How To Be More DISCIPLINED (Secrets For MASTERING Self Control TODAY) | Rob Dial

Rob Dial argues discipline is a learnable skill built through small, repeated actions you don't want to do. He shares stories from cold-calling jobs and connects tiny habits like picking up a stray box to handling bigger challenges, saying how you handle small tasks predicts how you'll handle large ones.
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People always think success is some big, massive event. No, success in whatever it is that you want to do is a bunch of little, teeny, tiny, tedious things that you do every single day over and over and over and over again. And the success just stacks on top of itself. Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Dial, and today we're going to talk about how. How to be disciplined. And this is something I hear from a lot of people of like, I would just love to have more discipline. But I'm going to tell you something that I hear all the time from people, and it's something along the lines of this. I would be so much more disciplined if I had a job that I loved, or I'd be so much more disciplined if I had my own business, I would be so much more disciplined in it. But because I have this job that I don't love, I'm not as disciplined as I should be because I don't really care about it. It's not my passion. And if you're in that situation, I want to talk to you about that. I want to just talk to you about discipline in general, but also specifically for that, because it doesn't make any sense. If you say, if I had my own business, I'd be much more disciplined, because discipline doesn't come from doing things that you want to do. Discipline means that you do the things that you don't want to do whenever you don't want to do it, because you know that you should do it. So if you are really, truly trying to build discipline, then shouldn't you be building your discipline at this job that you hate? Because if you can force yourself to do a job that you hate and to get it done and to perform at a high level at that job, then you're really going to perform at a high level when you open your own business or when you find a job that you love. So it makes zero sense to say that I will be more disciplined if I find a job that I love or if I start my own business. And the reason why is because discipline is a learned habit. And I learned this myself, personally. I was not a very motivated individual before I found one job. You know, if I look back at the jobs that I had before, I found the one job that it really clicked in. You know, my very first job, I worked at a pizza place. My second job that I had, I was a bird and fish specialist at PetSmart for two years in high school. I was, you Know, a busser at Outback Steakhouse. I delivered pizzas for a long time. And then one day, I got a job selling knives at Cutco Cutlery. And I saw all of these people who were around me that were around my age that were making way more money than even my mom was making at the time. And I was like, this kid's 19, 20, 21 years old, and he's making more money than, you know, some of my professors are. And then I watched what they did, and I saw how disciplined they were. And then I looked at my life and saw how disciplined I was not. And I went, okay, well, if you're smart, you would just do the exact same thing that somebody else is doing. So then I just watched them, and I said, okay, they're very disciplined. They do this. They make their phone calls. They show up to their appointments. They seem very disciplined. And I learned discipline. And through doing it over and over and over again, I learned to do the things that I needed to do, even when I didn't want to do them. So back in the day, we used to have this. Every time somebody bought Cutco, they would have a pink slip. You know, we would give the customer their receipt. We'd have the pink slip, which was for the office that I worked in. And then we would send the order to the company and ship them up to the company. And so my office had thousands. I mean, tens of thousands of pink slips. And what we would do is we would call these people and go out and sharpen their knives for them for free and hopefully get some more recommendations and some more sales. And. And the place. And this is. If I'm thinking right now in my head, the place that I learned discipline, I can actually tell you the room that I learned discipline is we called this room the dungeon. And the reason why was because it was where the AC was. It was cold. It was kind of like, mildewy, but it was filled with tens of thousands of pink slips with all of these people's phone numbers. And I learned discipline where I was cold. So I brought clothes because I lived in Florida, so it was hot as hell outside. It was cold as hell in mildewy and. And wet. And it was like this. It was like living. It was like being in a cave. Like, it was like. The ceilings would basically drip. Like, you know, obviously, I'm being a little bit facetious here, but I'm also being serious at the same time. It was not the same as it was outside. So I would bring clothes that were warm clothes to go into the dungeon. I would lock myself in there for hours until I made 100 phone calls. And I didn't want to make those phone calls. What I wanted to do, though, was I wanted to be successful and I wanted to make money. So I was more motivated by what I could get out of doing these phone calls and than actually doing the phone calls. And so I learned discipline. I didn't know that I was learning discipline at this time, but I was learning discipline through this process. If I can sit inside of a room for hours and hours and hours and just call people when the majority of them were like, old numbers, they didn't work anymore, you know, this. We were calling this, like, right from the transition when people were really starting to all have less house phones and more cell phones. So there was a ton of house phone numbers I was calling. Those numbers didn't work anymore. So I was just calling and calling and calling to try to get these people to set up appointments with me so I could go and try to sell them more knives and then also get recommendations to their friends, because that's kind of how it works. And so ultimately, I think that in that I learned discipline. And then when I opened an office with them, I learned discipline to be at the office every single morning at 7am I didn't leave the office until like, 11pm and so I learned discipline and learned and learned and learned. And. And so people are like, man, you're so disciplined. Like, you just execute whenever something needs to be done. I have not always been that way. It was just something that I learned. It was just a trait. And so if you're out there and you don't feel like you're as disciplined as you want to be, no worries. It's a skill that can be. It's not something that you're born with. You're not just born disciplined. It's a skill that you learn. Right. I also think that I learned discipline through a lot of sports that I played when I was younger. It's just something that you learn. So if you're out there and you're like, I want to be more disciplined, what. Well, what I'm telling you right now is you can learn it right now. You can instill discipline in yourself in this very moment for your future. You can't just be like, oh, my God, well, I guess I didn't get it this life. Maybe on the next life, I'll get more discipline. No, it's something that you learn. It is like going to the gym, you know, you might be have never gone to the gym before. If you go over and over and over and over again, you start to get muscle memory. Your muscles get used to. You start to understand how to go through the motions and what weights to use and how to use them. Exactly. It's the same thing for discipline. Discipline is learned. It is like a muscle. And there's discipline required for success. So much discipline. In fact, that might be the number one skill for success, is discipline. And you guys have heard me say it many times before, but I fully believe the way you do one thing is the way you do everything. The way you do one thing is the way you do everything. And I have this ridiculous story, and I've told it a couple of times this week, but it's a ridiculous story because I just have to tell it so. But it talks about discipline. Just how, if you want to know how I work on a daily basis now, I'm going to say this. I'm not perfect any sort of way. I screw up a lot of stuff. But this is how I go through my day, trying to build more discipline into myself. And what I'm trying to do is be as disciplined as I possibly can in the small things. So, you know, we've been gone for the past four months, and we were in Sedona, we just came back, we're in Austin. And, you know, I get a lot of free stuff sent to me for people wanting me to use their products before I, you know, talk about them on the podcast. Because I would never promote something that I haven't used or tried out or actually verified. Like, I just wouldn't want to talk about things, just to talk about them. So I try stuff out. So I get a lot of stuff sent to me. And, you know, having a following. People want to send you stuff is a, you know, I hate to say it, but a quote unquote influencer. You get stuff sent to you. So my friends were have the keys to our place and so they were putting boxes and they were putting the mail and all that stuff inside of our house. So we come home and there's just boxes, right? And I'm undoing all the boxes. I'm getting all the stuff out, and I'm taking all this stuff down to the recycling. You know, in our condo we have a recycling area. So I went and took it down there, throw all of the boxes. And I mean, I'm like, I literally only want to take one. You know, when you want to take one, I don't want to go down there a couple times I want to take one trip. I have all of the boxes, everything I possibly can. I throw all the boxes inside the recycling thing and it's outside and we have this recycling area in one box for like nut thins, you know, the little chips falls on the ground. And I think to myself, I could just leave it there because the people who, you know, who work here, you know, when they come in, they pick up the trash, they pick up the recycling, they'll throw it in there, right? You've had some version of that happen. I'll leave that because something, I can do it later or because someone else will take care of it. I don't really need to worry about it. So when I notice resistance, which there was resistance right there, I try to go at the resistance. I try to fight the resistance versus listening to what it's trying to tell me to do. So this box falls on the ground and I start to turn around and I am physically, completely turned around and I start to walk back into the condominium and I'm like, I notice resistance. And that resistance is telling me that I should leave this here. When in reality I know I should pick that up. And I'm like, whenever I feel resistance, I have to go at the resistance because I'm trying to build discipline. The way I do one thing is the way I do everything. So if I leave this damn box here, then I'm going to eventually not be disciplined in something else as well. If I'm leaving this here, there's other things I'm leaving on the table. In my business, in my relationships and my finances and everything that I do, I'm leaving something on the table. So I'm like, dammit, all right, I feel the resistance, I'm going to have to do it. So I turn back around, I go to pick up the box. And as you as I'm going down to pick up the box, I accidentally kick the box. And not only do I kick it, I kick it outside of a fence area because there's like a little, little area between the ground and the fence. It slides under there and I'm like, son of a bitch. Now I've got to go. Like I really feel the resistance of just fricking leave it, dude. Like somebody else will pick it up. I'm like, nope, I can't do it. So now I've got to go walk out of the condominium, go around the fence, come back, pick up this damn thing of nut fins and throw it away. And I share this ridiculous story with you. Because how often do we just leave things for later or leave things for someone else? Like, for instance, you know, if you've been going out and you're about to go out with some friends and you're trying to figure out what outfit to wear. Ladies, I know you've done this before. I've seen, you know, my girlfriend do this before. I've done this before as well. So you're trying on different shirts, you're trying on different pants, different shoes, all that stuff. And what do you do? You believe everything. All of the carnage of clothes, you could say, all over your bed, and you leave it all, and you're like, I'll get it later. And sure, you can get it later. But in my mind, there's resistance right there. And when I feel the resistance, I'm like, ah, damn it, I gotta go at it. So if I feel the resistance of I can do that later, I have to stop what I'm doing and not listen to a little voice inside of my head that's telling me not to do it and go ahead and do it. Because that is the same little voice that pops up into your head and tells you to procrastinate. Oh, don't worry about doing that now. You can do that later. You can do it at another time. And so it seems ridiculous, and I understand it is ridiculous. But at the same time, the way you do one thing is the way you do everything. If I notice resistance towards doing something now, I need to do it to fight past that resistance. And you'll never be perfect, and I'll never be perfect. We'll leave stuff around at some point in time. But if I feel it, if I feel that resistance, I'm going at it. So instead of leaving the clothes, start picking them up. Instead of leaving, you know, the box on the ground, thinking someone else to do it, pick it up and just do it. Because if you can have discipline in the little teeny tiny things, you can have discipline in the big things. Because if you're not picking up a box or putting away your clothes or whatever it is, those little tiny things, the things that are so easy to do that you could do in, you know, a minute, less than a minute sometimes, then you're definitely not doing the big things in life. You're not going ahead and, you know, making 100 phone calls and, you know, cold calling or, you know, going out and finding people to invest in your company or, you know, putting in all the work on your social media. So therefore, you can get Leads for clients. If you're not doing the small things, I'm for damn sure you're not doing the big things. And so when you have the little things, you notice resistance. You got to go at it. It's the same thing. I've told this story so many times, you know, that one of the first times I really realized this is a thing was when I was at the gym and I was warming up and I was on the treadmill, and I was like, I'm going to do 10 minutes on this treadmill as a warmup, get my heart rate up. And, you know, I'll do 10 minutes, and then I'll go ahead and do my workout. And I got to 9 minutes and 50 seconds, and I noticed I was about to hit the stop button 10 seconds early. I mean, it's not a big deal. It's 10 seconds. Nobody in the world would know if I hit that button. I could have just gone about my day and my life would have not seen any big difference. But you said, you know, what if I give up right now on this little, teeny, tiny thing where no one else is watching, there's definitely place in my life where I'm giving up on other things that I don't need to give up on. And so I thought to myself, okay, instead of stopping at 10 minutes or 9 minutes and 50 seconds, I'm going to do 10 minutes and 30 seconds. And it's only an extra 30 seconds on top of what I was planning on doing. It's Only an extra 40 seconds on top of where I almost stopped. But I'm trying to train my brain into going above and beyond versus stopping just short. Because I'm guaranteeing there's some people out there listening to this. They're saying, yeah, you know what? I've stopped short many times. I've stopped just short of my goal so many times. And it's because we train ourselves to do that. We train ourselves to give up. But the same way that we train ourselves to give up, we can also train ourselves to be disciplined. We can train ourselves to do the things that we need to do. Because if you do all of the little, teeny, tiny things like success, people always think success is some big, massive event. No, success in whatever it is that you want to do is a bunch of little, teeny, tiny, tedious things that you do every single day over and over and over and over again. And the success just stacks on top of itself. It's not some big event or some big client or any of Those things, it's a bunch of little teeny, tiny disciplines. All these, like, success is not a sexy thing, right? What, what looks like sexy is at the end. That's the sexiness when you see the success. But building up to the success, that's not sexual sexy at all. It's all just little teeny, tiny pieces of discipline. So the question I want you to ask yourself as we're finishing up here is where am I not showing up 100% of my life? Where am I not showing up? Where I need to show up more, Where I need to push myself more. I need to show up and show that discipline and do something more versus doing less. Where do I feel resistance? Where I need to go at it and push past it and stop holding myself back from everything. Because discipline is not found the job that you love or the business that you love. Discipline is something that's found by showing up and doing the little teeny tiny things every single day, regardless of how you feel about it. In fact, discipline is not even. It is how you feel about it. You know, it's doing it regardless of how you feel about it, but even more so doing it when you hate doing it. Because if you can do something that you hate doing, if you can show up and perform at a super high level at a job that you hate, then you will crush it at a job that you love, and you will crush it if you decide to start your own business. So discipline is a learned habit. If you're trying to learn discipline, find the resistance. Find that little voice inside of your head. Don't listen to it. And when you hear it, push past it. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share with someone that you know and love. And if you love it, please go ahead and share it on your Instagram stories. Tag me in at robdial Junior. R O B D I A L J R and I'm going to leave you the same way. Leave you every single episode. Make it your mission. Make someone else's day better. I appreciate you, I love you all and I hope that you have an amazing day.
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