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Discipline equals freedom

Jocko Willink (former Navy Seal Lieutenant Commander) says, “Discipline equals freedom.” It seems counterintuitive, but if you think about it, it’s really not. Discipline will bring you success, which will give you freedom from the rat race of life. It’s the great separator between you and most other people. If you are able to be disciplined, you are able to do the hard things when you don’t want to. Most people will choose the easy route, but not you.

Because of your discipline, you are able to get up early, to challenge your mind, to get a good workout in, to cook healthy meals, to save more money, to be a better parent, to be a better employee/employer. Because of your discipline, you can set a goal and achieve it. You can accomplish so much more when you are disciplined, which will actually free your future self (as opposed to making decisions in the present day that ultimately enslaves your future self to working a job you don’t like for a paycheck).

Are you disciplined? You can be if you want to be. But you have to remain focused. You have to believe in yourself and you have change what you tell yourself. If you say that you’re not disciplined, you won’t be. Identify yourself as someone who does hard things and you will become that person.

Training in the workplace: You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.

When you’re in charge of training someone, the only thing you can do is give them an opportunity to perform. You can show them what is required to thrive in their specific role – what they need to do, best practices, etc. – but you can’t make them do it. You can spend hours explaining the tactics of a position, but you can’t teach someone to have passion, to be curious, or to have a better work ethic. But if they don’t want to do it, or if they just don’t understand/aren’t picking it up quickly enough, you can’t force them to do what you would do. If it’s not working, eventually you will have to do something about it.

Be careful to not make an emotional decision about this. Be objective, but be kind. Are they just not doing something the way that you would do it, but they’re still getting the job done? Is their performance still acceptable? Are they making big enough strides where, even though they aren’t where you need them to be right now, they’re on their way to becoming what you need from them?

After you remove emotions and give their work an honest evaluation, talk with others who know the situation. Make sure you emphasize that they give you their true opinions about the work being completed by the person in question. It’s not about the individual. It should always be about the work and how it affects those around them. Many people are careful to criticize because they like the person they are evaluating or because they fear the other person will find out. But if they don’t let their true feelings be known, they are doing a disservice to the company and even to the individual. After all, maybe this isn’t what the individual wants. Maybe it’s not fulfilling for them and that is why they are not putting in the extra effort to learn and excel at their craft.

Ultimately, you must determine if you’ve done everything in your power (as the trainer/mentor) to help that person succeed. Do they only need to make a few adjustments or is it time to move on? Did you lead them to water? If so, it’s up to them to decide to drink…

Life is short, life is long

Life is short. Life is long. Both statements are true. Use them to your advantage instead of using them as an excuse. What do I mean?

Life is short when you think of our lifespan versus the span of our universe. We shouldn’t waste our time here focusing on things that don’t matter. Yes, we all need money to survive, but are you suffering in other areas because your sole focus is money? After all, we can’t take it with us when we die.

Are you sacrificing time with family, working on your health (mental, physical, spiritual), or letting relationships disintegrate because you choose not to go out to eat with friends or you’re stuck at the office again? Life is meant to be experienced. Go out and have an adventure. Even if it’s not a two week vacation to an exotic location, you can still take “micro adventures” nearby. Can you just go for a day hike, camp in your backyard, or do a ropes course? Can you go to a museum or go four wheeling somewhere? It doesn’t have to be expensive to be meaningful and create lasting memories. Life is short, so go make the most of it.

But guess what?

Life is long.

What??? Didn’t I just go over why life is short? YOLO, right? Well, yes and no. You still need to be responsible and play the long game. It feels good to eat pizza and ice cream, to sleep in, binge watch the latest show, and go on a spending spree. But if that’s your everyday life, the next thing you know, you’ll wake up and it will be ten years later with you weighing 50 lbs more than you ever have, not having challenged yourself or used your brain in a meaningful way, and be up to your eyeballs in debt.

Hopefully you’ll live for a long time. But to live your best future life, more often than not, you’ll need to delay doing what feels good today. You will have to eat right, go workout, read a book occasionally, spend less money than you make and invest the rest. Life is long. Don’t get caught up in hurting your future self by only thinking about what your present self wants.

Just like everything in life, you have to find balance. Find the balance between living for today and setting yourself up for the future. If you go all in on one or the other, you’re much more likely to regret your decisions.

Being a specialist, not a generalist

You need to specialize, to master one thing before trying to become everything to everyone. If your business/company is mediocre at ten things, but not great at anything, the only time people will choose you is if it is convenient. Otherwise they will go to the specialist.

For example, say your best attribute is that your price is low. It’s low, but not the lowest (maybe it’s the third lowest in town). For those customers who only care about price, they’re not going to go to you. They will go to the lowest price in town. There is minimal benefit to being the third lowest competitor in town. Instead, what you’ve done by trying to out-Walmart Walmart is cut your prices to the point that you have no profit and no margin for error.

Choose to specialize. Once you become a master of one thing and you’re known for it, you can more easily retain customers looking for that and then slowly expand and try to capture another specialized market. But remember, when you expand, choose only one area at a time to grow towards and master that next area. You can never become everything to everyone, so don’t try to be.

Responding to what happens to us

There is a great quote by Charles Swindoll in which he says, “life is 10% what happens to us and 90% how we respond to it.” The numbers are made up, but that’s not the point. The point is that we can’t control the world around us, but we can control our actions/reactions to life events. Trying to control what other people say, do, or think is a waste of energy. Trying to control a situation that is out of your hands or dealing with an event that might or might not happen in the future isn’t going to help. Don’t let the surrounding events dictate your life.

For past events, accept that what has happened has already happened. You can’t change the past, no matter how hard you want to. If it’s something that you did wrong, you can’t take back what you did. But you can apologize and make sure that you don’t do it again. If it was someone who wronged you, you can choose to forgive them or not. I’d choose to forgive though, because why carry around the negative feelings? It probably doesn’t affect the other person the way that you’re letting it affect you. You’re giving them power over you even after they have wronged you.

For events happening right now, you can only act with what information you have at hand. Do what you think is right, what feels right, and try not to live with any regrets. You won’t do things perfectly. And in the future you might chalk it up to being young and dumb, but that’s ok. Grow from your experiences. If you honestly believe that you’re doing what’s best (and trying to be empathetic if your actions will affect others), you’re more likely to be ok with your current decisions later in life.

For future events, develop plans. I will do Plan A if X happens and I will do Plan B if Y happens, etc etc. These should be general plans because nothing will ever happen exactly as you lay it out in your plan. But if you have a general idea of what you’ll do if certain things happen, you’re more likely to respond in a more productive way to the future circumstances because you’ve at least given it a little thought. You never know what the future will bring, but once again, life is only 10% what happens to you and 90% how you respond to it.

Ultimately, we are more responsible for the outcome of our lives than we tend to believe. Sometimes it feels like things are happening “to us” instead of “for us,” but the actions we take/don’t take often will have a far greater impact on our lives than the events surrounding us. Don’t be the victim in your life story. Be the victor. Conquer life’s challenges and keep working to be the solution as the world presents more problems to you.