind the cello I didn’t I didn’t uh uh I I didn’t have a meaning and I didn’t have a purpose and so it wasn’t I didn’t wasn’t able to stay disciplined and but after that after I had some meaning had some purpose got the coach got some discipline I was able to and then I want to contrast that with another part of my life where I wasn’t able to stay disciplined throughout my
(08:16) early 20s I was in the midst of my alcoholism and drinking and anxiety and all that kind of stuff but I still had the same kind of desires as everyone else I wanted to be I wanted to have a a a six I wanted to have six-pack abs I wanted to have the you know the chest that actually looked like a a guy’s chest not just a flat like weird looking chest I wanted to I wanted to be muscular I wanted to be strong I wanted to I wanted to look good and now as you as you think about that for a second does that really
(08:51) pass the the test of looking back on your deathbed and looking back at your 20-year-old self man saying man I’m really proud of myself for looking good or having six-pack abs no not not really what uh what would have had more meaning is like something around the health idea like I want to be healthy I want to be healthy for my kids or I want to be I want to be healthy but clearly I wasn’t practicing that level of health because I was drinking myself into Oblivion so there was a lot of lack of alignment a
(09:18) lot of lack of consistency there so I pursued something a one of these infomercial products that I saw late at night uh on television where you know the celebrity Fitness coach was really doing these crazy wild workouts like pull-ups with one arm push-ups with one hand I don’t know why we have to do one arm push-ups we have two perfectly good ones but anyway but he was doing all these crazy workouts I’m like man I want to do that because he’s got sixpack abs and I’ll get six pack abs if I do that
(09:48) but alas I started the program and the first day I felt wonderful the second day I felt kind of sore and the third day I basically said and you know cheered children put put your ear muffs on but I said this because that guy’s a jerk and he’s trying to kill me uh not only that but I ended up injuring myself and injuring my shoulder uh which uh which was because I wasn’t really following the form and I was just being stupid so in a nutshell I gave up on it and and that was kind of myo for most of the fitness programs that I ran
(10:22) into I would have a desire uh a superficial desire to get six-pack abs I would try the program I would do it for a few days and I would say F this I’m done and uh that’s not discipline so discipline can’t be can’t be created without meaning so the very first the very first part of that is that that it has to have some powerful meaning behind it what is driving you to want to be disciplined about this Iron Man Triathlon is is a great example because you know for some it may just be this kind of ego or or um superficial desire
(10:57) to like show off and if that’s not giving if it’s not giving you deep in personal meaning if it’s if it’s there to like serve somebody else or or try and like impress somebody else then it’s not going to work you have to do it for your own heart for me when I actually did get sober when I did look at the Iron Man Triathlon I realize that hey this is something that I can continue to pursue that will bring me greater life it will bring like it will enhance my identity it will it will just it will help me to
(11:28) transcend even more of these health issues that I’ve had to create Optimal Health and if I look back on you know if I do that test of looking back on my death bed at that I would see that that would make me proud and very happy and very and smile and of course it does looking back on it today it’s time in my life that I value deeply and that was the difference with discipline and there were a few aspects in those Journeys that help me that uh Beyond just the meaning part which is a prerequisite for discipline by the way way that meaning
(12:00) is a prerequisite for discipline um but there are a few other things uh three other things in fact that that I want to share that can help you implement greater discipline these are the three parts of discipline that I think that uh that that we tend to miss out on occasionally um now the problem is is that we don’t um we tend not to just as I didn’t um we either don’t start on something because we we we have a big goal we have a big dream so think of it this way if you have that meaning behind a dream say you want to pursue the Iron
(12:37) Man Triathlon say you want to start that business and build a business that employs a lot hundreds of people um the problem is is that we don’t a lot of times we just don’t start because we feel like the the dream that we have is way up there and we’re way down here and we can’t conceive of how we get there from here our ego gets in the way because our ego doesn’t understand change and so we don’t we don’t connect the dots we don’t figure out how we can do that so we just don’t start and then
(13:05) the second thing is is that we or you know we’re we do start to pursue our Dream but we fall into this belief that we’re sold this lie that we’re told in the mainstream that we have to give everything we’ve got 110% all the time in order to be successful and unfortunately what that leads to is we fall short and H because we we can’t maintain that 110% is not sustainable despite what what Johnny biceps on the television tells us that that that 110% that we that we’re giving is sustainable
(13:43) it’s all Bs it’s not we can’t we can’t sustain that so when we inevitably fail or burn out or injure ourselves the worst part about that the worst part about that lie that were told by the mainstream is that we feel responsible we feel like we’re to blame because we can’t stay disciplined because we didn’t have the discipline to continue on and it’s the tragedy of giving up too soon is falling into those traps of not starting because we won’t feel like we can we can achieve
(14:18) it that self-doubt gets in the way or going too hard and too fast and burning out and then believing that we can’t do it because it’s on us and the the the couple and and the the parts of discipline that I want to talk about touch on those two things and are the solutions to that so that we can avoid the pain of feeling like the dreams that fill us up are not possible for us so I’m going to share with you these things and the first one the first part of discipline that we have to maintain that I think we all inherently know uh is
(14:52) that we have to stay consistent consistent consistency is the key to success it’s absolutely true we have to stay consistent with our Pursuit that means that we have a plan on how to pursue whatever we’re doing it could be a business plan it could be a fitness plan it could be uh a relationship plan whatever it may be but the key is that we not just have the plan but we follow it with consistency we stick to it and we don’t shame ourselves if we miss something we just course correct and we keep going that’s what consistency is
(15:25) all about that consistency part is is really important I think we know that inherently that’s what’s required for discipline and I think that a lot of people don’t when they’re thinking about discipline they’re thinking about consistency they’re thinking about well how can I stay consistent um and and and the truth is that discipline and consistency are not the same thing but consistency is a part of discipline so we have to stay consistent but where a lot of people tend to fall short where
(15:55) they tend to miss out is not in their ability to not stay consistent because I truly believe that with a plan and with the capacity and with the commitment and the meaning behind it people can stay commit consistent regardless of who’s listening to this if you have a big enough meaning behind or purpose behind what you’re pursuing you can stay consistent with a plan but where we fall short is with these next two and the first one is that uh is is the amount that we challenge ourselves uh this is it’s important to
(16:31) note that part of discipline is tapping into the right amount of challenge for us at any given time one of the reasons that we uh that we feel like we can’t achieve our goals and we don’t even start is because we feel like that the the distance between us and our dream is insurmountable so we don’t even try we don’t even start um or we’re so afraid of of that that that it it’s overwhelming um but the point so what we have to do is we have to work backwards from that goal we have to work backwards
(17:08) to find the very next Target that’s right in front of us uh so that uh that next step right in front of us really just pushes us just a few percent beyond our comfort zone just 5% is all it takes so think about the next step on the way to that big hairy audacious goal that you have that can get you just 5% close closer to your dream what is that next step that gets you just 5% closer to your dream now in the pursuit of the Iron Man for me this was all about uh this the thing that scared me the most was the swim part of the race like I
(17:43) didn’t I I could swim like quote unquote like in the ocean play around in in the in in the surf and uh or in pools but I was by no means a swimmer the idea of swimming past the shorebreak terrified me but if if I wanted to be an Iron Man triathlete I had to learn to not just swim past the breakers but do so with hundreds of other athletes punching and kicking and submerging one another over the course of 2.
(18:11) 4 miles now looking at that from the perspective of of what I was as a beginner it would have seemed impossible I would have scared myself out of it but taking that step back working backwards to where I was at I realized that the next 5% step in front of me was learning to float in a pool that was the step I needed to take just learn to float in a pool and when I mastered that I graduated to the next 5% the next 5% the next 5% so on so that by the following year I was able to swim past the breakers punching and kicking my way for the through the first through
(18:44) the 2.44 miles of Open Water um to finish my first Iron Man that’s how we do it discipline comes in each step by just challenging ourselves the right amount so uh this is also a a um a part of of flow which um uh mihi chiet mihi talks about in his flow research studies that part of one of the elements of flow is is the fact that we’re challenging ourselves consistantly just beyond our comfort zone that we’re constantly pushing beyond our comfort zone and the point is is that we just nudge our comfort zone outward we don’t try and
(19:25) leap leap frog Way Beyond it because then we scare ourselves out of it we have my fitness experience where I push too hard too fast and I burned out um but instead we just uh instead we just nudge we just nudge our our comfort zone out 5% at a time and over time you’ll find that you know you’ll get to the starting line of your next thing gradually step by step not not by by pushing over it so we have the first two parts of discipline consistency we have to stay consistent second part is challenging ourselves just enough to
(20:02) make it worthwhile and to give ourselves that capacity to make it exciting but not push ourselves too hard call that 5% that’s the 5% Rule and then the final piece and this one this is the one that a lot of people neglect because they think it’s counterintuitive um but it is an important part of discipline this is where the difference between discipline and willpower come into play because this is where discipline sticks and it’s slowing down in any step we have to slow down in order to speed up we have to when we’re starting out or
(20:38) when we’re going through the process for the vast majority of whatever we’re doing whether it be starting a business investing or starting a new fitness program when we’re starting out we have to do so at 80% of our capacity not 110% this is the lie that we’re told when we look at many of the different Fitness influencers or business influencers the people who are existing in this hustle culture they’re they’re they’re bullshitting us they’re saying that we need to give everything we’ve
(21:13) got when that’s not true that’s not part of discipline that’s part of willpower and willpower dies when our force of will ends we need to hold back and it’s counterintuitive it’s difficult as hell when you’re in the midst of discipline but that’s what that’s the biggest part of discipline that people Miss we have to slow down in order to get faster we have to give 80% not 110% why because that helps us to keep going giving 80% over time means that you’re still giving more than someone
(21:50) who gives 110% for three days then gives up 80% keeps us going and this this this this follows a scientific method too because Phil maone who was uh a famous endurance uh coach and U and and physician actually trained his athletes to do the vast majority of their endurance training uh at 80% capacity at a heart rate that was typically about 80% of their of their maximum heart rate and what that did was it gave them the gave those athletes including myself this maone method is exactly how I went from zero athlete to World Championship
(22:34) qualifying athlete I did so by giving 80% consistently over time um but that maone method just people athletes are able to to manage the volume to build the volume while giving it 80% capacity so what happens when they’re doing that when they’re giving that 80% is their capacity is increasing their energy is increasing they are getting faster under that same heart rate over time so that even though that first part that where they’re first starting where it seems ridiculously slow and ridiculously easy
(23:07) it feels like they’re not doing anything what’s happening over time is they’re getting faster under that same effort so they’re not giving any more effort but they’re getting faster and their 80% listen to this carefully their 80% is becoming everyone else is 110% and the people who are giving 110% are burning out while those folks that are just giving 80% are just getting started and there are times in our lives where 110% will be required and don’t you think that it’s important that we have the capacity to
(23:42) give 110% when it really matters not every day like we’re being forced to believe force-fed from from the influencers but when it matters so that we can blow those people out of the water when it matters so whether you’re starting a business this matters with any kind of endurance Pursuit and I’ll tell you that anything worth pursuing that that we’re talking about here where we’re Rising above fear where we’re where we’re pursuing things that make us better over time these are long-term Pursuits things
(24:16) like starting a business or investing or starting a fitness pursuit or involving yourself in a relationship those are long-term endurance Pursuits and if we’re going to give a 100 10% in those in that process we’re going to burn ourselves out really quickly and we’re going to give up on them really quickly but if we give 80% and it has meaning for us we’re going to build that capacity and I’ll tell you that over time if you give 80% over time consistently while challenging yourself just 5% beyond your comfort zone that is
(24:53) where you’re in the domain of discipline you fall within the domain of discipline when your goal when your when when your desire where where your Pursuit has a purpose and a meaning for you you’re in the domain of discipline when you are practicing consistently challenging yourself just 5% beyond your comfort zone and slowing down in order to get faster and more methodical to be more accurate to to to see what you need to see to get build the capacity to blow everyone to blow to blow the anyone else out of the water if
(25:31) you’re competing or just to make yourself better and continuously improve and you practice that you will stay disciplined if you practice that discipline with something that means the world to you you’re not going to give up in shame you’re not gonna you’re not going to be you’re not g to be disappointed that you gave up or or feel like your dreams are not possible you’re going to be at the cusp of your dreams and you’re going to be excited to achieve it wondering what’s next what’s the next level for me
(25:58) and when you look back on your life you’re going to be really proud of what you achieved so show that discipline practice those parts of discipline and practice it consistently challenge yourself just 5% beyond your comfort zone slow down 80% that’s the path to success thank you for joining me today we’ll see you next time hey everyone Thanks for tuning into the flow over fear podcast if you’d like to learn more about getting into flow and learn the foundations of flow I have a free video series on my website at
(26:32) www. adamclick hill.com called the foundations of flow feel free to go there and download it and start your journey to Rising above fear and achieving greater flow in your life if you like this episode and I’m guessing you did if you stuck around for this long then please do me a favor and hit the Subscribe button and you will receive notifications when I have new interviews new Recaps and new training that pop up on YouTube thanks again for joining us