Daily Motivations - THE ART OF DISCIPLINE

Episode Date: May 7, 2026

The most successful people in the world have mastered the art discipline and habits. Powerful Motivational Speeches from Motiversity, featuring speeches from James Clear, Ryan Holiday, Andrew Huberman, Chase Hughes and more.Instagram - @daily_motivationsorgFacebook- @daily_motivationsorg

Hey Ontario, come on down to BetMGM Casino and check out our newest exclusive. The Price is Right Fortune Pick. Don't miss out. Play exciting casino games based on the iconic game show. Only at BetMGM. Access to the Price is right fortune pick is only available at BedMGM Casino. BetMGM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly. 19 plus to wager, Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you,

please contact Connix Ontario at 1866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. The highest form of discipline is the ability to adjust and be flexible and adapt. You're building the muscle either building the muscle that says, I do what I say, I keep the commitments that I make, or you're building the muscle that says, I make excuses, I don't do what I say, I can't be counted on, right? And so when we think about discipline, it's really about what promises are you going to keep. and the tricky thing is you're keeping promises to yourself

that nobody even knows that you made. Discipline is kind of the gateway drug to everything else in authority. And it's the gateway to composure, for sure, but getting your discipline modified is one of the fastest ways to make everything else change. And how do I fix my discipline if I'm an ill-discipline person? Understanding what discipline is

is the most critical element. And I define this differently than most people. So I define discipline as your ability to prioritize the needs of your future self ahead of your own, present self. And that's it. That's all the discipline is. I'm prioritizing the needs of future me.

The first question I ask is, how do I want to spend my days? And so then you'd, like, draw a box. And inside that box, how can we make the most money, reach the most people, make the biggest impact, you know, make the contribution that you want to make, but not outside of it. And what happens a lot of the time is people do that in reverse. They start by asking, how can we make the most money or reach the most people or make the

biggest impact? And then they decide, oh, well, this is what I want to do, but it's actually outside of how they want to spend their days. And it's not going to work out well because, you know, it goes back to our point previously about, is this fund? You know, if they don't want to spend their time that way, you're just grinding for a little while and eventually it's not going to work. That's the key for building systems that really work is, is this how you want to spend your days? The person who wants to live the lifestyle is much

better positioned to get the result. I think everyone needs to realize that discipline is like a rubber band. It stretches, right? It stretches. Sometimes it's like really, really tough and really flexed and you're good to go. Other times it's a little flimsy, it's a little flimsy and that's okay. But do you know what you need to do to get it strong again? Do you have the right people around you that you can lean on and go, hey, but I need, I need a little of help in this area without feeling like you might reject me or I might feel like less of a man or less of a woman if I reach out. And I think that's important. Whether someone does the project or not doesn't matter to me. What matters is that they are disciplined in areas of their life they know they need to

be. And all of that starts off by shedding the false identity and putting on a new identity of the man that you or the woman that you want to be and then start living that life. It's literally that simple. Your outcomes are a lagging measure of your inputs. Like where you're at is just a lagging measure of the things that you've gone toward that. And it seems like discipline is pretty much exactly the same. And that's where the line between your future destiny is dictated by your current discipline. It's about doing the things you don't like to do for an extended period of time without getting reward. And then discipline then becomes not are you disciplined or not discipline, but how disciplined are you? Everyone who doesn't have discipline created this false

identity of themselves as, man, I'm just not a disciplined person. Well, if you keep saying I'm not a disciplined person, you just keep going further away from discipline. Discipline equals freedom. You have your standards that you selected for yourself that you are living up to. I told myself I'm going to do this hard thing. Now that hard thing is approaching. And am I going to come up with an excuse, am I going to give myself a way out? Or I'm going to do it. And then when you do it, now you're in the middle of it. And now you're tired. And there's this voice inside of you that says, oh, no one's watching. You can stop any time you want. Just turn around. Just go back or slow down. It'd be easier if you slow down. And the muscle or that part of you that is able to override that

is a really critical muscle. All of our lives are about habits, not goals, but what are the habits that make my goal a byproduct? Everything is about byproducts in your whole life, whether you know it or not. So instead of setting goals, set like the byproduct, what are the byproducts I want to have for this year? And then what are the habits that make that up? So what the big mistake most people make is they see somebody like you. You go to the gym very often. You probably eat really clean. Somebody who doesn't live a very disciplined life would look at you and say, God, I want to be like Stephen. He's got all this discipline, going to the gym.

But they don't understand that you going to the gym isn't discipline. It's a habit. So you're not like forcing yourself to go do something. You're doing something that's a habit for you. The discipline only is necessary. You only need like a teaspoon of it at the very beginning to get this habit started. So start micro habits first and then bigger habits. So the discipline is not something that you should be seeing.

if you're seeing someone eat healthy and go to the gym, do all the stuff you want to do, those are habits. And that person, you're not seeing a discipline at work right there. You're seeing a habit. The discipline was just at the beginning. And I think if more people knew that, that you're just exercising a little discipline at the very beginning,

and then it's just, that's just what you do. It's like somebody who sees someone brushing their teeth every day. Like, wow, that's so much discipline. It's just what we do. It's a habit. the goal is not the thing that determines the outcome. So the person who wins and the 99 people who lose, they have the same goals. You look at the Olympic Games.

Presumably any event, everybody who's competing has the goal of winning the Olympic medal, right? Of winning the gold. So the goal is not the thing that makes the difference. So again, winners and losers have the same goals. So if they have the same goals, they cannot be the thing that make the difference in their performance. It has to be something else. Maybe having a goal is part of it. Maybe it's necessary.

But it's not sufficient for the outcome that you want. And for that, what you need is the system. You need a collection of habits that are going to make the difference and accumulate into a bigger outcome. I think it's really important when we mess up that we don't identify with that. We identify with the person that we want to be, that we know that we can be. We identify with the thing happening and then we fall off. Sobriety circles, they talk about like falling off the wagon. I like the idea that the wagon is going and you're either on the wagon or off the wagon.

right and the idea when you fall or you mess up or you make a mistake or you break that promise like it's still there like you can get back on it anytime right that's kind of how i think about so instead of going oh i'm a piece of shit i'm spiraling i'm i'm worthless it's it's like no the thing is continued on you know am i going to run and catch up to it am i going to start to build those habits again or am i going to you know write it off because it's it's not there anymore. Do you know what I mean? I kind of try to think about it that way. It's like just because I've had a bad week where I was over scheduled or distracted or I was sick or whatever and I wasn't writing, that doesn't mean all is lost. Like I just have to sit down tomorrow or better. I have to sit down

now and I just have to do a little bit. Right. And that's what starts that process again. There's this interesting thing that happens. If you have a really good workout, ethic, if you have a strong work ethic and working hard has gotten you far in life, it kind of becomes a crutch. You know, for a long time, I was like, if I ever had a problem, I was like, well, I'll just work my way out of it. You know, I'll just work harder on it until I figure it out. And that's great.

That's really powerful for a lot of things. But at some point, it breaks, you know, like you can maybe, if you really try, maybe you can work 10% harder or 20% harder, but there's some limit. But if you work on the right thing, well, you can get 100x the result or 1,000 the result. And so if you just keep your head down and work hard, it's very unlikely that you'll be spending your time in the highest and best way. And the only way to figure that out is to have time to reflect and review, time to think. So you need enough time to think to figure out what should I be focused on next. And so I think that is almost, it's almost, reflection review is almost like

the meta habit that is above all others. Because if you give yourself time to reflect and review, then you can troubleshoot your habits and figure out how to adjust them. A lot of the time when someone sits down and they want to build a new habit, they don't say this, but what they kind of assume is what it would mean to be successful with this habit is that I do it for the rest of my life. You know, and that if at some point I'm not doing it, then that must mean that I failed or I quit on it. But that's not how it is at all. Like, things have a season, you know, and so habits have to change shape over time. If the why is, I need enjoyment in the present moment, then no other why will be bigger.

No discipline Y will ever be larger. The only why will be, why am I eating these Cheetos right now? Because that's the only why. So I think once the Y starts edging its way into the future, that's the moment where you break the discipline spiral. And you get out of that because your whys are extending into time that hasn't happened yet. Discipline is when you take the battery of willpower and you squirt that extrajuice. to make up the difference.

Your motivation's only getting you so far. Usually it's far enough. Sometimes it's not. How do you bridge this gap? You bridge it with something called discipline? But what it takes is a discipline that everybody has the ability to do it, but they just don't want you.

Our mind may tell us it's easier to over sleep or not go to the gym, but at the end of the day, discipline can be practiced. It's not difficult. But for some reason, I think, when it comes to internal stuff, willpower, habits, discipline, because you can't see it because it feels like it's part of your

sense of self. And I think that that limits maybe people's understanding of how much they can move that and lift the ceiling. We think that discipline sucks, like not getting to eat everything you want, not getting to do everything you want. We think discipline is a punishment, but actually nobody has a shittier life than a person who has no self-control, no boundaries, no rules. What are you going to get without discipline? Are you going to be in good physical shape? Are you going to be financially successful about discipline? No. If you want to make progress in your life, you've got to have discipline.

It's a discipline, it's a regimen. It was a choice I made. And the choice I made was, what are you willing to sacrifice? What are you willing to give up to find every bit of who you are as a human being? And I was willing to give everything to do that. There is a bridge from what you see in your head to what you hold in your hand. And that bridge is called discipline. We're talking about pressing and pushing towards something despite difficulty, despite delay, despite distractions, despite the doubters, despite the naysayers.

This is somebody who perseveres who has an unwavering tenacity to achieve what it is that they see in their head. We do what we hate like we love it. That's what discipline looks like. Okay, what you need to know about discipline is three things. If you do the three things from the next part of this video, you can accomplish anything you want to in life. Okay, so write this down. Three things. The first one starts with the importance of getting enough sleep and planning your day the night before. You can't be disciplined if you're tired and if you don't have a clear plan for your day.

So the first thing I need you to hear is to get enough sleep and make a plan for your day. sleep is this tremendously important period of life because it resets our ability to be focused, alert, and emotionally stable in the wakeful period. So we can't really talk about wakefulness, focus, motivation, mood, well-being, without thinking about sleep. Optimizing what we're doing during the day is going to help us to actually sleep better at night. And that's really the key. So good night of sleep starts the moment that you wake up in the morning.

When you sleep better, your entire day is better. When you sleep better, your life is better. Until you are sleeping long enough and deeply enough, 80% of the nights of your life, you are functioning suboptimally. And what's the biggest risk then if we're not getting enough sleep? Deficits in learning, deficits in the immune system. We need to sleep enough. Now, what's enough sleep? Enough sleep has been argued.

It's six hours. Other people, it's seven hours. Other people, it's eight hours. It's basically waking up without an alarm clock and feeling rested. Okay, the second thing I need you to hear is the importance of time blocking your day and especially your morning. Don't miss this one. It's not about making long to-do lists. It's about being very intentional with your day.

What does your morning routine look like at the moment? Morning routine is wake up, try and get as much natural light as you can in the, morning hours, whenever it is that that is for you, especially the first three hours after waking, I hydrate, I drink water, and then I do everything I can to not do email, not do social media, and to take care of a few critical tasks. These days, I have this obsession with trying to do one cognitively hard thing a day, one, and one physically hard thing a day. I try and get my brain into kind of a linear mode. I try and narrow that aperture.

If I don't, the distraction that's created by social media and interactions with others can kind of wick out into the rest of the day. So I'm not necessarily trying to finish something in that time, but I try and do something challenging. I experience great pleasure from battling through something mentally challenging. So this is something I observed in myself, which is that from 6 a.m. until noon, my brain is very capable. My body is very capable of doing certain things far more easily than at other times of the 24 hour cycle. So I consider that sort of, you know, the first phase of my day. Sometimes I'm up

by six, sometimes it's seven, sometimes it's eight. Usually it's about six, six 30. So I consider that one opportunity block. The second opportunity block, because I eat lunch typically around noon, between, you know, one and six p.m. So a second opportunity block. And then the third is between six p.m. and bedtime, which for me typically is 1030, but sometimes late. I mean, you have to live. I mean, come on. So what I started to realize is that I can do really focused work in two but not three of those blocks consistently. I also notice that if I exercise early in the first block, like between 6 a.m. and before 9 a.m.,

I have more energy all day long. But if I exercise starting at 9 or starting at 10 or halfway through that block, the second opportunity block is diminished. I'm kind of dragging. Maybe it's related to when I eat. eat, but that wasn't changing when I eat or what I eat. So I'm very aware of the fact that I get sort of two opportunities from these three blocks. So I do think that people could benefit tremendously, not necessarily by following the schedule that I follow, but by paying attention to their natural,

cognitive, and physical rhythms. You don't have to wake up at 4 a.m., but you do need to block your day and understand when your most productive periods are. Okay, on to the last important piece of advice. Don't miss this one. Okay, here it is. strive to be an emotionally mature person. And one way of doing that is by forcing yourself to do hard things. Practice discomfort every single day. You say the emotionally immature man seeks out motivation to do something hard one time. The emotionally mature man uses discipline to do something hard a thousand times.

Why is emotional maturity related to motivation and discipline? Because when you have emotional maturity, you realize that some days you're not going to sleep well. Some days you're going to wake up and you've got your schedule and everything's planned out. And whether things go well or not that day, the emotionally mature man will still do what he has to do to stack his winds to focus on his purpose. Whereas the emotionally immature man will say, well, I didn't sleep well, I had nightmares, so I'll stay in bed. Or it's raining outside. It's cold outside. I don't feel good.

You have to stay the course no matter what. And it takes a high level of emotional maturity because your emotions, dictate your motion, like what you're going to do. And so if you have emotional maturity, you're more likely to lean into discipline when things are suboptimal. If you lack emotional maturity, then how you feel determines what you do next, which is very damaging to outcome-driven humans. You need to understand how your brain works. Doing hard things builds your brain and your ability to be disciplined.

Most people don't know this. But there's a brain structure called the anterior mid-singulate cortex. But what's interesting about this brain area is there now a lot of data showing that when people do something they don't want to do, like add three hours of exercise per day or per week, this brain area gets bigger. In many ways, scientists are starting to think of the anterior mid-singulate cortex, not just as one of the seats of willpower,

but perhaps actually the seat of the will to live. Now we're talking. All the data point to the fact that we can build this area up. Yep. But that as quickly as we build it up, if we don't continue to invest in things that are hard for us, that we don't want to do, that's the part that feels so Goggin-esque to me that we don't want to do. Like if you love the ice bath, yeah, I love the ice bath. And you go from one minute to 10 minutes. Guess what?

Your anterior mid-singulate cortex did not grow. None. But if you hate the cold water, if you're feeling, you're feeling. afraid of drowning and you get into water and put your head under and survive, then the interior mid-singulate cortex gets bigger. It's that I don't want to do something, but do it anyway. That grows this area. That's how I've lived my entire life.

I know anything about that. But people go, man, you have such a strong will. It's something that you build.