36 - The 4 Dimensions of Discipline: The Titan’s Blueprint for Growth

Welcome to the Impact Podcast. I'm Eddie Wilson, here to help you visualize what others cannot see, create opportunities where others have failed, and push you to build empires where once there was empty space. Let's embark on this journey together and make a difference in this world. Oftentimes we think that the success of the Titans, the Titan leaders, or the Titans of the past, are tied to their ability to innovate or their ability to create courage where everyone else runs out. But I want to tell you today that the deep work of Titans is often tied to the word discipline. Today on the podcast, we're going to talk about what actually multiplies the effort that you have in life, in business, in your career, in your personal life, whatever it is, there's this word called discipline, and your business will never outgrow the discipline of the leader. So in this episode, we're going to talk a lot about what type of disciplines you need in order to be successful, some things that I implored in my own life and the use of my own life, and some things that I'm constantly working on. I don't think that being disciplined or being successful is ever something that you complete. There's never a true finish line. It should be an evolution. It should be a pursuit. It should be something that's constantly changing. Most people want the results that only discipline can create. Most people want results that only discipline can create, but they wait for their motivation to start. Typically, what happens in your life is you think, well, once I grasp a level of motivation, then I get some motivation, then I'll begin, and then once I get going, then I'll discipline the results. It's almost like this refining process. But the reality of it is, is that's not how it goes. We have to start with discipline, even when motivation doesn't exist. Discipline is doing something under restraint. Sometimes, under restraint means the fact that you don't have motivation, that motivation doesn't exist. As we step in, I'm going to go through three points, and I'll give you a couple of narratives along the way. I've got a Stoic story I want to share with you in the podcast as well. To start off with, I want to say that discipline isn't hustle. Discipline isn't hustle. It's restraint. Discipline isn't doing everything, it's doing the essentials with consistency. There's this constant narrative out there about always grinding. We've heard people like Gary Vee and others that will consistently use this phrase of grinding. We almost elevate the thought. Are we elevate this thought of grinding? When I say that word, most entrepreneurs know exactly what that means. They know that that means that they're working 12, 14, 15 hours a day. That means that there is no start to the workday and there really is no end to the workday. Oftentimes, their sleep, their habits all revolve around whatever it is that is demanding of them in the workday. There's a huge myth here because we believe that just by the sake of putting in more time, that we'll get better results or we'll get more results. That couldn't be further from the truth. There are periods of time where we have to put and go all in, but it's not sustainable. If we don't get into a sustainable work environment, we'll never get into a consistent work environment, we'll never get into a consistent work environment, then we'll actually never get as far as we want to go. I think typically, most entrepreneurs, most people that are just running hard and grinding, they think that basically what life is is chaos and caffeine. It's like, I've got to drink my next energy drink so I can keep my energy up and then if I keep my energy up, then I can distill down the chaos that's coming at me all the time. We've got this chaos and caffeine mentality. I would say that what I really believe is that if you want to become a Titan, if you want to grow past the competition, if you want to surpass your own limitations, it's not caffeine and chaos, it's clarity and constraint. It's clarity and constraint. It's what is it exactly am I trying to accomplish and what in my life is taking me away from accomplishing it. It's more important to consistently think through why doing less is better because oftentimes, if you do less, but all of those things in the less are pointing towards the end result you want, you still get there faster and you get there with more clarity. So I'll tell you one quick test is if I opened up your calendar right now and you hear me talk a lot about time and time management, but if I just opened up your calendar and I looked at today, could I determine based on your calendar what's important in your life? What is important in your life? If I looked at your calendar, I would highly, highly recommend that you put everything on your calendar. If you look at the start of my day, I put those time frames in my day on my calendar that nobody can interrupt. There's a period of time where I meditate and I pray. That's unerrupted time. I have times when I work out and then when I work out, that's on my calendar. There are times where I'm doing something with the kids and with my son and that's on the calendar. And the reason is because I want things to be set in stone that matter, that matter, right? And so if I look to your calendar, could I tell you or could I see what matters most to you? Titans don't live in reaction. We live in rhythm. We live in a consistent pattern of discipline, doing the things that matter most that point towards the end result that we want. That's truly what a Titan is. Let me say this to you and I want you to grasp this. This is an important statement. If you can't say no to the wrong things, you'll never build the right things. If you can't say no to the wrong things, you'll never build the right things. Again, discipline isn't hustle, it's restraint. The second point I want to make is that there are really what I say are four dimensions of personal discipline. There are four areas that you have to determine that you're going to be disciplined in. And so what I want you to do is I want you to rate it. I want you to rate it A being you do well. You're an A student. B, you got some improvement, but you're doing pretty good. You're better than average. C, you're below average. And then we're going to skip D. We're going to go all the way to F. F is like I'm failing. All right? So you got A, I'm doing great. B, I'm solid. I'm better than average, but I've got room for improvement. C, I'm below average and I've got a lot of improvement. And F, I am failing. So these four areas, I want you to rate them in your life. A, B, C, F. So the first area of discipline is what we call mental discipline. Mental discipline. What I say oftentimes is that we should have a trash in and trash out rule. There are lots of things that I will not allow into my life, into my mind, into that eye gate or ear gate, because what happens is, is what you fill your mind with, whether it's through sight, reading, listening, what you fill your mind with will have an, a correlation to the output. And so if we're going to be mentally disciplined, we have to make sure that we control what comes into the mind. We have to guard the input. If we're going to be disciplined with our mind, we have to be guarding our input. We have to also choose long-term thinking over short-term pleasure. If we're going to be mentally disciplined, we have to avoid the things that give us short-term pleasure that we know will give us, that will take away from the result that you ultimately have. And this could be everything from food choices to drink choices to, it could be a lot of different things. It could be who you let in your life, who you let influence you. We have to not just take on these short-term pleasures and avoid the long-term consequence. Let's choose long-term thinking over short-term pleasure. And then the third part of mental discipline is this. And this is where most entrepreneurs really struggle. I know I struggle here. This is something that I'm constantly pursuing. And that's daily silence, daily silence, journaling, strategic thinking time, those time periods where we can sit in silence and think, where we can isolate the mind away from the noise that's all around us. It's making sure that there's time in our schedule where there's a break where, you know, for me, it's, it's prayer, it's meditation. It's things that allow my mind to go away from the things that are crowding it and that are noisy and that are stomping all over my thoughts and allowing myself some space to get some clarity to allow, in my own life, what I would say is the voice of God in my life, where I can begin to tap into the divine, where I can decide, hey, there's something bigger than me going on in this world, and you have to have silence in order to get there. Okay, so that's mental discipline. So how did you do? Mental discipline A, B, C, or F failing, gotta, gotta make big changes. Okay, next dimension of personal discipline is what we call physical discipline. Now, this is more than just working out. This isn't just a workout routine. Physical discipline can be tied to our sleep, our movement, our hydration, right? Like, these are the three components that I think through all the time is how am I doing on my sleep? Am I getting adequate enough sleep? Oftentimes, just adding a little bit more sleep to your schedule does amazing things for your body for the clarity of mind for your memory, for your cognitive function, just a little bit more sleep. And so many times as an entrepreneur, we go back to that grind mentality, we think like, Oh, I just, you know, I just got to suck it up. I got to live on four hours or three hours. And I did that for many years. And I got to tell you that it takes such a massive toll on your body to deprive it of sleep, you're better off to focus and isolate down and get good sleep in order for your brain to function so that you can be a Titan leader. Sleep, movement, hydration, sleep, movement, hydration, these are not optional things. These are things that have to exist in my life. Next, discipline in your body sharpens your leadership. I believe that putting my body under subjection through whether it's just doing things that I don't like, right? I don't enjoy getting up and doing cardio in the morning. I don't enjoy working out, right? Like, I don't enjoy the feeling of it. Now I enjoy the result of it. I enjoy the feeling after it, but in the middle of it, when you have to get up, you have to do it, you have to put your body under subject. I don't enjoy doing that. But what it does is it begins to, it begins to call the mind where when I'm willing to do the hard things, when other hard things come into my life, I don't run from them, I face them head on. Disciplining my body sharpens my leadership. Oftentimes, I'll talk to leaders all the time. And one of the things that most leaders struggle with is the hard conversations with their employees. And I can tell you that when you shy away from hard things, you shy away from all hard things. So, if I have a leader who is struggling to have the hard conversation with their employee, oftentimes, you just chalk that up to, well, they don't like, they don't, they don't like confrontation or they don't like doing that, you know, like that portion of it. But I got to tell you that there's a correlation. There's typically a correlation with people who will not have the hard conversation and people that won't do hard things in their own life, right? If you look at oftentimes the undisciplined body, you'll see undisciplined areas in every other area of their life. That's why it's so important to make sure that we maintain a level of discipline. Then the third thing, and I know this one's going to hurt because it hurts me sometimes too, is if you can't master what you eat, what else is actually mastering you? Mastering what you eat should be the easiest thing that you face, right? Like think about all the things that you have to do throughout the day. You're telling me that not eating that brownie is the hardest thing that you have to face, right? Like you face hardship. Some of you are in sales, some of you are in marketing, some of you are in building, it's like, come on, and you can't master what you eat. The phrase that I constantly think through is, if I master what I eat, then I can master everything else. If you, and I just go back to that statement, I said, if you can't master what you eat, what else is mastering you? This is physical discipline. That one's a tough one. I don't know why it's a tough one, but it's a tough one. All right, number three, how did you on that last one? Number two, on the physical, did you get an A, B, C, or F? Okay. Number three, emotional discipline. Emotional discipline. Leading without emotional leakage. Leading without emotional leakage. Do you stay grounded when you're under pressure? Do you take in everything without an emotional response that just happens? So many people that we deal with on a daily basis, their emotions may not come out of their mouth, but they're all over their face. Do you understand that your body language carries just as much emotion as your voice? When somebody corrects you or gives a difference of opinion or wants to go a different direction, or when you're presented with something that's hard, what is your bodily response? Not just your verbal response, your eyes, your body language, right? A true Titan is going to master their emotions. Emotional discipline. One thing that I pride myself on is being able to take the worst news, the worst situations, and the worst scenarios, and be able to absorb it, be able to process it without an emotional response, and then turning around. I think if you talk to the employees that I've had over the last 15 years, you know, close to, I think I'm up to 8,000 employees now in the last 15 years, I think that what you would get from them is, is that is something that I am working on a consistent basis, an even keel, non-emotional response to whatever is thrown at me. In the rough times, I want to be even. In the good times, I want to be even. You know why? Because we struggle to lead when we can't lead our emotions ourselves. Staying grounded under pressure is so vitally important. Let me ask you this. The people that surround you and the people that you lead will either take on the essence of positivity or negativity. Can I tell you where they get the essence from? It's from you. If you are the source of negativity, others around you will naturally become more negative. And for you, the best thing you can do for your people that you lead, including the people in your home, is to have an even temperament. You can master that. You can say, well, that's not how I grew up, or that's not what I was taught. No, that's you. Again, it goes back to a Titan is in control their emotions. That means that you control them. Circumstances don't control them. Your past doesn't control them. And I know that's tough talk, but the reality of it is, is only you can control your temperament. And you are in control of your temperament, whether you decide to be in control of it or whether you choose to temper it or not, right, to pull it back. The power of a pause before reaction is everything. The power of a pause, that simple piece right there, mastering, pausing for one second, pausing for two seconds before you react. When you get hit with, I was talking to somebody on the phone the other day that had taken advantage of me. This is, you know, and I'm not going to go deep into this because it's still sensitive, had taken advantage of me, had ripped me off, had taken money from me, set unclear expectations, and then never fulfilled on the expectations that were set, and then left me with all the consequences, all the results. And then this person began to tell me that all of that was my fault. I invested in this person. I gave this person massive runway. I gave them opportunity. I gave them everything. And yet, because the circumstance wasn't exactly what they wanted, they blame me for the entire result. The easiest thing would have been is to go at them and believe me, that was there in the very first second. The rage that filled me inside with the ingratitude, the entitlement, the absorption in one's own, let's just say selfishness. Man, it just, it fired me up. And I know you guys have been there before. But in the end, I remember, I thought, you have a chance to just literally fillet this person right now, just go after them. And to the point where it could be legal, I mean, I could take everything. And I paused for a second, and I thought, what do I want the outcome to be? And I thought, what I want the outcome to be is for us to walk away in a mutual manner where it's beneficial to both. And in the end, maybe three, four, five, six months down the road, still be friends. I paused long enough to have that thought. That thought and that pause caused me to then go completely away from the anger, the frustration, the fear of what was going to happen, all of it, allowed me to have enough space to go, you know what? And my response to that person was, you know, I understand why you feel that way. Right? Like, the entire thing changed because I paused, right? And then in that, we found a solution to work together. We found a solution to move forward. And that's so important because I could have burnt down the bridges. I could have, there would have been, there would have been such a fallout with me just going hard at somebody, everything from legal to people tied to it, to other friends that are connected to it. It would have been a mess, right? And the crazy part is, is I'm probably going through about five or six situations just like that. And so, as I'm telling you the story, I'm thinking about all the other ones I'm going through. And that's emotional discipline. And a Titan leader carries that level of emotional discipline and more, it's something that I have to keep under constraint all the time. And then lastly, how'd you do on that one? That one's a tough one, ABCF, okay? Number four, last discipline is what we call time discipline. And this is what I talk about a lot. I know if you've listened to my podcast and all, you know that this is a big, big deal to me. But this is where time, time blocking, putting non-negotiables in your calendar have to be there. I believe that one, one big mental shift I want for you to have is that I want you to understand that margin in your day is not laziness. Margin, and I had to get past that point too, because I felt like downtime or time to think or space to think was just laziness because I'm the type of person that I want to maximize it. I have meetings by the every 15 minutes, a lot of my executives get 15 minutes with me, they don't get an hour, they get 15 minutes, because I believe that most of what we need to accomplish can happen in shorter windows, we just choose to give it longer windows. So I'm very intentional. But then I have to get to a place where if I do have downtime, space, I don't turn around and think that's laziness, I got to hurry up and jam a bunch more things into it. No, margin is not laziness, it's periods for leverage. I'll tell you that the most important periods of my day are not those 15 to 30 minute meetings I'm having. They're that 15 minutes where I have just enough space to sit down and think about what I'm going to do, times where I can sit down and write an outline for a podcast. Those margins are not laziness, they're leverage and they're leverage points. And then lastly, the one point I want you to may or to read understand is that boundaries are important because boundaries are where you create breakthroughs. When you let every part of your life just kind of mesh together, there's never any clarity around how things work and how things can coincide. And so when you give extreme boundaries, look, we're not going to go past this point, we're not going to talk about this thing. You don't let things bleed into it, boundaries with your work-life balance, that type of stuff. It's like these things are important because these boundaries are what ultimately create breakthroughs. You want an area of my life and so I'm not an A in all these areas. This area, time and discipline, the reason I talk about it the most is because I focus on it the most and the reason I focus on it the most is because it's the one thing I struggle with the most. And you say, well, you seem super disciplined, you seem like you got meetings down. Well, yeah, there's another part of timing and the timing of spending time with my children uninterrupted is an area that I have to work on. And so when I say that boundaries create breakthroughs, let me explain this. I took my youngest son away for two or three days during a break period this year, around July 4th, just the two of us went away. And what I noticed was day one, I was consumed with trying to keep up with everything going on back at work. Well, he is now in the middle of like dad on his phone, dad in conversations, then we'd have a 10 minute talk and then we're driving somewhere. I think we were driving four or five hours away and then I'd be talking on the phone and then I'd be talking to him and then I'd be texting and I'd be sending an email and then we'd be listening to a song and then I literally just put him in the middle of my world. Now, that's not a bad thing. It's not a bad thing to allow your children to be in the middle of your world and feel accepted in your world. However, I'll tell you that the time that we had that was most impactful, right, those breakthrough moments was on day two when he and I decided that we were going to go out, rent some bikes, go ride, you know, 10 miles or however long it was on a bike and go grab some food and I left my phone at the resort. I left my computer at the resort. I brought nothing from work and we literally just went, well, that was the most impactful part of the trip was not the time that they, that everything coincided. It was the time where there was extreme boundaries where I said, this time Maddox is for you. And let's talk, let's talk about, you know, he was getting ready to start junior high this year and I was like, let's talk about junior high. Let's talk about what it's going to be like. Let's talk about how to deal with older kids, right? Those are those breakthrough moments. Those are the moments that matter most when you create boundaries. Okay, so how'd you do on that one? A, B, C, F. All right, so those are the four, you know, you've got just to reiterate, you've got a mental discipline, physical discipline, emotional discipline and time discipline. The Titan who controls these areas has massive growth in their life. You don't get stronger by being available to everything, get stronger by being accountable to something. You don't get stronger by being available to everything, get stronger by being accountable to something. This is what these disciplines are. It's accountability to something. I told you, I tell you a quick story and I want to tell you a story of one of the stoic generals in, in Roman history. His name is Lucius and he's essentially defending a city that's under fire. You've got, you've got cannonballs coming in. You've got all kinds of different things. This is back in the day when cannonballs are literally just cannons were just being created by the Persians and others and he's under fire. The city is on fire. He's half of his robe is torn. He has marks on his face and he is, it's hopeless, but he is the general. He is the, the last bastion of authority in this city and the troops are looking at him. Half of them are run away. He's battered. He's torn. The city's on fire and Lucius begins to gather his own courage and Lucius stands up, commands this amazing group of people and defends the city and defends the city and ends up holding off, holding off the, the, I think it was the Germanic tribes that were coming in and ends up holding them off and saves the city with about half of the troops that he started with and Lucius's Herald is one of the greatest generals and he gets all these accolades and when Lucius was asked and this to me is, is amazing. This is the translation, but when Lucius was asked, I'm going to actually just pull that quote out is that when he was asked what he, or why he decided to stand up, he said this, he said, a man cannot command fire or fate. A man cannot command fire or fate only himself. If I yield to fear, he said, as I was sitting there thinking, if I yield to fear, fear becomes my master, fear becomes my master. He said, however, if I hold discipline, courage becomes yours. What he was saying is, is that I can't control these things around me. I can't control my fate. If I die, I die. Right? That's the momento mori concept. Right? He said, if, if, if the city catch them, I can't control that. He said, in this moment, the only thing I control is myself. I can't control the men around me. I can't control the situation. I can only control myself. He said, but if I yield to fear, fear becomes my master. If you, whatever you yield to becomes your master. Right? So you yield to that, you know, go back to it. You yield to the donut, the donuts, your master, you yield to someone else coming in and infringing on your time. Now they're your master. Right? He said, fear will become my master. However, listen to this, this is important. If I hold discipline, right? If he stands his ground, if he stays his course, if he holds the authority and the position that he's been given, because now he's controlling himself, he said, what happens is instead of fear becoming the master of those that I'm leading, he said, courage will become their master. Courage will be their guiding light. Courage will be their next step. And that's what happens. He says, I can't control this around me. The only thing that Lucius can control is Lucius. And if Lucius stays the course, if Lucius decides I'm going to control myself, standing here in discipline, I'll essentially instill courage in those that follow. In the end, the citadel fell. However, he was remembered and as men remembered him for all that he did. It was an amazing story of somebody who led under fire. Last thing I want you to understand is that discipline actually is a great multiplier. I think oftentimes we feel discipline is a great restrictor. The more discipline I put myself under, the more I feel restricted. This is a mental shift you have to make. You have to get past the point where you feel like the more good habits you have, that the less good life you have, right? Like we have this feeling of like, well, if I can't eat good food, if I can't, if I can't just have free time to myself, then I'm living under restricted life. Let me change your mindset for one second. Discipline actually gives you back time. I believe that in my day, I get done more than most because my timing is disciplined. I also believe that I get to do the things in life I want to do because I live a disciplined life. Oftentimes, you just let everything else come in. You don't even get to do the things you want to do. So in your thinking, you think, well, I want to live in freedom. And in living in freedom, which is unrestraint, then everything comes into your life and you're fighting fires in a very reactive mode. Number two, discipline reduces decision fatigue. You've ever gotten to the end of your day and you're like, oh, like, you know, my 19 year old son will say, where do you want to go for dinner? And I'll be like, I don't even care. I've made a million big decisions today. The last thing I want to do is make a decision on where we're eating. I don't even care, right? Like it's decision fatigue, right? Well, what happens is, is the more disciplined you are in where decisions are happening because of the principles you've set, you don't have to make constant decisions. You don't have to sit there and weigh everything. The decisions are already made. There should be principles in your life through discipline that when these things pop up, they're automatic. You don't have to think about them, right? Next, I'll give you an easy one. For lunch, oftentimes, I'm very disciplined in what I eat. And for the most part, for the longest time, I just ate chicken and a vegetable. It didn't matter if it was broccoli or if it didn't matter if it was green beans, I didn't care. And it was, it's, it's the simple things and just literally saying, this is what I'll eat for lunch every day, right? Like, and you think, well, that's boring. Well, anytime I want to change it, because it's boring, I can, but let's just say I change it one day and I decide, I'm going to go crazy, maybe go get a burger or whatever it is. It's like, but the other six days of the week, it's already saying care of it. I don't have to think about it. And when my EA comes in and says, what do you want for lunch? I don't have to say, well, I think what I'm going to do is, you know, I'll do a salad today or whatever. It's like, it's just taken care of. And it's little things like that. Then when you just set it, you just let it go, right? Like just move on. Decision discipline reduces decision fatigue. Discipline allows leaders to become scalable humans. Most of your problems is that what you do is not scalable or replicated. They can't be replicated, right? In order to scale who you are and replicate who you are, you have to be disciplined. It can't be a free for all of creativity. You have to be able to be replicated, right? To have somebody come in that looks at you as a sustainable, scalable human. And then you'll get more out of your life and you'll multiply your life. And then lastly, I want to say this is that rituals are always greater than motivation. Rituals always have a greater output than motivation. Here's a couple of actionable practices I want you to think about. How did you do on the scale? How did you do on all these disciplines? Is this episode rough for you? Or does it just reinforce what you already believe and what you're already doing? Here's a couple of actionable practices I want to leave you with. Number one, I believe that everybody should have a morning routine. Some people say you have to have an evening routine. I would say at least start with the morning routine. What do you do in the morning? How do you prepare for the day? How do you get ready? Morning routine is really important. And I'm not one that's crazy. I'm not getting up at 4am. I'm not doing stupid stuff, right? Like I resist the cold plunge concepts, right? Like I'm not going to get in some cold plunge every single morning, right? Like I'm not insane and crazy. Like if that's you, go for it. If you can withstand a cold plunge every morning, then by all means do it. If you need to put your body under that subject, do it. That's not me. What I need is in the morning, typically I have high amounts of cortisol through my day, which is stress. So the last thing I need to do is create more stress the moment I get out of bed. So what I don't want to do is immediately spike cortisol by adding stress the moment my feet touch the floor. So my mornings are a little bit more subdued, right? So I spend time in meditation, in prayer. Even my workouts in the morning are less strenuous than the workouts I choose to do in the evenings or night times, because in the end, oftentimes just going and running five miles doesn't reduce cortisol. Oftentimes, if you stress your body out too much, it'll add cortisol. So I'm trying to allow my body to naturally ramp up into the stress that it's going to field throughout the day, throughout the work and the things that I've gone to my life. And then I try to pull that back down by the end of the day. Define a start and stop time for your work day. Number one, create morning habit. Create a morning routine. Number two, define a start and stop time for your day. Just choose it. What is the start? When is the stop? And I don't care if it's like, hey, 8am to 8pm, whatever it is, just choose it and live by it. Try to do that for the next week. Plan your week before the week happens. On Sunday, I spend a lot of time looking through my week, reorganizing it, pulling things off that don't matter, things that got into my schedule that I shouldn't be doing. Every Sunday, I go through it and then every morning, I audit it one more time. Next, number four, audit one habit. One habit that you have. Just audit it. Just look at it. Look at the things that you wish you could change and audit one. Don't try to change everything. Try to change one thing at a time. And then last thing, this is a shout out to David Goggins. He says, find an accountability mirror. Accountability mirror. Go stand in the mirror and look at yourself and decide what you want to change and start to go after it. All right, guys. Last thing here in summary, Titans aren't superhuman. They're literally just strategic and consistent. Discipline isn't about control. It's about liberation. It's about multiplication. I would love to see you take action this week, changing one area of your life, adding a little bit more discipline on this journey of becoming a Titan leader. Thanks so much for being a part of the podcast and for listening today. I'd love to connect with you further and you can connect with me on social media at Eddie Wilson official on any of the social media channels.