Ep.36 - You’re Not Lazy. You’re Just Doing Discipline Wrong

Episode Transcript

My definition of success was sticking to a routine

I want you to have a look at your relationship to discipline. Each of us is told from a young age that we need discipline to be successful, no matter what we're doing. We have to work hard, we have to have routines, we have to be consistent, and that is what creates success.

At least for me, when I was younger, my definition of success was sticking to a routine — waking up at a certain time, doing all the things I was seeing online that was meant to help, like ice baths, certain workouts, all of these things. The thought in my head was: if I'm disciplined enough, I'll be successful.

I want you to think about that for yourself. Either you have a routine you want to stick to and can't stick to it very well, and you keep trying and keep judging yourself because you're not sticking to it. Or you have an amazing routine and you're sticking to it, and maybe you're not making the progress you want to make even then. Because of that, you're constantly looking at new things to try — a new workout, new things to add, saunas, acupuncture mats, I don't know.

I want to have a look at discipline because we really misunderstand it, and it can lead to what happened to me: doing all of these things and still feeling like half of my day was my routine. It got to a point where I put more energy into my routine and prepping for my day than I put into the day itself, because I was so convinced this is what I have to do, this is the way. It didn't really get me anywhere apart from bragging rights.

You may be in a similar situation, doing all the things that as someone on a self-development journey you are expected to do, you've been told to do — and maybe we don't really look at it because it's just obvious, right? Wake up early is good, working out is good, cold showers are good, and because of that we just do them without really understanding where it's coming from.

As I'm sure you've heard me say in previous episodes, the biggest thing with self-awareness is knowing where you're coming from, knowing why you're doing this — that is the awareness in self-awareness. So yes, you may have an amazing routine on the outside, but if it isn't giving you what you're looking for, something's mismatched there, something's misaligned there.

How do you create a healthy relationship with discipline?

That's what I want to go into in this episode: how can you create a healthy relationship with discipline? Not one that is just run by this robotic "I have to do all of these things, I have to plan out every 15 minutes of my day" out of a fear that if I don't, I'm weak, or if I don't, I'm not successful. Which I think is a lot of what discipline is shown as — a measure of worth, almost. The more things you have stacked in your routine, the higher worth you have, the more manly you are, the more successful you are. And the opposite: if you can't stick to a routine, if you're not doing these twenty things every single day, then you're failing, or you're lazy, or what's wrong with you. And that's not true.

So how do you create a healthy relationship with discipline? I was the same way — I'd have my online workspace and my habit tracker with this list of ten things I'd want to do every single day: sauna, journaling, reading, working out, cold showers, and the list went on and on.

It gives this illusion

It's deceiving, because I'd feel so happy when I did everything — 80%, 90% — and I'm sure you feel the same way, ticking that item off your checklist or habit tracker, it feels really good. It gives this illusion that maybe the more I do with my discipline or my routine, the better I am.

But then you get to a point, like where I got to, where you're six months or a year or two years into a routine, barely skipping a day, and in a lot of ways your life is the exact same. Your relationships haven't really changed, your income hasn't really changed, the way you see yourself hasn't really changed. So yeah, it felt great to tick off that cold shower in the morning, but the thought is still going through your head: why am I going in circles, what's missing, why aren't I there yet? No matter how many times you tweak your routine, it doesn't really feel any different.

If that sounds like you, this is going to be really eye-opening. So before I explain why, think about that for yourself. Do you have a routine that's actually making a difference in your life, that is changing the way you see yourself, changing how your relationships are, helping you show up better in the world? Or do you have a routine where you're judging yourself because you can't hit every single checklist item, or you're constantly stressed because you have to make time for this routine and if you don't, you're a failure — or because you feel really good when you check everything off, but actually you're even more tired than when you started?

Where am I coming from?

I'm going to get into all of that, because it really comes down to destigmatizing discipline. If you're someone who is very disciplined, who has that routine and is doing all of those things, and I turned around and said stop doing everything you're doing, some part of you would feel, mmm, I don't want to do that. Some part of you would be scared: I'll be lazy if I don't do these things, I'd be a failure if I don't do these things. That's the real thing you want to look at, and that's how you understand — with my routine, as with everything else in my life — where am I coming from?

A lot of the time, with our routines, we're coming from a place of I need to fix myself, I need to make something of myself, I need to prove myself. The best way to know that is to ask yourself: if I stopped doing everything — all my routine, my cold showers, my saunas, my reading — would I still like myself? Would I still feel okay as I am? That's how you know where you're coming from.

At least for me, I had this image in my head about what success looked like, what worth looked like, and it was from all of these books, or YouTube videos, or gurus online who are waking up at 5am, having a cold bath or ice bath, doing all of these things, and then saying — maybe not in those exact words — this is what you need to do. Creating that illusion of, this is what I did to help me be successful. So anyone looking to be successful, in whatever definition, you'd be crazy not to do those things, because people are saying, this is what I did to become successful.

That's what leads to burnout

My entire routine was driven by this idea of someday I'll get there, and this is what I have to do in the meantime to prove myself. And that's what leads to burnout, because you're projecting this idea of success and making yourself stick to it out of willpower. Then when you don't stick to it — because you feel sore, or tired, or any reason — you beat yourself up in your head, because by definition you're not doing these things, making you a failure, because your definition of success is I have to do these things. Do you see how dysfunctional that relationship is? Because it is a relationship — everything in our lives is a relationship: relationship to stress, relationship to fear, relationship to discipline.

Imagine if it was an actual person, a partner, and every single morning they said to you, you have to do 20 things, here's a list, if you don't do it I won't love you. How is that going to make you feel? That's what we're doing to ourselves. Take a second and let that sink in, because your definition of worth is a sheet of paper with a bunch of tick boxes on it — at least it was for me.

When your discipline is based on this self-image you've created in your head about what success and failure looks like, I completely understand, because you're trying to get somewhere, you're trying to make something of yourself, and there's nothing wrong with that — it's a very honest and brave thing to do, because you want to improve yourself, you want to be the best version of yourself you can be. So after this episode, you can go back and decide to stick with your current routine, no matter how intensive it is, because you feel good about it, and that's fine.

The reason I'm bringing this to your attention is because I don't want you to tie your self-worth to anything apart from you — you should be enough as you are. So if you skip a day, yes, in your head, okay, probably wasn't the best idea to skip a day, but that's it, that's the length of that conversation in your head. It isn't three hours of berating yourself, judging yourself, calling yourself names because you couldn't do one thing on a list. That's the reason I'm bringing this up — because again, it's the same as having a relationship with a partner who tells you to do this thing, like take the laundry out, and if you don't, they shout at you for two hours straight. That's basically what we do to ourselves.

How do you find the balance?

So how do you find the balance? This is the question I asked myself for so long, because I don't want to just do nothing — because I'm worth it anyway, yeah, that's a great thought to have, but end of the day I still want to do things, I still want to work out and get stronger, I still want to wake up early so I have more time. So how do you find that balance of compassion, where you don't berate yourself if you miss a day, but also accountability? That's the real question.

The way you do that is to understand what you get from your routine — understand, in a very visceral way, how it helps you. This is why having an idea in your head about "if I do this routine for 20 years I'll be successful" doesn't help anyone, because you get no feedback. You do everything on your list and think, okay, am I closer? Well, I must be a little bit closer, right? Whereas a true routine, you finish it and you feel amazing. You doing it is not to achieve some level of success in your head, you're doing it because you want to feel good, and therefore doing this routine just makes sense — it is a way to feel good, it is your drug of choice to feel the way you want to feel, to help you show up in the world the way you want to show up, not because you're trying to get somewhere, but because you're trying to be as full as you can right now. That's the balance.

Then when you miss a day, you don't berate yourself, but you also think, I feel worse today, huh, well I felt better yesterday when I did my routine, maybe I should keep doing that, because who doesn't want to feel good, simple as that. That perspective allows you to qualify your routine so effectively, because you're not just doing 20 things hoping that if I keep doing this for 20 years I'll be successful, or I'll be whatever — you're able to do something and know pretty soon, okay, this feels good to do, not in my head of "I check these boxes off therefore I feel good" but in my body, I felt better. So it just makes logical sense for you to do those things more, and that's a natural accountability that doesn't come from pressure, doesn't come from expectation of what would these gurus think, what would my friends think, what would society think. There's an inner knowing: I feel like my best self when I do these things. And those things may change.

I've come to a place in my life where my routine changes throughout the year, quite consistently, throughout the different seasons, or depending on what I need. If I was younger, I wouldn't have allowed that — I would have had this idea in my head about what my perfect routine looks like, and I would have measured myself against that every single day, regardless of how I felt or what my body actually needed. There was no flexibility, because there was no intuition. Everything I was doing was based on this image I had in my head, and it was black and white, very robotic. That's what we think discipline is — robotic, I have these ten things to do, if I do all ten I'll be successful. That's basically what my mind was saying, but there was no checking in with my body of, well, what do I actually need in this moment, rather than what I think I'll need to get somewhere 20 years from now.

Your habits need to be rooted in feeling, not fiction

So when I started connecting back in with myself, it was scary, because I went from a hundred to zero, essentially — from this disciplined person to basically doing nothing, because I realized something is wrong here. But at that point, because I had this idea of discipline and success, if I stopped doing something and my body was kind of making me stop because it realized something was wrong with my routine, I would just judge myself so much, because I would hold myself to this standard that is fake, an idea in my head.

I want you to entertain the idea that you're not lazy, you're just not asking your body. You know what Einstein said — if you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree, it'll go its entire life thinking it's dumb. That's what we're doing: we're judging our success, our lives, on this external image based on what we're told success is, what we should aim for, and then when we can't meet that standard we think we're dumb. Whereas in truth, if we listened to our bodies and accepted that this is what my body needs right now to feel at its best, without the judgment of "it doesn't align with what I thought I needed," we'll be better off for it, because we'll feel better, we'll feel stronger, and because of that you'll probably be more successful anyway, if you can maintain that feeling by listening to yourself.

It's scary when you start connecting back with yourself, because you realize how much of your routine is based on fiction, and you slowly drop those things out. You feel bad because you feel like, well, not only was I wasting time, but also I'm no longer doing these things, and I attached my self-worth to doing them. But if you trust that process — and it is a process, you'll have days where you want to go back to your old routine and do those things because they feel safe, they feel like you're making progress, and there'll be days where you realize, no, this isn't doing it, it still feels off — if you trust that process of listening to your body and what it needs right now, without judgment, and exploring new things that make you feel more alive, more stronger, you'll end up wanting to do those things more anyway, because you feel better for them.

So in short: your habits need to be rooted in feeling, not fiction. Not trying to fix anything, not trying to become someone or be someone — your habits need to be rooted in feeling the best you can possibly feel, because at the end of the day, that's all that counts. Maybe you realize that actually all I need to feel good is my workout — I can skip the cold shower, I can skip the reading, I can skip all of these things, and that's all I need. Suddenly your entire day opens up, and you're not forcing yourself to stick to a schedule that feels off.

It takes some trust and it takes some time, because when I was younger, I loved people knowing that I had this cool routine, that I would wake up at 5am.