PPI #152: Winners Need Discipline Not Motivation

If you want to win and work in life, maximizing your discipline is much more important than maximizing your motivation. Action without discipline is like an octopus on roller skates. There's plenty of movement, but you don't know if it's going forwards, backwards or sideways. Today I'm going to highlight why discipline is the secret, the key thing to help you achieve what you want and work in life.

Hi, my name is Eric Partaker. I'm a peak performance expert and I've been recognized as the CEO of the Year. I'm also the author of two best selling books including the Three Alarms. Now, motivation can often be associated with a rush of adrenaline and a feeling of excitement, but then it can suddenly wear off, whereas discipline can stay there more permanently. Discipline can be there whether you feel like doing things or not. Discipline is the key thing to master and let me highlight a few reasons why. Number one, being disciplined helps you get things done. Let me give you an example with the book that I recently wrote, the Three Alarms. As you can imagine, when it comes to writing a book, there's a lot you need to do. From researching the book to organizing all the information, to actually sitting down and doing the writing and all of that can feel a little bit overwhelming. But by just focusing on being disciplined, all I focused on was showing up every single day for at least 90 minutes to work on the book. And I just did that day in and day out. Some days I did more than 90 minutes, but always for at least that 90 minutes. Monday through Friday, day in and day out. And eventually the book was written. So by just being disciplined, by just showing up and doing the things that needed to be done for the task at hand, eventually everything got done in order to reach the top of your game, the top of your field. Whatever you're aspiring to do to become your best, it will require you mastering some new set of skills or practicing some new behaviors or or completing some new body of work or course or material, whatever it may be. And by being self disciplined, by practicing the discipline to continually engage in whatever those activities are, you will then progress and achieve your path to mastery. You will become a better version of yourself in whatever it is that you're working towards. So self discipline becomes your ally on your route to mastery. Number three, working on your self discipline builds your self control. Meaning that you become more in control of your behaviors, your actions and your feelings. And these are the things that over time add up to us achieving our best to us achieving our goals. And by building your self control, you're more likely then to spot those things, those temptations that might take you off your path. Having that increased self control makes you far more likely to resist those temptations. By building our self discipline, by building that ability to show up day in and day out, starting small at first and growing it over time, our self control grows as well. And as our self control grows, we're more likely to stay on course. Next up, discipline equals freedom. By being more disciplined, you're able to get the right things done in the right amount of time, in the right place, in the right situation. And that frees you up to focus on other things when you're not disciplined. Often if you're engaging, for example, and things that you shouldn't be doing rather than the things that you know you really should be doing, it then creates these feelings of anxiety, this feeling of resentment, this sudden frustration and pressure because eventually you still need to get done whatever it was that you've been putting off. So by being disciplined, it actually creates freedom because instead of not having that time to do the things that you like, you stay disciplined to get the things that you need done finished so that you can free up time in an anxiety free way to do other things that you would like in either your work or life. Last but not least, discipline remains strong even when motivation weakens. So there'll be loads of times, plenty of times, when you do not feel like doing whatever it is that you know you should be doing when you don't feel motivated. But if you've built yourself discipline muscle, you'll stay the course and you'll be able to carry on the doing whatever those things may be. Going back to the example earlier that I gave for writing my book, the Three Alarms, there was many times when I didn't feel like continuing to write when I didn't want to continue on the path. But by building that self discipline muscle over time, I was able to stay the course even when I didn't feel like doing it. And the pain of discipline is always much cheaper than the pain of regret. The pain of doing what you know you should do right now in the moment is, is always much cheaper than that pain of not having stayed disciplined in the moment and then feeling that regret later. So choose your pain wisely and I'd love to hear from you. So don't forget to leave a comment and a rating as well. And if you'd like to get a copy of my new book, the Three Alarms, please head over to my website at ericpartaker.com that's E R I C ericpartaker.com or you could pick up a free digital copy of my new best selling book, the Three Alarms.