Unlock Your Inner Strength: Mastering Willpower and Discipline

Good morning, Believe Nation! Today we're going to talk about how to increase your willpower. Rule number 3 is my personal favorite, and I'd love to know which one you guys like the best. As always, guys, as you're watching the clips, if you hear somebody say something that really resonates with you, please leave it in the comments below and put quotes around it so other people can be inspired as well. Also, when you write it down, it's much more likely to stick with yourself.

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Enjoy.

Michelangelo is really a great story on willpower and self-control. He was beaten severely when he was a young kid by his father. His father wanted him to be, uh, to pursue a more noble profession, a more lucrative profession. And Michelangelo wanted to be a sculptor, and his father beat him, and his father tried to get him off course. And Michelangelo said, no, I want to be a sculptor. And finally, through his grit and perseverance and unrelentingness, Michelangelo's father said, you know what, okay, fine, you're 14 years old. I'm going to allow you to go to apprentice with a Florentine Italian master, and he will help you become a sculptor. And Michelangelo moved to Florence and he started to study and he started to practice. And again, this is a story of self-discipline and world-class willpower. And through his mastery and through his practice and through his suffering and through his persistence and through his focus, all of these great lost traits that are no longer celebrated in this world where all too often people are card-carrying members of the cult of mediocrity. Through this practice, through this devotion, he became well known. He became known far and wide. He created the beautiful sculpture David. If you go to Museum of Accademia in Florence, you will see David. You will see some of his other masterpieces. And part of that whole region started to honor the way that Michelangelo was appearing and performing as a sculptor. Because of his mastery, a lot of the other artists like Raphael, the Renaissance painters, became— they became jealous. And so they and they devised a very elaborate and interesting plan to discredit and to ridicule Michelangelo. And Michelangelo's peers went to the Pope, who was Julius II, and they said to the Pope, "Why don't you get Michelangelo to paint the Sistine Chapel?" And the Pope said, "Sounds good." And so the Pope went over to Michelangelo and said, "Um, I want you to restore the greatness of Rome." The greatness of Rome is now on your shoulders because I want you to paint the Sistine Chapel, and I want you to make it a masterpiece that holds the world in awe when they see it. And Michelangelo replied to the Pope, he said, you know, I'm not a painter and I've never painted. I'm a sculptor. But Julius II was very persistent, and eventually Michelangelo said, fine, I'm going to agree. And over 4 years 4 hard years, 4 years that took incredible self-control, incredible grit. We're going to talk about grit in this webinar. Incredible focus, incredible discipline. Michelangelo created the Sistine Chapel. Now let's put this into perspective. I mean, Michelangelo had never painted fresco before. Michelangelo had to paint something on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel that people standing many feet below could look at that and see with great detail. Michelangelo dealt with the fact that the painting on the Sistine Chapel was moldy. There were paint issues. He had to deal with the fact that the Pope was very ill and he thought he might not get paid. He actually developed this incredible elaborate system of scaffolding which allowed him to paint, to paint backwards for 4 years on the Sistine Chapel. And he damaged his back in the process, but he did it for the art. He did it for the discipline. He did it for what it made of him. He did it for his commitment, because the great artists and the great performers are much less about ego and applause and money, and they do their work for what it makes of them as human beings. And after 4 years, Michelangelo's eyesight was so damaged from looking at the images on the Sistine Chapel that he suffered permanent eye damage. But like I said, once he was finished, the world was awestruck at what he created. And now 20 million people a year go to the Vatican and they do experience this breathtaking work of artistry and human ingenuity constructed by an ordinary man who exercised world-class willpower named Michelangelo. And so ladies and gentlemen, I guess what I'm suggesting to you is one of the fundamental points. The myth of the talented genius, the myth of the gifted genius is nothing more than a lie society has sold you. I don't know if I expressed that clearly, but what I'm trying to suggest to you is the world says the Michelangelos and the Beckhams and the Jay-Zs and the, um, the great entrepreneurs, the Carlos Slims, the Warren Buffetts, um, the Jack Dorseys, you know, the founder of Twitter, the Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, the Mozarts and the Picassos and the Bachs Society teaches us and trains us that these people are somehow born with special talents. And what I'm here to remind you with deep respect for all 25,000 or 24,922 of you on this webinar from around the world is that is a lie that society has sold us to keep us small. And if you look at the science and science coming out right now is indisputable, we're gonna get into that science. But what science says is Genius is much less about your genetics and much more about your self-control and your discipline. Genius is much less about natural talent and much more about practice, persistence, focus, grit, dealing with suffering, dealing with failure, dealing with laughter while the rest of the world thinks you should stop. Genius is much more about continuing practice, developing your craft.

The first idea is to emotionally engage with that dream each morning of your life. See, a lot of people don't actually struggle with the discipline part in terms of the doing the thing. It's that they're not getting revved up to do the thing. In other words, we got a problem with motivation. Emotion, not necessarily just discipline. We have a problem with that once in a while you hit it, you do it, you do the work, but a lot of times you fall off because you're not emotionally engaged in it. It's like if you want a lot of discipline, you need a high level of emotional connection and focus on that thing that you want to work towards. So every morning what I want you to do is just start a new visualization practice. When you wake up in the morning, close your eyes, Think about the dream, the aspiration, the thing that you're really after in life, and just visualize it and really get yourself emotionally attached, emotionally engaged with it. Think about how great it will feel for you to have that thing or be that thing or contribute that thing, to make that difference. Just think about it, allow it to well up in your heart a little bit, get excited about it. Remember the dream. That's why we get away from discipline, because we're so busy with the chaos of the world that we emotionally are no longer attached in a way that our brain says, "Hey man, focus on this. It's important to you. Remember?" So if your heart is disengaged, it's difficult to stay disciplined. So every morning, make it a practice to actually just imagine the payoff, the benefit, the contribution, the art, the thing that you do and are doing and do contribute, if you can do that more often, you'll be more fired up and you'll stay back on track.

Number 2: Set up hard and fast rules in your life, rules that cannot be violated, because from a willpower perspective, it is very draining, again, to go back and forth in your head. So it's much easier to say, "Okay, I will not drink soda and I'll only eat foods off of this list," than it is for you to go, "Okay, I ate really good yesterday," and I worked out extra hard, now I'm at dinner and they just gave me a free dessert, is it okay for me to have a small portion? Because that takes a lot of mental energy to process. When you set up hard and fast rules, as draconian as this might feel and sound at first, it actually creates a tremendous amount of freedom in your own life to spend your brainpower on the things that matter the most. So set up rules. You must work between these hours. You need to go to the gym 5 days a week. For me, I set up a rule I have to release one YouTube video every single Monday, and that's why I am here right now. So set up rules.

What's your why? Hey, if I don't give y'all nothing else, you better start that. What's your why? You know why I do what I do and I do it so passionately? 'Cause my grandfather was a high school dropout, my father was a high school dropout, I was a high school dropout, and we 'bout to break the cycle. I do what I do so my son won't have to go through what I went through. When I was at the football game, my old dude wasn't with me. I saw other kids with they father. I said, "That'll never happen to me." I do what I do because my dad Your daughter says she going to Harvard. It ain't even about y'all. I'm about to come in here and blaze y'all.

Why?

'Cause I'm trying to get to all the NFL. I ain't about to miss this opportunity. This is the first NFL team I've ever done in my life, and I'm about to lick it. I'm about to give everything I got, and I will know if I don't get another gig, it won't have nothing to do with the fact that I didn't put everything on the field. What's your why? Why do you wake up in the morning? Why do you put on that jersey? Why do you go out and practice? Why?

Your hardest tasks you should set for the morning. In the morning, you typically have the highest willpower. Your brain is refreshed. Glucose stores are pretty good even though you've been fasting overnight. You're refreshed, you're ready to go, you're more likely to make smart decisions because you can think, you have clarity, you're not exhausted by the day yet. So whatever is hard for you, whether that's exercise, some new thing you're trying to do, try to do it before your day, before the long day, which is why most successful people in history have some kind of smart morning routine. So they wake up, they do the most important task first while they're fresh, and then do the rest of the stuff throughout the day or at the end of the day when they're more tired.

Before you start to seriously build your self-discipline, the first thing you're going to do is learn how to make it easier on your future self to complete a task. Think of it as stretching before a run. Take out your Wellcast journal and write down a task that you regularly put off. Let's say there's a big pile of dishes that greets you every day after work, and instead of cleaning them right up, you bow to the temptation of collapsing on your couch and leave them until the next morning when you tell yourself you have time to take care of them. So help your future self out. Write down 2 things that you're going to do to make it easier for you to complete the task the next day. Stack the dishes neatly in the sink. Or scrape the food off any especially dirty plates before turning in. And that brings us to Workout 2. Now that you've started stretching your muscles, let's try a conditioning exercise. Okay, now the same scenario greets you when you return home from work. You're tired, it's been a long day, and a dirty mountain of dishes is sitting in your sink. This time, Figure out a way to break the activity into segments. Take out your Wellcast journal and write down a week's plan for how you're going to tackle this task gradually. For example, the first night, do 5 dishes. Second night, do 7. Slowly increase how many you do. Your discipline will slowly build as well. Like any exercise, building up your willpower will take time and effort, but You keep at it, you'll see results.

If you want to increase your willpower, you need to remember your why. Remember the big game that you are trying to play. And for me, this is something that I need to do daily. I find that no matter how great a day— it's video day, it's filming day for me, I'm pumped, I'm excited, I leave here feeling amazing, energized— no matter how great a day I had, the next day I start from scratch. The The next day I'm starting over. The next day I need to build myself up again as part of my morning routine and ritual to remind myself to push harder, to do more, to not stop, to not rest, to not stay in my comfort zone. It's a daily battle and a daily grind, and I think having that morning routine becomes so, so, so, so important to help you remember your why. I think you can only force yourself to do something for so long before you quit. If you don't like the work that you're doing I mean, if you're not genuinely excited about the work that you're going to do today, that can only last for so long. You can only increase your willpower to do something that you don't want to do for so long before you quit and realize, this isn't for me, I gotta move on and do something else. But it's for the things that we do want to do, it's for the big dreams that we have that sometimes we don't end up believing in anymore. We have a down day, we don't have that big boldness or that motivation all the time. Structuring into your your daily routine the why. Why it's so important to you, why you're gonna hold yourself back, where you know you're gonna fall down. You know, for me especially, when my schedule is thrown off, that's where I start to fall down. I'm a pretty scheduled person, and I have different things on different days, and it really, really, really works well for me. The system, the schedule works amazingly well for me. But on days when there's interruptions, it's hard for me to get back on the schedule for the rest of that day. The next day starts, new schedule, great to go. But if I fall off in the middle of one day, it's really hard for me to catch back up. And so it's either I design my schedule so that I don't have interruptions, which I've done for the most part, but there's still going to be those 5 to 10% of days where something random, mysterious happens that you have to adjust and deal with. And the second way to do it that I've been working on is having a trigger to get you back on schedule, having a trigger to to get you back into the zone of where you wanna be. And so what I do is I start my day with saying a few lines to myself. I'll say this 3 times. And if I can't start my day with it because there's been some kind of interruption, then as soon as I'm ready to start working again, as soon as I need that extra little jolt, as soon as I need to remember my why and the push and the drive, then I read it again. You know what, let me read it for you. I'm gonna pull it out. This is what I read. This is how I start my day. And if I fall off track, I get back to this. I read this 3 times. Today I will push myself to be my absolute best, to believe more, care more, and try harder. I vow not to let distractions, schedule changes, or fear prevent me from being great. I will make every minute count because my time is running out. I have the ability to change the world, and it's my responsibility to do so. If you want to increase your willpower, Remember your why. So thank you guys so much for watching. I made this video because Abhilash asked me to. So if there's a topic you'd like me to cover on the next edition of Believe Life, leave it down in the comments below and I'll see what I can do. I'd also love to know what did you take from this video? What did you learn the most? What are you going to do in your life or your business to increase your willpower? Did I miss something here that you want to share? Leave it down in the comments below. I'd love to hear from you. Finally, I want to give a quick shout out to 2,000 Books. Thank you so much for picking up a copy of my book, Your One Word, and posting that awesome picture of you outside with it. I really hope you enjoy the beautiful weather as well as the book. Thank you so much for your support. So thank you guys so much for watching. I believe in you. I hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever your one word is. Much love, have an amazing day, and I'll see you in the next video.

I think it's your natural responsibility to be great. And I think for you not to do whatever it takes to learn how to run your mind like a superstar and to make this your absolute best year yet, I think for you not to invest in becoming the person you know you're meant to be, I think for you to play small with your life, for you to go to work and come home and for you not to do things that are difficult, for you not to lean into your fear, for you not to read, for you not to invest in your learning, for you not to populate your life with people who are better thinkers than you is being out of integrity. And I think it's being out of integrity to you, to your family, and to the world. And I know mostly we don't talk about high performance and peak potential in terms of integrity, but you have a personal obligation, as do I, to be the best human being and to express the gifts and the talents you were born with. And if you don't do that because you've fallen into mediocrity or because you've bought a bill of goods that the world has sold you, that you're average, that you're average, that you're ordinary, that the Beckhams and the Jay-Zs and the Mandelas are somehow different from you, Well, that's just not true, and you are breaching your own integrity and your own responsibility. And if I do the same thing, I'm equally responsible because the world is less of a place and your family is less happy because you are not living at your best. And related to that, willpower and expressing your potential and playing at genius and creating a life that's legendary is actually the secret to happiness. I went for a little walk before the webinar and I thought to myself, you know, full expression of your willpower is really how you express your genius and how you express the genius you were born into. But it's also the secret to happiness. I mean, we watch Breaking Bad or we drink too much or we gossip too much or we spend too much time on the internet and we think we're doing that to keep us happy. And you've You've read my books and you followed me, so you know I believe that victims love entertainment, leaders love education. You know, ordinary people love leisure, extraordinary people invest in their learning. I mean, I looked at the best of the best. I look at the billionaires that I've coached, NBA players who follow my work. Taylor Swift reads my books. FC Barcelona reads The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari. Jon Bon Jovi read The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari. And I say that simply to share with you. If you look at the best of the best, they are the best of the best and full of passion and excellence and exuberance because they stretch, because they want to be the best. Let's go to the science. Every time you do something uncomfortable, every single time you exercise self-control and willpower, you release a neurotransmitter called dopamine. Dopamine is the secret to happiness. Dopamine is the neurotransmitter of motivation. And it doesn't happen playing Grand Theft Auto 5. It doesn't happen gossiping at the water cooler. It doesn't happen being addicted to distraction. Dopamine is released when you do difficult things, when you are focused, when you achieve a small win and you say, "Yeah, I did it."