Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Cleared Hot Episode 96 - Motivation and Discipline

Episode Date: September 10, 2019

Sometimes you have them, sometimes you don't.  There is no magic wand and no magic formula, but there are some practical steps you can take that will increase the odds of achieving your goals.  These tactics work regardless of occupation and profession.   Simple, not easy. 

All right, here we go. Episode number 96. Let's get into this. First and foremost, though, this episode is brought to you by Onit, a company that believes in total human optimization. That's what I'm going to call. That's what I'm going to say. If you are interested in total human optimization, what you should do is go over to

Onit.com, O-N-N-I-T-com, forward-slash, hot. And you're going to know you're on the right page because the damn artwork for the podcast sits right there at the top. And it says, cleared hot special. You can receive up to 10% off when you check out. And you just start scrolling down. Take a look at what they have. They have exercise routines. They have information.

They have supplementation. On the landing page are some supplements that I like, the alpha brain, which is a neutropic. I take it often. Total human, which are day and night packs. What would be the best way to describe this? a comprehensive pack that contains all your vitamins and minerals, herbs, and amino acids, all in one pack. You have one in the morning, one of the evening.

I love taking them at night. It helps me sleep. And then there's, of course, MCT oil, which is a great supplement for some really, really healthy fat. I put it in my coffee. Use with caution, if you overload when you first take MCT oil, you're going to have an interesting experience when you go to the bathroom. As always, when I talk about supplementation, before you.

Before you spend a dime on anything in the supplementation world, which is the micro aspect of your health and wellness, please take the time, effort, and energy to square away the macro aspect of your health and wellness. What do I mean by that? How about your diet? Don't eat like a garbage disposal. Eat real food. Shop on the periphery of the grocery store.

Meats and vegetables, nuts, and seeds, all that good stuff. Make sure you're training. Do something every day. Just sweat every day. I don't care what it is. do 10 squats if you can't do anything else. Do something that get your heart rate up and sweat every day. I promise you you're going to feel better and think better because of it.

And then your recovery, your sleep. If you're functioning on two hours of sleep and you down a pot of coffee every single day or a pot and a half and your hypothalamus is just completely smoked, well, nothing that you buy it on it is probably going to help. So focus on the macro and then when you're ready for optimization, dive into the micro or at least be doing both at the same time. If you're not doing anything for your macro, but you're spending a lot of money on your micro,

what you're doing is making your pee really expensive. And I don't want to see anybody do that. So go to onit.com forward slash hot. Check out what they have to offer and dive in there. I've been using the supplements that they make for years before I ever developed a business relationship with them for the podcast. Can't recommend them enough. Go in there, go to town.

I'm done. That is the business aspect. of this podcast. Episode 96, I just gave a speech in Denver on the topic of discipline and motivation. And guess what? I'm sitting down on Monday evening and I'm going to record a podcast about discipline and motivation because I had a lack of both today. And sometimes that happens to me.

And I think it happens to everybody, unless your name is Jocko. I don't know. I'm going to see him later this month. I'm going to secretly record him saying that sometimes he has. has less disciplined and motivation than at other times. And Jock, if you listen to this, I'm just joking. I won't do that. But I might.

So you never know. Either way, this episode would have come out on Monday. But like I said, I had a lack of discipline and motivation. But the speech I gave was to give some practical tools to hopefully help people achieve their goals. So I'm going to hit the highlights of that and make this short and sweet. Try to keep this sucker under 30 minutes. and forewarning you next week, the episode is going to come out on Tuesday

because I'm doing the interview with the individual on Monday. So I'm saying it, declaring it now, next week's episode will not be because of a lack of discipline and motivation released on Tuesday. It will become, or it will be released that way because of a logistical nature. And that's it. So let's dive in.

Episode number 96. Here we go. Okay, got the red smoke. Okay, copy. Where's the smoke? I'm looking at the smoke. I'm looking at danger close now. Come on winter, baby.

Give it to me. I need it. You're cleared hot. You've got to be cleared hot. Okay. Like I mentioned in the intro, I just finished a speech in Denver to a large group of what I would call

financial professionals, and they asked me to talk about discipline and motivation, which is not necessarily the most common topic that I speak about, but I really do enjoy speaking on this topic. And I'm going to open with this. And this is actually what I opened with. at the keynote speech.

There really is no magic when it comes to discipline and motivation. I wish I could wave a wand or give somebody a pill and it would solve all the problems when it comes to either motivation or discipline, but I haven't found that to be the case. But hopefully,

I can give you some practical tools. The tools and the discipline and motivation in my mind are all designed around helping you achieve your goal, and we'll dig into that in a little bit. Now, one of the best examples I can think of physical, like visceral example of a test of motivation and discipline is the Buds program. And that is, I'm going to go briefly into this.

This is not a podcast about Buds. If you're interested in Buds or want more information about it, go onto the Internet, go down the rabbit hole. Everything you could possibly want is going to be there. Buds is the initial screening process to become a seal. It stands for basic underwater demolition slash seal. You are not a seal at the graduation of Buds. You have, I would say, if you were very quick about it, probably 18 more months of additional training that you need to do.

And then you will be awarded your Trident, in my understanding of the pipeline now, at the end of what is called SQT or Seal qualification training. Once you have your Trident, you are actually a seal. So Buds is not the end-all be-all. It is a very, though, arduous and difficult selection process. That is what it is. It is six months long.

So call it for easy math 180 days. There are, on average, six classes that go through a year, and that has fluctuated a little bit over time, but on average, there are six. Also, on average, I'm going to say there are about 200 students that will start on the very first day of first phase. It's broken into first, second, and third phases. That has changed a little bit over time,

but when I went through and when I was an instructor, that's how it was. So that's how I'm going to discuss it. On average, again, for easy math, 200 students. There's going to be plus or minus a few from time to time. When you look at these students, or if you think about these students when it comes to discipline and motivation, you have to realize that for them to even show up for the first day of buds, these are incredibly highly motivated individuals.

just to be there on their first day, they've already volunteered multiple times. They volunteered to enlist in the military. They volunteered for the Buds pipeline, and then they proved themselves in the pre-training process in that Buds pipeline via their performance and now are arriving at Buds. They have, and this pre-training pipeline

did not exist when I went through, so I'm speaking a little bit out of school about how it's structured. from my understanding though they go through an you know after boot camp 12 to 14 weeks of relatively intense training before they even start buds and the slots at buds are competitive it's not just hey oh you're you're you're at a heartbeat here you go here's your bud slot no there are more people that want slots than there are slots available so it is competitive and these people are proving themselves so on day one you're looking at a class full of highly motivated individuals And one of my favorite things that I used to love to do was canvas the class of students. And I remember being canvassed as a student by the instructor cadre, and it went a little bit something like this. In my class, we had 180 people, and they would put us into rows of 10. So we had 18 rows of 10 desks.

Like the desks that you use, I don't even remember what grade it is, but it's got on like the right hand side, the little writing area. It's awesome being a, well, actually, it was only 19 at the time, but a 19-year-old kid sitting in one of those things again. I'm pretty sure they're from elementary school. But I digress. The instructor staff will get up onto the podium, which is, of course, towering over the students by a good 12 to 24 inches, but they're looking down at you, which is important, and it helps when you're an instructor.

But they'll say to the entire class of students, who in this room wants to be a seal? And every hand, of course, goes up because they all want to be there. And then the question is, who's going to be here on graduation day? And, of course, every single hand in that classroom goes up. If your hand doesn't go up when you ask that question, your career buds is going to be catastrophically short. You're not even going to make it through the first day.

And then another question that's commonly asked is something along the lines of, you know, for you in this room who have raised your hand of both previous questions, how many of you are not going to be phased or stopped regardless of what the instructor staff is going to do to you? And every hand in that room will go up. now that's a room again of individuals that are highly motivated and i'm going to call them disciplined as well because they took the steps necessary to get themselves at least through the front door of the test gate and i'm going to define discipline and motivation here in a minute my point is they at least externally or outwardly express both motivation and discipline now

As the instructor staff, we start applying the curriculum to this room full of 200 people. And we start testing them in a variety of ways. Most of the ways are physical, which can result in a mental exhaustion slash test as well. And what happens, on average, is that 75% of the people who raise their hand and said they wanted to be a seal, that raised their hand and said they're going to be there on graduation day, and raised their hand and said that there's nothing that the instructor staff can do to stop them that will make a difference are gone. 75% attrition.

And I've seen that up to 90% in the winter classes because the temperature is obviously colder, so we keep them out in the cold. It actually is one of the most effective tools. 75% on average. Why? Why does that happen? What is it that we're testing? Are we testing their discipline?

I think so. Are we testing their motivation? Absolutely. And in my mind, those two things are very closely linked. And we're also testing their mental and physical toughness. But if you look at what they've already gone through to get there to that first phase of buds, that's already been chipped away at a little bit. To me, it's more of a test of that motivation and specifically the discipline.

So let's dive into that just for a second and define those things. For me, when I talk about motivation or when I think about motivation, I think of it as my fuel or an individual's fuel. It's the thing that drives you. The thing that sucks about motivation, and I'm specifically talking about myself right now, but I suspect most people are the same way, is that it comes in peaks and valleys.

It definitely, for me, looks like a sine wave. And if you catch me on a peak, I'm unstoppable. There's nothing you can throw at me that's going to derail me. My ability to accomplish work is unbelievable. But if you catch me in a valley, I oftentimes feel like there are unmovable or unavoidable obstacles. and I'm sure that everybody who is listening to this right now,

regardless of where you are and what you do, have experienced this in and of yourself. You could think of it as having good days and bad days. That's what is not concerning about motivation. That's what's challenging about only relying on motivation, because one day you may have it, and the next day you may not. Now, we live in a beautiful age of social media that has pros and cons. One of the pros is you could reach out all over the world and just be a sponge for external motivation.

And you could pull from other people and help bridge those gaps. But at least in my own experience, it's nowhere near as powerful as internally derived motivation. Now with that, so that's the motivation, right? That's your fuel. Let's talk about discipline. If I had to describe it in the most concise terms, terms, it would be an individual taking the action that is needed or required. to achieve your goal. And that would be regardless of your motivation,

your external pressure, your mood, your fatigue, your appetite, your stress level, fill in the blank. There should be nothing when it comes to discipline or you are going to take those actions regardless of any way that you may feel personally. So if motivation is the fuel and it's what drives you, I think of discipline as what guides you. and I've heard people talk about it, and sometimes I'll talk about it in terms of being the path.

It's the breadcrumbs that you know are there, and you can see, and they're the small individual steps that you need to make to get you towards your goal. You stay on the path, you're going to get to where the path leads you. The cool thing about discipline is that it can actually be strengthened through momentum, and you build that momentum at the micro level, which is right back to the breadcrumbs that I was talking about, the small individual steps, that you need to take to successfully achieve your goal. You don't take a massive bite, small individual steps. You build that momentum, and then you use that momentum to carry you through the path. Now, motivation and discipline, in my opinion, are not enough.

You have to pair one more thing with that. You have to target both of these. I would like you to think about your goals, and that's what you. what these have to be paired with. Motivation and discipline have to be targeted towards a goal. Now, think of your goal like a vector. Think of an arrow going up at a 45-degree angle towards the ceiling or the sky, wherever you may be. That's a vector. But a vector has to have two things. It has to have an amplitude, and it has to have a direction. If you take any one of those things away, right, if it's pointing in the right direction, but it has no mass behind it and it's not moving,

you're never going to get there. And if you have nothing but energy and you're just corking out into space, you're also not going to get there because you have no direction. So you have to have both, just like you need to have both discipline and motivation, plus your goal.

Now, when it comes to your goals, I don't actually believe that it is the goal itself that is important. What's important is how you mentally approach achieving whatever goal it is that you may have. The best way that I can describe this, is set your goals at the macro level. And people will ask me, they'll raise their hand at the end of speeches and say, well, how big should I set my goals? My answer to that is as big as humanly possible.

When you start scaring yourself because you think there's no way you're going to succeed, in my opinion, you're arriving at around the right level for where your goal should be. So you set your goal at a macro level. And then you get into and live in the micro focus. you focus on each individual breadcrum. The best metaphor for this that I found to talk to both children and adults is dominoes. And I don't know if I've talked about this on the podcast before, but I think it's a very powerful example because a domino is a very, very small thing. They're about two inches tall, but a thought is also a very small thing.

But they're equally as powerful. The cool thing about dominoes is they have an immense amount of contained kinetic energy. So one domino that is only two inches tall can in fact move an object or knock over an object that is one and a half times its size. To do that, to express that contained kinetic energy, dominoes have to fall sequentially. So if you want to knock over something huge with something that begins very small, you have to line them up and they each have to fall in order. So again, to the dominoes. The first domino being two inches tall. Just think about this.

If you were to line them up and each domino were to knock over the subsequent domino, which is 1.5 times the size of the preceding domino, if you start a number one, that's two inches. By the time you get to number 24, that's the Empire State Building. By the time you get to number 31, that's the size of Mount Everest. By the time you get to the 57th domino, It's the distance between the surface of the earth to the surface of the moon. That's how big the domino would be that would fall over.

But that all starts with something that is a mere two inches tall. Now, like I said, they have to fall sequentially. And the curse of the novice is somebody will line out these breadcrumbs or these dominoes or whatever metaphor works for you. And instead of knocking over the first one, they say, I really don't want to take the time to do this. So they sidestep the entire line of domino. and they walk over to Mount Everest

or the Empire State Building or the moon, and they push on it as hard as they can. And it does absolutely nothing. So they get frustrated, and then they quit, and they don't understand why they have a very difficult time achieving their goals. So think of it like this, when it comes to mentally approaching your goals.

If you were to attempt a four-minute mile, which if you are even close to doing this, I don't like you at all, at your level of athleticism, disgust me, but you're mentally standing there on a track, a 400 meter track, and you know you're trying to accomplish a four-minute mile. Would it be easier from a mental approach perspective to think about one mile and only four minutes to do it,

or breaking it up into four by 400-meter chunks where you have a minute to do each one? Or another example. Say you're an individual that is incredibly over, weight and you want to lose 100 pounds. And your choice about how you mentally approach this is you're going to lose one pound and then you're just going to focus on the fact you have 99 more pounds to lose. And then you lose another one like, oh, I've got 98 more pounds to lose. Or the individual who focuses on losing one pound at a time and celebrating that victory and you keep going and going

one pound at a time until you've done it 100 times. Which one do you feel is more likely to succeed? which one do you feel is less likely to become overwhelmed. Now, when it comes to Buds, I was given really good advice when I went through. An individual told me, you know what, don't think about this program as a six-month training pipeline. Think about it as an exercise and seeing the sunrise each and every day. Focus on seeing the sunrise tomorrow and just stack sunrise on sunrise on sunrise. And the next thing you know, 180 later, you're done with Buds. Another great way to do this or inside of the program is Hell Week.

five days long starts on Sunday in the afternoon ends on Friday in the afternoon you're going to get a couple hours of sleep on Wednesday it sucks that's why they call it hell week but they have to feed you every six hours so should you focus on the totality of the five days or maybe just focus on trying to make it to the next meal I went with the latter and I found it to be very successful when it came to getting individuals in buds to quit which is very easy and again, these are highly motivated, highly disciplined individuals. My number one tool that I used as an instructor was to get the students to think big, to get them to think in the macro perspective, how far they are from their goal, how many steps they have to do to accomplish that goal. They became overwhelmed, and they would quit. The students that were basically impervious to anything that I would have to say were the ones that did the opposite of that.

They refused to allow me to drive them into the macro, and they just focus on the micro. And I've been that student with an instructor trying to get into your head, and the only thing I was thinking of was, you know what, I'm just going to survive this interaction with this instructor, and we'll worry about what happens next, next.

I will put one foot in front of the other until this situation ends, and then I will deal with the net situation, and I'm only going to keep my nose six inches from the next problem. I'm not going to focus about how far I am from where I want to be, because that's when you see people making decisions, and I saw it time and time again in buds. What I was trying to do was catch an individual at a valley of their motivation, and then overwhelm

them and then get them to make a decision that they would regret for the rest of their life. And that might sound mean, and it might sound unfair, but the job that they were selecting for was anything but fair, and oftentimes was very mean. So we needed to select for the correct people. That was it. That was my number one tool. The point of all of this is, is you have to approach your goals from a digestible perspective.

Get out of the macro and dive into the micro. Because when you encounter adversity, I'm sure there's a variety of choices. I break them down into two. Roadblock or motivation. And only you can decide. The best tools that you can have to turn that adversity into anything but a roadblock.

That's what we're trying to avoid. Is be motivated, right? Have a fuel. Have a purpose. Be disciplined. Know the path that you want to be on. And then break that path up into digestible peaches. Digestable peaches.

I guess if you like peaches, you can do that. I meant to say pieces. Motivation, your discipline, and then that mental approach. Have to have a goal. Target your motivation and your discipline towards that goal. And you're going to become, bond proof. I mean, it's not, there's no, again, there's no magic recipe, but time and time and

time again, this formula has worked for me, and I have seen it work for other people. And that's it. I want to keep it short and sweet. There's about, I don't know, I think that was 20 minutes of a description or an approach that hopefully can help anybody who's listening, regardless of what it is that you do. And that is all I have for this week. Coming back to you next week, on Tuesday, declaring it now with an interview. Very interesting individual. I think you might want to tune it on Tuesday. That's it, everybody.

That is all I have for this week. Like I said, short and sweet. Thank you, everybody who has taken the time to go on to iTunes and written a review of the podcast or giving it a rating. If you haven't done that and you listen to the podcast, do me a favor and go, you don't have to write a review if you want, but go rate the podcast. And if you think it sucks, give it a one or a zero,

if that's possible. I don't even know. If you think it's good, give it whatever. you think it should be. And I think that's about it. If you want to fly the flag and help me help grow the podcast, which I think is my number one goal at this point, is just to increase the audience.

Do me favor and tell somebody about the podcast. Recommend it or share it. And what else? Oh, I was going to, the shirts. If you want to fly the flag, go to clear it hotpodcast.com. Click on the shop tab. And what you can find is some pretty simple shirt designs.

I'm getting ready to partner up with a really cool company owned by X Team Guy as well. So hopefully, coming up with some new designs, a different fulfillment process, hopefully just a more streamlined interaction for the people who are choosing to purchase the apparel, which I greatly appreciate. It helps me travel around and fly people here to Montana to sit down and do interviews with. And I think that's about it. Hope you enjoyed the episode. See you next week.