Establish and MAINTAIN Discipline For GOOD with These Helpful TIPS | Tom Bilyeu

Everybody, welcome to another episode of Impact Theory. Today, we're going to be talking all about how to establish and maintain discipline. And this is one that will change your life if you let it, because if you have big dreams, but you don't have the drive to see them through, you are just an empty dreamer. And my friends, that is definitely not what I want for you. I want for you guys to be able to achieve your deepest dreams and goals, but that's going to require you to establish that discipline and see it through. All right, question number one. What are some practical steps that I can take to introduce discipline into my everyday routine? All right, the key when it comes to discipline, one, you have to know what it is that you're trying to achieve and why and why you want to achieve it. Once you know what you're trying to do and why you're trying to achieve it, then we're going to put rules in place. So, when you have rules and you know these are the things I do, these are the things I don't do, they are bright lines in your life, we can start to create some routines and habits that are going to take us where we want to go. So, I'll give you some rules in my life, especially at the really it's the night before and the morning of, so that every day is set up for success. So, rule number one, I go to bed at 9:00 p.m. like it's a religion. So, that way I'm going to get as much sleep as I need. I almost never wake up to an alarm because I just want to make sure that I get plenty of sleep. So, rule number one bright line, go to bed at 9:00. Rule number two, I'm out of bed in 10 minutes or less. So, from the moment I realize I'm awake, I'm getting out of bed in 10 minutes or less. Now, the reason I need that rule even all these years later because I first put that rule in my life in my early 20s. The reason that I put that in place is because I was laying in bed four to five hours a day every day and getting absolutely nothing done. And so, I realized that if I didn't have that rule, if I didn't just have a mandate, a bright line, a non-negotiable that I got out of bed in 10 minutes or less, I was never going to get anything done. Now, you have to have that goal and that reason, otherwise you're not going to stick to your goal. And so, a big part or you're not going to stick to your rule. A big part of your discipline is knowing why you're doing all of this. So, I had all these big dreams and quite frankly had shame because I was at that point engaged to my now wife and I felt like I was letting her down, the family down because I wasn't actually taking steps to make my dreams come true. So, trust me when I say that if you don't build the desire, if you don't really want something that makes it worth having these rules, you're not going to stick with it. So, out of bed in 10 minutes or less. Next thing is, I set beside my bed my workout clothes. So, it's not like a big debate whether or not I'm going to work out. I put my workout clothes on, I give my dog his medicine, long story, and then I go and work out. And it just makes it easy when the very thing there next to your bed are your workout clothes. The next thing I do is I make sure that I always have an important things list so that I don't have to think or wonder what should I be doing. I know exactly what I should be doing with the next 15 minutes of my life because I keep that list of important things that I would need to do in order to take meaningful steps towards my goal, and because I really want my goal, I've built all that desire, it becomes very easy for me to stick with it. So, those are some really simple, practical steps that you can put in right now. Know what you want, build the desire to get there, put in rules that optimize your time, and get rid of any and all excuses and sort of weak moments. Because I find people that have to, "Hmm, what should I be doing?" They get distracted. They end up living by the law of accident. So, go to bed at the right time, have rules about getting out of bed, put your gym clothes or whatever is important to you right there. If, you know, the first thing that you want to do when you wake up is get to work or whatever, make sure that whatever work implements you have, your laptop, whatever. This is not what I advise, but I'm just saying, whatever that thing is is important to you, grab it and get going. And then keep an important things list that's in order so that you know exactly what to do first, what to do second, third, fourth, so on and so forth. And if you do that, and you have those bright lines, you'll be off to a very good start. All right. What tools do you use to keep yourself dedicated and focused on your main priority on a daily basis? All right, so much of what I do and how I'm able to accomplish the things that I'm able to accomplish is because I've taken the time to actually build the desire, to want the thing that I'm chasing. Now, a big part of that is assigning meaning and purpose to your goals. Your goals should not be random. They should not be designed to make you rich, even if that's a second or third-order consequence, great, but the primary goal should be something that gives you meaning and purpose. Now, when you have meaning and purpose, you will be willing to fight through the lame, the boring, the difficult, okay? I've said many times, boredom kills more dreams than fear, than failure. It's you get in there and to get good enough to do the thing that you want to do, it's really boring. You have to do a lot of stuff that you do not want to do over and over and over. And so, the for you to have the stamina to see that through is to really want that thing that you're pursuing. Now, if you really want that thing that you're pursuing and you've tied meaning and purpose. So, back at Quest, it's real boring being under the equipment trying to fix it. But I was there fighting for my mom and my sister. I wanted to end metabolic disease. I wanted to make sure that they lived long enough that I could enjoy their company for decades and decades and decades to come. But to do that, the price for that, if you will, was I had to create food that they could choose based on taste and it happened to be good for them. At Impact Theory, I am trying to make sure that nobody gets to the age of 15 without encountering a growth mindset through story at scale. And so all the boring things dealing with finance and contracts and all of that stuff, I do it because I really believe in the people that I'm trying to help and I have deeply personal connections with the with people that I've encountered in my life that because they didn't encounter a growth mindset in those years, they have struggled needlessly in their lives. And so that really matters to me. So when it gets hard, when I get bored, I can stay focused because I really have this deep, spiritual, quite frankly, connection with what I'm trying to do. It isn't about making money, it's not about getting famous, it's about helping people that I love and care about. And so when you have that, you're going to be able to keep yourself focused and on your main priority. And then, if you actually believe that you can accomplish it, that helps. And so you need to believe that you can get good enough. You don't have to believe you already are good enough, but you need to believe that you can get good enough in order to achieve this. All right. What is up, my friend? Tom Bilyeu here and I have a big question to ask you. How would you rate your level of personal discipline on a scale of 1 to 10? If your answer is anything less than a 10, I've got something cool for you. And let me tell you right now, discipline, by its very nature, means compelling yourself to do difficult things that are stressful, boring, which is what kills most people, or possibly scary or even painful. Now, here is the thing. Achieving huge goals and stretching to reach your potential requires you to do those challenging, stressful things and to stick with them even when it gets boring, and it will get boring, and even when you might be afraid of the outcome if you fail. Building your levels of personal discipline is not easy, but let me tell you it pays off. In fact, I will tell you you're never going to achieve anything meaningful unless you develop discipline. If you're not already a 10 out of a 10 with this skill, and I use that word intentionally because it is a skill, you can build it, you can get better at it. Class from Impact Theory University called How to Build Ironclad Discipline that teaches you the process of building yourself up in this area so that you can push yourself to do the hard things that greatness is going to require of you. Promise, if you want to achieve your goals, this is the number one thing you have to focus on. As Jocko Willink says, "Discipline equals freedom." Right, click the link on the screen, register for this class right now, and let's get to work. I will see you inside this workshop from Impact Theory University. Until then, my friends, be legendary. Peace out. How do you decide on what you want to dedicate yourself to? How do you keep yourself focused on that goal while other opportunities are opening up to you or unforeseen obstacles come up? Okay. Here is how life works. If you're trying to achieve something great with your life, right now, I know exactly what's happening to you. You are metaphorically standing in a room with a thousand doors. There are many things that you're excited about, many things that you could do, so many opportunities before you. The hard part isn't finding opportunity. The hard part is standing in a room full of opportunity and knowing out of those thousand doors that are open to you, how to close 999 of them and have the courage to walk through just one. Most people are so dazzled, distracted, so worried that they're going to choose the wrong one that they never step through one. And so, my advice to you is just run around closing doors like crazy, walk through one with reckless abandon knowing that you can always come back the other side and try something else. And also, if you're young, don't prematurely optimize. Go through a bunch of doors, come back, go in, come back out, go in, come back out, try a bunch of different things, find the things that excite you the most, find the things that the more you engage with it, the more interested you become. If you engage with something and over time it starts to lose interest for you, that's not the right door. If on the other hand, the more you learn about it, the more you engage with it, the more you're like, "Man, this is so fun." That's what you're looking for. You're looking for something that gives you more energy than it takes. If it's taking more energy than it gives, this is not the door for you. So, you want to find that thing where the more that you engage with it, the more fascinating it becomes. Now, if you do that, and the only thing that you pursue is the thing that's giving you more energy, and again, it's going to give you more energy because there's something innate about it that's fun, and you did what we talked about earlier, where you figured out why you wanted it, you started assigning meaning and purpose, "I'm doing this to save my mom and my sister." Whatever the case may be, but you're assigning something to it that is deeply personal, that really makes sense with that thing, and now when an unforeseen obstacle comes your way, you know why you're fighting for this, and you will push through that boredom because it's something that you know on balance you love anyway, and you're fighting for something that matters to you. When you get that magical cocktail, as Friedrich Nietzsche said, "A man with a strong enough why can endure any how." So, you need that strong why to keep you focused, to ignore all the other obstacles and opportunities, to really go after that thing, and to have tested. You've tried a lot of things. You did not prematurely optimize. So, I know that this one is good for me. I know that I'm not cuz a lot of people they end up just they like the beginning. And so, in the beginning I know I'm here. I'm ready to fight. This is good. And then as time wears on, laziness kicks in. They like distraction. Maybe they have ADHD. They want the next dopamine hit. They pick up their phone. And suddenly they think it's oh, well, this Tom said to only do the one that gives me more energy. This doesn't give me enough energy. I'm going to go try something else. I would say once you've done the early exploration, you know, of 15, 20 different things and found some that give you more energy than they take, then if more than three times you find yourself starting only to stop and want to start over again, that is you're lacking grit. Angela Duckworth has a book called Grit where she addresses this, but basically you have to at some point draw a line in the sand and say, "Look, I know that in the early phases of this I loved it. Now I just need to push through the boring stuff by knowing why I'm doing this and having a desire to progress in my life, which is incredibly important. And I'm going to do that by gaining mastery in the skills that I would need to master in order to be good at this thing." And then you commit and you go. All right. That's how that's done. Next, I struggle with the consistency aspect of discipline. What advice do you have for someone like me? All right. So, first of all, you want to set yourself up in the way that we were talking about earlier to make consistency the default answer. So, we go to bed at the same time. We have our meal plan prepped out. So, we don't have infinite ingredients in the house and a bunch of junk food. It's like we have the ingredients we need to make the food that that want to make. Our gym clothes are right next to the bed. All of that stuff. So, we are setting ourselves up so that the right answer is the easiest answer. And the pantry is an easy way to explain that. If you don't know what you're going to eat, you don't have rules around what you eat, and you've got a bunch of junk food in the house, the odds of you sticking to your diet are basically zero because you don't have things laid out. You have not said, "This is what I eat for breakfast. This is what I eat for lunch. This is what time I eat. This is what time I stop eating." All that stuff. Put rules in your life. Buy according to that. Live according to that. And then keep that list of the things that you know that you're supposed to be doing. Okay? It's very important for you to make the right choice the easy choice. As you do that in multiple areas of your life, and just start ruling things out, and this is again where bright lines really come in handy, you have to have things that you don't do as much as knowing what you do do. And a lot of people get themselves in trouble because they don't have these bright lines. There aren't things that are off limits. So, for instance, Monday through Friday, if I'm awake, I'm either working or working out. So, you can imagine if I start goofing off, uh I start playing with the dog, I um play video games, I would know immediately that I'm not doing what I'm supposed to be doing because is it Monday through Friday? Yes. Uh am I working or working out? No. Cool. Then you're doing the wrong thing. And so, by having these rules and writing them down can be really useful. Having these rules, writing them down, knowing exactly what you're trying to accomplish and why you're trying to accomplish it cuz remember, you don't want to live the way that I'm describing unless it's in service of something you love, that you're excited about, that you believe in, that you want it. Because when you want that stuff, none of what I'm describing is a pain in the ass. You're excited to have these rules because they're actually allowing you to get done the thing you want to get done. And the more you engage with it, the more exciting it is, the more your passions are ignited because you're getting good at something, you're making progress. And something we haven't talked about, make sure your goals are exciting and honorable. They're exciting, you just want to do it. It's fun. This is an area that you like to be in. And it's serving people in a way that elevates not only yourself, but other people. Okay? When you're working your ass off to gain a set of skills that allow you to serve other people in a way that's fun, now you've really got something. If you hear me talking about all this and I'm saying apply it to a thing that you hate, that doesn't make any sense. But when you apply it to something that you believe in and you have to do that work, you have to decide to attach that meaning and purpose to that thing. But when you do that, now all of a sudden working hard and being a badass and seeing who you're becoming, that is amazing. As Tony Robbins says, progress is a foundational pillar to human happiness. Make progress. Make progress and you will feel amazing. Discipline isn't meant to make your life suck. As Jocko Willink says, discipline equals freedom. The point of these rules and all of that is to know you're not going to quit. And you're not going to quit on something that you care about, something that matters to you, something that you're building towards that is improving your life and giving you a sense of joy. Unfortunately, joy is not easy to come by. All of the default answers are going to lead you somewhere negative. And the reason they lead you somewhere negative is because nature has hardwired you to work really hard to gain a set of skills that allow you to serve not only yourself, but other people. Nature has hardwired you for that. So, if you fail to do that, you sit around just playing video games all day. And I love video games, but I don't sit around playing them all day. So, if you're just sitting around staring at the wall, um getting lost in a book, uh working out all day, and you never do anything that allows you to serve other people. I promise you, as much as you don't want this to be true, you will not feel fulfilled. Okay, nature only has two levers to pull, pleasure and pain. And if you're not doing the things that nature has deemed you need to do in order for you to live long enough to have kids that have kids, you will have a profound sense of disease. And the only way to combat that is that formula for fulfillment, working really hard to gain a set of skills that allow you to serve not only yourself, because it should be fun for you, but also serve other people. All right. That's how you get consistent. Next. What makes you keep pushing towards your goal after you've already had some level of success? Nature. You're having a biological experience. Nature has those two levers, pleasure and pain. I think a lot of people make the mistake of thinking, "Well, as long as I don't do things that create a problem, I don't do bad things, I'll be fine. What could possibly be wrong with sitting around in my apartment all day, goofing off, watching TV, playing video games? All that stuff, all individually wonderful, but when you put it together, suddenly it does not give you the life that you want, and you start to feel disease. You don't feel good. Something's not right. Something's off. I don't know why I don't feel good. And then, by the way, you're probably eating terrible food. And each bite, individually, is amazing, but it adds up to inflammation, dysbiosis, meaning your gut bacteria, your microbiome is out of whack, and it's sending signals to your brain that alter your brain chemistry and make you not feel good. Something isn't right. But why don't I feel good? I'm doing things that are awesome. This food is awesome. Playing video games is awesome. Relaxing, awesome. Reading a book, awesome. But life in total, not awesome. And how is that possible? Because nature has implanted directives in your brain to ensure that you work hard, cuz you grew up on the the the plains of the savanna. And life was hard, and life was scary. And if you weren't a part of the group, you were going to get eaten by something, you were going to die of exposure, you weren't going to make it. And so, nature, by way of natural selection, has made it extremely pleasurable to work really hard to gain a set of skills that are unique and exciting to you, that allow you to serve not only yourself, but the group, makes that really feel good. Even though it's hard, even though each step of that way is difficult. And yet it adds up to something extraordinary. Okay? It's It is the most counterintuitive, weird thing in the world that if you do all of the individual things that are fun, it ends up where you feel like crap. And if you do individually all the things that are hard and a struggle and are difficult, you end up feeling awesome. That's a reality of life. So, I knew that. So, even as I became successful, I never thought, "Hey, why don't we just retire?" It won't work. It won't work, meaning work, because I won't be able to feel the way that I want to feel. I want to feel good about myself. I want to make progress in my life. I want to feel like I'm contributing. I know all of that, because I understand how the brain works. I understand how nature embeds these directives in your brain and it isn't enough to not do something bad. You have to be pursuing something that matters. Meaning, purpose. That's it. That's the game. It isn't success. It isn't wealth. It isn't adoration. It's not trophies. It's not goals. It's nothing other than fulfillment. And fulfillment is work really hard. Okay? If it comes easy, it won't work. Work really hard to gain a set of skills that you care about, that matter to you. Don't worry about what everybody else thinks. Skill set that matters to you. That skill set could be playing video games. That could be how you're going to reach and touch the world and elevate people and show them what's possible and entertain them. Absolutely great. You're doing something for other people. But you work real hard to gain a set of skills that matter to you, that are exciting to you. But they don't just serve you, they serve other people as well. Nature, baby. You're having a biological experience and nature will [ __ ] with your neurochemistry if you don't follow that pattern. So, no matter how much success you have, you still need progress. You still need to be moving forward in your life. You still need to be gaining skills. There is no retiring, not if you want to be fulfilled. Not if you want to enjoy your life. You need to go after something. Now, make it fun. Should be joyful. Should be the joyful pursuit of something that matters to you. But man, if you do that, life is amazing. It's hard, but it's amazing. But if you don't do that, it's easy, but it sucks. It's all right. That's it. That's how you do it. All right, guys. Speaking of things that are amazing, if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Peace.