Discipline Equals Freedom — The Ancient Secret to Unlocking Your Potential

Well, hey there, my friend.

Jonathan Doyle with you.

I am so pleased you have dropped by once again.

We are gonna take a very short journey together on a crucial topic.

Today, I wanna talk to you about a word that is not always incredibly popular.

The word is discipline.

I don't know what you hear when I say that word.

I mean, for so many of us, it comes with all sorts of different connotations.

Most of us, probably not the most positive connotations.

The concept of being disciplined when we were younger.

And these days, you know, having, like say in government, right?

Like fiscal discipline or economic discipline, they always seem to

imply some kind of suffering or pain, which, as we're gonna discover

together, is partially true.

I wanna put one big idea in your mind today, and it's simply this:

that discipline equals freedom.

Discipline equals freedom.

We're gonna go straight to the heart of this.

If we are slaves to our desires, if we are slaves to our urges,

we truly are prisoners, right?

We don't have any freedom to act in the ways that we'd really like to act.

Like, let's just say we've got a major goal around weight loss or

health or business or career or relationships, and we, we have

that desire, but then all sorts of other things come up for us, right?

All sorts of other distractions and problems and ways of acting.

And to impose discipline on those things is difficult So we often don't.

We give in to our emotions, we give in to our cravings, and we keep falling

back into some form of slavery.

So what I desperately want you to understand is something that I've

learned over many years, and I'm really relearning it in my life,

that discipline equals freedom.

I wanna give you the roots of this.

It's always useful to know exactly where a sort of term comes from.

So this is a little description of the word discipline itself.

It comes from the Latin disciplina, meaning instruction,

teaching, training, or knowledge.

And this actually comes from the older Latin word discipulus,

which means pupil or student.

So you can see that we've sort of got these connotations

that are very, very negative.

We've got these connotations of suffering.

But the ancient meaning of this word was instruction, learning, knowledge,

being a pupil, being a student, and these processes, these systems of

disciplining ourselves actually lead us to growth in virtue, growth in wisdom.

And I really wanna stress this: the more that you move in discipline, I

wanna promise you that you're going to notice an increase in energy.

You're gonna notice an increase in… I don't use this word

very often, but self-esteem.

You'll begin to look at yourself different because Ham, look, I

am on a super strict diet, right?

Those of you that follow me on Instagram, @jdoylespeaks, you see it every day.

You see the kind of training and the stuff that I do every single day, and my

diet is so dialed in, it's ridiculous.

But it didn't, it-- I've always tried to, but you know, in the last sort of period

of time, I've been very disciplined.

But I wanna tell you about the times I wasn't, 'cause I know

you're gonna relate to this.

There was this thing, and it was often on a Friday.

It's the end of the week, and Karen would be out, and she'd be-- she'd text

me and say, "Hey, do you want," wait for it, "Goodbury's?" Now, you could be

listening to this in Alaska or Sierra Leone, and you're gonna be thinking

to yourself, "What is Goodbury's?"

But for people that know the city that I live in, it's this magical place

where your wildest dreams come true.

It's this place where they make frozen yogurt, and I don't even know why

they get away with calling it that, because it is not frozen yogurt.

It's some kind of absolutely sugar-encrusted ice cream

magnificence, but doesn't stop there.

There's this massive tray of things you can select, like M&M's and, and

all sorts of chocolate and stuff you can have it mixed through.

And there's this voice in Karen, she texts me, and there's this

voice in my head says, "Jonathan-" Jonathan, you, you mustn't do this.

This is not gonna advance your goals.

And then this other voice, it's like, but it has l- little M&M's in it, and it has

crushed Oreos, and how could I say no?

So the next thing you know, Karen delivers like this five-kilo tub, and

then I take the lid off it, and I've got this one thing in my mind, and

it's like, just, just a few spoons.

Just a few spoons.

What do you think actually happens?

Every time this has happened, I've eaten the entire tub.

And you've done it too, and it may not be good breeze, but

it'll be something similar.

And you finish that last spoon, and you collapse back on the couch, and you

have this huge sort of exhale, right?

You're like, "Ah." And then this one voice, and it's the same voice you

hear when you eat a heap of McDonald's when you haven't eaten it for ages.

It's the same voice that goes, "What did I just do?"

And you know this is true, right?

On the other side of that indulgence is this kind of suffering, is

this lethargy, is this… And the self-esteem piece, right?

You kind of go backwards because you kind of look at yourself and you go, "Why

did I do that? That's disgusting. Why did I do that?" And the self-reproach.

So you can already see experientially that discipline, doing the

more difficult thing, doesn't lead to those sort of outcomes.

It leads to an increase in energy.

It leads to an increase in virtue.

It leads to an increase in creativity.

It leads to an increase in self-esteem and self-regard.

It just does.

And one of the best things about getting older is that I'm able

to say I've, I've lived this.

So on a daily basis now, by the grace of God, and I mean that, like prayer

and, and, and trying, I, I keep trying to improve in this area of discipline.

St. Augustine said in the fourth century, it's one of my all-time

favorite quotes, he said, "He who made you without your cooperation will not

save you without your cooperation."

I love that line, "He who made you without your cooperation will not save you without

your cooperation." There's this incredible sense that, you know, God creates us, but

He gives us a vote about whether w- we wanna participate with His plan for our

life, which is growth, joy, energy, uh, serving other people, great experiences.

And discipline, for me, is one of the ways in which c- we cooperate with grace.

I really mean that.

So I wanna give you a crucial quote here just to finish.

This is from Jim Rohn, the OG.

If you're not familiar with Jim Rohn, he's been dead quite a while now, but

one of the real great 20th century communicators on personal development.

He says this, listen carefully, "Discipline is the bridge between goals

and accomplishment." Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment.

It's so true.

Have you ever felt super stuck, like you've got a goal, but it

never seems to happen and you wanna get started, but you don't?

This discipline issue is the key.

Uh, look I, I don't know.

What's the essence of this?

How do I practically do this?

I've learned a few hacks, and one of them that I shared a few days ago was

simply you never negotiate with yourself.

You never negotiate with yourself.

So I never get in the habit when there's something that I must do,

I never get in the habit of, like, having a conversation with myself about

whether or not this is the right path.

I'm committed, and I don't start that internal conversation.

The second thing is I have a lot of rituals.

I have a lot of processes and rituals that I've just done so many times that

they make the discipline path easier.

So listen, there's a person that you can become if you really start

to look at this area in your life.

You learn to say no to things because you can't give a full-throated yes

if you can never give a no, right?

If you're always saying yes to everything but you haven't learned how to say

no, because this no is the path that will lead you towards those goals and

things that really matter in your life.

All right, there's a lot in there.

I hope that's useful.

If you're on Instagram, come and find me, @jdoylespeaks.

Just type J. Doyle Speaks into Instagram and you will find me.

I'm posting there all day, throughout the day.

You can see exactly what I get up to.

I'd love you to come and check that out.

And, uh, everything else is on the website, jonathandoyle.co.

God bless you, my friend.

Make sure you've subscribed, and I'm gonna have another message for you tomorrow