Discipline equals Freedom episode 1 Jocko will link here with Echo Charles.
Why?
Why am I feeling compelled to talk about this? Well, as I go through life I have often said and I've been saying for a long time that discipline is what you need in your life and what I often times think people miss.
Is the same thing they miss about leadership, which is that leadership is a skill and a lot of people think leadership is natural, right you look at a person and you see them in a leadership position and they're confident and they got Charisma and they're making decisions and it's very easy to think that all of that.
It's just natural gift. Now. Listen, some of it was natural gift. Right some you're going to have some level of natural gift. You're really charismatic. You're very articulate and that's a skill that you were born with some of it. But then over time you become more articulate. Can you can you become more? Charismatic? Do you think you can become more charismatic? Yes. Yes, you can. Absolutely. I've watched people become more charismatic as time goes by generally speaking often times has
Do with their confidence level what breeds confidence? Well, it's when they practice when they rehearse when they acquire skills when they become more capable the more capable you are the more confident you are you ever seen a kid going into a wrestling match or Jiu-Jitsu match and they're really good.
Their confidence why are they confident? They're confident because they've been training their ass off for a long period of time any sport you watch anybody going in any sport if they trained really hard Tom Brady playing football, right? You'd see him going on the field. He didn't look nervous. Why because that guy was just training all to Michael Jordan. Why does Michael Jordan want the ball in the clutch moment? Cuz he practiced Larry Bird. Why why does he want the ball when there's two seconds left on the clock and they they're taking the ball in.
Why do you want the ball because he's practiced and he's confident and that is seems like Charisma and it probably is charisma. So so leadership is not something. Oh, you're just born with and like I said, there are aspects of it that you have some level of a gift but then you get better at it and the more you stand up and talk to people the more you put out word the more you get put into situations where you have to make decisions to better you get at those things as long as your humble.
Enough to correct yourself and admit all that wasn't a good decision as long as you can do that. But so we understand and I've been saying this a national front for a while leadership is a skill. I wrote it in leadership strategy and tactics leadership is a skill. You can learn it. Well, it's the same thing with discipline. It's the same thing with discipline. You can learn the skill of of discipline and can you be born with some of it? Yeah, you can get some people that are
Born and look is it nature or nurture? I'm not 100% sure but there's some combination of that that you can you can grow up and be a more disciplined person than someone else right? If you look at the Big 5 on the psychology chart and you're a very conscientious person that person generally speaking is going to be more disciplined human.
But regardless of where you are on that chart you can become more disciplined there. No doubt about it and and for me.
You know Echo Charles on one of our earliest podcast. You said something along the lines of there's nothing that will affect and help your life more in more different aspects of your life then exercise, right? So when we're working out or when we're working out I was going to say when we wake up and work out, but I know not everyone in that category, but when we work out
Everything gets better. Everything gets better every aspect of your life gets better your relationships get better your business gets better your mental health gets better. Your attitude gets everything gets better just from exercise just from exercise well,
I actually would say that we could take that one step to the left one precursor the precursor to exercise that would be an even more impactful thing in every aspect your life would be disciplined. I think it's the most important characteristic the most important aspect of your life. As a human being is to be disciplined. And again, this is why I wrote the book discipline equals freedom field manual.
Now what made me start thinking about this? When did I learn about it?
What made me pay attention to this? Well, if I'm going to go I'm going to go old school.
old black fat black Flag album Henry Rollins to live album
And in the song My War which is like basically I'm against you know, it's my War. It's against I'm against everybody but at one point is a live album.
And I'm a little kid listening this I'm probably 13 13 year old kid and I hear Rollins and at one point during the song.
He's saying the discipline. I am the discipline. I don't even know what this word means at the time of 13 years old, right? So, you know, you kind of start to figure it out. I don't know if I looked it up in a dictionary. I don't know if I had that kind of had that kind of kind of where with all to go to the library and pull out a dictionary but you know, you had some indication so at a young age, I wasn't mean why is this guy talking about the discipline?
I am the discipline was that mean but as a young kid again when you're looking at when I was looking to Henry Rollins when I was 13 years old. He's a 23 year old guys seems like a tough guy right seems strong. Okay, those were things that I looked and said those things are good. Good to be strong seems like a good thing to be strong when at when all the punk rockers back in the day were, you know doing drugs or whatever and he was working out you see him.
Doing push-ups. So he's trying to be strong all these other people doing other that seems like the good thing that must be the discipline. That's it. So that's what I need. Right? That's probably that is no doubt. My probably the first little colonel in my brain of discipline. And so then I started saying, okay, what does that mean? So I need to work out I need do push-ups I need to do pull-ups. That's what I need to do. And I had this goal of course of going into the military going into the Seal team.
has become in some kind of a Commando so discipline seem like the thing I needed that the thing I needed so I did worked out got ready left go to the SEAL Teams go through SEAL training in and
the thing about SEAL training
does it teach you discipline?
Kind of the thing about SEAL training and the thing about all military training all basic military training which which basic SEAL training is basic underwater demolition SEAL training that's buds basic underwater demolition
seal its
basic. So what you're getting is imposed discipline is imposed this one. It's like you are going to go do push-ups you are now going to carry this log you are now going to do this you now going to do something. You're not going to sit in the water until we tell you get out of the water. That's what
So it's imposed discipline.
It's imposes. It's not it's not you're not they're not sitting you down and and explaining to you.
The value of discipline. You're not hearing that I didn't hear it. I don't think I heard the word discipline one time when I was going through basic SEAL training. I don't think I heard that word one time. I probably had a little colonel it up in my head.
What you do learn you what you start to see and what you have to have is you have to have some level of self disciplined. You have to have some level of of self-discipline because if you're going through SEAL training and you didn't have the discipline to run.
To get prepared. You're not going to make it if you didn't have the discipline to do pull-ups. You're not going to be able to climb those ropes and you're not going to make it. So there's a bunch of reasons why it ends up surfacing.
And it ends up becoming if you're if you if you're aware of it, it ends up becoming something that you see as very valuable because you see people that are undisciplined. They only do what they're forced to do. That's not gonna be that's that's not the best route.
If you're only doing what you're forced to do, that's not that's not what we're looking for. That's not what the SEAL Teams looking for. Look they do it and there's if you don't do it you're forced to you. Don't make it obviously you could you just called quitting we force you to put his boat on your head and run 10 miles. You don't want to do that anymore. Cool you quit.
But what we really want is someone that's going to discover
self-discipline.
And what that means is that means that you are.
You are the general and you are also the soldier. You're the one that's making you do the task. Right? So if I'm the general and Echoes the soldier and like this what you have to do and you do it cool that's imposed discipline.
That's actually not that hard.
But for me to be the general and me to be the soldier that's harder that's are. In fact, this is why people have personal trainers, right? They know what they have to do, but they need someone to they actually need someone to tell them what to do. Like do one more rep. They know what the look I could give you the workout program here. It is go do it, but they need someone actually there to impose discipline on them. Otherwise, I'm not going to do it.
Strange,
right it's real it's real it's real. So we have to realize that we are the ones that are imposing discipline and we are the ones that are executing where the general and with a soldier so think about that get yourself in the mindset that yes, I'm the general and yes, I'm the soldier and I've got to be good at both. I've got to be good at setting out what it is I need to do and then I need to be good at doing what I need to do. I'm not allowed to refuse.
Orders, by the way, I'm not allowed to have a mutiny.
There's no Mutiny allowed when the general says do it, you've got to do it and we missed that little piece sometimes sometimes we end up with a military unit in our brain that's not functioning because the generals put now word and the soldiers not listening the soldiers the soldier lacks disciplined the soldiers making excuses the soldiers rationalizing and the general doesn't know what to do.
It's a what do you end up with failure? Hmm, you end up with failure across the board and multiple areas. So so if you're lucky going through basic SEAL training, you can kind of get it you kind of learn some self discipline
and
that's what we need in our lives.
That's what we need.
That's what having that General in position having that commanding officer in position to make decisions for you the soldier that's what we
need.
And this is why I wrote about this in the discipline equals freedom field manual.
I get that you don't want to do it. I get that you don't want to do it. I get that the bed is warm and the pillow is soft. I understand that I get that the water is cold.
I get that you're tired.
I get all those things.
But if you want to achieve your goals if you want to move forward if you want to actually become who it is, you know, you can become.
There's no easy way of getting there. There's no shortcut. There's no hack.
There is only discipline.
That's it.
Go into the book right now discipline equals freedom field manual. There must be discipline.
Which think about that for 10 seconds of your life, there must be discipline if there's not disciplined the soldiers are doing whatever they want.
And guess what the soldiers want to do. They want to sleep. They want to get drunk. They want to eat donuts. That's what the soldiers want to do.
That's what they want to do. They're looking for immediate gratification.
So not allowed there must be discipline discipline the root of all good qualities the driver of daily
execution.
Daily
execution
daily execution doesn't come from motivation. We look if you get motivated today great if you're motivated tomorrow morning and you watch the cool video you got motivated good. I'm happy. But how many what's the what's the half-life of a video?
Having an impact on you. What's a half-life how many times can you watch a video before you say yourself? All right, I get it and it wore off. Right? What's the half-life so the daily driver isn't motivation. It's not a video The Daily the daily driver has no thoughts almost whatsoever.
It only has disciplined it only has this but do you ever see the movie Soldier? Yes and Robert Russell Kurt Russell.
Look in my own Twisted way, that's sort of the life. I wanted right sir in my own Twisted way. That's kind of the life. I wanted but at one point in that movie, you know in the movie this the guy he just a soldier. He he works out he trains when there's a war they sent in the war when there's no war he sits on his bed and waits for war and trains. Yeah. That's the fantasy that many of us have right so
1.0. He ends up on this other planet and there he ends up with a family living with a normal family. And the mom of this normal family. She's asking him don't you know, don't you do you have any what do you feel?
Do you feel anything and his answer?
is
fear
and disciplined and he says it like that fear.
And discipline which is really it's really a heavy thing because the only thing he feels is fear like I'm afraid I'm gonna die. I'm afraid I'm going to fail. I'm afraid I'm not going to do the right thing. I'm afraid. I'm going to make a mistake in all that all that is overcome by one thing discipline.
So when we talk about the daily driver of execution, it's got to be disciplined. This is the core principle going back to the book The Core principle that overcomes laziness and lethargy and excuses discipline defeats the infinite excuses that say not today not now I need a rest. I will do it tomorrow and you can just keep going on the excuse List have we ever sat down? We should get on chat GPT and just have it come up with
Sis, give me seven thousand excuses why I shouldn't work out today. It'll do it to 7000. It'll give you seven thousand excuses on why you shouldn't work out today. And you know, what probably 6,000 of them. You can kind of Nod your head and be like, well, that's not a bad one.
So excuses are dime a dozen. They're everywhere. We have to have discipline to overcome them. So then going back to book. What's the hack? How do you become stronger? Smarter faster healthier? How do you become better? How do you achieve true freedom?
There's only one way.
the way of discipline
So that's what we're doing that.
Is the discipline
with
that?
If you want to do some more discipline activities go to the deaf reset.com, if you need fuel go to Jocko fuel.com, if you need gear go to origin usa.com or Jocko store.com, and if you need leadership go to a salon from.com and until next time this is Echo and Jocko out.
