Daily Motivations - The Cost Of Discipline.

Episode Date: September 7, 2026

The cost of discipline - real, daily and permanent, and still far cheaper than the price of never finding out what you were capable of.Discipline costs you comfort, convenience and the approval of people who chose the easier road. Skipping it costs you everything you could have become. One bill arrives daily, the other arrives all at once.Featuring words of wisdom from David Goggins, Jocko Willink, Alex Hormozi, Joe Rogan, Chris Williamson, Jordan Peterson, Admiral William H. McRaven, Mike Tyson, DJ Shipley, Dr Mike Israetel, Ray Allen, Kevin Hart, Jay Williams, Andy Frisella, Teddy Atlas, Shi Heng Yi, Jeremy Renner, Bruce Lee, Greg Plitt, Nick Saban, Patrick Bet-David, Kobe Bryant, Roger Federer, Cristiano Ronaldo and many more.Instagram- Daily_motivationsorgFacebook- @daily_motivationsorgSupport us PayPal

Doing the thing in spite of not wanting to do the thing is discipline, right? You don't need motivation to get yourself up to go and do a thing. Make the promise small, build it up step by step, know that you are going to have setbacks. And this is my favorite rule from James Clear, which is a habit missed once is a mistake. A habit missed twice is the start of a new habit. Never missed two days in a row. We know that discipline is what we need. And yet, even with that, even though everybody knows discipline.

discipline is what we need. It can still be difficult for people to process. So if you want to change the world, start off by making your bed. If you make your bed every morning, you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride and it will encourage you to do another task. And by the end of the day, that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed. Making your bed will also reinforce the fact that the little things in life matter. If you can't do the little things right, you'll never be able to do the big things right. And if by chance you have a miserable day,

you will come home to a bed that is made, that you made. And a made bed gives you encouragement that tomorrow will be better. But I promise you, if every single person ever watches this, you wake up and do a 20-minute walk in the morning and one after dinner,

and you do it for seven days. On the eight day, the world doesn't fall apart. It only gets better the more you do it. It just will. People just don't want to put it in the work. They want this quick fix. Motivation, you have to learn to exist without it. You have to learn to be,

you have to be your best self and you're least motivated. And that's the tricky part about all that. Motivation is just a word. You have to have these different things in your mind on where you want to go and know that motivation is not going to get me there. Because I'm not going to always be motivated. Path to being the best version of yourself should be lonely.

And the loneliness you feel is nothing to be sad about. It is a benchmark and an indicator that you're probably on the right path. Everything in life has a true opportunity cost to it. Cutting people off, cutting things off, cutting habits off is uncomfortable. But every time I've done it, something incredible has filled that gap. I don't care how good you are in anything. You don't have discipline. You ain't nobody.

Right. You're nothing without discipline because you give up under the slightest struggle without discipline. 100%. Doing what you hate to do, but do it like you love it. Doing what you hate to do, but do it like you love it. Shut off your phones. Shut off all technology. Find a dark, quiet place.

for you to think. Get up early. Do some kind of workout. Eat good foods. Clean your room. Make a list of things that you're supposed to do in your life.

And then wake up in the morning and do those things that you put on the list. If you want to know something about yourself, sit on your bed one night and say, what's one thing I'm doing wrong? That I know I'm doing wrong. That I could fix.

That I would fix. You meditate on that. You'll get an answer. And it won't be one you want, but it'll be the necessary one. It's time to get back to work. Stop hearing yourself talk. Get off the podcast.

Don't be on social media too much. Cut out all the noise. Get back to the mental lab. You're going to hate yourself in the morning. Why are you falling back? No, don't tell me yes. Why? Stay inside.

Where are you supposed to be? And every day, the same answer came back to me. Do you want to be on your deathbed? Knowing that you could, but you didn't. You're going to lose sleep. You'll doubt whether it'll work. You'll stress to make ends meet. You won't finish your to-do list.

You'll wonder whether you made the right call and have no way to know for yours. This is what hard feels like, and that's okay. Everything worth doing is hard. And the more worth doing it is, the harder it is. The greater the payoff, the greater the hardship. If it's hard, good. It means no one else will do it. More for you.

The constant grind and the feeling of never being good enough kept us working. I really learned on the days, the nights that we won championships, you think you want to go out and celebrate, you think you want to go out and party. But those days, you realized that you didn't win the championship on that day, on that night. You won a championship that day when you got up, when you had two games or four games and five nights, you went up and you went to practice every single day. That's when you became a champion. The three-step process of how to win. Number one, realize no one is coming to save you. Number two, take responsibility for your current position.

Number three, be willing to sacrifice who you are for who you want to be. A lot of times I'll be in a 200-mile run or something like that, and I'm all jacked up. Body's broken, mind's broken, spirit's broken. I started to say, what if I can pull this off? When I first walked into the Navy-Sill recruiter's office, He looked at me and said there only been 35 African Americans in 70 years make it through. You know, I said to myself, what if I can be the 36th?

It's the what if I can pull off a miracle. What if I can become someone that no one thinks I can be? And just me talking about that, I have the hair going up on my arms because it makes me just like, what if? A lot of people can give up. It's easy to give up. Hell yeah. It's the easiest thing in the world to do.

I'm done. I ain't going. I ain't going to keep going. I don't feel like going to work. I'm done. Yeah, man. It's easy. It's very easy.

But what's hard is going, yo, yesterday I got nothing from working as hard as I could. Nothing happened from that. I'm going to do the same thing again today, but I'm going to try to go harder. That's the hardest thing in the world. To get up every day and give 100%

and be in the same position that you were each day, but mentally know that you're trying and trying and trying. That's a real, that's a real grind. Turn your feelings off when it comes down to you wanting to be better. What that means is when that alarm clock goes off, your feelings got to go away. It's raining outside. It's cold outside. When you don't want to put those long hours in at work, that's what I'm talking about. Your feelings must go away.

You said that discipline eats motivation for breakfast. And discipline is good too. But without a clear headspace, there's no discipline. If you have to ask how to get motivated, to go to the gym, you don't need to be going to the gym. You don't want it enough. When you're sick and tired of looking and feeling like, you'll show up, I'll see you there because you're going to look in the mirror and you're going to be like that. You're going to want to be in the gym. And if you're going to make this a lifestyle, you have to lower the barriers, make the gym cheaper, closer,

training partners, exercises you like. And you have to raise the impetus, goals, inspiration, and goddamn real desire to be there. The people that have no problem showing up to the gym are the people that want to be there. And no amount of Rocky Balboa movies are going to get you to that place. A lot of that is also built with the experience of having the gym

be a place where you get results by pushing yourself, winning little mini challenges, and having fun with it. Going to the gym, but muscular training in the gym, is one of the only pursuits in life where during the act of doing the thing, you see the future progress of where you will be if you keep doing the thing.

Clean your room. Organize your life. Like, get a routine. Get up every day at the same time. Go to bed at the same time. Establish disciplined habits. Sit down and open the calendar and think, okay, well, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to design a week of days that I would really like to have.

So what that would mean is that you would schedule. things that you would consider meaningful and productive, you know, on a daily basis, so that you feel that your life is justified by having a day like that, and also to schedule enough of your responsibility so that you make progress day by day instead of falling farther behind. And I'm telling you, you don't need to determine, I'm telling you it's worth it. Oh, yeah. I'm telling you it is worth it.

And you know what? You actually know it's worth it. That's why you're asking this question. You know it's worth it. You know it's worth it to have discipline, but you think there's an easier way. You think that it's something that people have. You think that when Jocko's alarm clock goes off, it's like, oh, just like my father taught me, I rise and I shine. You know, like, no.

It's like the pillow feels soft and comfortable. And the alarm clock is banging on my head and I don't like it. But you know what? I know it's worth it to get up and get after it. I know it's worth it. And you know it's worth it. The ultimate lesson here is this. Everybody's on their own path.

And I don't want to judge someone for wanting to be free and easy. I just want you to understand that there's a cost to that. And the cost that you're going to have to that isn't going to come until later. Most people focus on that version of themselves they want to become and actually be willing to become it. And that's what's ultimately going to create the fulfillment that you're looking for. It's not going to be your cold plunge. It's not going to be your morning routine. It's going to be the work that you do to become that version of yourself that is the exact version that you know you're supposed to become and then being proud of it.

That's what's going to create the fulfillment that you're searching for. A friendly reminder that in three generations, everyone who knew us will be dead, including the people whose opinions stopped you from doing what you wanted all along. Imagine that someone you know achieves every dream and hits every goal they have. Years later, they get old and die. Two years after that, how much do you care? About as much as everyone else will, if you accomplish your goals and dreams, do it for you. You have to take control.

You've got to do something to get control of your brain, of your mind. You've got to check yourself. I don't care how you do it. it. I don't care if you set an alarm every 45 minutes so you can audit your thoughts, so you can audit what is influencing you, so you can control what's influencing you, control the things you think about. You can actually control how you feel. You can control what you think, and you can definitely control what you do. Do not be a slave to influence. You've got to be the master of your mind. You've got to control your mind. You've got to exercise mind.

Control. That means you got to pay attention and be aware all day. That's what you got to do. So go execute. So this guy just passed me. He said, Gaginz, some of you just don't understand. Some of you've been average for so damn long, you don't know what it is to do hard work. But there's a lot of you out there who want to be much more than average, but just don't know how to do it every single day to grind. You can find someone to oil those gears up. I have to ask this guy. I got to I have to understand, like, why he works like that. Right.

So after games, I'm like, hey, Kobe, like, why were you in a gym for so long? He's like, because I saw you come in. And I wanted you to know that it doesn't matter how hard you work, that I'm willing to work harder than you. Life was unfair. Boxing was around to make it fair. And I tell you how. On one given night, if you worked hard enough, if you dream big enough, if you were tough enough and you made yourself tough enough, and you made yourself tough enough,

you sacrificed enough, you became polished and savvy enough and technically equipped to do things that you had, and you learned those things, and you just worked yourself to the bone. No matter where you came from, no matter what part of the world, no matter who your parents were,

no matter what your poverty level may have been, may not have been. No matter what you had, what you didn't have. No matter what people had told you, didn't tell you, all of that. If you made yourself, and took advantage of that opportunity

and got yourself ready. And you were ready to behave like a champion. You could get in that ring on one given night and make the world fair. Those who have swords and know how to use them, but keep them sheathed, will inherit the world. One of the things I tell young men, well, and young women as well,

but the young men really need to hear this more, I think, is that you should be a monster. You know, because everyone says, well, you should be harmless, virtuous. You shouldn't do anyone any harm. You should sheath your crime. competitive instinct. You shouldn't try to win. You know, you don't want to be too aggressive. You don't want to be too assertive. You want to take a back seat and all of that. It's like, no.

We are overcoming the suffering. We are not running away from the suffering. You are overcoming it. You go through it until you have become so strong. Your body becomes so strong. Your mind has become so strong that it doesn't matter after words anymore. You feel it, but it's not the same. like you felt before. People need to suffer. It is an actual requirement of life. And it's the fiber, the DNA of love. Real love, true love, and perpetuity can't exist without suffering. It's impossible. We don't appreciate it. Yeah, you have to have suffering. And suffering doesn't have to be looked at it in a negative thing. It could be looked at it's a beautiful thing. It's where real love comes out of. Yeah. You know, all my suffering, there was real love in there. Everyone around me, just in

this recovery or in a loss I may have had from an uncle or a grandparent or whatever, you know, there's, there's real love that comes in that suffering, you know, even though it can be a lonely experience. I mean, I look at it that way and not as a negative, terrible thing because it's just temporary. Be formless, shapeless, like water. Now, you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle, you put in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. And water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.

Every morning, every day of our lives, we have choices to make. You have the choice to stay in bed to say, forget it, I'm not going to work out today, or forget it, I'm not going to work hard today. You always have a choice every single day of your life. So it's a very different video Because yesterday, I made the choice to get up early and run, but today's another day. Today's another day, and I'm faced with another choice to make. So I'm making the choice again to put my shoes on early in the morning and get after it again. So make the right decision. There is no excuse for not being the hardest worker.

Yeah, someone might be bigger, stronger, faster, quicker, younger, whatever else. But there is no excuse to not be the hardest. worker there. And when you believe that you had the ability to do something, that the life that you're living right now is going down this direction, you hate where it is. There is nothing else to do but to change direction. A belief that I cannot go that way anymore. I gotta go this way. And what do you have to lose? You know the outcome if you continue the same... Why not just just commit one time in your life to something? See what happens. There are no loser in the world of passion and commitment to something. No one loses there. The losers

are the people that sit the starting line and never initiate. It's the belief that supremacy exists. There's so many examples in the Olympics, and every day we see the common man with the odds against them, overcoming what people thought could never happen. And probably he didn't even think it. But there he stands, victorious,

and a role model to all of us, like, oh my God, we want to be him. But before he was him, he was us. What got him there was an undying belief. And every drop of sweat that came out and every pain and ache and everything else was just a telltale sign that he was getting closer and closer

to that dream that we were when we were kids of being a reality. Why not believe in it? What's the other option? There is no other option. It's a life forgotten, man. If you want to be really great at something, you kind of have to be out of your mind,

but you also have to have an iron will. Yeah. You don't want to work out every day. There's going to be days you just want to eat cake and sleep. Yeah. But if you, You want to get past the guy who eats cake and sleeps.

You don't eat cake and you don't sleep. Yeah. It all starts with who you are. You know, I always tell our players, who you are is more important than what you do. How high you jump, how fast you run, because who you are is your character. And your character is an accumulation of your thoughts, your habits, and your priorities on a day-to-day basis. Because those three things determine the choices you make. And the choices you make make you who you are.

Set up a schedule and just do the work. You stick to what you put there on paper. You take your time, you make the plan, and unless you really are sick or have some type of higher excuse, you just do what you have committed to. So another year is coming gone. and a lot of us are the same place we were last year. We sleep one-third of our lives,

and we think we can take days off. We think we had the right to sit back and give ourselves options on which way we're going to go in life. Am I going to run today? Am I going to work out today? Well, it's Christmas. It's New Year's. It's my birthday.

Do you think time that is Christmas, that it's New Year's, that's your birthday? You give me something to me, options. Let me tell you one thing. Time is running out. You keep on sitting around wondering what they want to do. You're just going to run out of time. So make sure you do one thing. Stop falling the crowd. You are one decision away from changing. It's a decision away. You're one decision away from changing your life. I hope you make that decision tonight. And I hope you make that decision with what you do tonight. Fear is a mile wide and an inch deep. And so it looks like this

ocean that you're going to step into and drown. But as soon as you step into it, you realize it was not that deep at all, and you can keep walking through it. And I just love that visual, because a lot of times when it's like we have this anxiety around this big decision we have to make, if you actually take the step and realize that it's not death, you're not going to drown immediately. There's plenty of other steps you can take from there, even if you get a little wet. I get an email the other day. This young man wants to be a ranger, but he's afraid to go to ranger school. Not because how hard the training is, but because he's afraid if he fails what people are going to say by judging them. One thing in life, this applies to everything in life.

Any time you move from being normal to trying to be exceptional, people aren't going to like that. Those normal people, it makes them feel like they're going to judge you. And nowadays, it's very easy to be a coward. If I could go back, I'd tell younger me, you're going to do some. pretty great things, but you do not need to be great. All you have to do is be yourself. That will always be enough. I promise you guys, success is the loneliest road out there. It's you and your shadow at the end because it's too far. When people don't understand you anymore, you're in that spot of obsession and drive. Where people are like, what's wrong with this guy? You will never

understand what is wrong with me. And that's why I'm so glad you don't, because I'm in the right spot. go higher, you go even more alone. Why? Because nobody is willing anymore to invest their energy in going higher. Because it's becoming more difficult. Along this way, the higher you want to go, the more likely you're gonna walk alone. And how you become a better person,

how you gain mental toughness, how you become the person you want to be, is constantly facing the things that you don't want to face. If you constantly run up, away from things that you don't want to face, how is their growth? How is their mental toughness? The truth is, whatever game you play in life, sometimes you're going to lose a point, a match, a season, a job. It's a roller coaster with many ups and downs. And it's natural when you're down to doubt yourself and to feel sorry for yourself. And by the way, your

opponents have self-doubt too. Don't ever forget that. But negative energy is what wasted energy. You want to become a master at overcoming hard moments. That is, to me, the sign of a champion. The best in the world are not the best because they win every point. It's because they know they lose again and again and have learned how to deal with it. You accept it, cry it out if you need to, and then force a smile. You want to be good? You really don't have a lot of choices. Because it takes what you have to do to be successful. So you have to make it. You have to make choices and decisions to have the discipline and focus to the process of what you need to do to accomplish your goals. For the first 20-some years in my life, it was just darkness. But if you are able to get up

every morning, have no passion, no drive, no motivation, and still get up with that kind of fire, you will be successful in life. I guarantee you that. So if you have a regular job job, like an office job. You will pretend to be a whole different person for eight hours a day, every day of your life that you're there. Yeah. That is a lot of time. Yeah.

And when you get out of all that, there's not much you left. Whatever could have been you never grew because whatever could have been you was stifled by fluorescent lights and a monitor. There's 44 degrees and it's nice and rainy y'all saw. But no one cares about that. It's not about the rain. for the rain represents life was always giving you a test

trying to give you a way out trying to give you an excuse not to show up this is my excuse today but guess what you gotta have the mentality to show up every day of your life no matter what life does at you it's our responsibility to show up to the coliseum of life

prepared for battle Effort, dedication, work hard, because the talent is not enough anymore. And if you're not dedicated 100%, you're not going to reach the level that you want. Through this, through discipline, through self-discipline, through repetition, through tons of repetition, the same thing that you don't want to do. And that's the key thing. Through repetition, the things you don't want to do, you develop mental, like an armor for your mind. Start to armor your mind.

okay, we suffer, we suffer every day. It's what we do. We do stuff that sucks every day. So then when the suck stuff comes, you're ready for.