Can you just touch on, you already spoke about the four principles or the main principles of Swiss 8? Can you go through the eight principles for us, for the listeners. Yeah, so the top four, I mean we call in the top four, bottom four, so the top four is fitness, nutrition, mindfulness and sleep. Uh and that we we call those the top four because they are the holistic health, lifestyle principles um that we we asked we try and get people to start with. First build a routine around those four principles and then once you're happy and you're comfortable that all that has become habit and it is a routine. Then we've got minimalism, discipline, time management and personal growth and they basically life hack kind of principles. Yeah. You know what is up guys welcome to today's episode of live train perform podcast. I'm your host, Sean Koba. In today's episode, we are diving into the next principle of the Swiss eight model. Now, Adrian opened the episode with the eight principles of Swiss eight, which is a proactive mental health program developed by combat veterans for veterans transitioning to civilian life as well as general population to help structure and schedule in the important things of your day.

So it allows you to be better at life. Alright, so disciplined for me is one of those things that pretty much ties all of these other principles together and how have released these episodes. So I started off with the interview with Adrian, then I went into sleep, then I went into gut health, then I went into time management Today's discipline, okay, And then I'll go through the next four over the next few weeks, but for me I've released these in this order because this is the order of precedence for me. Okay, now every single person is going to be different and you need to understand what the most important thing for you is at the time. Now of course sleep is important, gut health is important. Time management is important. All right, we're also going to cover off on fitness and minimalism and mindfulness and um that type of stuff as well, but for me, discipline is the framework that everything else is built upon. So if you don't have discipline then you can't build these habits and routines and structures around all of these other principles.

So um I could arguably put discipline as the number one episode, the first thing that needs to be developed before you can start developing principles around um the other components. So let's get started on today's episode on discipline. Now, the last episode was all about time management. Okay, now, time management is of course important, but you also need discipline to be able to allocate that time correctly and effectively and efficiently. So a lot of the previous principles that I spoke about in the time management episodes are going to carry over into this episode. However, I will present it in a different light uh likewise with accountability. Okay, I have done an accountability episode, I've done a goal setting episode, I've done a hierarchy of value episode Okay, the effect of your environment, all of these principles are important because they all play a massive part in your ability to build discipline.

Let me give you an example of this. Okay, if you want to build discipline in a certain area of your life, like health and fitness for example, let's use that simple um example, I want to go to the gym three times a week. All right now, how do I build the discipline around that? Now, first of all, you need to have an underlying value. You need to be clear, you need to have clarity on why you want to go to the gym. Okay, it's not just about, I want to go to the gym, right? You need to know why you want to go to the gym, is it because you've got some health implications that you need to get on top of, and you want to start um implementing, you know, healthier habits and actions into building a lifestyle that's going to allow you to live longer so you can play with your Children? Or is it because you want to compete in a bodybuilding competition? Is it because you um play social sports and you um want to improve your skills and ability so that you can be a better team player. Okay, all of these actions need to be driven by underlying values and if you don't know what your underlying values are, then you're pretty much chasing your tail.

So I recommend going back and listening to the hierarchy of value episode. Now once you've got your hierarchy of value and you understand why you want to do something, then you go right, how am I going to do this? This is when you start setting goals. Um So the example that I gave before uh if I want to be a better team player for social sports, then I know that I need to go to the gym three times a week and I need to work on some strength and conditioning that's going to be um specific to the sport that I'm playing. So then I set some goals. Alright, if I want to be, you know, half a second faster over 40 m then I need to do X, Y. Z. I need to get into the gym three times a week and I need to focus on some speed based work, but if I'm lacking some strength and I'm going to need to focus on some strength. If I'm lacking some stability, I need to focus on stability, right? So this is where um taking ownership and being accountable of what your weaknesses are and what your strengths are, understand what you can do and what you can't do.

Um and then potentially employing someone else to guide you through that journey is extremely important because you could be spinning your wheels and again, going back to the time management episode, if you know how to do something and you can do it effectively and efficiently, then that's awesome. Get after it, okay, But if you don't know what you're trying to or you don't, you know what you want to achieve, but you don't know how to get there, then this is where it's worth employing someone else to take you on that journey, because there's definitely been times in my life where I've um sunk a lot of time, energy and effort into certain things, like building my website, for example, I spent a lot of fucking time building out my website a number of years ago, and, you know, looking back, I'm like, well, I didn't even get that much traffic to my website, it probably wasn't necessary for where I was in my business at the time, and you know, yes, I know how to do that now, and I could do it again, but I could have, you know, invested that time energy and effort into doing something else that would have um progress my career in the direction that I was heading in.

So, uh if I was to develop a website again, I would simply get someone else to do that because yes, I've got a basic fundamental understanding of how to do it, but it might take me a month to get done, whereas I could pay someone else to get it done in a week. So um being accountable, taking ownership, understanding where your strength are, where your weaknesses are, and then putting actions in place to allow you to progress and move forward in accordance with, like I said before, those underlying values. Now, once you've got your underlying values written down on paper and that's, it's clear in your mind, then you need to set a goal. Okay, where do I want to be at, what time when then how do I get there? Okay, your goals are your destination and then your roadmap is what's going to get you there? Okay, and then you break those long term goals, it might be a year long goal. I'm going to break those long term goals down into short term goals. Let's have quarterly goals where we check in every three months, okay, Within those three months I break that down into one month blocks and then I break those one month blocks down into one week blocks.

Then I break those one week blocks down into one day blocks. Okay, so basically what I'm doing here is implementing habits. Okay, what do I need to do every single day consistently for a long period of time, that's going to push me towards get me moving in the right direction to achieving this overall big long goal. Okay, so it's what you do every single day, that adds up those one percenters add up every single day and this is the power of habit, okay, The power of habit is fucking critical, it can either move you in the right direction and serve you, or it can take you steps back and sabotage you. So what you do consistently, um plays a massive part in the direction that you're heading and how capable you are of achieving these goals. The next thing is how do we create habit? We build consistency, we need to do something consistently for a long period of time, so that our brain essentially goes well, we're going to do this, let's fire this default pattern, because that's basically what our brain does.

Okay, when we're exposed to something new, we expend a lot of energy trying to learn how to do it, trying to figure out how to do it. And this is why, you know, a lot of people fall off after a couple of weeks because when they start something they're motivated, okay? When you're motivated it's fucking easy to put one ft in front of the other. But what happens when life kicks you in the balls, right? When things start happening, you have fight with the missus, you got financial problems etcetera, etcetera. Okay, this is when that motivation starts fleeting and motivation is an emotion, it's fleeting, It comes and goes all right. So if you're relying on motivation to get shit done, then that might be fine to give you a kick up the arse and get you moving in the right direction, but it's the power of habit. It's creating consistency and it's having discipline that actually gives you long term success. I'll talk about what discipline is in a moment, but people always say to me, dude, you're in such good shape, how do you stay in good shape all year round? I'm like, well I've been training consistently for 20 years, all right.

It's something that I've been doing for a long period of time. It's become habit and it actually takes me more disciplined to not go to the gym when I'm tired, when I'm run down when I'm fatigued than it does to go to the gym simply because that's become a habit for me and I've created this association with not only how training makes me feel physically, but also mentally I get this cognitive boost typically after I trained. So for the majority of the time I like to train first thing in the morning because I feel pretty fucking sharp for the rest of the day or at least for the next couple of hours afterwards. So what exactly is discipline? I've brought up a number of tabs on my laptop with the definition of discipline and I can't really find anything that I agree with. Okay, yes, there are some good examples of discipline and some definitions, but I don't necessarily agree with how they present it. So let me give you an example. I've got three tabs up right now and they all pretty much say the same thing, and that is discipline is the practice of training people to obey rules or a code of behavior using punishment to correct disobedience.

Okay, now, for me, that's is that a part of discipline? Absolutely. Okay, But that is not necessarily what we should be looking at discipline as okay. If you're disciplining yourself and punishing yourself because you're doing things that you maybe shouldn't be doing, then that's not a good way of looking at discipline. Okay, discipline is doing things that, you know, you should be doing, even when you don't feel like doing them. Okay. That to me is discipline, you're creating discipline around things that stop you from self sabotaging and you're creating discipline around things that are helping you move forward. Okay, So you're creating discipline, not because you fucking hate yourself and you want to punish yourself, you should be creating discipline because you love yourself and you care about yourself. All right, That is the difference. Now, there's many, many different types of discipline. Um, we have external discipline and we have internal discipline. External discipline is driven by external forces, external factors.

Um think about, you know, being in the military or being at school or being part of the union or something like that. You know, your discipline is um created and guided by the governance of these groups. All right. But the internal discipline, for me, this is way more important, This provides you with your own rules and self regulation and consider this. If you're if someone tells you to do something, yeah, you probably do it depending on what the punishment is or depending on what the results are going to be okay, but if you tell yourself to do something and you have a reason why that is so much more powerful. So yes, external discipline is required at certain times, and this might be, you know, you need your boss um breathing down your neck to get a um get a project in on time, okay? But self discipline is so much more powerful, so much more important, and this is where we start building um these small things into our day to day and an example of this is when I used to go traveling, I'd work for eight or nine months every year, and then my ex girlfriend, I would go traveling for three or four months every year, and for me, people would say, dude, how do you stay in shape whilst you're on the road?

And I created discipline around training and I made sure that I got some training in at least every day or every couple of days, and I said some rules and regulations around it, and an example of this was, you know, I wasn't allowed to drink alcohol unless I trained that day. Now, training was not necessarily an hour of a smash session, it might be like, You know, 10 minutes of doing some sprint based work on the beach or um something like that. And you know, I created discipline around this and I set my own rules and regulations and I couldn't drink if I hadn't trained that day and I couldn't go um more than two days in a row without training. So that meant that I had to plan ahead and I wasn't allowed to treat myself to junk food if I hadn't trained that day. So, you know, it was just creating my own rules and regulations around that, that um played a massive part in me being able to maintain some form of physical fitness, which obviously helped my mental health as well. Now I will circle back to internally driven discipline.

Um but I want to discuss in a little bit more detail externally driven discipline. Okay, because this is an important part in being able to um create and regulate your own discipline. All right, So obviously I'm ex army, I spent six years in the military, I deployed three times. I went to Iraq East timor Afghanistan Um and I joined the army when I was 20 now, the military is obviously massive on discipline and creating these rules and regulations and um you know, getting people to abide by their systems and you know, we will talk about standard operating procedures in a moment, but um basically we become part of the system and that requires discipline. So when I went through my recruit training was three months at Capucho which takes you from being a civilian into a soldier. And everything was about discipline. Everything was about time management. Everything was about reps doing things over and over and over and over again until you got to a point where it became habit and I spoke in the last episode on time management about um this discipline that they created right from the start.

So we would have to get up at six o'clock in the morning, we'd number off and we'd have 15 minutes to shave and then be presented in a neatly pressed uniform that didn't have any threads or anything hanging off it. Uh, and have our bed made with 45 degree hospital corners in a 30 centimeter fold. Now, if we didn't have the discipline and the time management to have those things done within 15 minutes, then that cut into our breakfast time, which then cut into our next lesson, which then, you know, had this flow on effect throughout the day. Now discipline in the military is massive and this is um probably one of the biggest things that I talk out of my, my military career was creating this self discipline. The military is very good at enforcing this discipline on you and you know, creating punishment to um fix behaviors essentially. So an example of this is, you know, little things very, very little things that just seem fucking stupid and menial. Um we had to have our clothes folded in a certain way and we would have inspections on our clothes and like our socks need to be folded a certain way, Our shirts need to be folded and presented in a certain way.

All of our clothes needed to be laid out in our lockers in a certain way. And sometimes the recruit instructors would come in and they would have a tape measure and they would measure the distance between the clothes and the objects in there, the toiletries and you know, the shirts to the edge of the shelf that it was sitting on. And you know, they would measure the 30 centimetre fold in the bed sheet once you've made your bed we would come back from P. T. Sessions and sometimes, you know, people had left their lockers unlocked and um literally everything had been taken out of those lockers and fucking thrown around the room. So you know, that created this discipline of making sure that your shit was locked up and squared away and and if you didn't give attention to detail and make sure that everything in your locker was laid out correctly and folded correctly, then again the recruit instructors would take things out and you know, all of your stuff would be strewn across the room. And I mean I look back at what was happening at the time and I'm like why are we doing this?

But over my military career, I realized that those things were in place for a reason. You know, if you can't be disciplined enough to have your shit squared away at the smallest level and have attention to detail to how you do everything, then that's going to impact everything else in your life. You know, another example of this is uh, whilst we're still in the puka through that three months transition from civilian to soldier. When we go out field, if one of our pouches on our webbing that carried all ammunition and water and everything that we're required to do our job as an infantry soldier, um, if one of our pouches was undone, the recruit instructor would um pause you where you were, they would take out everything that was in that pouch and they would throw it as far as they could and you would have to get down on your hands and knees and fucking leopard crawl over to pick that stuff up. And this was to teach you discipline. This was to teach you to maintain security. And the reason I bring this up is because this actually happened in Afghanistan where another base was out on patrol and they came across an id.

They were in location for a long period of time and one of the boys had taken his bag off and um, to give your shoulders a little bit of arrests. Obviously as a soldier carrying all of your um combat equipment and body armor and things like that, it's fucking hot, it's heavy. Um so one of the lads took his bag off and then a couple of hours later the patrol continued moving, they got up and left and he got up and left and he didn't actually put his bag back on. So um he realized a couple of minutes later and ran back and the locals that grabbed the bag and in the bag was some night vision equipment. Which is fucking dangerous because that was one of the um advantages that we had over the taliban when we're fighting them is that we could operate at night time and we could see them and they couldn't see us. Okay. Now one of these N. V. Gs was potentially going to fall into the hands of the Taliban which would take away the advantage that we had of fighting at night time. So we were taught this external discipline from the very start as soon as I joined the military and it became quite clear over my military career that why it was important why we're doing that stuff okay because that external discipline then created internal discipline.

An example of this is whenever we would go out, field would go on these field exercises and the goal would be to prepare for a deployment for example and you know obviously we need to go through some really realistic training so that we can get the most out of and prepare us for basically going to war if we need to you know get into firefights and engage with the enemy. So this meant that we were going through live fire drills where you know we had real bullets and we were going through these training drills and executing these missions. Um these real life scenarios that we could potentially come up against. Now obviously when you've got live fucking round and you've got multiple people within a section, within a platoon, within a combat team, within a battle group. You know you need to coordinate really well and you need to make sure that you have discipline because with live rounds and this has happened where you know people have been killed in training scenarios because of these live rounds and because you know the standard operating procedures and um tactics techniques and procedures weren't adhered to.

Now this is something that is massively important is that you know we lived by um these S. O. P. Standard operating procedures. If this happens then we do that if that happens we do this then we had our T. T. P. S. Our tactics techniques and procedures and again that was uh overarching guiding set of rules and principles that allowed us to you know be structured with what we were doing but also have the flexibility to be able to operate within the the rules of those tps. So when we go out on these training exercises prior to deploying we wouldn't go straight into live fire, okay? We would need to build up into that and we would go through our drills dry meaning that we would have our rifles, we would have all of our equipment but we wouldn't have any rounds within the rifles and we would literally just walk through talk through our skills and drills.

Okay. Once the leaders were happy with where we're at and you know the discipline of everyone within the team and how everyone was operating um as an individual and as part of a team then we would progress to the next phase which would be using blank rounds. So then we'd go through the same thing and every single time we have an after action review and we'll discuss what went wrong, what went right, what we needed to work on, how we could improve our tactics, techniques and procedures. Right? So that would guide our standard operating procedures which meant that any single person could come into our platoon or into our section. And because the standard operating procedures were the same across the board, any soldier could tap into your section or your platoon and have an understanding of what the S. O PS. Are because they were using those same S. O. Ps in another platoon or in another section. Okay? But then it comes down to the section commander to be able to be flexible with those skills and drills and change them as needed.

Now once we went through our blank firing um skills and drills then we would progress, everyone would need to get the tick in the box, everyone would need to be competent and then we would go through um live fire skills and drills and you know, we'd obviously start off very basic. Once everyone was happy with the movement and the competency then we would make the skills and drills and um the scenarios more and more challenging, but we would progress through varying degrees of difficulty, starting from easy to hard and this was you know, to ensure that we had good discipline, we had good standard operating procedures and we had good skills and drills to fall back onto, we were creating these habits and you know, I look back at some of the times in Afghanistan getting into firefights and I'm so fucking grateful that you know, those skills and drills were hammered into me time and time and time again and you know our leaders had the discipline to make us do things again if they weren't quite right, we had to make sure we had attention to detail and we're doing the right things and we're progressing and we were learning and we were adapting and um you know, that created our own discipline because we're like fuck, we don't want to keep doing the same drill over and over and over again, let's square this shit away so that we can progress so that we can move on and I look back at those skills and drills and it literally saved lives when the shit hit the fan, when shots started ringing out, you know, there were bullets cracking and cracking around my head and whizzing by the skills and drills and the training took over.

Okay, so having that discipline throughout that whole process, um set me up to be in a good position whilst I was overseas and literally saved lives. Now, I understand most people listening are never ever going to be in a situation like that. Um but for me this is why discipline is so important because I've seen firsthand what can happen if you're not disciplined, okay, and when you do have good discipline, you do have attention to detail, then it can have a massive impact on your ability to execute and essentially keep yourself alive. And like I said, most people are probably never going to have to um find themselves in that situation, but the same principles apply and that is how you do anything is how you do everything, and this is how I approach my life, If I'm going to do something, I'm making sure that I'm doing it correctly, I'm making sure I'm doing it effectively and I'm making sure I'm doing it efficiently, and this is because I disciplined myself to do that stuff, you know, and you will see people in your life, I'm sure people can look at others in their life, that, you know, take shortcuts in the gym, they take shortcuts in their finances, they take shortcuts in their relationships and guess what?

They're probably going to take shortcuts in other areas of their life as well. So this is one of those times where you can create discipline in the gym and this is what I really like to do is create discipline within the gym with my clients. And, you know, I'm asking them to hit a set number of reps or I'm asking them to work at a specific intensity or I'm asking them to work for a specific time. And I can really tell a lot about someone's personality and they drive their motivation, that the type of person they are and they're disciplined and their attention to detail by how they conduct themselves at the gym. An example of this are you someone who pulls up a couple of seconds short every rep? Are you someone who cheats the reps and doesn't do as many as they should be, because you're trying to get a faster time. Are you someone that whatever takes shortcuts and doesn't do things as well as they should be or as well as they should do as well as they could do.

And this is the thing, we can create discipline within the gym, okay? Because if you stop two seconds short on every rep, for example, or every set, for example, then that two seconds adds up over that training session, that two seconds adds up over the week, that adds up over the month, that adds up over the year, okay? And then people wonder why they're not getting the fucking results that they want. Well, you're taking shortcuts, okay, you need to create the discipline to follow through on something and do something correctly. And I really like the gym for creating discipline because it's a good place to put yourself under adversity, okay. But it's a controlled environment and this is important. We need to condition ourselves, and this is what discipline is, it is conditioning yourself all right to do the right thing, even though you don't feel like it, and it's what allows us to fall back on discipline when motivation does start fleeting, because it is going to happen.

So, um there's many, many ways to create discipline and I will give some tools and techniques, but for me, using the gym is an excellent way of doing this, okay, we're hurting, we're challenging ourselves in a controlled environment, but we're also maintaining discipline and we're ensuring that what we're doing is correct. If the coach says, do X, y z because of this, and they're giving a y, then you need to ensure that you're doing that, because if you're not doing that, then, you know, if you're not following the program, the program doesn't work, and this is something I've seen time and time and time again, particularly with weight lost clients. People have been dieting for long periods of time and they've yo yo dieted, they've lost weight, they've put on weight, they've lost weight, they've put on weight and they're going through this process and then they come to a coach and the coach is like, all right, well, we need to rebuild your metabolism. Um we need to get you lifting weights rather than doing so much cardio, we need to Pablo blah blah.

And they lay out a plan for these people and it's really difficult for these people to discipline themselves to just do what the coach says okay, because they think they know what they need to do. Well, guess what? You don't fucking know what you need to do, because you've been doing the same thing for the last 10 years, and it's gotten to the point where you're at right now. So, listen to the coach, create discipline around following the structured training program and nutrition protocol. And here's the thing, discipline goes both ways. Sometimes discipline is about Creating a habit and doing something. It might be getting out of bed 15 minutes earlier every day, Okay. Or sometimes discipline is um stopping yourself from doing something and that might be um, you know, not using your phone for the 1st 15 minutes every morning. Now, this is where we're going to dive into um creating these habits and building discipline, Every single person is going to be different here, Okay, you need to look at your life and go, right, what's one thing that I can do or not do consistently over the next week to a month, that's going to push me in the right direction or stop myself from sabotaging my efforts.

And here's the thing, choose one thing that you can do, okay, this is where a lot of people go wrong is they try and do everything at once, Okay, this is part of discipline as well, understanding that when motivation is high and you're trying to make changes, okay, you don't go, I'm going to start a new training program, I'm going to get in the gym five days a week, I'm going to restrict um all my carbohydrates and I'm gonna track all my food and I'm going to do this and that and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. All right, when motivations high, that's awesome, that's going to work. But as soon as that motivation dips or something happens in your life, okay, you've got no discipline to fall back on. So this is where that discipline comes into play, choose one thing and work on it. Okay, do that thing consistently, make it a habit and then move on to the next thing. Let's go through a couple of examples here. Um, some actionable takeaways that people can start implementing and again, this is totally dependent on you as an individual and what you want to work on.

So choose one thing in your life that you want to do, or one thing in your life that you want to stop doing. All right? So here's an example of that. If you say that you don't have any time to get any movement in, then let's look at getting out of bed maybe 15 minutes earlier. Okay? And simply going for a walk. Getting some sunshine on the face, getting some fresh air. Okay? That 15 minutes Is I spoke about it in the last episode. It's sharpening your acts, it's getting some movement. It's um creating this habit, it's creating this discipline and it's only 15 minutes earlier. Okay? So if you can do this every day for a month, then guess what? That's going to become a habit. It's going to get much, much easier to be able to do that. Okay, and then you might move on to the next thing or you might go, I'm going to add another 15 minutes and this is the point I get out of bed at 6 30 every morning. Okay. For the most part now, This is because I've created a habit around this and when I was in the military, that was my wake up time was 6:30 AM morning.

Once I got out of the army didn't have to get out of bed at that time, then I just fucking slept until whenever. But then I started creating that habit and that discipline again, which makes it easier for me to be able to uphold that and follow through. And I like to get out of bed at that time because I like to go through my morning routine, which is again, is disciplined. These are habits that I've created over time and it's not like I just woke up one morning, this is my morning routine of implemented one thing at a time over a number of years and I found the system that works for me, you know, there's been times where I would do certain things in my morning routine and then there are other times where I would kind of drop those out and transition into something else that serves me better. So it's all about um putting these processes in place and then refining them as you go through finding what works for you and what doesn't work for you. Now, here's the thing. My morning routine is a product of the discipline that I've created over years, and discipline is not just about, you know, being rigid discipline is about flexibility.

An example of this is I've actually got a number of morning routines alright, and each individual morning routine is going to be dependent on the circumstances. So when I'm at home, I'll get out of bed at 6 30 I'll make myself a coffee and I'll go and sit in my balcony and watch the sunrise and do some reading and meditation and I might do that for 20 to 30 minutes other times. If I've got a little bit more time in the morning, then I might get up and go and swim in my pool and then do some breath work meditation in my sauna. And that's a great way to start the day. But it requires a little bit more time. If I've got earlier clients or my day is going to be a little bit different, I need need to get out of the house earlier. Then I'm looking at what's the most important thing and that might simply be 5 to 10 minutes of meditation whilst I'm having a cup of coffee in the morning and you know, adapting these principles, adapting these habits to um whatever is happening in my life and being disciplined enough to be able to go through with that is super important.

Sets me up and put me on the on the front foot to get after the day. Now here's some things to think about. If you want to get out of bed earlier, then set your alarm 10 minutes earlier, 15 minutes earlier, whatever it is, If you are having trouble sleeping then create some discipline around, turning your phone off in that last hour before bed. Okay now I'm at an hour. I turned my phone off at 9:00 every night and I discipline myself to do this. Um and my phone is on the other side of the room charging. My phone is always on silent. I never have my notifications on because I don't want to be distracted. But this is because I disciplined myself to do this and I'll also go away on um weekends and a couple of weekends ago I went away and turn my phone off like completely off the 36 hours and you know, for the average person that's not going to be suitable, it's going to be too much. So again, build that discipline over time, you might turn your phone off for like an hour on a weekend go, I'm gonna be tech free, right?

Give yourself some digital detox is some technology fast And then build into it. So again, you might turn your phone off and make sure you don't use your phone for the last 15 minutes before you go to bed and for the 1st 15 minutes when you get up in the morning, okay, once you can do that consistently, then you might add that up to 20 minutes or you might bump it up to 30 minutes again. Working with what you think is suitable for you at the time and it's just doing these little things over and over and over and over again. That creates discipline. Okay, doing the right thing. Even when you don't feel like it. Another example of building this discipline in a different area, might be um, you know, drinking more water. If you're not drinking enough water, then that has an impact on everything else in your body. Your body is made up of 70% water, right? So if you're dehydrated, that's going to impact your ability to perform at the gym, that's going to impact your cognitive ability to get through your work and your tasks throughout the day.

That's going to impact your recovery. So a simple thing to do here is go, right, I'm only drinking, I'm drinking less than the leader of water per day. I'm going to make sure I drink a leader. Alright, cool. Once I've done that for a couple of weeks, then I might bump it up to a leader and a half. Alright, once I've got that up to like two leaders, three leaders, whatever it is, depending on your climate, then you work on the next thing. All right now, I'm going to look at I'm not eating enough vegetables, I'm going to add some vegetables in every single day. Okay, one extra serving of vegetables every day. Once you can do that for a couple of weeks, then look for something else. Okay? Or it might be I drink soft drink every single day, so I'm going to cut that out or I'm going to reduce my consumption and here's the thing. Just choose one thing and work on that every single day, And for me again, discipline is not rigidity, its flexibility, discipline equals freedom. If I'm doing the right thing, the majority of the time through these discipline practices that I've created then that allows me to be flexible and do whatever the fuck I want the other 20% of the time.

So an example of this is uh, when I lived in Tasmania in Australia, I would play rugby every weekend and the boys would always give me shit because you know, we play 40 on the saturday and then we go back to the sponsor, which was a pub on a saturday afternoon and I'd order a chicken pommy with chips and you know, a jug of beer and sit there and watch your footing and grab some cold rock on the way home. And um the boys would look at me and be like, dude, how the fuck do you look the way that you do and perform the way that you do when you eat like this, and I'm like, you guys don't see what I'm doing, you know, the other 164 hours of the week, you see me for a couple of hours here and there, you know, at training and um, on the weekend, at the games and at the pub, but I'm like, you guys don't see that I'm doing the right thing for the rest of the week, and that allows me to have the freedom to be able to do whatever I want on the weekends, okay, within reason, and this is the whole point is create discipline in your life, do the right thing the majority of the time and then that gives you the freedom to do whatever you want whenever you feel like it okay and you're doing these things not because you hate yourself, you're doing these things because you love yourself and you fucking care about yourself and this takes time and this takes reps and it takes you know these practices to be done over and over again to build that consistency and and build that association with how things make you feel.

You know an example of this for me is mindfulness and meditation alright. I I dated a yoga teacher for like five years and she was all into that spiritual side of things and um you know she tried she tried to get me to um meditate a number of times and I wasn't into it at the time, I was like no I don't need that shit, that's fucking woo woo right? But um there have been times in my life where I've needed to do that and I will talk about this in one of the upcoming episodes, it's actually the mindfulness episode which will be coming up in the next couple of weeks but I'll talk about my time in Afghanistan and you know the mindset that I was going through and and how I dealt with um these situations where you know I've had teammates shot and um you know being in fire fights and all of this type of stuff and I was actually using meditation and mindfulness to help me get to sleep manage my mind. Um like I said, I won't go into too much detail here, but um I didn't realize that I was using these mindfulness and meditation techniques, Walters in Afghanistan, but then when I got back from Afghanistan, I got out of the army and I started dating this yoga teacher and she was trying to get me to do this stuff.

I was like, no, that's a fucking well I'm not into it, okay. It wasn't until a number of years later, um this was only a couple of years later that I actually realized that I'd already been doing mindfulness and meditation, I just didn't know it okay. And this is where it comes down to reframing and repackaging certain things and and I saw the benefit in how it created change in my mindset and how I thought about things and this is now a daily practice that I implement every single morning. And also when I go to bed is some form of mindfulness or meditation or breath work, call it whatever you want. And this is because I saw the benefit in it. Um and once you start seeing the benefit in something than it's much easier to implement these and make them habit and create discipline around these things and and again, I, you know, struggled to go through the meditation mindfulness stuff initially because I didn't really believe in it. Um but once I reframed that then it made it much easier to start practicing it and once I did create that discipline around practicing it and actually giving it a chance then within a couple of weeks, so I was like, oh man, this is such a good way to start your day, you know, puts me um in a good mental space where I'm focusing on the things that I can control, rather than things that I can't control.

And you know, we live in this world where we are literally influenced by external um factors and we're constantly being distracted and our attention, our focus is pulled in multiple directions from multiple sources. So this comes down to us to create this self discipline to ensure that what we're consuming because we are a product of our environment and our environment is what shapes us, however, we also shape our environment. So, you know, if you're constantly distracted, you're constantly being pulled in multiple directions um from external sources and you're always procrastinating well this is where you need to start building some self discipline, Okay, give yourself some rules and regulations and start implementing these things. One thing at a time, once you tick off um one thing and you can do that consistently for a month and add something else. Once you can do that, you might take something else away.

Okay, so it's just implementing these small practices on a daily basis over long periods of time and then layering on top of that, that's going to bring you the results that you want and provide you the discipline. That's going to allow you to move in the right direction and or stop sabotaging your efforts. Now, I'm going to start bringing this session home by saying that your ability to build discipline is relative to your experiences and your capabilities. So, an example of this is if someone say wants to get out of bed earlier to start the day, because I know for me that, you know, my creative juices are flowing early in the morning. So if I get out of bed earlier, then I'm probably going to get a lot more of my most energy demanding work done in the morning. So this is where I'm going to be most productive. All right, But if I get out of bed an hour earlier than I am at the moment, going from 6 30 to 5 30 that's probably going to be too much for me.

So I'm going to build that I'm going to I'm going to get out of bed at quarter past six. Okay, now this is the same for you in your own personal circumstances, you need to find what works for you, if for example, you want to get out of bed earlier And you know, an hour is too long for you, then you might start with five minutes or 10 minutes or 15 minutes, whatever it is. Okay, so finding that sweet sweet spot is absolutely critical because if you go too hard and you try and create too much discipline and you push too hard too fast, then you're going to fall off that wagon. All right. Um and that's a good point is that discipline is relative to each individual, so you need to find that sweet spot that works best for you. An example of this is something that I'm just about to go through again and that is coming off caffeine. Uh I've come off caffeine numerous times throughout my life and the last time I did it was when I did my yoga course in late february.

And prior to that I've been drinking, you know, 3 to 4 coffees a day and I decided to go vegetarian because that was the menu whilst I was on the yoga course. But I also decided to go caffeine free for the entire two weeks and I just went cold turkey. Now I've done that before, so I knew I could do it and I was disciplined enough to do that even though my mates and the other veterans are on the course with me, we're drinking coffee every day and they were kind of like trying to entice me to given to the sweet sweet cravings of that caffeine and oh man, I felt like doing it a couple of times because my cognitive ability was a little bit down because I wasn't having caffeine, I wasn't eating meat or anything like that. But sometimes even just like smelling that coffee when the boys walked past was, you know, it was it was it was a big test for me because I wanted coffee and I wasn't feeling as sharp as I normally did, but I also wanted to challenge myself, I also wanted to create this discipline knowing that, you know, in a couple of weeks time when I did have that caffeine again, then I wouldn't need four cups of coffee to get the same fucking results, right?

So this is where sometimes restricting yourself from certain things, um gives you much, much more benefit and I do this again, I do this with my phone all the time, you know, we spent a lot of time on our phones. So I disciplined myself to restrict my phone time. Um What I'm recording this on sunday at quarter past 12 and I haven't touched my phone today, you know, I haven't been on my phone and I'm probably not going to touch my phone for the rest of the day, maybe this afternoon, I'll jump on and um schedule my week ahead and touch base with clients and um reply to messages and things like that, but you know, it's just not an important thing for me today and and that's the thing, understanding what your underlying values are, um, then drives your actions and your behaviors and you know, then it's just about building discipline relative to where you are at the moment and what you want to achieve in line with what your goals are. So, um, the biggest recommendation I can give for discipline is again, go back, listen to the hierarchy of value episodes, you have an understanding of what's actually important to you, then sit down and set some goals, break them down into smaller chunks to give you a roadmap of how you're going to achieve those longer term goals.

And then you need to start looking at implementing daily habits, okay? And then creating consistency around that, which then provides discipline and all of these things tie in together and you cannot have one without the other. So, to round out this episode, I want to say that having too much discipline is a problem, but having no discipline is also a problem. Think about this from, um, a different perspective. I'm sure you guys know people that, uh, you know, super religious, okay, people that are brought up in a religious family that when they go out on their own and their, those rules are no longer being enforced, then they rebel and they go all in and they, you know, start having sex with everyone and taking drugs and drinking alcohol and doing all these things that um, they were restricted from doing for such long periods of time. All right now, it's the same on the other end of the spectrum. If you don't have any discipline, then, you know, you're always going to be sabotaging yourself, You're always going to be um acting upon impulses, you're always going to be kind of floating and being pulled in different directions by your external environment because you don't have those underlying values and you don't have that discipline to understand the difference between what's serving you and what sabotaging you.

So, um striking that balance of having enough discipline to achieve the things that you want to achieve without sabotaging yourself and, you know, having enough flexibility and freedom to do the things that you want to do whenever you want to do. That's a good balance to find, and you know, it's a constant working process and it's something that I'm still working on and I will continue to work on for the rest of my life. So finding that balance for you is going to be a little bit of a trial and error process and you need to figure out what's going to work best for you relative to your circumstances. That's it from me today guys. Hopefully you enjoyed this session on discipline the next episode, we are diving into fitness, which is obviously my passion, I fucking live to coach other people and I love what I do. Um if you guys like what I'm doing here and you enjoy the message and you're taking some good actionable, take away advice from this, please make sure you pass this on to friends and family and I always appreciate five star ratings and reviews much.

Love guys piece the Western world is in the middle of a mental health crisis and our veterans have taken action. Swiss its team of combat veterans have built a proactive mental health program that is delivered through a mobile app. The app offers users programs in eight categories of health and lifestyle, all proven to reduce anxiety and depression. This holistic model forms your daily routine, aiding you to build structure, improve discipline and take ownership of your life. Once these habits are formed, the app will teach you new skills, skills that can form identity purpose and encourage physical interaction to rebuild your tribe and reduce isolation.