The Discipline Trap: When Discipline Becomes a Cage

Part of optimizing is doing the right things for the right reasons and identifying those small things that are causing us to do the right things for the wrong reasons and replacing those wrong reasons with better reasons. And that's just the path of maturity and identifying where things like fear, doubt, anxiety, ego, pride are fueling things versus the desire for growth, longevity, and being a good steward with what you've been given. Welcome to the Optimizing Beyond podcast. I'm Josh Negron, and this show's all about sharing lessons, ideas, and strategies that sharpen your thinking, strengthen your habits, and push you to grow beyond comfort zones. Let's dive in. Welcome back to the show. Today I want to talk about when discipline can become a cage. What happens when the very habits that built you start to imprison you? What happens What happens when that really good habit stops being a tool for growth and starts to be a metric driven by fear or other negative emotions? Now, anyone that's known me for a significant period of time knows that I have a lot of discipline, and I have for a lot of years, but that doesn't always mean that that discipline had the cleanest fuels and sources of motivation. We've talked about on previous episodes how perfectionism or fear of failure or things like that can be things that propel you forward, but aren't always the cleanest fuels in order to do so, especially long-term. So Today, I'd like to talk through that tension of you're proud that you've built these habits, you're building streaks, and you're really making progress. Your momentum seems to be going really, really well. And yet it's helpful to start discerning whether or not these habits are truly propelling you forward in the best way, especially long-term, to identify habits that maybe have run their course and maybe need to be replaced by something else, or finding pure sources of motivation, To keep going. Now, I'll start straight up by telling you one of mine that was a challenge for many, many years. Now, I've been working out in the gym for over 20 years. That was a discipline that I built and was an immovable routine for me for a long time. And I was really proud of that. And through that discipline, a lot of amazing things happened. However, I was always willing to sacrifice anything, especially sleep, in order to wake up early and get that workout in no matter what. If I had a late night flight, maybe got some delays, got in at 1:00 AM, 2 AM, guess what? I was still waking up. I was still working out. And so I operated like that for many years, over a decade. And that became a source of pride for me that I never missed. And workouts were never something I sacrificed. And maybe at a certain point in my life, that had value. Maybe it was a way to show myself that I was capable of executing at a high level for a long time. But like I said, back then, there were things in the way, things like perfectionism, fear of failure, fear of backsliding. And those were things that I just wasn't willing to compromise. For anything, even other good things like sleep especially. And you can kind of think about that like over-indexing on a single metric, obsessing over one thing at the cost of everything else. I have some friends that have recently got into fitness and getting their health on track, and between work and family time, they're finding it hard to fit in their workouts in a way that it doesn't disrupt their sleep schedule, but also disrupt family time. It's not ever been something that they've had to make time for. So that's significant. 45 minutes, probably more like an hour. Whether you do it in the morning or the evening, it's cutting into something. You're having to sacrifice something. And it's been cool helping them navigate the different options, the different ways they can organize their schedule to really think through what they're wanting to sacrifice and what is more worth it to give up in order to accomplish this habit. And one of my mentors, when she was getting into shape, had a trainer that told her that if she didn't get a certain amount of sleep per night, that she wasn't allowed to work out the following day. And that was an interesting approach that really caught my ear. And I was like, man, I don't know if I've ever thought of it that way. And their whole point was that if you don't get enough sleep, then the gains that you're trying to get are really not going to be fully realized because you're not fully optimizing the single thing that your body uses to recover, to be at peak functionality for a workout. So arguably you won't be able to perform at your best in the workout that day anyway. And then if you're continually not sleeping well, Then you're not going to recover after that workout very well either. So at some point you have to reset. So get that sleep, then you can work out. And so that was a real good James Clear habit stacking technique from Atomic Habits that I thought was really interesting that caught my attention. And lastly, I had a friend who was really proud of their streak. They were really crushing their habit, really doing extremely well. And at some point they ran into some challenges, you know, with travel and some other things. And it was like, extremely disruptive to their life to keep that habit going rather than just skip a day. And when you're obsessive about it, you're like, no, I'm not giving it up. I'm not going to lose a streak. And that person was challenged by their trainer of like, hey, this seems like it's a little bit more tied to ego and your ability to communicate or maybe even brag about this accomplishment. And if you miss a day, then you seem to really be associating your inability to continue that, that way you view yourself and your ability to talk about it. And so that was the first time that I had considered that ego was potentially a part of streaks and keeping a habit going that maybe has run its course or maybe needs to be adjusted. Now, lastly, there's other instances, and I think we've all experienced this, where we download an app. So many apps are gamified these days. So they want you to get in there. They want you to interact with the app. They build daily streaks and all this stuff. And so at some point you get more attached to, oh man, I need to do the thing rather than actually track it. And this example was for water. So I had already shared in previous episodes how years ago I wasn't getting enough water in my daily intake. And Trey Frisbee, a dear friend, kindly pointed out to me that, hey, you do everything else so well, but you don't drink nearly enough water. And that is a huge shame. You're leaving a ton on the table. And so I got my water under control. I used an app to track it, to hold me accountable and do it. But after a certain amount of time, I had gotten in the rhythm of drinking the right amount of fluids per day, and I didn't need the app anymore. But I had built such a significant streak that it annoyed me to not keep it going. And so sometimes if I missed entering it in the app, but I knew I drank enough water, that shouldn't matter. But I would go back maybe even 1 to 2 days and fill in that info just so I could keep the streak alive. I never cheated, but I did have to go back and fill it in. That doesn't matter. That's dumb. And so that told me something's wrong here. I'm more obsessed with the streak than I am the actual habit. The habit is what I was trying to build, and yet I got fixated on a stupid streak in an app that nobody ever sees except me. This is dumb. Good news, I don't track that anymore in the app, but I've kept the habit going. Yay, progress, you know? So all in all, it boils down to true optimization isn't about having flawless metrics. It's about being a good steward and building these habits to better your life. That's the whole point. That's the only reason to optimize in reality. And I liken it to this: doing the right thing for the wrong reasons versus doing the right thing for the right reasons. Now, like I said earlier, using those potentially unclean fuels to do good things— hey, I get it, we all do it— but that isn't optimal. So part of optimizing is doing the right things for the right reasons and identifying those small things that are causing us to do the right things for the wrong reasons and Replacing those wrong reasons with better reasons. And that's just the path of maturity and identifying where things like fear, doubt, anxiety, ego, pride are fueling things versus the desire for growth, longevity, and being a good steward with what you've been given and building on top of that. Now, am I saying that streaks are bad? Obviously no. Streaks are psychologically helpful to motivate us to change. This is the obvious reason why gamification uses streaks in order to get the action that they want out of consumers, guests, customers, and those that are engaging. That's why algorithms serve you what you want to see, what you want to hear, and why ads target you specifically on things that they think you might be interested in, because that drives up engagement and gets them what they want, but also gets you what you might want. And so in their view, it's kind of a win-win for everyone. Now, like I said, streaks can be extremely useful for beginners, especially when they want to get started with something. And that streak mentality can help them get the plane off the ground and really get into flight. Building that habit, getting into 62 days, 93 days, those kinds of things, getting into those thresholds, 2 or 3 months, getting that habit built to where it's easier to do than to not do. But I would say to you, if it's something that you've been doing for a significantly generous amount of time, you've built up that streak, it costs you nothing to take an inventory, to ask yourself some questions. How much is ego involved in this? Is that more of the reason you're doing this than the actual task or habit? And is the habit still effective where you are today? Because like I said, sometimes you just need to let something go. Now, I'm still drinking all the water that I was when I was tracking. I'm just not tracking it anymore because I got in the habit of knowing what I need to drink when to hit my targets. So there's no need to measure it daily. Other things I've let sunset. I'm like, hey, this habit served its purpose for this time and Now I'm not really getting the ROI that I used to out of it, and I don't need to feel obligated to do it anymore just to maintain some arbitrary streak. And if you give something up, then you have the opportunity to fit something else in that might serve you better at this stage. I find also that early on in people's journey of optimizing their lives, they might still have a lot of negative fuel— fear, doubt, anxiety, and those kinds of things. And those things can have some really adverse effects on people when they do miss and break the And so I think we do need to be honest with the fact that sometimes, depending on where you're at and where you're at with your self-talk, with the way you view yourself, your measure of shame, like how much you've got going on and how much of those negative emotions are present in all this, that also needs to be considered in this conversation. Because for those people that have high negative energy of all those things, shame maybe is high, maybe self-worth is low, maybe you have a high degree of negative self-talk and are not a huge huge fan of yourself, those kinds of things can really explode when you break a streak. I've witnessed people who've been doing really good with fitness or eating or both, and then they miss one day, and then it causes this landslide of, well, I missed once, what the heck, what does it matter? And then they backslide for a week, maybe a month, and maybe even more, all because of one day. So in this inventory, it's important to note— let's bookmark that in there— to assess where you're And if you're currently free from a significant amount of negative emotion to be able to make those kinds of discernments in order to decide how you will be affected by leaving that streak behind. And this is that layer of optimization, of looking, seeing where you're at, and seeing where you can push the envelope safely. Because we're looking for opportunities where maybe certain disciplines are actually overriding actual optimization. Like I said, maybe they've run their course. Maybe our fuels and our sources of motivation are not as pure. Is there a way that we can replace some of those one at a time to give us some cleaner momentum to move forward? Those are all things that I would encourage you to think through because just like my water tracking app, even just a year or two ago, that system launched me into building a good habit, but at some point it crossed over to the system managing me instead of me managing the system. And I decided, no, I don't need this. It's all good. I've got the habit established. I can free from this streak, from this app. I can release it and not be annoyed that it no longer exists. And on that conversation of our motivators, I do think it's important to make an assessment on the things that are motivating and pushing you. Like I said, negative emotions can be extremely powerful in motivating us to do incredible things. There are world champions, Olympic gold winners that achieve greatness. And then when asked what fueled them to be the elite, the 1%, the, the ones that made it to the pinnacle, And sometimes it's, I had a teacher that said I would never amount to anything. Oh snap. I would say to a certain degree, that's a negative motivator. So in the good, better, best hierarchy, I always encourage people to make considerations in the choices that they're making. Is this good, better, or is it best? And that's a great thing to reflect on when you're making a lot of different choices. And so when you look at your motivators, what is pushing you to do certain things? What's pushing you to work out? What's pushing you to sleep well? What's pushing you to do all these different things? What's pushing you to perform at work? If you're a top performer, that's awesome. But if your fuel is you need to perform in order to feel appreciated, to feel like you're worth something, and that's the only time you feel alive, that is an opportunity for optimization. Again, you're a high performer, you're a successful person, but your fulfillment formula is going to be incomplete. And even achieving the results that you should be proud of are gonna carry some things in there that I think Words aren't adequate to describe. And if you are challenged by this, I think you know what I mean. And I think part of that is the source of fuel of that motivation and identifying what are the things that are driving you that are potentially not the cleanest sources of fuel. And we've talked about in previous episodes how to address things like negative self-talk. So I won't cover them in detail here, but go back and review those. I'll have those linked. And like I say, we're not ever going for the whole enchilada every single time. So when you identify certain things You're like, man, I've got a lot of fear. I've got a lot of doubt. I got a lot of anxiety. I don't know how to tackle all of that. That would never be anything that I would tell you to do all at once. So you'd want to take some inventory of those things and ask yourself, which lie, which false belief can you address first and start replacing that with truths? Is it negative self-talk? Can you try to reverse engineer that like we've discussed in previous episodes and take those steps necessary to start replacing that fuel with a cleaner one so that you can continue on with the habits, with the production, with the success that you maybe already have? Having, even if the momentum stays the same, which is unlikely, honestly, I think your momentum will increase. However, even if it stays the same, your level of satisfaction with your results and your view of self will only improve in that scenario, which again, I would argue will increase your results no matter what. And one of my mentors has a saying that assets always adjust. And what Danelle means when she says that is that assets are always willing to analyze their plan, analyze their goal, analyze their trajectory, their mechanism, Their strategies, their systems, and always willing to tweak as they're inspecting what is going on. And when you identify those things and you're constantly tweaking, pushing, adjusting, your results will be significantly more than if you just followed a single plan and made no adjustments throughout that same time domain compared to someone making endless adjustments throughout that same timeframe. So back to my personal story on the adjustment of working out at all costs How have I changed that? So I've adopted something kind of similar to what my friend's trainer was having them do in that my sleep dictates a lot of what I will do workout-wise or even morning routine-wise. My morning routine used to be untouchable. I would wake up at that time no matter what, feet would hit the ground immediately, no snooze. And that was something I was really proud of. But when I realized that my sleep getting Sleeping 5 hours a night was not the way to build an optimized life. That year and a half that I spent dialing in my sleep 30 minutes at a time in 6-month blocks, I knew that in certain cases, in order to keep that consistency increasing over time, that I was going to be challenged with late nights and things that I couldn't avoid, whether it's travel, flight delays, or even just those single events where you're like, well, this person's only going to graduate once and I have to be there. And then I got to come back home and it's going to be late. And what am I going to do? There's always going to be something that you can't always say no to. So then when you're challenged with those, what do you do on the back end when you're like, well, do I work out or do I get, do I get a good amount of sleep? Well, when sleep becomes the foundation of the thing that I was working on for those 18 months, sleep won out for the first time ever. And it was like, well, it's either 5 hours of sleep or 7. Guess I'm not working out tomorrow. So I'd wake up later, do my morning routine, not in the morning. Probably do it in the evening, and that was a huge, huge adjustment. And I think that's where the hierarchy of grace comes in, and being able to show yourself grace and say, "Hey," especially when you know you're doing something for a purpose. And I think that's where some people let fear grip them when they're like, "Well, I'm afraid that if I if I choose to give up this habit or this streak and do it willingly, but I don't have any sort of structure that I could backslide or slip, or it's gonna I'm gonna let myself go, or." Whatever. But if you have a structured system where it was like, no, I'm committing to— initially it was 5.5 hours of sleep, then it was 6, then it was 6.5, and then it was 7. And to be clear, it's time in bed because you can't always control when you're actually sleeping. And so when that was my commitment, it was easy math. It was like, okay, so I need this amount, this is when I'm going to bed, can I fit it? And sometimes it'd be like, well, I'm gonna do my gratitudes, my devotional later in the day. I can still wake up, I still Cool. Other times the math just did not work no matter how you diced it. Hey, could I work out in the evening? Sure. But if that's not something that you're used to and you smash a workout in the evening and then try to go to sleep, that didn't work out very well for me. So I was like, doing CrossFit an hour before sleep, I don't think so. So, and in those past years, if I would've made that same choice, I didn't have enough grace for myself to value sleep enough to be okay with missing the workout. And that also applies to when trainers and coaches say, listen to your body and, and don't go 100% if you don't feel well. Like, that's just not how I do it forever. And so it was like I would go 150% no matter what. And if my body was not happy with that, then it could deal with it later. And so that same grace can start to bleed into that where you're like, no, I don't have to attach my self-worth or anything to my competition in the gym or even, you know, the weight that I may have lifted before or how I would have performed in a workout previously. Sometimes just realizing that weight sometimes feels really light and other times half that weight feels like a house. And that's just how it is. Body goes in cycles, hormones cycle and those kinds of things. So just realizing, you know, I'm just not feeling it today. Other times you're like, man, I feel like 100 bucks. I could do 100 of these. This is great. And also as you age, those kinds of things kind of force you to adapt your thinking as well. So, but having that grace is super critical. In order to prioritize the right things, especially as you're optimizing and realizing that at some point I realized that, hey, sleep was going to be where I— how I was going to be able to take this to the next level and keep my health metrics for longevity where they needed to be. I've talked about I'm a Whoop user. As they keep growing their platform, there's all sorts of interesting metrics that they start to track. And a lot of these fitness trackers now have some sort of like lifespan, like digital age component to them. And it's interesting, like I don't know how valid or How legit it is, but it is interesting to look to see the things that I do on a weekly basis. That's how it updates, on a weekly basis. And sleep is the number one thing that affects that number from speeding up or slowing down. And it's the sleep duration average, but also the sleep consistency. And that one's the one that always gets me because it's like, if I get the right amount of numbers, but it's not always in the same window, that fights against me. I'm trying to get those two ironed together, but it's not always— the way I want it to be. But when I get it dialed in, that number has the highest net effect on that number, more than any of my other metrics, which is cool. So in that, I realized what a lot of my coaches and trainers had been saying over the years of like, listen, the fact that you would sacrifice anything, including sleep, and you don't drink enough water, but you're wanting to give it everything and optimize everything, you got some of your priorities mixed up. And so that's not optimization. That's really bad stewardship. And so I had to listen to that feedback. I had to be able to be receptive, be like, okay, you know, he's right. Like, how do I get this in? And I couldn't tackle both at the same time. So I was like, you know what, water is something I think I can do easier than sleep because sleep doesn't just affect me, it affects a spouse situation as well. And so I was like, you know, let me get the water dialed in and then I can talk to her and figure out like, hey, you know, when, you know, when can we go to bed? Because she's kind of more of a night owl. So I'm like, hey, Okay. And had to have that conversation. So got the water dialed in first, then started addressing the sleep. And again, small adjustments. It was an 18-month deal. Having the patience and the grace to do that over time, doing it 30 minutes at a time. Every time I hit that 30-minute average bumped up, it gave me the confidence to go, okay, I mean, we did it 30 minutes. We can scoot it to another 15 to 30 at the end until I reach that next 30 mark and then keep it going. And I wanna address the elephant in the room about grace. I think some of the times the pushback I get when I talk about this to people is that they are afraid that if they have grace for themselves in a habit, in a streak situation or things like that, that it's going to become something like that it's going to produce laziness or complacency or initiate a backslide scenario. And I would say that's all dependent on your purpose and your design for what you're doing what you're doing. So for me, if there's a reason that I'm sacrificing the work These days, it's going to be intentionally sacrificing the workout for something more valuable, which in my case most often is sleep. In some other cases, it might be maybe I'm nursing an injury. Maybe I'm going into something and going, okay, I don't know how this is going to feel. We'll see. The body does great. Cool. Just go for it. If it doesn't, be like, you know what? Guess I'm not doing that today. That's really hard to not be stubborn through. And if negative emotions are in the way, like ego, pride, that streak, whatever it is, then you're doing the right things for the wrong reasons, and you could be doing more damage than good. And that isn't optimization, my friends. So my challenge for you this week is go through a particular habit that you have, or maybe want to have, especially if there's a streak attached to it, and just run it through the friction test. Ask questions, maybe ask for some feedback. If this is like a gym or nutrition habit, you can ask your coaches and trainers. They'll be more than willing to give you their perception, especially if you give them permission, if they're anything like my coaches and trainers. And then some other life habits, you can ask your significant other, your close friends, and sometimes if it makes sense, sometimes even your kids can give you some feedback on certain things. And do that inventory on those negative emotions, those sources of fuel. Are you doing that habit because you really want the benefit of what it provides? Or is there something else attached to it, something else driving it that needs addressed that would benefit If you first identified what it was, realize that it's there, and then start to do some work on figuring out how you can replace those with something more constructive and something more powerful. And this goes back to why we value progress over perfection every day and why daily anything really does change everything. And because we're doing things daily, we have the ability to improve day over day. And you can tweak and optimize those things on a daily basis, not a monthly one, not a yearly one, but every single day. So look over a habit this week week. See what you can adjust. See if there's anything that needs to be looked at, adjusted, replaced. And let me know in the comments, what did you discover? Did you find anything? Did you make any changes? Did you drop any habit? Are you replacing it with another one? I'd love to know. But in the meantime, thanks for listening to the Optimizing Beyond podcast. Remember, growth happens when you take action. So subscribe, share this with a friend, and most importantly, put what you learned into practice. Until next time, keep moving forward Because daily anything changes everything.