Most people think discipline is forcing yourself to do something that you don't want to do. Dragging yourself out of bed at 5AM because some Navy Seal on YouTube told you that's what disciplined people do. And so when you don't do it, you make it mean something about you. I'm not disciplined. I don't have what it takes. There's something wrong with me. But here's the thing, there's nothing wrong with you. You've just misunderstood what discipline actually is. Because discipline is not the consistency of doing something you don't wanna do. Real discipline operates at a completely different level. And once you understand it, the thing you've been forcing yourself to do becomes easier. Not because you get tougher, but because you stop fighting yourself. So in this episode, I'm gonna show you what discipline actually is, why willpower keeps failing you, and the two part process that turns resistance into mastery.
So let's get into it.
Alright, guys. There are sort of two different ways that you could go with this discipline conversation.
The first is where 99% of people go, is why so many people feel like they're undisciplined. Because you can go on YouTube,
you can find a 100 videos on five steps to become more disciplined.
You can find a bunch of habits of the world's most successful people. You can find laws of leadership, and it includes things like time blocking or habit stacking or the twenty one day rule, the 5AM club. And that's all fine,
but that is the surface game of discipline.
What we really wanna take a look at is what's happening upstream.
What allows you to actually do the things that you know would bring your health forward, your relationships forward, your growth forward, your wealth forward. I wanna talk about discipline at a root cause level. Because when you understand discipline this way, you're not just making an effort from your end. You're actually aligning your effort with a response from the universe. Now I know that might sound a little bit new age, but bear with me here. Okay?
So you can do willpower or discipline the hard way. Anybody can do that. Right? It's like you can if I point a gun to your head, I can get you to do the work. You would sit down, you'd write the marketing plan, you'd make the calls, you'd you'd do the sit ups at the gym. But that's the hardest way to live. Right? Living with a gun to your head, living from what I would call a primal state
that's pushing a boulder uphill every single day. And so we want to find a way to actually act in alignment and congruent
with the things that we believe we need to do in order to produce the results that we wanna get without having to force the action. So we wanna make the action
easier
by disciplining ourselves internally first. I'm gonna talk about two different ways that we can do this here. Okay?
Now,
let's first talk about what's not working with willpower.
So if you keep procrastinating around something,
it's not because you're lazy.
What you'll find behind procrastination
or self sabotage or being undisciplined
is some fear.
Like, if you actually believe
that the thing that you're about to go do might not work out, you'll be tempted to not do it. If you believe that you're not good enough. Right? Of course, your nervous system is gonna resist putting you in a position where you might become exposed or grow. If you believe money is hard to make, you're gonna resist building the thing that's supposed to make you money.
If you were programmed as a kid to be seen and not heard, then your whole nervous system
is going to resist becoming visible.
Right? So you can put whatever action plan you want in front of you. But if I tell you that what is in front of you is a tiger, you're gonna run-in the other direction.
And so this is the challenge with most of the wonderful ideas out there that might work for some people, like waking up early or time blocking or organizing yourself in a particular way,
uh, or, um, reducing context shifting. All these are really great strategies.
But what we have to do is look upstream because this disciplined behavior is downstream
of psychological alignment.
And when you really look at what discipline is, it's discipleship.
Right? It this isn't just a Christian concept. The esoteric Egyptians taught this. The Rosicrucians taught this through anthroposophy.
Every ancient tradition pointed to the same thing, and that is a changed life is the byproduct of a changed mind.
If you want to become more disciplined,
at a root cause level, we have to identify what is the inner conflict that is occurring for you that is making this action so difficult.
That is putting fear between you and the outcome.
Really, that was the entire teaching of the gospel. Right? That's why it was called the good news. Christ came and said, hey, don't be conformed to this world,
but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. And so you don't have to be stuck in your life in what we would call undisciplined.
You can actually create the breakthrough and start to align your identity and your actions
with the person who actually produces the outcome. But in order to do that without force, in order to make it consistent,
we've gotta take a look upstream
and see what's going on. Because real discipline
and I want you to write this down. Real discipline is psychological.
Real discipline is not behavioral.
And that's the big mistake we make. We look at the external and we go, oh, I'm not disciplined. But really what's driving
that action
or preventing you from doing that action externally
that you believe you need to engage in and produce the result is something going on inside. So the problem is most people are trying to discipline their behavior before they've disciplined their thinking.
Right? And that's why it keeps falling apart.
If you actually believe something is hard,
do you believe you're gonna be likely to do the thing? But if you remove the concept of hard and you just realize like, I'm gonna be doing something for the first time, it's not gonna go as smoothly as it might the second time. This is a learning process,
but I understand that this is the process and I can truly enjoy the process of getting better and better at over time. Aren't you more likely to actually do the thing? So the story that we have
about the action
that we believe we should take, that determines whether or not we are actually doing the thing or doing the thing for a couple of weeks and then back on the couch. So the discipline that you're being called to, which again is not the alpha male hyper masculine navy seal type of discipline that we see on YouTube or Instagram or social media. Real discipline
is a discipline of awareness.
And that can be challenging because
external reality is so alluring. Like, we live in the sensory experience. You've been given these five senses,
and we live in a sensory overload, and so we almost forget our inner world. But really, the opportunity if we wanna become
disciplined
is becoming aware of the resistance that is inside of us. Identifying the old belief that comes up in the face of this action or activity that you believe you should engage in, and then working with that belief and choosing a new one. One of the great distinctions that we teach that I think is one of the most powerful distinctions in personal growth,
when you're looking at trying to transform a belief, you identify you've got this belief that is
moving you into some form of suffering and deterring you from taking the action. We wanna work at the belief level, and one of the most powerful distinctions is distinction that beliefs are decisions. You've decided that money is scarce. You've decided that there's not enough time. You've decided that you can't trust people.
You've actually decided that you're not disciplined.
And you're so powerful and your brain is a goal achieving machine that whatever it is you believe becomes your reality. And so the opportunity here is when you identify a limiting belief, when you really look at
what it is that you're not doing that you're not disciplined to externally, and you go like, what is this resistance that comes up inside of me every time I think about working on the presentation, every time I think about making sales calls, every time I think about, um, taking some time for myself to meditate, but I don't do it. And you go, wow. Like,
what's happening inside of me
when I'm confronted
with that action is this idea that I'm not worthy,
or this idea that this is not going to work, or this idea that there's not enough time. And to decide differently, to decide that you are worthy, to decide that this is going to work, to decide that there is enough time to do the things that are important to you. That small two millimeter shift realizing the beliefs or decisions and that you have choice transform my life. For years,
I was not disciplined around my business.
Found it very difficult to sit down and actually do some work. But part of that was I had a limiting belief, which was that I'm not disciplined, you know, and I had a whole lifetime of history to prove it to myself. I could look back and go, I mean, look, you were an alcoholic. You know, you were
drug addict. You were a sex addict. Right? How can I possibly be disciplined enough to be successful in business? And one of the things that I actually reframed,
which isn't just something I was making up, was really just seeing reality clearly, was that I was very disciplined.
Like, I I was incredibly disciplined in my drug addiction. I was incredibly disciplined with happy hour. I was incredibly disciplined,
uh, with my capacity to roll joints,
smoke them on the way to work, and smoke them on the way back home. So I had this story that I wasn't disciplined, but in fact I was very disciplined. I was just disciplined in things that were representative of unresolved trauma. I was disciplined in things that were not in alignment with the results that I actually wanted to create in my life. So I started developing some new belief systems. Around every limiting belief that I could find, I made a new empowered decision.
And what was really simple was that the new decision that I made was always the opposite of the limiting belief. So I've decided that I am disciplined, I am worthy, I am capable. As I started to adopt those beliefs, I started to incrementally take more action in the areas of my life where I hadn't been. And so I started to work out more. I started to go out more. I started to connect with others more. I started to be willing to pursue the ideas that I had. I started to actually take on learning how to do marketing and becoming a marketer. You know, today I think I'm I'm a really phenomenal marketer. I've had to in order to get my mission and this message out there in the world, but it didn't start out that way. I had to start making new decisions. You don't make that decision once.
Right? You you make it every time the old belief comes up. You start focusing not on actually time blocking and task doing,
you focus more on your inner dialogue.
And so I had a process when I started becoming quote unquote disciplined, which was really a shift in my identity. It was called the morning dump. Every single morning, I'd wake up with all these reasons why I couldn't,
why I wasn't. Right? Why I wasn't disciplined, why I wasn't successful. I created a three column spreadsheet. And in the first column, I would write down all of the negative
inner belief systems that would come up. And in the second column, I'd write down exactly the opposite of what that belief was.
And in the third column, I'd say, well, what evidence do I have for the fact that this new decision is true?
Right? So I'd write down something like I'm not very disciplined. And then in the second column, I'd write, I am very disciplined. And the third column, I'd say, well, what evidence do I have for the fact that this is true? And I'd sit with it. What's interesting about this process, we call it the decision matrix. Some of you have said this tool has completely changed your life. Is that if you're willing to just kinda sit with the new decision for a little bit, there'll be old memories that come up. Evidence that you've sort of been filtering out of your conscious awareness because it hasn't been congruent with this limiting belief that you have. Right? This belief that there's not enough time. This belief that you're not good enough. This belief that money is hard to make, this belief that you can't trust people, this belief that if you wanna do things right, you have to do it yourself. But if you're willing to sit with it for a moment, you start to activate old dormant memories.
You literally start to activate
a part of your brain that has been sleeping.
And as you do that, what you'll start to find is that the new decision that you make
actually starts to
be more true than the limiting belief that you've been buying into. So I would do this process every morning. I did it for about thirty days. It was called the morning dump. Again, in the first column, I'd write down my limiting beliefs,
how I was feeling in the morning. Second column for each one, I'd write a new decision. And then for each of those, I'd say, well, what evidence do I have for the fact that this new decision is true? And I'd ask that question a couple of times. Right? So if my limiting belief was like, you know, I'm not very good at anything, my new decision would be, I'm actually pretty good at most things.
And I'd say, well, what evidence do I have for the fact that this is true?
I'm like, woah. Like, I'm good at the simple things. I'm good at waking up. I'm good at brushing my teeth. I'm gonna drive my car.
And then I'd ask the question again, okay, what other evidence do I have for the fact that this is true?
And I'd say, well, I'm I'm pretty good at marketing. I'm I'm pretty good at coaching. I'm a pretty good friend. Say, cool. What other evidence do I have for the fact that this new decision is true that I'm pretty good at most things?
And what you'll notice is is you're willing to spend just a couple of minutes on that, this whole new awareness starts to open up and you realize that you've sort of enrolled yourself into this hallucination
of the limiting belief. And as you go through the first two, three, four limiting beliefs, you don't need to go through all 30 or 40 that you would write down in a morning dump process.
Your whole attitude on life starts to change. Your identity starts to shift. You start to feel motivated, and that's where discipline becomes more natural. You're now not forcing the action.
You've just removed the resistance that was making the action so hard. So this type of process,
reframing or limiting belief shifting work, this is actually how you start to build new neural networks and new neural pathways. You start to change your brain.
And so you become a person that from the outside looking in, someone would say is disciplined, like you're doing the work that you said you were gonna go do. Right? But really from the inside looking out, you know, no. This was who I always really was.
I've just removed the resistance that was preventing me from being that person. What changes when you do the inner work first
is that you're no longer battling yourself internally. You're just practicing a new behavior.
And so it's kinda like
if you and I were gonna go practice a new tennis swing.
Right? There's
practicing the new tennis swing. That's one thing. And over time, we could dial that in. We could get you disciplined to a new improved tennis swing. But there's another scenario where you're practicing a new tennis swing while a part of you is screaming that you're not good enough to be on the court. Right? So that's the challenge with trying to discipline yourself to new behavior is that there's an internal dialogue taking place that makes the actual changed behavior harder than it needs to be. So you can change your behavior.
You have the capacity to do that, but not while you're criticizing yourself, beating yourself up, or scaring yourself
at the same time. Right? Because one is just mechanical. It's a new habit. The other is psychological warfare.
So we have to remove the psychological warfare,
and then now you don't have to push yourself into the new behavior. You're no longer sitting on the sofa distracting yourself with Netflix and swiping left and swiping right and smoking pot and drinking.
You're actually out there practicing the new behavior. And so number one, we have to understand that discipline is an inner discipline. It's not an external discipline. The reason why most people fail in changing their behavior is they haven't changed the psychology
that's motivating
or preventing
the behavior.
And then number two, what I wanna explain to you now is that the confidence that you're looking for.
Right? Because if you notice, like, anytime you are feeling undisciplined, there's a lack of confidence. That confidence
is gained through the doing,
not before.
So here's where most people make their biggest mistake. They think that
the ability to do something well
requires the confidence to do it first.
Right? And so what most people do is they're waiting for the fear or the doubt or for the discomfort to go away before they do the activity.
But that's not how it works. In fact, it's just the opposite. The confidence,
the certainty, the comfort level is gained
and the fear is eliminated
through the doing of the thing.
And so the first thing we have to do is make sure that we're psychologically and emotionally aligned. That gives us a capacity to do the thing. And we also have to understand that even though it would be nice to be confident and certain and good at doing the thing before we do it, that's not how it works. Right? All of those are rewards
for being willing to do something
imperfectly.
I look at this show, for example. It's we've got, like, 240 episodes on the podcast now over the last three and a half years.
I had to be willing to
start recording imperfectly,
and I had to be willing to record when nobody was listening. You know, it was eighteen months that I was recording an episode every single week,
and about 5,000 people a month were listening, which is still pretty cool. Right? But it wasn't until I got to around my eightieth episode
that all of a sudden, started to really get good and I was rewarded algorithmically
on YouTube. And in one month, I went from 5,000 listens to a million listens on the show. But that only happened because I was willing to do it imperfectly. And by the way, you can go back and listen to some of the earlier episodes.
Um, I don't think they're bad,
but they're not as good as they are today.
And I gotta be honest with you. I I still get anxious before I get in up and speak on stage.
I still feel a twinge of anxiety before I sit down and record an episode. There's still an echo
of that old identity that says, hey, Dave. People aren't gonna like you. You're not gonna do it right. Like, I I lived with that for the first
thirty five years of my life until I got into drug and alcohol and sex addiction recovery. And it hasn't completely gone away.
But what I now understand is, I don't need to be perfect.
I need to take a look at what's going on inside of me, what am I thinking, and and work on transforming that resistance that will make the action and the effort easier,
and it's still gonna be uncomfortable.
Right? But the fear gets quieter every single time.
You know, uh, one of my mentors said something that I'll never forget. He said, in the beginning when you try anything new, you're gonna suck at it. And you're basically gonna suck at all of it. And if you're willing to stick with the sucking long enough, you'll suck a little bit less. And if you stick with that long enough, you'll actually start to get kinda sorta good at a few things. And if you stick with that even longer, you'll start to get genuinely good at most things. And then eventually, if you stick with that long enough, you'll become great.
Eventually, people will look at you and go, wow.
Look how masterful he or she is at that.
But there's no way to shortcut that process.
The gift is
when you've done the inner work first,
the sucking doesn't take you out.
Right? You you're not making the suck mean that you're broken and reinforcing the limiting belief that's been trying to prevent you from taking the action in the first place.
You're just in the practice.
And this is what
discipleship
really is. This is this is following a true north and being willing to commit to the practice.
It's honoring the fact that your inner world out pictures itself.
And so you do the inner work first in order to make the external action easier. It's honoring the fact that you become great at something
by being willing to do it imperfectly
for a long time. That's discipleship. That's discipline.
Right? That's honoring
who your higher power sent you to be. So the question isn't how do I force myself to be more disciplined.
Right? The question is what am I afraid of that's making the behavior so hard in the first place? Because when you identify that fear, when you name the limiting belief, and when you start making new decisions
as a practice over and over again, the resistance starts to dissolve.
And then the action that you've been forcing yourself to take becomes the action you naturally want to take. So discipline isn't about getting harder on yourself. It's about getting clear
with yourself.
It's a discipline of the mind first and then a practice in the world. Because the truth is you were never undisciplined.
You were just trying to discipline the wrong things. So I hope you love this episode as much as I loved sharing it with you. Couple of things. Number one, if you haven't yet subscribed, become a member of our community. We're growing so quickly because, man, this personal growth thing, it's not a thing you do on your own. It's a thing you do with others. And if you haven't had an opportunity yet, there's a ton of resources
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You can opt in to our newsletter. You'll immediately get a four part video series as well as download my mind hack ebook for free. And again, if you have questions or comments, I tried to read all of them. Just drop them below if you're following along on YouTube. And if you're on the audio platforms, would love if you leave a rating and review too. But most importantly, I look forward to seeing you in the next episode.