The "D" Word - Discipline, Your Best Friend

Most people spend their entire life stressed without ever giving a single thought as to what it is they really want or what's important to them. See, I'm here to cut through all that noise connecting you to yourself and the life that you were meant to live. I used to slave away at a corporate job that I hated, but I broke through the social norms and pursued my passion. As a result, I own my own coffee company. I'm espresso sommelier, and I get to travel the world. You too can live a life that you love, but it starts with getting clear about what you want. It starts with a new decision. I'm your host, Donnie Rouse. You are listening to the podcast One Line. Today we are going to talk about the D word, discipline. Discipline leaves such a bad taste in people's mouths because when they think about discipline, they think about restriction. They think about taking things away, life sucking life, being boring. But in fact, everything that you want in life, anything that's worthwhile, anything you've done that has given you any kind of fulfillment, has taken the D word, has taken the discipline. I had just gotten out of a course called Business Mastery with Tony Robbins. And then, since then, I been starting my mornings with positive reinforcement, so listening to audios that have positive messages rather than being bombarded with negative stuff from the world around me. And then also, one of the things I had started to do was I started to get. He says, the first thing is change your state in the morning. So he's like, I jump in the. I jump in a cold bath. Not because I want to, because I discipline myself to take uncomfortable action. I was like, all right, well, I don't have a cold pool, but what I could do is I could take a cold shower. So I started. I set my clock, my timer on my watch. I set it for 15 seconds, or I think I did 10 seconds. Like, the first day went in there, it was frigid. It was freezing. And then I was like, all right, well, how can I do this? I remember my cousin telling me about him taking cold showers. I was like, you're freaking crazy. I would never do that in a million years. Just the thought of it sent chills down my body. So I did it for 10 seconds. 10 seconds. I was freezing. I jumped out. I was like, how am I going to build up? But I went back the following day. I said, okay, well, let me increase it. Five seconds. We'll go 15 seconds next. Because 10. I feel like I kind of cheated where I maybe put one foot in. I started my Clock jumped in the shower. And then quickly, right when it was 10, I turned the dial back to hot. So 15 seconds, I was like, all right. Well, it was still really cold. Again, I found myself kind of cheating. I wasn't putting my head completely in the water. I wasn't letting the water literally envelop my entire body. Okay. Next day, 20 seconds. 20 seconds in. Now I'm actually putting it all over. It's pouring on my head. The shower is hitting my head. It's going all over me. I'm spinning to make sure that my entire body is going to wet. But it was still cold and uncomfortable. The next day, I did the same thing. 20 seconds, spinning around, still uncomfortable, but it was starting to ease up. Right. I didn't feel like the discomfort was starting to let go. It was starting to lessen. Did it again. And then today I did set my clock for 20 seconds. Went in there, put it on cold. Just with the dial right when you crack it, that is the ground temperature, pretty much what you're getting. And here in Fairfield county right now in Connecticut, United States, it is cold. So there's frost and stuff on the ground. So the water coming out of it is really cold. So I put it on at 20 seconds. 20 seconds, I'm in there. And then I noticed something. I'm like, this is not as cold as it was yesterday or the day before. Definitely not the day before that and definitely not when I started. Interesting. So then I literally. My alarm goes off. It's 20 seconds later, and I stay in there, and I stay in there, and I just have the cold water pouring on me. And, like, how am I not able to feel this right now? What is going on? So then I made the. I started to move it to the middle way to, you know, to this way I could. I'm not completely going hot, but I'm still right in the center. And I said, no, screw this. And then I turned it back to the cold. And I didn't go all the way back down, to be honest with you. I didn't go all the way back down to, like, the, like, the coldest part. But I did go to, like, if this was the half, I did, like, kind of go on a. Like a. Like a 2o', clock, which is still really good. I didn't think I would have done that. So what is the point? Why am I even telling you this? Why does it matter? Because it's the discomfort that everything that you have to do to get to whatever it is that you want to do where you want to be is going to be uncomfortable. There's going to be discomfort. In the beginning, once you train yourself, you overcome that discomfort, and now all of a sudden, your body's used to it. It's like just another workout. And a workout is a good example of that. Maybe one of your New Year's resolutions was to get in shape to lose so many pounds, but that's a really crappy way of stating the goal because you're talking about losing rather than how you want to feel as the result. So working out. For example, I did a physique contest. If you've listened to my podcast, you've heard me mention this probably. I mean, at least a couple dozen times. If not maybe like 50 times. I talk about my weight training regimen, how I was. There was satisfaction. I got out of it one, because I was doing stuff that I knew no one else would do. People would ask me for my workout. Hey, Donnie, you know, you look amazing. What are you doing? I literally would take the workout that I paid for and all the stuff, like, all the work. I'm like, here you go. Ah, man, you do all that? Oh, no, that's. I'm not going to do that. But yet they wanted the body. And when I was doing the workout, I would literally push. I remember realizing, okay, well, this is the number of. The number of reps I have to get on the set. I would feel my body giving up, and there was something in me. After going through all that discomfort, when I would feel like my body burning, my mind was trained to say, okay, this is the time you kick in. This is when it counts. And all of a sudden, whenever I had that pain, like the pain of every part of my body saying, stop, stop, stop. All of a sudden my brain was working with me, saying, push through. This is it. This is where the gains happen. And I remember sitting in the gym, I would sometimes sit on the mat, the stretching mats, or even after a set, and I would literally have. I would cry. I would have, like, tears coming down my face. Not because I was emotional, because something, but because breaking through a limit. How good it felt to literally have my mind yelling, stop. And then breaking through. Let me backtrack. My mind was insane, you know, like, don't stop. It was something deeper inside of me. So when my mind was yelling at me, stop, stop, stop. This hurts. Breaking through that. And something happened whenever I would break through that limit and I would shut out the mind. Once I broke through, all of a sudden it became silent, and I would complete those reps and it would bring tears into my eyes because I'm like, oh my gosh, it was so fulfilling, it was so gratifying knowing that once you break through, once you get past that mind, you break through, all of a sudden it has nothing to say. So I tell you this. Why do I tell you this? I tell you this because everything you want is going to require that. Whether you want to travel the world, whether you want to start your own business, whether you want to improve the relationships with someone in your life. Everything is going to take discipline to put forth a new habit, a new pattern. One of the things that's kind of at the forefront of my mind right now, learning new patterns or learn to seek out new patterns. My business has always been one of those things. You've heard me mention this a hundred times too. This desire to travel as well as this desire to build my business. They've often been a conflict. I had some epiphanies during this last seminar that I attended, but it was always like, you know, like, I want. I don't want to, like, let go of the pleasure for the. To do the business. Because I'm like, well, there's a part of my body said, well, life is happening now. Like, I don't know what tomorrow is going to bring. None of us knows what tomorrow is going to bring. But you can't live. I mean, when I say this, I'm saying it to you, but I'm saying it to myself. You can't live life completely free, meaning not free, but without any regard. Because everything is a scale. There's a plus and minus side to everything. If I were to go, just literally leave and just go travel for the rest of my life, yeah, I could start. First of all, there's tons of possibilities too. Yeah, I could probably create an online job, see all those things. But there's also downside. If I don't do the planning, where am I 5, 10, 15 years from now when I've had all these good times? So that was a realization that had come through. And listen. And nothing is black and white, right? It's shades of gray. So why can I have my cake and eat it too? It's only a story that I'm telling in my mind as to why I can't. But anyways, that is a completely different tangent. So I hope you guys enjoyed this little tidbit on discipline. And I want you to. I have a little bit of assignment for you. And the question is this. What is one thing that you're trying to go after and what is it? And the second question, what does it require of you, right? Does it require, say, let's use the gym example just because that's easy, is it that you want to get in shape, you want to feel great, you want to look good in your bathing suit this summer, what is it going to require of you? Write down all the things and then the next step is choose a few, right? Because there's keystone habits, not everything. You don't have to do everything to start to see progress, but once you start to see progress, then you'll actually start getting more momentum and you'll put forth more energy. Take a few things. Don't try to do the entire thing at once. Don't try to, if it's do the meal plan, which, yeah, you can literally just kind of cut off everything and completely change your diet. But you might give up, you might stop it because it's too drastic of a change. Start. If it's a meal plan, right, and you want to start eating more vegetarian, start by changing one meal and then two meals and then three meals and let that compound and then see where you go after that. So that's all I've got for you guys today. Hope you enjoyed this post podcast. This is very much a rant. I was inspired. When I got out of that cold shower, I was like, I have to do a post on this. So that's why I am here if you enjoy this. Well, actually, before I even go there, I want to thank you for tuning in. Thank you for watching because I know you could be spending your time doing a million other things, watching a million other things, but you chose to do here. And it is my hope that by listening to this, it improved your life in some way. So thank you so much for spending the time with me. And if you have any questions, if you'd like to ask me a question, if you like to give me a comment, feedback or subscribe to the podcast, which would be awesome. So this way you're constantly taking in this new information. Otherwise you're left to taking in all the garbage that's in the world. And that's not going to move you where you want to go. You can do so by going to donnyrous-o n n y r a u s dot com and that is all I've got for you guys today. I hope you enjoyed this podcast. God bless you. I wish you guys the best in 2022 and I will see you again soon.