488: A Simple Approach to Self-Discipline – How to Get Yourself to Do What You Need to Do

Hal Elrod: Welcome to the Achieve Your Goals podcast. This is your host, Hal Elrod, and thank you for tuning in today. Appreciate you being here. And I will do everything in my power to make sure this is valuable for you. In fact, I already did because I recorded the episode. And we’re going to talk about a simplified approach to self-discipline, how to get yourself to do what you need to do when you need to do it, whether you feel like it or not, it is the ultimate superpower because with it, you can achieve everything you want to achieve as long as you can get yourself to do what you need to do when you need to do it to achieve those things, whether you feel like it or not.

And today, we’re going to examine this topic in a very simple way. And what I mean by that is this, if we were to go over dozens of strategies, in fact, there’s a great book that I recommend at the end of today’s episode by Brian Tracy called No Excuses! on how to develop self-discipline and the subtitle of the book is something like 21 Ways to blah, blah, blah, whatever it is. Here’s the point. If I were to give you 21 ways to develop self-discipline today, how many of those would you remember? Probably not very many.

So, I’m going to give you three. I’m actually going to give you three simple steps you can implement today immediately to help you develop more self-discipline in any or every area of your life because really, when you develop more self-discipline, it’s you that’s developing that quality within yourself. You are becoming more self-disciplined. You can apply it to every area of your life.

Before we dive into the episode today, I want to take just a couple of minutes to thank our sponsors that bring you the episode. Thank you so much first and foremost to Organifi. Organifi makes the highest quality whole food organic supplements in powder form so you can pour them in a smoothie or a glass of water or a cup of almond milk or orange juice or whatever you fancy. And they’re also great because many of their products are like to-go packet. So, when I travel, I take Organifi Red Juice with me, Immunity with me, Pure with me, all of these products that are on the go, really simple in these one-off pouches that I can just tear off, put in some water in the morning, in the afternoon, or in the evening to wind down. So, if you want improve your health, like one of the easiest, fastest ways that I know to do it is using Organifi’s products. Head over to Organifi.com/Hal, that is O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I, Organifi.com/Hal, and then use the discount code H-A-L for 20% off, my name, H-A-L, HAL for 20% off your entire order.

And then, last but not least, I want to thank our second sponsor CURED Nutrition. And CURED Nutrition is very similar to Organifi. In fact, I met them through my contact at Organifi, Hannah. And CURED Nutrition also makes high quality whole food supplements. They’re unique factors that they use CBD in most of their formulas. And there’s even some formulas where you can legally microdose THC, which has a whole host of benefits and they tell you about that all on their website. I use their Rise every morning as a nootropic first thing in the morning for mental focus and clarity. I use their Night Caps every night to go to sleep and then I use different products during the day. CuredNutrition.com/Hal is where you can find all of their products. Again, that’s Cured, C-U-R-E-D, CuredNutrition.com/Hal, and then use that same discount code HAL, H-A-L, at checkout, and you, as a listener of the podcast, will get an additional 20% off your entire order.

All right. Without further ado, y’all, let’s dive in to a simplified approach to self-discipline, how you can get yourself to do what you need to do when you need to do it, whether you feel like it or not. Enjoy it.

[INTERVIEW]

Hal Elrod: Hey, goal achievers and members of the Miracle Morning Community, this is Hal Elrod. And today, we’re doing second in a series Back to the Basics. And we started this last week. I don’t know how long it’s going to go. It might be like a three-part series, I might keep going, I’m not sure. I’m playing it by ear, taking it one week at a time.

The essence of it, though, was I just realized that for me, maybe you can relate to this, that sometimes I feel like I’m not as good as I used to be. Is that weird? You ever feel that way? Meaning, like I look back and I’m like, man, when I was younger, I was more disciplined or I was more focused or I was more consistent or I was smarter. I have a lot, like for me, with going through chemotherapy and the brain damage that that creates, in addition to the brain damage I had when I was younger. I wonder like, man, am I as smart as I used to be? I don’t think I’m as smart as I used to be. And that sucks.

It’s really interesting. The other day, I was sick. Actually, you might notice, I’m a little nasally. But I was pretty sick and I was sick a few weeks ago, which my wife pointed out. She’s like, “Sweetheart, I think your body is telling you something. You don’t normally get sick and you’ve been significantly sick twice in less than a month. Take it easy.” I also threw my back out on Saturday, which never threw my back out before. So, again, my wife’s like, “Yeah, a lot of these things, you should probably pay attention.”

So, the point being, I was in bed sick and I had a lot of time to think. When you’re sick, you’re like, I had a lot of time to think, I had a lot of time to reflect, which should be a good thing, yay, and a bad thing, depending on your mindset and perspective. For most, it was really a good thing. For me, I had a lot of breakthroughs, took a lot of notes, a lot of journaling, updated my affirmations, all of those things.

But one thing that I realized is the difference in what life is like from in terms of your perspective when you’re younger versus older. Now, those are relative terms, younger, older. But let’s just say, for example, when you’re a kid or even when you’re a teenager or in your 20s, let’s say that younger is going to be like anything under 25. Let’s start there, okay. But life exists as possibility, right? When you’re younger, it exists as possibility, like anything’s possible. You could be what you want. You could do what you want. Who knows what the future holds and what you can create?

But then, as you get older, I’m 44 now, and I found myself when I was sick, looking back and looking at some of the mistakes I’ve made in my life, maybe not even mistakes, but just the decisions that I’ve made, like the big ones. Like, oh, we made it. We moved. That was actually really big when we moved to Texas in 2016. And it occurred to me, in fact, I called my dad and told him this yesterday and I broke down crying. I couldn’t keep it together. I said– but anyway, my dad had moved down to where we lived in California, Temecula, and he had bought a house like two miles– it can be a mile away from us with a pool. And he was so excited to be next to his grandkids.

And for a variety of personal reasons that I won’t go into, we decided to move, and it caught him off guard, I mean, caught us off guard, honestly. And I don’t think I ever fully– because he didn’t tell me, he really wanted us to stay and he begged me to stay. And he said, “Hal, how are you going to handle the heat in Texas?”

But I didn’t realize until maybe this last weekend when I was sick in bed how hard that must have been for my dad. He moved to be next to his grandkids and his son, me, and then I left. And we left. We went to Texas. And I can imagine how devastating that was for him. And I called him yesterday and I broke down in tears, expressing, I said, “I don’t know if I would do it any different because the reasons we left were the reasons we left. And I think it was what was best for our family.” I said, “But Dad, I never expressed to you or I never realized how hard that must have been for you.” And I was crying as I’m telling this, and he’s like, “It’s okay. It’s okay. And you did what was right for you.”

But anyway, the point being, you look, when you’re younger, life exists as possibility. And when you are older, you have most of your life or a lot of your life, depending on the age, I mean, if you’re in your 80, most of your life is already behind you. And now, you’re evaluating the decisions that you made, the good ones, the bad ones, and everything in between.

So, with all of that, back to today’s topic, we’re going to talk about a simple approach to self-discipline, how to get yourself to do what you need to do when you need to do it, whether you feel like it or not. And this is a topic that we’ve touched on, we’ve covered in the past in various podcasts, but it’s one of those things. It’s something to be covered. Literally, this could be the only topic of the podcast, and it would be extremely invaluable for all of us because it may be the most important quality, self-discipline, to get yourself to do what you need to do when you need to do it.

Because the good news is you can have nearly everything you want in life if you’re willing to put in the effort. You can have the body that you want, your fitness can be where you want it to be if you’re willing to put in the effort. You can make as much money as you want if you’re willing to put in the effort. You can transform your marriage if you’re willing to put in the effort. So, the good news is you can have nearly everything that you want in life if you’re willing put in the effort.

But the bad news is putting an effort requires doing things that you may not feel like doing. And for many areas of our life, it requires doing things that you may not feel like doing literally every day for the rest of your life, which that can feel a little overwhelming, right? That’s like, oh, every day, for the rest of my life, doing things I don’t feel like doing, now that’s the bad news.

But there’s good news about the bad news. And here’s what I mean. The good news about the bad news is that once you establish a rhythm of doing things that you don’t feel like doing, it gets easier and easier and easier. It just keeps getting easier to do what you need to do, whether you feel like it or not. And I can tell you that that’s where I feel like I’m at in my life. I’ve been there for a long time. Yes, there’s a lot of things I don’t feel like doing, but I just do them anyway.

And it’s interesting. Like, it still creates this identity for me of not being a self-disciplined person. This is part of what we’re going to talk about today is your identity around self-discipline. But it’s created this identity where I’m like, I’m not self-disciplined, I don’t feel like doing all these things, but I have to realize, yeah, but you do most of them anyway. As I said, I’d rather not work out five days a week. I mean, yeah, you’re going to get benefit out of it, and obviously, you get benefit out of it.

And I usually feel better afterwards and all of that, but it’s easier to not do. And I forgot who said that. But there’s a very famous quote that the things that are easy not to do, now, what is it? I’m going to butcher the quote as usual, but it’s something like the things that you have to do that are relatively easy not to do are also easy to do or they’re easier not to do. Maybe you get what I’m saying. I totally mess that one up.

But the point being that it’s not hard for me to go work out in the morning, like it’s not hard for you to work out in the morning. It’s not hard for us to eat healthy. Think about that. It’s not hard. Like I said, you put a gun to your head and said, “Hey, I need you to go work out for 20 minutes, go for a 20-minute walk or go lift weights for 20 minutes.” You could easily do that, right? If it was life or death, no problem. Easy. “Hey, I need you to eat the salad.” I’ve had a gun to your head. “Oh, yeah, not hard. Not a hard thing at all.” I need you to run a marathon. That’s hard. That’s hard. I need you to exercise for 20 minutes. Not hard. I need you to eat this bag of rocks. That’s hard, right? I need you to eat this salad. Not hard.

So, the point is, these things that will get us the life that we want, they’re not actually that hard to do, not even really hard to do at all. It’s just that they’re easier not to do. There you go. That’s what I was trying to say a minute ago. The things that we need to do, they’re not hard to do. It’s just that they’re easier not to do. And human nature is to take the path of least resistance.

I know I did a podcast. Probably, I think it’s been a year or so ago, but I really talked about this primal nature that we have to always take the easy route. And you think about human beings, like you go back to our ancestors, we only did what we needed to do to survive. Back before, I mean, literally, think about like, I don’t know about caveman, but go further back before there was technology and everybody was trying to achieve these levels of success, like back when, even the prairie days. So, not the caveman days, but the prairie days where you woke up and you grew food, you hunted food, you sat around a campfire and talked. There was no television. Something pre-technology, pre-television. We were essentially programmed, like our deep, inherent way of being is to do the minimum that we need to do to survive.

And then once you killed the buffalo and you got your meat or you picked the harvest, well, then you didn’t go try to achieve high levels of success. You just enjoyed time with your family, man, and that’s a whole episode. In fact, you know what? I’m going to write a note. That maybe an episode that I do in this series. Hold on. Back to Basics number 489. That’ll be next week. That’s a maybe. I’m not promising this will be the topic.

But family, it’s one of the things that as I’ve got older, I’ve realized is that maybe the most important thing in the world, if not the most important thing, is spending time with your loved ones, and family is a relative term. Maybe your family all passed away or maybe you’re disenfranchised with your family like so– but the people that you love. And then for me, that would be my family. I just realized, the reason I was in tears with my dad is I was like, man, my dad’s getting older. There’s only so much time left with my dad. I mean, he’s only 67. So, I mean, hopefully, there’s 30 years or so, but who knows, right? Who knows?

And I just realized that, if I had it to do over again, if I had to do life over again, my utopia, my highest priority would have been for my family to all live next to each other in the same neighborhood, at least in the same city, even on the same compound. That might be ideal or not, I don’t know. But that would be my highest priority. And now, it brings me to tears. That’s part of that whole 44 years old. Now, I’m looking back at my life and I’m going, man, what are all the decisions I made that cause my family to live so far?

My mom lives in Washington. My dad’s in Southern California. My sister’s in Northern California. And I’m here in Texas. And that breaks my heart. It really does, because I go nothing matters more to me than to be around the people I love, my people. Nothing, nothing, nothing. And yet, the decisions I’ve made in my life have led me away from that because I didn’t realize it was the most important part.

I thought that chasing success was the most important part. I thought, and I’ll tell you what I also thought, and this might be specifically valuable for some of you listening that my mission, my big mission to change millions of people’s lives and elevate human consciousness with the Miracle Morning, I thought that was my highest priority. And now, cancer changed that in some ways, in terms of my immediate family, as in my wife and my two kids. So, cancer was a wakeup call that, oh, no, no, no, no, they’re your priority. Your wife and kids are your priority.

But it didn’t occur to me that, and your mom and your dad and your sister trump this global mission to elevate consciousness. Spending time and nurturing the relationships with your wife, your kids, yes, but also, mom and dad and my sister. Anyway, and so now I’m trying to rectify that. So, this weekend, we’re going away to see my grandma for her 90th birthday. And then now, I’m trying to look at the calendar and go, okay, when can I go visit my mom? When can I go visit my dad? When can I go visit my sister? The thing about that is it’s not ideal, right? It’s challenging. It’s time, money, energy. It’s a time away from my family, my wife and kid. I’m trying to bring them to some, but some I can’t. And we got a ranch to take care of, right? So, there’s a lot of different considerations.

All right. Let me duck back. Where did I– I go off the rail there. In terms of self-discipline, in terms of self-discipline, this is what we’re talking about, a simple approach to self-discipline. So, I mentioned that the good news about the bad news is that once you establish that rhythm of doing the things you don’t feel like doing, it gets easier and easier and easier, right? You can do the things whether you feel like it or not.

And just to be clear, that’s the definition of self-discipline, let me define it. It’s the ability to get yourself to do what you need to do when you need to do it, whether you feel like it or not. And here’s the thing. We may all have been born with the capacity for self-discipline. I mean, we all were. But some of us use it more than others. People who have better control of their attention, their emotions, and their actions are better off almost any way you look at it. They are happier. They are healthier. Their relationships are more satisfying. And they last longer. They make more money. They go further in their careers. They’re better able to manage stress, deal with conflict, overcome adversity. They even live longer, right?

So, thus, the most important quality to develop is self-discipline, no matter what age you’re at. Without it, you are likely to struggle your entire life. And whether you’ve got 80 more years on the planet or 10 more years on the planet, either way, this quality is the most important for you to embody to be able to do the things that will create the results that you want, the conditions that you want in your life.

Now, personally, I began developing self-discipline when I was 19 years old. For the most part, I mean, obviously, we all have varying degrees of discipline throughout our entire life, but I consider myself to be very undisciplined up until 19. I procrastinated on everything. I didn’t achieve much of anything. And when I was 19, and I want to say, by the way, I may have begun developing self-discipline when I was 19, but I continue to work at it to this day. It’s an ongoing development. It’s very much like working out or exercising, right? You don’t build your muscles at 19 and then you’re set for life. You have to continue going to the gym or going for runs. You got to continue developing these qualities that bring us a satisfied, fulfilled life.

And another thing that’s interesting to think about is that most of us avoid discomfort. But if you think about the most meaningful experiences in your life are often the most uncomfortable, the most painful. Your greatest adversities provide you with your greatest character, your greatest ability to develop resilience and self-discipline, all of these qualities. So, we think that we want to avoid discomfort. Like, that’s the lie. And again, I think it’s innate. Like I mentioned earlier, we are innate pre-technology way of being, call it prehistoric or prairie, whatever time frame you want to choose. But it was to do the least amount we needed to do to survive.

So, it was like we worked to get food and shelter and have the temperature be okay, and then we just enjoyed life. And I think that getting back to that in a lot of ways is important. And this isn’t an all or nothing thing where it’s like you have to work all the time to be disciplined. No, a little bit of discipline goes a long way. And what we’re going to talk about today really lends itself to that, that a little bit of discipline does go a long way.

So, if you’re listening right now, what if you’re not very self-disciplined? You may, if you’re listening, you’re going, Hal, okay, this is for me. I am not very self-disciplined. I really struggle with discipline in my diet or with fitness or in my relationships or at work or just with everything. I mean, some of you might listening, I struggle with everything.

So, what if you’re not very self-disciplined? What have you struggled to get yourself to do what you need to do because maybe you never feel like it, right? So, you’re like, I never feel like doing it. So, how do I get myself to do it? How do you change that? And that’s what today’s episode is about. And I want to keep this simple, it’s called a simple approach to self-discipline because we could overcomplicate this.

And I think that for all of us, if I were to give you 10 steps, for example, 10 steps or 10 strategies, you might go, “Wow, that was a lot of great content.” What are the odds that you’re going to remember, let alone implement those 10 steps or strategies? Probably not very good. So, let’s break it down to three simple ones. Now, remember also, I think I said this on last week’s episode, which I’ll probably say this every week because it’s a Back to the Basics episode, I think this is worth repeating, which is we’ve been conditioned as a society to value new. We value that which is new and we often disregard that which is not new, which is old, if you will. Even if it’s proven, even if it’s effective, even if it works, it’s like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ve heard that before.

And those are some of those dangerous root words in the English language, “I already know that.” “I already know that” are four of the most dangerous words because it makes us dismissive. And you go, ah, I know that, I’ve heard that, I’ve read that, known that forever. The words you need to replace, those four words with “I already know that” are “am I living that?” Am I living that? Am I doing those things? Because it’s not what you learn, it’s what you live. It’s not what you know, it’s what you do.

All right. So, here are three simple strategies, simple steps to develop your self-discipline. And this isn’t all or nothing. You don’t need to go from 0 to 10, right? If you consider yourself to be undisciplined, you don’t have to. This episode isn’t supposed to get you to 10. It’ll get you to 10 eventually, but it’s supposed to get you to 1. Or if you’re at a 3, it should get you to 4 and then to 5 and then to 6. And then in a matter of months, you’re operating in a very high level of self-discipline.

So, step number one, actively identify as self-disciplined. This is worth writing down unless your memory is bulletproof, which I’ve never met a human being– actually, that’s not true. Somebody I know, Adel Anwar, he holds the Guinness Book of World Records for memory. We’ve known each other for, like, I don’t know, 20 years. I met him at a Tony Robbins event. But anyway, other than Adel, you should write the step down.

So, number one, actively identify as self-disciplined. What does that mean? Well, we don’t act out of alignment with who we see ourselves to be. So, you won’t act out of alignment with who you see yourself to be. If you believe that you don’t have self-discipline, you will not act with self-discipline. But if you believe, if your identity is such that you see yourself as either someone who is self-disciplined, or at the start, someone who’s committed to becoming self-disciplined, if you’ve heard me talk about the flaws in affirmations, one of the biggest ones is that lying to yourself doesn’t work if you do not believe you are self-disciplined, but you tell yourself, I am self-disciplined. Every time you say that, even if you say it with conviction, if you don’t actually believe it, you are creating an internal conflict that then actually makes it even worse.

But if you say I’m committed to becoming self-disciplined, that’s a very different statement, and it’s one that is rooted in truth. And the more conviction you affirm it with, the more it becomes your reality. So, actively identifying as self-disciplined is the first step. You’ve got to shift your identity. And so, whether you word that as I’m committed to becoming self-discipline or I am becoming self-disciplined or I will accept nothing less than being more self-disciplined, you can word it whatever resonates with you. You could take one of those three examples or create your own.

But I’m telling you, I have breakthroughs a lot, where I have just a breakthrough realization. You probably do, too, where I go, oh, my gosh, I need to do this better, or oh my gosh, this is the number one area of my life I need to focus on. Like, recently, actually, it’s so funny. I say recently, this morning, while I was sick, I went, man, my relationship with my 13-year-old daughter is my number one priority. Everything else in my life is, I have other priorities, but that’s the one that’s going to matter the most to me. That’s the one. She’s 13. I got roughly four more years with her at home.

And here’s the thing. If my marriage was struggling right now, this would be a different conversation with myself. It’d be like that might be the highest priority because if my marriage is struggling, that affects my parenting, that affects my happiness, and at times in my life in the last, I mean, recent years, that’s been the highest priority. Like, my marriage wasn’t where it needed to be. But I’ve really focused on that.

But it starts with always affirming my identity. I’m committed to being the best husband, yhe husband my wife deserves, that’s usually how I word it. I’m committed to being the husband that Ursula deserves, and that’s where it starts. It always starts with an upgrade, if you will, an upgrade to my identity. So, an upgrade to your identity, identifying that you are someone who is capable of being self-disciplined. You might even start there. I am capable of being self-disciplined or I’m capable and committed to being self-disciplined. So, start there.

And when I say actively identify as self-disciplined, it means that you’ve got to affirm it day after day after day after day after day after day. Commit to a 30-day self-discipline challenge. That’s a good frame, a 30-day self-discipline challenge, where every day you– in fact, that’s what I encourage you to do with these three steps. Number one being that you every morning actively identify as self-disciplined.

The second step is choose one specific area of your life to be self-disciplined in. So, choose one specific area of your life to be self-disciplined in. And choose the area that for you is maybe the biggest pain point, maybe it’s where you’re struggling. Maybe it’s just where you know– I mean, it’s your health. If you know that you need to change your diet or you know that you need to quit drinking or quit smoking or at the very least cut back, if you know that, then choose that as your area.

And here’s the thing. I know this is one way we all struggle, which is like we have so many priorities. I was talking to my team this morning and we were talking about the books that we’re reading. And they go, yeah, it’s a huge struggle for me because, I’ll be like, man, my business, I really need to read this Profit First by Mike Michalowicz. I started reading it. I need to finish it, but then I go to pick it up and the book underneath it is Untangled: The Seven Steps from Childhood to Adult, something like that. It’s for girls, like teenage girls. It’s for dad or for parents to read about how to guide their teenage daughters.

And then as soon as I pick up Profit First, I’m like, man, I need to read this. Then there’s that book I’m reading for my daughter underneath it, I go, oh, that’s way more important. It’s way more– so competing priorities is a real challenge. And the solution is you literally just have to pick one. And again, you’re not picking one and then disregard. It’s not like you’re like, all I’m going to do is work on this one area of my life and everything else is going to fall apart, right? I’m going to do this is improve my diet or quit smoking and I’m not going to work, I’m not going to talk to my family. No, of course, you don’t. It’s not this extreme, but it’s simply a matter of going, okay, for the next 30 days or seven days, I mean, the numbers are arbitrary, but I’m going to focus, I’m going to choose one area of my life to be disciplined in. Okay. So, that’s your second step. And choose it right now. Choose it right now. You can even change it after this podcast, but pick an area.

You know something in your life that where you are not being disciplined, you’re not showing up with doing the things that you need to do to create the results that you need to create. When I was in sales, it was very easily, I don’t have a family back then. I mean, I had a mom and a dad, but I didn’t have kids. And my highest priority was typically my career. And I knew that making my daily phone calls was the single most important area that I needed to be disciplined. I was exercising on the daily, on and on and on. I might have mentioned that to you before. I’m sure I have.

In 2011, we were living in an apartment, me, my wife, and my probably two-year-old daughter, I think, a year and a half. And I realized, I was at the gym one day, I was working out. My diet was on point. My marriage was going really well. I had my daughter time and my schedule every day. But money was tight, my finances were tight. And it occurred to me, I looked at the books I was reading. I was reading books that made me feel good. I was reading books, I think, on my relationship, and books on spirituality and this and that. And I just realized, I need to be more disciplined in my finances. We’re struggling financially and I focus. So, I took every book off my shelf that was not related to improving my financial situation, so either growing my business or managing my money or anything related to the topic of my finances.

And so, I pulled those books off the shelf and I pulled out my affirmations and I made the affirmation that said, like my number one priority right now, I need to put all my energy into– keep the plates spinning that are spinning, my marriage and as a father, of course, but my conscious effort and energy really needs to go in getting our finances in a place where we have financial abundance and freedom and security and so on and so forth. And so, I did.

And within a matter of months, I added $7,000 a month in income. And the way I did that is, I was a one-on-one coach at the time. That’s how I made all of my money. And so, I charged probably $625 a month to coach people, two calls a month. Let’s say I had 10 clients, I was making $6,000 a month. Then I read a book called Multiple Streams of Coaching Income because again, I put all my energy. My priority was to develop discipline and knowledge and abilities in the area, one area of my finances. And it’s amazing how, what do they say, where your energy or where your attention goes, your energy flows or energy flows, not even your energy, the universe’s energy, forces that you can’t even recognize getting a little woo-woo and spiritual in you, but where your attention goes, energy flows.

And so, my attention went into increasing my income. That was what I identified as my highest priority. Didn’t mean my family wasn’t more important and all of that. You get the point. But within a matter of, I think, two or three months, it was probably at least three months, but I doubled my income. I increased my income. Here’s what it was. I charge $97 a month, let’s say $100 a month roughly. And within a matter of a few months, I signed on 70 group coaching clients. I never had a group coaching program before that. I launched a group coaching program and I signed on 70 clients at 10 bucks or 100 bucks a month. So, they’re $7,000 in income. And all I did was two group calls a month.

So, I was doing two individual calls a month with 10 people. So, 20 calls a month for $6,000. And I was doing two calls a month for the other $7,000. And then I ended up scaling that program to 220 coaching members at $100 a month, so $22,000 a month in income for those two calls. Anyway, so point being, that’s my sales pitch for you on choosing one specific area of your life to be disciplined in, and it doesn’t mean you neglect the rest.

But here’s the beauty of that. When you do that, when you develop discipline in one area, guess what? It can’t help but spill into other areas of your life, it can’t help but do so. Why? Because it’s a reflection of who you’re becoming, you are becoming more disciplined. If you try to be disciplined in 10 areas, good luck with that, right? Well, your energies disperse between 10 areas. It’s flowing all over the place. You’re like an octopus. You only get 10 arms instead of eight.

But if your energy is in one area, how much more successful is that one area going to be? Developing discipline in one area, how much easier and more effective is that than three, four, five, six, or more, I mean, right? The answer to the question is in the question. I mean, it’s very, very obvious. And so, step number two after number one, actively identify as self-disciplined every single day. Put it in writing that you are committed to becoming disciplined. Step two, choose one specific area of your life to be disciplined in. What is that one area? It could be a goal that you’re working toward, just one area of your life.

And then step three, again, this is a simple approach to self-discipline. Step three is to do something disciplined first thing in the morning, no matter how small. Do something disciplined first thing in the morning. Why? Because it reinforces your new identity to start your day. And it could be going for a 10-minute walk. Again, what is self-discipline? What’s the definition that we gave you or that I gave you? We. Who’s we? It’s only me here. It’s me and my alter ego and my higher consciousness. There’s a few of us here.

Anyway, self-discipline is the ability to get yourself to do what you need to do when you need to do it, whether you feel like it or not. So, step three here is to do something disciplined first thing in the morning, every single day. And when you do something disciplined in the morning, whether you feel like it or not, and no matter how big or small, by the way, that’s one of the beauties of the Miracle Morning is it requires self-discipline and it literally is starting your day every single day with self-discipline. Thus, you are showing up as a self-disciplined person. It’s one of the ancillary benefits of the Miracle Morning.

So, do something disciplined first thing in the morning, whether that is your miracle morning, which I would imagine many of you were doing that already. But I’m talking specific, doing something specific to the one area of your life that you’ve chosen to be disciplined in, right? So, step two is identifying that one area. Step three is doing something disciplined first thing in the morning. And I didn’t say this, but related to that area. Related to that area.

So, if you’re doing this as a 30-day challenge, step one is in writing, you’re writing down a statement. It doesn’t need to be fancy, it can be one sentence. I’m committed to becoming more self-disciplined this month or I’m committed to leaning into my self-discipline this month or I am self-disciplined and I will prove it this month. Like you word it the way that resonates with you and you can always change that wording, right? Affirmations are always fluid.

Step two, once you’ve actively identified as a self-disciplined person, you’re starting to develop and believe and see yourself as self-disciplined, which again, remember, you won’t act out of alignment with who you see yourself to be. You’ve got to start there. If you do something that requires self-discipline, but you don’t actually reinforce that that is who you are, a self-disciplined person, then as soon as that thing is over, the goals hit, whatever, you will fall back into your old pattern, your old identity. You’ve got to reinforce that new identity. Step two, choose one specific area of your life to be disciplined in – health, fitness, a specific goal, whatever it is for you.

And step three, do something disciplined first thing in the morning related to that one specific area, so related to the area. If you are trying to eat healthier, eat something healthy first thing in the morning. For me, first thing I eat in the morning is a green smoothie with some spinach and some– a bunch of organic, everything. Well, this morning, it had an organic orange, had organic ginger, a little bit of organic garlic because I’ve been under the weather, so that’s like my get-better or I call my live-to-100 smoothie, but it’s whatever when I’m sick, that’s what I take. What else? It had Brazil nuts for selenium. It had fenugreek, which is shown to help boost testosterone and libido, organic whole fenugreek. What else did I have in it? Organic pecans. Anyway, organic turmeric, little organic pepper because there’s a binding effect with the turmeric and the pepper. So, anyway, but do something first thing in the morning that is disciplined related to the thing.

And by the way, you could actually combine this with what you’re already doing. So, let’s say you’re doing the Miracle Morning. Well, make sure you’re reading a book on improving that one area. And by the way, let me say this. Read a book on self-discipline. There’s one. That makes a lot of sense. If you’re trying to develop self-discipline, it would make sense that you actually read a book gone beyond this podcast and you read a book on self-discipline.

One of the best of all time is by Brian Tracy. It’s a classic. It’s called No Excuses. And the subtitle is The Power of Self-Discipline for Success in Your Life. And it has a second subtitle, which is 21 Ways to Achieve Lasting Happiness and Success. But that’s a fantastic book that I have read. In fact, I was listening to the audio the other day just preparing for today’s call. And I was reminded of what a great– it’s just a foundational book. There’s also a good book by Daniel Walter called The Power of Discipline. It’s very popular. But anyway, so choose, that could be the book that you choose.

But the point being, you can actually combine if you’re doing the Miracle Morning anyway, right? You can exercise first thing in the morning, read a book on self-discipline. You can do these things during your Miracle Morning so that you’re already doing something. We call it habit stacking where you already got a habit it in place where you’re doing the Miracle Morning.

And if you don’t do the Miracle Morning, by the way, let’s say you fell off. I know that happens for all of us where you’re like, I read the book. I did it for a while. It was awesome. And then I went on vacation. I fell back into my old pattern. The Miracle Morning is a great first thing for you to do in the morning, right? That’s step three. Do something disciplined first thing in the morning related to your specific area.

So, the Miracle Morning can be that thing that you do. And obviously, that’s got a ton of benefits beyond just developing self-discipline. That’s one benefit. But obviously, with it, you’re going to meditate and journal and do affirmations and visualization, exercise, read, you can name all those practices that enable you to evolve, develop yourself into a better version of you, the best version of yourself.

So, all right, let’s wrap this up. So, this is our second edition of the Back to the Basics series, A Simple Approach to Self-Discipline, how to do what you need to do. And just real quick, final recap. Step one, I actively identify as self-disciplined. Put it in writing that you are self-disciplined, that you’re committed to becoming self-disciplined, and read it every day. Step two, choose one specific area of your life to be disciplined in something important to you, one area, and that one area will help you to develop discipline that will spill over into the other areas. And then step three is to do something disciplined first thing in the morning related to that area. That way you create momentum, you reinforce your identity as a self-disciplined person, and you actually make progress in that area of your life.

All right, friends, family, goal achievers, members of the Miracle Morning Community, I love you. You know I love you. I appreciate you. Thanks for listening today. And I will talk to you all next week.