19 tips for discipline
Good morning everyone hope you're doing well. So today I just want to read out a tweet thread by the author Ryan Holiday who is the author of The Obstacle is Away, the book I mentioned on Monday. Always give credit what I do for people's content. Well a lot of people don't do this. I'm trying to think they come up with everything.
Speaker 1:But Reinhold is one of those authors that can cut through the noise, he speaks in plain English and he brings the ancient lessons to a modern audience which is great. Now he's done a tweet thread called 19 keys to being a more disciplined person. I think it's important to go over this, see if any insights you get from us and if any of them resonate. So the first thing he says, attack the dawn. The morning hours are the most productive hours because in the morning you are free.
Speaker 1:Hemingway would talk about how he'd get up early because early there was no one to disturb you and it is cool or cold and you can come to your work as and warm as you write. Hemingway was a famous author and I think it's true. Other people call this renaissance time in the morning, it's the time where you're the most creative, it's the time where you need to put that into what your strengths are, right? Or you need to get if you want to hit your workouts hard you hit them in the day, early in the day because when winter comes, are you going be doing evening workouts? Maybe not.
Speaker 1:So the morning's important, give it to yourself not to your email inbox. Number two, just be about the work. Before he was a big time comedian Hassan Minhat Mishar was asked if he thought he was going to make it big. He said I don't like that question. That question implies doing comedy as a means to an end, the Netflix special Salad Arena's ETC.
Speaker 1:So he just wants to do what he wants, he just wants to do the day to day things he loves doing and whatever comes from it comes from it right. You know when I put too much pressure on end result. Number three, bring distinction to everything. A general in Greece was appointed responsible for the city's sewers. Instead of being insulted he took full he took fully to his new job saying that the distinction of the office isn't brought to the man, the man brings the distinction to the office.
Speaker 1:That's a good one. Whatever job you're doing, you do it well. Patience. Joyce Carol Oates is one of the most prolific writers of her generation as one of the most patient and one of the most patient. I almost never publish immediately she says.
Speaker 1:Every first draft is placed in a drawer where it's set sometimes for a year or more. Okay. It could be the same for ideas. Sometimes ideas just aren't ready for ripe. They're not ripe yet.
Speaker 1:You got an idea, you might act in two years time, who knows. Do the hard things first. The poet and pastor William Starford put forth a daily rule, do the hard things first. Don't wait, don't tell yourself you warm up to it, don't tell yourself you get this other stuff out of the way and then, nor do it now, do it first. Number six, make little progress each day.
Speaker 1:George Washington's favorite saying was many Mickles make a muckle. It was an old Scottish proverb that illustrates a truth we all know. Things add up even little ones, even at the pace of one per day. Cumulatively this has enormous impact, bang on. Number seven, practice.
Speaker 1:Okay, how do you practice your skills? What drills or exercises make you better while you do? If you want to be great you must know the answer to that question. What makes you well how can you practice mindfulness for example? Well, it doesn't just happen you know today.
Speaker 1:You've been conditioned, you've been your thoughts are all over the shop, have to bring, you have to have prompts to do mindfulness stuff. If you want to be a better runner, you got to run. If you want to be stronger, you have to do strength training. If you want to lose weight and keep her off, you have to learn about macros, you have to learn about your calorie intake, have to learn about portion sizes, you have to be curious about these things and take a different view of them. Not so much.
Speaker 1:I don't want to know the information on food. Don't know if you're bad about it. How are going to get better at knowing what's in foods if you don't want look at the facts in their face? Eight Focus Concentration might not solve every problem, but there are a few problems which are not solved by concentration. You must have a mental discipline to shake off distraction to carve out concentrated periods of focus and try the Pomodoro Technique for this.
Speaker 1:Look it up. Be hard on yourself. Take the cold bath bravely, Webb Dubois wrote for his daughter. Make yourself do unpleasant things so we can gain the upper hand of your soul. Seneca said to treat the body vigorously so that it better abase the mind.
Speaker 1:Probably truth to our heart training if you're more in control. Number 10, stay in the saddle. There's an old German word, I'm definitely butchered that, which means basically sitting your butt in the chair knocking up until the task is complete. Many a great conqueror in the days of horseback were called old iron ass for their ability to stay in the saddle. Find your comrades.
Speaker 1:The Spartan lawgiver Lysurgius required all citizens eat together in a common mess hall. It's harder to eat more than your healthy share when you're surrounded by your comrades in battle and as my dog told me once as a kid you become like your friends. Number 12, speak little. Robert Greene puts it perfectly, powerful people impress and intimidate by saying less. They have the discipline and this discipline creates a powerful presence.
Speaker 1:Beware of perfectionism. Churchill said any, Churchill said another way to spell perfectionism is paralysis. It's good to have high standards but all virtues become vices if taken too far. Sweat the small stuff. The reckless and irresponsible Zelda Fitzgerald said with only some self awareness, it is the loose ends, she lamented, with which men hang themselves.
Speaker 1:Is anything made better by inattention? The stoic appetizers would ask, of course not. Number 15, get better every day. The Japanese word is Kaizen, continual improvement, always finding something to work on, to make little progress on, never being satisfied, always looking to grow. You're either rotting or ripening, getting better or getting worse.
Speaker 1:Number 16, manage the load. Absolute activity of whatever kind Goethe said ultimately leads to bankruptcy. Say that again, absolute activity of whatever kind Gertha said ultimately leads to bankruptcy. No one is invincible. No one can carry on forever.
Speaker 1:We are all susceptible to what the American swimmer Simone Manuel had helped popularize overtraining syndrome. Flexibility is strength. I'm a dress for the weather guy said rigidly is fragile rigidity is fragility, flexibility is unbreakable. That's true. And be strict only with yourself.
Speaker 1:It was said that the true majesty of Marcus Aureus was that his exactingness was directed only at himself. Tolerant with others, he reminded himself, strict with yourself. Number 19, make the choice of Hercules. Famously at the crossroads, Hercules had to choose between vice and virtue, the easy way and the hard way, the well trod path and the road less traveled. We all face this choice.
Speaker 1:Hercules chose virtue. He chose excellence. Will you? Okay, and that's a little nice little thread about discipline, fear of repeating themes there. But you do get a choice today and I love the Jim Rohn quote, you either you suffer two pains, either the pain of discipline or the pain of regret.
Speaker 1:No regret. No matter which path you go down, there's going to be a pain to it. Now the pain of regret is way heavier than the pain of discipline. You know, go waking up at the alarm sound to go for your walk or for your run, go for the workout. Yeah, it sucks to start with.
Speaker 1:But what sucks more is if five years have passed and you still haven't utilized those morning hours, you're still getting up half an hour before you work, you feel tired, feel lazy, you haven't gained any physical strength. You haven't seen what the body is truly capable of. You haven't seen where your boundaries are. You haven't pushed yourself nowhere near where you can go. And that is the beauty and even like the old Socrates would say this.
Speaker 1:Would say paraphrasing, it's abysmal at the human body and none of us, nor many of us ever see what the human body is truly capable of. Because you see these feats these people make. Now it doesn't mean we have to be Olympians or elite athletes or to conquer in monktons but we can definitely be more than we are in terms of physical strength and ability flexibility. The body will adapt to it. So training the body is training the mind as well.
Speaker 1:And this is where discipline does come in. So if you're doing workouts, you feel the rep burn and you keep going for three or four more. That translates to your work. Like you sit down and you have that urge to go on your phone but then over time you ignore. So it's distracting me, I've removed the distraction, I don't need it.
Speaker 1:I need discipline there. Discipline needs to be in my opinion, discipline essentially is a form of willpower in a kind of they're tightly related I'd say. But we don't actually want to rely on discipline all the time. We don't want to use this capacity willpower all the time. We want to remove as many distractions as possible.
Speaker 1:We want to be disciplined to the things that matter, like waking up. Like if you were to think of the main things you wanna be dis if you could think pick three things to be disciplined for today. I know we've already woken up about tomorrow. The three things to be disciplined for that would really change your life is to wake up when the alarm goes off on the dot at the time you wanna get up this earlier than previously done. That will change your days, that will change your life.
Speaker 1:The discipline to track your food no matter what, no matter what you eat, no matter if you don't like it, you track it, that will change your life. Okay, and then maybe the discipline to not go on your phone until twelve or 11AM. So you don't have any distractions that will change your life. Now come up with your own three things that these are the things that will be disciplined for and other things I'll try my best but let's narrow it down today. Let's pick three things for the next few days we're gonna be disciplined for no matter what.
Speaker 1:And let's see the impact they have on your day because the knock on effect is massive. Waking up early in the morning, getting more hours in the day, having time to yourself. You can't buy that type of stuff. Like that is just life changing. Do you know what I'm saying?
Speaker 1:I know what I'm saying. You know what you're saying. I think we need to go and pick up with three disciplines we're going to focus on and try them out. And we're again like we're experiments with scientists aren't we? So let's go, purple disc machine again.
Speaker 1:Today, what am I going to do today discipline wise? Discipline for me not to go on my phone, obviously got to do clubhouse. But after clubhouse to knock on my phone for two hours and just read and apply some new ideas to the business and have some kind of one big idea and flush it through. For me just to have that two hours of indistracted work, getting back into that flow would be awesome. So what's yours?
Speaker 1:And also I'd say going for my lunchtime walks again, 100%.
Speaker 2:Is it funky? Funky to me. It's funky to you. I'm smiling. I'm getting disciplined.
Speaker 1:You're getting disciplined. Okay. There we are then. 53 disciplines you're gonna focus on and why. Let me know where they are.
Speaker 1:Have a good day, and I'll, speak to you all
Speaker 2:soon.
Speaker 1:Happy days.
