Discipline is Useless Without This

All discipline begins with motive. No person on earth has ever developed a habit without the motivation to do it. One of the reasons you might lack motivation or discipline is straight up fatigue and stress. We have to work on our emotional control, our social environment, and our biological energy. When we do this, we develop discipline. When we talk about skill development of becoming more disciplined, there are five core areas that develop this skill. We're going to work through some of these concepts today, and once you get them, you'll never go back to guilting yourself or labeling yourself, or falling into the idea that you have some kind of disorder or problem or challenge that is preventing you from developing the skill. Because it all starts with some simple things. Discipline starts with the skill set of motivation. All discipline begins with motive. Right? You don't do a thing being disciplined to go work out, being disciplined to write, being disciplined to make your calls, being disciplined to do your prospecting, being disciplined to be awesome in your family. You don't do those things unless there's motive, there's reason, there is cause. If I don't have the idea of the thing and want to do the thing, I won't do it. And lots of people confuse it and say, no, you just need to have behavioral control and show up and do the thing. I'm like, but you won't unless the motive is there first. You cannot have discipline without motivation. In fact, a lot of academic research couples these two together so closely. Because if I don't fire motivation, my, my body doesn't do a thing. Whether it's conscious or unconscious, there has to be a motive to do the thing. Even if I set up everything, I put my shoes by the bed to put them on in the morning, go for a run. I needed to have the motive. I want to run. Oh, motivation. I have the motive to want to run, which will make me put the shoes down, which will make me get in the morning and remind myself, oh, I'm not just going to go back to bed. I have reason, I have cause of action here. There's a reason I'm going to do this. Now, if I can habituate that, that's wonderful. Which is why so much of discipline comes down to habit formation. But no person on earth has ever developed a habit without the motivation to do it. Not over the long term. Remember, discipline is about controlling ourselves to achieve goals, specifically long term goals. It allows us to discipline. And motivation allows us to control our impulses and our desires in the immediate sense right now, so that I could maybe override them. My immediate Impulses to do something that's important to me over the long term or tomorrow or next week. It's saying, hey, I've got to control this impulse that I have that says, do nothing right now, and I have to do something. Well, no one creates a habit of discipline in their life to show up to enact a behavior without motivation. There's a reason, there's a cause, I have a motive for the action. Okay, what else do we talk? Well, third, I've previewed to this concept of emotional control, and this one. Our society really struggles with that emotional control. They don't understand emotions versus feelings versus mood. They don't understand emotions, feelings and mood, and they don't understand those separate than impulse and immediacy. It's like, I know what I want, Brendan. I've set up good habits, but I can't activate myself. See, these two are the same thing. Emotional control is regulating your self, specifically your emotions and your attention, as we'll come back to, so that you can do a thing. But so many of us are swept into the emotions and the reactions and challenges of our life, and our emotions have been hijacked because our attention has been stolen. And so your emotions are out of control, primarily because we haven't done these two things well enough. If we establish the right motivation and cause in your life and set up the right habits, you'd be less likely to lose your emotional control. Okay. Fourth, you know that discipline is often a function of your social environment. It's hard to get healthy if everybody in your house eats terrible stuff. It's hard to be motivated if everybody else around you never learned that skill set. It's hard to achieve your dreams if nobody else around you is stretching themselves for great things. So as we understand social environment, it really does impact your ability to learn these skills. And so often the reality is, because we don't have a good education in psychology or performance in our schools, most people never learn any of this. And so they don't even know how to structure their relationships and the expectations in those relationships so that they could even have what they want. And I always tell people like, this is a simple one. Is the structure and the expectancy of the people around you set up for you to actually do the things that you want to do. If it's not, then we're going to have to talk about this conversation. Fifth area we have to explore today is biological energy. Because you and I both know that one of the reasons you might lack motivation or discipline is straight up fatigue and Stress that you could do all this, right? Many of you have done this. If I come out of your house, your pantry is so organized and it looks so good. You know, you get up in the morning, you do your gratitude journal and your gratitude walk, your morning workout to get yourself in a good place. You're inspired. You know how to reward yourself with that end of week cheat day. You know, you've got amazing things set up in your life. Like everything is set up, it's organized. You know how to regulate, you know how to do all of these things. And yet you also continue doing the things that super stress you out or steal from your sleep or your mental health that you can have all the cause in the world. You have the great habits. You've read all the habit books, high performance habits. You have your emotional control ability, like Brendan, I cannot eat the cookie. I cannot eat the cookie. I cannot eat the cookie. You have good people around you, but your biology is off. You're just exhausted or overly stressed. You've been going so hard for so long that you haven't managed the storehouse, you haven't taken care of the temple, that you're so depleted energetically, mentally, emotionally, biologically, spiritually in some way that we just don't have the energy to push through the difficulties of life. We don't have the energy to aim ourselves. And so you don't have the energy. I don't really feel like it right now. I don't have the energy. So what I'm going to do, I'm going to sit on the couch and I'm going to scroll for an hour. I'm only going to scroll for five minutes, but it turns into an hour. And this is why learning this and learning these topics is everything. If you ever wanted to understand what you need to do to develop greater discipline in your life, do me a favor, screenshot this right here, this is the skill set stack. If you're wondering what's the stack, Brendan, this is the stack. And it is specifically in this order of impact. Like, if we can work through these things, I promise you these will give you the greatest levers. And it usually is in this order. But here's the one. If you're wondering what you have to master in your life. Motivation. And I'm going to really emphasize this because so many of my peers have started disconnecting discipline and motivation. And they do that because they don't learn by psychology books. They learn by memes on the Internet. And it becomes a very good clickbait one. Of the greatest clickbaits in my entire industry is saying, you don't need motivation, you just need discipline. And you're like, oh, I'm sorry, you're confused. You need motivation for discipline. In fact, you cannot have discipline without motivation. You need the motive to act. What they're saying is you don't need enthusiasm and excitement for discipline. That's what they're really saying. They're like, you don't need to feel it to do the behavior. Does that make sense? You don't need to feel energized, excited, enthusiastic, like go, go, go, go. You don't need the drive and that it doesn't have to feel good, you just have to do the thing. That's correct. It doesn't have to feel good. Right? Discipline. You can move forward and not feel good. None of this says you have to feel good to have discipline. But you do have to have motivation. You have to have cause for action or your body will literally not do anything. Everything you do has a cause to action. There is motive behind everything you do. It doesn't matter what you do, there's motive there. And this is why it's really important. Do not be the perpetuator of a dumb Internet meme that discipline is needed and motivation is not. The people who say that are saying because they literally have never studied the topic. And so it's important to understand these are absolutely necessary. There is no discipline about motivation. But there is discipline without enthusiasm, There is discipline without positivity. There is discipline without, like that impulse to go, like, I gotta go, I'm excited. Excitement is not required for discipline, but motivation is. So let me recap really briefly. Discipline is the ability to control oneself to achieve goals, More specifically longer term goals, despite the impulse to quit or the impulses not to activate or the immediate desire to say, do something else that I would feel like is good. Do something else. In other words, it's a way to overcome competing impulses and interests to do something that is important to me. Longer term, that is discipline. Discipline is a skill set that you build by learning to organize yourself, regulate yourself and reward yourself. If I don't organize myself, meaning focus my attentions and priorities towards the things I really want. If I don't regulate my immediate impulse or emotion, and if I don't reward myself once in a while to keep going, I won't have the discipline. How do you develop the skill of discipline? Because it is a skill. Well, we got to develop the stack, we got to work on our motivation, our habits, we have to work on our emotional control, our social environment and our biological energy. When we do this, we develop discipline.