Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the channel.
This is Discipline Equals Freedom, the ultimate guide to discipline by the one and only Jocko Willink, who is a former Navy SEAL.
And we are going to be talking about it in this episode of Book Club, the ongoing series where, for the last five years, I've been talking about some of my favorite books.
And so, in this video, I'm going to share the five or six quotes from the book that have most resonated with me and share my own thoughts of them, in the hope that you will find them helpful as well.
So firstly, we're going to talk about the way of discipline.
And here is what Jocko writes in the book.
There must be discipline.
Discipline, the root of all good qualities, the driver of daily execution, the core principle that overcomes laziness and lethargy and excuses.
Discipline defeats the infinite excuses that say, not today, not now.
I need a rest.
I will do it tomorrow.
What's the hack?
How do you become stronger, smarter, faster, healthier?
How do you become better?
How do you achieve true freedom?
There is only one way, the way of discipline.
Oh wow, so good, fantastic stuff.
And then he talks a little bit about more stuff, about discipline, and I really like this on page number seven.
Where does discipline come from?
Where does discipline come from?
This is a simple answer discipline comes from within.
Discipline is an internal force.
Self-discipline comes when you decide to make a mark on the world.
If you don't think you are disciplined, it is because you haven't decided to be disciplined yet.
It is because you haven't created it yet, you haven't become it yet.
So where does it come from?
It comes from you.
So make the decision, make the commitment become the discipline, embrace its cold and relentless power, and it will make you better and stronger and smarter and faster and healthier than anything else.
And most important, it will make you free.
People ask me, how do I get tougher?
Be tougher.
How can I wake up early in the morning?
Wake up early.
How can I work out consistently every day?
Work out consistently every day.
How can I stop eating sugar?
Just stop eating sugar.
You can even control your emotions.
How can I stop missing that girl or guy or whoever broke up with me?
Stop missing them.
You have control over your mind.
You just have to assert it.
You have to decide that you are going to be in control.
You are going to do what you want to do now.
I think this is quite a helpful way of viewing stuff.
Like i get the reason.
People want like prescriptions and like a more detailed how-to guide.
For example, how can i wake up early in the morning?
Like what he's saying here is i'll just choose to wake up early right, like it's not that hard.
At the same time, there are like helpful tactics that you could follow if you wanted to, around making sure you don't take your phone to bed with you and making sure you have an alarm set first thing in the morning.
But you have like an analog alarm clock.
And, for example, when you hear your alarm, you simply decide to wake up rather than snooze the alarm.
You find an alarm clock that doesn't have a snooze button.
Like there's a bunch of different tactics that you can do to increase the odds that when it hits five in the morning or six in the morning or whenever you wanna wake up early, those environmental things that you put in place, those are sort of nudging you in the direction of not needing the discipline, of just sort of doing the thing kind of by default.
But at the same time fundamentally, I think Jocko has a point like how do you wake up early in the morning?
You wake up early, right?
Like there's something that's just quite nice and simple about that approach to things.
We have a bunch of students in my Lifestyle Business Academy, which is like this online business school where we're helping people build businesses.
And you know, they'll say things like, oh, how do I get over the fear of posting on LinkedIn?
How do I get over the fear of selling?
And there's all sorts of strategies we can give them.
We can say that like, hey look, you just got to recognize that you know the colleagues that you had 20 years ago.
They won't actually care.
Like, maybe they'll talk about you behind your back, but that's OK.
Like, you know, you're the one going after it.
You're the one going for the freedom.
Like they're still going to be stuck in jobs that they hate, etc etc.
But fundamentally, what it comes down to how do you get over the fear of posting on LinkedIn?
You just post on LinkedIn and then eventually the fear goes away.
There is a tendency in this world of self-help, in the world of like intellectualization people who are very smart and very good looking like you you probably have a tendency to over intellectualize the strategy and the plan and the tactics for every little thing that you find difficult.
And while like, you know, this is just one way to approach life, discipline equals freedom.
I think it just is really helpful to get this almost like counter narrative, to stop being like thinking about it, stop trying to make some long, elaborate plan.
Just like fricking, do the thing.
It's not that hard.
And I personally for me, since I read this a few months ago, I found that to be a very you know, a helpful guiding light when I find myself over intellectualizing the how of something where really it's just a case of how do I get to the gym more consistently.
Well, I go to the gym more consistently.
It's not that hard.
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And now let's get back to it.
Now, speaking of doing stuff consistently, what if you're just not feeling it?
And that takes us to page 49, where I highlighted a lot of stuff.
So let's go.
How do I handle those days when I'm just not feeling it?
Those days when I'm tired or worn out or just sick of the grind.
What do I do on those days?
I go anyway, I get it done.
Even if I'm just going through the motions, I go through the motions.
Don't really wanna work out, I work out.
Don't really wanna hammer on a project, I hammer on the project.
Don't really wanna get up and get out of bed, I get up and get out of bed.
Now, these could be signals that you need some time off, and those signals might be right.
But don't take today off.
Wait until tomorrow.
Don't give in to the immediate gratification that is whispering in your ear.
Shut that down.
Do not listen.
Instead, go through the motions.
Lift the weights, sprint the hill, work on the project, get out of bed.
I don't like procrastination.
But if you feel like you need a break, that is one thing you should procrastinate.
Taking a break is the one thing I put off until tomorrow.
And if, when tomorrow comes, you still feel like you need a rest or you need a break, then go ahead, take it.
Chances are, you won't.
You won't need that rest.
Chances are, you will realize that the desire to rest was just weakness.
It was the desire to take the path of least resistance, the downhill path, the downward path.
And by going through the motions, you overcame that weakness.
And you stayed on the righteous path, the disciplined path.
You stayed on the war path, right where you know you belong.
I think this is really good.
There's like two things that I personally really take away from this.
The first one is the idea of just going through the motions.
There are plenty of days where I don't feel like sitting down and working on my business, but I go through the motions.
I get started.
I like get my desk in order.
I get my cup of coffee.
I do the thing.
I figure out what I'm going to work on and I start working on it.
And usually in the process of going through the motions, I start to feel like doing the thing.
It's very hard to feel like it all the time at the start of the process.
This is something I talk about a lot about in my own book Feel Good Productivity, which is that, like mostly, we can enjoy the process of doing our work or doing the thing like, once we've gotten started.
But before getting started, there is this hump, the hump of procrastination, the hump where it's like the thing is difficult and you don't want to do it.
And even if you know it might be fun further down the line, like there's just that hump.
And so what I like about this is the idea of going through the motions.
There are plenty of days where I don't feel like filming a YouTube video, but I go through the motions.
I set up the camera, I set up the light, I hit record, like whatever the thing might be.
I hit record, I start talking.
And usually about 10, 15 minutes into the recording.
I've now started to feel like making that video.
But if I waited until I felt like it every single time, I'd have made maybe four videos on this channel, rather than like 400 videos in the channel or like a thousand plus videos in the channel.
That we've done over the last eight years and staying consistent with this youtube channel has been one of the best things i've ever done in my life and has literally unlocked a life of financial freedom, time freedom and creative freedom where i can literally do whatever i want.
And that would not have happened if i hadn't been consistent with the thing even on the days where i didn't feel like doing the thing.
So i love this idea of just go through the motions.
The other thing I really like is this idea of yes, there are times where you need a break, but you can probably wait until tomorrow.
I think that is like really really, really good, because this thing around hey, I might be burned out.
I might need a break is a very easy narrative to go with because it's like healthy, right?
People talk about the power of rest and the importance of like, you know, not burning out.
But the problem with the hey, I need a rest because I might burn out is that it's very, very easy for that to just become an easy button to press every time you don't feel like doing the work.
Every time you just need a little push to get over that hump of procrastination.
But you tell yourself oh, I need to rest because I'm burned out.
What I love about this is that he's saying, that's okay.
He's not saying don't ever take a rest.
He's saying, wait until tomorrow.
You can procrastinate the rest until tomorrow.
You're not gonna become crippled with burnout by working on doing the thing for just one more day.
So do it for just one more day.
Now, in my case, when i've applied this particular advice, maybe half of the time, i the second day i've also felt like i want to take a rest and i'm like, all right cool, that's fine, i'm gonna take a rest on the second day because, like you know, feeling like you need a rest for two days in a row, that to me is like i'm kind of an honest signal that i probably do need a rest.
But the other half of the time i have felt like really tired and really burned out on like a particular day.
And then, if I go through the motions of doing the work anyway, like going to the gym, going on the run, filming the video, working on the business, having that meeting that I really don't wanna have, but like whatever
If I go through the motions of that the other half of the time, especially if I've had a good night's sleep the next day, I feel totally fine.
I'm like, oh, this is great.
Like it wasn't actually that I needed a rest for that one day.
It was just that it was my mind being like, oh, you know, I don't feel like it right now.
So probably we need a rest because burnout.
And you can't argue with the whole burnout thing, right?
Because like, it's just, it's too easy to go down that I need a rest.
I might be burned out kind of route.
I love the idea of procrastinating the rest until tomorrow.
All right, now we come to a beautiful part.
This is a chapter titled Good.
And so here goes.
How do I deal with setbacks, failures, delays, defeats, or other disasters?
I actually have a fairly simple way of dealing with these situations, summed up in one word, good.
This is something that one of my direct subordinates, one of the guys who worked for me, a guy who became one of my best friends, pointed out.
He would pull me aside with some major problem or some issue that was going on and he'd say boss, we've got this thing, this situation, and it's going terribly wrong.
I would look at him and I'd say, good.
So I explained to him that when things are going bad, there is gonna be some good that will come out of it.
Oh, the mission got canceled?
Good.
We can focus on another one.
Didn't get the new high-speed gear we wanted?
Good.
We can keep it simple.
Didn't get promoted?
Good.
More time to get better.
Didn't get funded?
Good.
We own more of the company.
Didn't get the job you wanted?
Good.
Go out, gain more experience and build a better resume.
Got injured?
Good.
Needed a break from training.
Got tapped out.
Good, it's better to tap out in training than to tap out on the street unexpected problems.
Good, we have the opportunity to figure out a solution.
That's it.
When things are going bad, don't get all bummed out, don't get startled, don't get frustrated.
No, just look at the issue and say, good now.
I don't mean to say something trite, i'm not trying to sound like mr smiley positive guy.
That guy ignores the hard truth.
That guy thinks a positive attitude will solve problems.
It won't.
But neither will dwelling on the problem.
No, accept reality but focus on the solution.
Take that issue, take that setback, Take that problem and turn it into something good.
Go forward.
And if you're part of a team, that attitude will spread throughout.
Finally, if you can say the word good, then guess what?
It means you're still alive.
It means you're still breathing.
And if you're still breathing, that means you've still got some fight left in you.
So get up, dust off, reload, recalibrate, re-engage, and go out on the attack.
This is something that my father-in-law actually does, my wife's dad.
Anytime, like, my wife goes to him with a problem, his first response will be good.
And he's been doing this for, like, years, since before, like, Jocko kind of went on the scene.
Even like when my wife Izzy was a kid, she would go to her dad with, like I don't know, a bruised elbow or whatever.
And she tells me that his first response would be good.
And she would be annoyed about this initially.
But over time, she realized that, okay, you know, this is, like...
It's almost like a reframe.
It's like, there is always good to be found in literally any situation that you come up against.
Now there is actually a story that is relevant here and that you know it's something you might've come across.
It's the parable of the Chinese farmer.
And I actually made an Instagram reel about this.
So we're gonna play it here because it was quite a fancy animation.
So let's go.
Once upon a time, there was a Chinese farmer whose horse ran away.
That evening, all of the local villages came to console him.
They said, we're so sorry to hear that your horse has run away.
That is terrible.
But the farmer just said, maybe.
Then on the second day, the horse came back bringing seven more wild horses with it.
And in the evening all of the local villages came back and said wow, what a change of fortune, aren't you lucky.
Now you have eight horses.
But the farmer again just said maybe.
Then on the third day his son tried to train one of the new horses and while riding it he fell off and broke his leg.
The local villagers came back and said oh dear, that's too bad your son has broken his leg.
And again the farmer just said maybe.
But on the fourth day some army officers came to conscript people into the army and they didn't take the farmer's son because he had a broken leg.
Again all the local people came around and they said isn't that amazing?
And again the farmer just said maybe.
The Chinese farmer reminds us that it's impossible to tell the true meaning of what we think is good or bad luck.
And instead we should just try to embrace uncertainty, not get too attached to what happens to us in life, and just try our best to enjoy the journey.
Essentially, if you can train yourself every time you experience any kind of failure or any kind of setback, if you can actually train yourself to immediately see the good in the situation, that particular neural pathway will just become more and more solidified over time.
This is the idea of Hebb's law.
It's like a neuroscience thing that you know, when particular neurons in the brain fire together, they also end up wiring together.
So neurons that fire together, wire together.
It's sort of like, you probably know someone who's just like really, really negative, right?
In your life, they can find the negative in every situation.
A big part of that is because the more negative your thoughts are, the easier it becomes to have negative thoughts.
It's sort of like you've got a field of grass right and you take one path through the field of grass and then you take that same path again, and then over time that path becomes more and more like trodden and it turns into a path which become, which means it becomes easier to continue taking that path, and then the path continues to be formed and so you get this virtuous or vicious cycle where the thoughts that you keep on having are the thoughts that becomes easier to keep on having.
So if you're the sort of person where when you deal with a setback, when something goes wrong, it ends up like throwing you off your game for like a few days because I don't know the fear, the anxiety, the emotion, the depression, the sadness, whatever the thing might be, then that is a pattern that, repeated over time, will just make it easier and easier for you for that situation to continue happening.
Whereas if you do the Jocko thing of like something bad happens and your immediate response is good and you're then scrambling to find the good in the situation, you know every cloud has a silver lining and all that crap.
That's actually not crap.
That's actually some pretty good stuff, which is very helpful, because if you can find the silver lining, if you can find the good in the situation, your brain becomes attuned to finding the good in negative situations, which means you're just less likely to be thrown off when bad things happen in life, which they often do.
And then finally and I think this is my favorite part of the book it's just a really really cool story that I hadn't actually heard before reading this.
The chapter is titled, I Feel Fine.
During SEAL training, there is a lot of scuba diving.
Scuba diving has inherent dangers.
Scuba diving at night with equipment over long distances in and around harbors, ships and other manmade obstacles only increases those dangers.
In the event of an emergency, we are trained to follow procedures, to proceed to the surface of the water in a certain way, to inflate our life jackets in a certain way, to signal for help in a certain way.
And when you come to the surface after having some kind of diving related emergency, a medic or diving medical officer will ask you how you are feeling.
Only one response is acceptable.
I feel fine.
The roots of this statement come from the fact that a diver on the surface may have suffered from a diving emergency, which means they might have suffered some level of neurological damage.
A quick way to check for immediate signs of this are seeing if they remember to give the proper response and seeing if they have the physiological agility and fine motor control to properly enunciate the Fs, which take more effort than many other letters.
So it really didn't matter how you actually felt.
You could be freezing cold, exhausted, dehydrated, confused, and mentally broken.
But there was still only one answer to the question, how do you feel?
And that response was, I feel fine.
I don't know when this procedure started in the SEAL team, but I do know it was in place long before I arrived.
I also know this.
The answer I feel fine eventually morphed into a response for any time you got asked how you were feeling, regardless of how you actually felt.
Tired, worn down, starving, blisters, chaffed, hungry, none of that matters.
The response would still be, I feel fine.
And you know what?
When you said those words, you started to believe them.
And when other people, people in the same state as you, would hear you speak those words, they would think well, I know what he's been through, but he still has a good attitude.
I guess I can too.
So don't let yourself get down.
Don't admit it to yourself.
Don't admit it to your friends.
Instead, tell them and yourself the only proper response, I feel fine.
Obviously, there's a little bit of nuance here.
If a friend is asking you how you're feeling and you're feeling down in the dumps and depressed and shit, like you probably don't want to just be, like I feel fine and like you know battle through and all that kind of stuff.
It is good to talk about your feelings with your friends, et cetera, et cetera.
And also at the same time, I freaking love this story because I think it's really, really cool.
There are so many situations.
I don't know about you, but in my life there are so many situations where, Again to the point of like, I don't feel like doing the thing that I know is good for me.
I don't feel like going to the gym.
I don't feel like working on the business.
I don't feel like going for a run.
I don't feel like stretching.
And in those situations, if my wife asks me you know how are you feeling, or whatever, you know it's almost too easy to just lean into the oh yeah, I'm feeling a bit like tired today.
Yeah, I don't really wanna go for a run.
Yeah, I don't really feel like going to the gym.
And you know, sometimes you'll see that like I just need a push and be like hey, you know, I know you're tired, but like I know you're gonna feel better after you go to the gym, et cetera, et cetera.
This is where there's like a little bit of nuance here, right?
Because I think about 50% of the time, if I were to respond with, I feel fine.
It would actually change my own internal state, because now I'm saying to this person who I love that I feel fine.
And so then to Jocko's point, when you say those words, you start to believe them, right?
So, because the feelings are so fickle, right?
Like.
This is one of the big things I've taken away from this book and also from doing a bunch of research around like emotions and feelings.
Like feelings are so fickle.
Feelings are just like waves on the surface of the water, or waves on the surface of the lake, or like the clouds going by.
Sometimes the feelings are like, you know, I don't feel like doing the thing.
Sometimes the feelings are like, I do feel like doing the thing.
And there is a danger when we over-read into the feelings.
There is a danger when we say hey, it's raining today.
Therefore, I must be tired and I must be burned out, and I must be on the verge of depression, and I should probably just play video games for 10 hours.
There's a danger to that, because sometimes the clouds are rainy just randomly, like the feelings can be random.
And this is where, I don't know, like I really like this book.
I find it very inspiring and very motivational.
And also at the same time, it's a tool that is useful in certain situations.
If your response to every single feeling is, I feel fine.
You end up in a place where you're like ignoring your feelings.
But if your response to every single feeling is to over-read into the feelings and to use those as a sign as to why you're burned out or why you need rest, or why you shouldn't be doing the thing that you wanna do because it shouldn't feel like a struggle, then you're also gonna end up in a dodgy place where you're never doing anything hard.
Because when you're doing hard or uncomfortable things it will feel bad, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't do it right.
So like this is why I mean, with anything, when I read these books, when I listen to the podcast and stuff, my guiding philosophy for this stuff is always what is gonna be useful, given the goals that I have and given that my ultimate goal is to live like a peaceful happy, fulfilled life.
And I think this idea of I feel fine for me at least and for a lot of people that I know is actually helpful.
Now, if you are someone who is already too like in the your pendulum has swung already so far in the direction of like you don't know your own feelings, you don't know your own emotions, you have no, you're not in touch with your body, you're like constantly, just like denying to yourself how you really feel then for you this advice of like in any situation, just say I feel fine, is probably not helpful, because you're already too far in that direction.
But for me, I think I'm kind of a little bit, I don't think I'm quite far in that direction.
And certainly if I think of most of the students that we have in our lifestyle business academy, who have professionals with jobs trying to build businesses.
Mostly they feel the pain, they feel the discomfort, they feel the struggle of trying to put themselves out there and start to grow their business.
And most of them could benefit from this story of like, I feel fine.
They could benefit from ignoring their feelings a little bit more and just following the plan and doing the work.
But that's not to say that everyone benefits from ignoring their feelings and following the plan.
That's where kind of the nuance lies.
And that's where I'm hoping, if you're at this point in the video, you've got sufficient intelligence to know if you're reading a book.
It's like this is not like the fricking Bible or the Quran or like the word of God or anything.
It's just a book from a dude who's like sharing his own perspective on life.
And you want to use that perspective insofar as it is useful for you.
So I really like this thing of I feel fine.
I know that, for me, ignoring my feelings more often and just following the plan will take me more in the direction of where I want to go in life.
But not fully, not like 100%, right?
So like, yeah.
There's a little bit of nuance here.
Now, this book is very inspirational.
It's very motivational, ironically.
And I really like it.
But if you are looking for some evidence-based tips on how to improve your discipline, there is a video over here that I did a few months ago which is all about, like you know, if you look at the scientific literature around, what are the tactics that improve your discipline and allow you to do hard things even when you don't feel like it?
There's like a handful of things that actually work.
So you can check that out over here.
Thank you very much for watching and I'll see you hopefully in the next video.
Bye-bye.
