EverydaySpy Podcast - The Self-Discipline Lie

Episode Date: January 25, 2022

Human nature drives you whether you like it or not. And the secret sauce to success comes when you stop fighting nature and learn to make it work for you instead. In this episode, Andrew shares a secret known only to Tier 1 operators, athletes, and soldiers; a secret that you can use to master your everyday life to win massive success. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My name is Andrew Bustamante, and this is everyday espionage. So this week I had the opportunity to be a guest on a podcast with a former Army Ranger who specializes in talking to athletes, specifically Tier 1 athletes, athletes who do Brazilian jiu-jitsu or martial arts that come from the military world. And it was a really cool podcast for a lot of reasons. One, because I really let my hair down when I talk to former military. I know if you've been listening to me for a while, if you follow me online, then I oftentimes try to be very professional and very proper because I'm former CIA. And you don't get very far being kind of a brazen, you know, jerk.

And when you talk to people through CIA and when you're trying to make spies, it doesn't really work well to cuss at people and do all the garbage that you see Tony Robbins do. And he tries to shock all people with cuss words. But when you talk to military, a lot of times it's really easy to slip back into that really harsh language because it's a dialogue that we use with each other that we all understand. So it was really fun to kind of put back on that camouflage, service-oriented kind of colorful language. But it was also fun because I spent about two hours talking on that podcast. And I often get feedback from you about asking me why my podcast is so short. why are my episodes just nine minutes or 12 minutes or 20 minutes long? And a big part of it's because I'm trying to give you simple, actionable skills, knowledge, tactics that you can use right away.

This isn't supposed to be a podcast designed to entertain. It's supposed to be a podcast designed to teach and equip you with tactical practical solutions. But the podcast that I was on earlier this week is not that kind of podcast. It's really just meant to be an entertaining conversation between me and another tier one brother where you get to sit and listen and learn with both of us in a conversation. So that podcast was called the Tier 1 athlete podcast. I'm going to talk a little bit about it today. And I'm going to give you the information you need to find our episode because there was

so much cool stuff in that episode. But one specific nugget came up that I really wanted to share with you today. And that nugget is one that has led me. has brought me incredible success, and it continues to bring success to all successful people, but it's often misunderstood. And that power, that skill, that tactic is really just something as simple as consistency. Consistency is the ability to do something over and over again, right? Doing it consistently, meaning in terms of the time, consistent in terms of the quality,

consistent in terms of the perseverance, being able to keep doing something, whether you like it or don't like it, whether it's easy or hard, whether you feel good or don't feel good, that's what consistency is. Now, oftentimes people mistake consistency with discipline. We talk about discipline, and there's lots of influencers out there who love to talk about, you know, the importance of self-discipline and they show pictures of themselves and they pictures of their watches at four o'clock or five o'clock in the morning. Hoorah, look at me, I'm so awesome because I'm up every morning at 5 a.m. That is not actually helpful to anybody. I get it that that it's a great marketing tactic for them to promote themselves. But the truth is that when you force yourself to do something

that isn't natural, then you actually are working against human nature. You're working against your best chances of success because what you're doing is you're forcing yourself to do something that isn't natural and it's human nature to do what is natural. Discipline is not natural, but consistency is natural. Just think about something as simple as going to the bathroom. Everybody goes to the bathroom every day. You go to the bathroom every day, but do you go at the exact same time? No.

You might go at about the same time. You might pee two or three times a day. You might hit the bathroom, you know, for some other reason later on in the day or maybe in the morning. Who knows? But the point is, you do it every day. not at the same time every day. You don't force your body to have a bowel movement. You don't force your body to urinate.

You don't force yourself to drink a certain amount of water by a certain time so that you can set a clock to when you're going to go to the bathroom. The same thing with eating. You eat every day. Most people eat multiple times every day. But do you eat at the exact same time? No, you don't. You don't want to go to sleep at the same time.

You don't want to wake up at the same time. You don't want to do the exact same thing at work over and over again. don't want to do those things, and if you force yourself to do them, then we have been taught by culture that doesn't understand the difference between discipline and consistency. We've been taught to think that discipline is some magic power that gives you more success. I'm telling you right now, discipline is not the power. Discipline is the marketing lie. What's really powerful is consistency.

If you go to the gym or if you set a New Year's resolution to lose weight, to exercise, more to eat healthier, you're probably feeling, statistically speaking, you're probably at a place now where that New Year's resolution is hard. You maybe have even missed a day or two. As we approach February, 80% of all New Year's resolutions fail by the second week of February. Think about that, because most New Year's resolutions rely on what? Discipline. You think that it's not enough to just go to the gym. You have to go to the gym every morning at 7 o'clock before work. It's not enough to just eat healthier, you have to put yourself on a diet, eat specific foods, eat a certain amount of calories. These are elements of a culture that has forced discipline when instead it should have

been focused on consistency, eating a consistently healthy diet, exercising a consistent amount of days in a week. Totally different ideas, easily confused for one another. CIA teaches us, teaches its field officers, to be consistent to consistently defend our cover. to consistently carry out daily activities, to consistently execute security practices, to consistently practice language, to consistently use pneumonic devices to make memory hooks that allow us to remember things for a long period of time. They teach us to do these things consistently. They don't put us on a disciplined regimen to do them.

Because the more you gravitate towards discipline, the more you increase the probabilities that you're going to fail, the more that you increase your access to consistent practices, the more you increase the probabilities of success. So whether you're talking about how you handle your business or how you handle customer service, whether you're talking about how you handle your studies and when you do your homework, when you focus on being consistent, doing an hour of homework every day. Who cares if you do that homework at 8 o'clock at night or 1 o'clock in the afternoon or 10.30 in the morning?

Who cares? If you do an hour of it every day, then you're going to have the success you're looking for. But if you force yourself to do your homework every night at 630 after the college day is over, before you go out with your friends, guess what's going to happen? Right? You're limiting your opportunities for consistency. Forcing yourself to do something disciplined, discipline is not part of human nature, and every day you're going to struggle at the exact same time in the exact same way because your friends are going to want to go out.

Or your date is going to go out. Or you're going to have had a stressful day and you yourself alone are going to want to go out. there's always some kind of temptation that is working against discipline. But consistency is what gives you the ability to essentially forgive yourself or give yourself permission throughout the day to have natural highs and lows. I go to the gym almost every day. I go to the gym a solid five days a week. I never go at the same time.

Sometimes I'll go at 10 a.m., sometimes it's 1 p.m., sometimes it's 4 p.m. my favorite time in general to exercise is between 1 o'clock and 4 o'clock. Does that mean I do it every day? No, sometimes my kids have an appointment. Sometimes I don't feel up to it. Sometimes whatever. Sometimes I have a work meeting. There's always something, but guess what?

When I wake up in the morning, I'm not stressing out about getting into the gym at 1 o'clock. Instead, I'm thinking, I'm getting excited, I'm looking forward to my hour at the gym whenever it comes today. because even if it's 6 o'clock or 7 o'clock, if I haven't gotten to the gym, I've given myself permission to miss the 1 o'clock to 3 o'clock window, so I just go at 6 o'clock or I go at 8 o'clock when everybody goes to bed. It doesn't matter, right? Sometimes I'll miss a day because it's just a rough day. It doesn't really work. I don't feel like a failure.

I just missed it that day. I can either do it to a day the next day or I can work on a weekend that I otherwise wouldn't have worked out. Consistency is the magical sauce that brings you success. It's so powerful. I've included it in my, the very first e-book I ever wrote, the thing that started Everyday Spy, my e-book called Everyday Espionage Winning in the Workplace. You can buy it on my website. You can find reviews for it online. But inside this e-book winning in the workplace, I teach people four C's, four powerful Cs that CIA uses to unlock the potential on every one of its officers.

Guess what the third C is? The third C is consistency. So on this podcast, with my ranger buddy, we're exploring this idea of consistency versus discipline. And even though he knows it, even though he's lived it his whole life, even though he sees it play out every day as he continues to train tier one operators in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, he self-admits that my commentary, my point of view, is hitting him in the face, right, reminding him of his own mistakes as it's, as he himself in everyday life has slipped into this cultural narrative of discipline. So what I want you to do is two things. I want you to erase the idea that self-discipline is your problem. I want to erase the idea that you think self-discipline

is going to help you in any way. Self-discipline is not the problem. Self-discipline is just a marketing term that's been forced on you from the time you were a kid. If you were anything like me, my stepdad used to tell me I wasn't disciplined all the time. Look at me now, dad. I still am not disciplined, but how was I successful? Because of consistency. All right? So the same thing is true for you. Abandon the idea that you suck at discipline. Just get that out of your head because it's not true. You could be awesome at consistency you've just never actually tried. All right? So what I want you to do, first, clear the air, get yourself, hit the reset button, whether it's for the new year or for the rest of your life. I don't care. It's up to you. Stop thinking you're bad at self-discipline.

number two i want you to go to everyday spy dot com forward slash self everyday dot com forward slash self s e l f and i have there a primer that absolutely destroys what self discipline the lie of self discipline and replaces it with tangible facts about willpower consistency success energy it's all there one giant write-up that i created this year because this is a such a problem in our everyday life. This lie of self-discipline hold so many people back that I just want to, I want to shatter it, I want to destroy it, I want to erase it from your memory banks. So head over to everyday spy.com forward slash self-s-E-L-F and download that free report. So you can get the exact blueprint for how CA officers use willpower to build consistency

and how we get rid of self-discipline, how we keep self-discipline from being a factor that holds us down. And then the third thing I want you to do is I want you to look up the Tier 1 athlete podcast. Tier 1 athlete podcast. You'll find it on Spotify. You'll find it on iTunes. You'll find it all over the place. You'll even find it online if you just look it up. But if you do a quick Google search or a Yahoo search or a duck, duck go search, look up the Tier 1 athlete podcast with Andrew Bustamante. You'll find our episode there. Be warned, I do not use kind language. It is not the kind of thing you want to listen to with your kids. And be ready because it's a long episode, right?

We talk for like two hours. So if you ever want to see what it's like, when I open the floodgates, when I start to cuss, when I let my emotions get really hot about all the things that I see wrong with how business and marketing and formal education lie to us, then you want to head over to the Tier 1 Athlete podcast. The interview I just completed this week. I think it just went live actually on Friday, the 8th. I think that's one, or Friday the 21st. So take a look, January 21st, 2002, unbelievable,

January 21st, 2022, the Tier 1 athlete podcast, Andrew Bustamante is the guest, and you'll get everything that I talk about with my buddy Ray, and you'll get a chance to really see Ray's reaction as the two of us, you know, kind of blow the roof off of what we always knew was true about consistency and the lie of self-discipline. That's all I have for you today. That's what I want to take. I mean, it seems like it's a monstrous goal, right? Those three things.

Again, just to recap, the first thing I want you to do is take the word self-discipline out of that secret guilty pouch that you carry with you everywhere. You do not have a lack of self-discipline. Discipline is not the solution to your problems. Get that out of your head. It's a lie. It's a scheme to get you to spend money on doing something that will never work. So don't worry about discipline.

Focus on consistency and said. That's step one. Step two, head over to everydayspy.com forward slash self-s-E-L-F and download my free report on exactly how to overcome self-discipline and focus instead on willpower. And willpower is the key to consistency. Pull that download down. Get it. It's yours.

I'm happy for you to have it. I'm happy for you to dominate the rest of this year in your life, understanding that secret. And then step three, go ahead and do a quick search. Head over to the Tier 1 athlete podcast. Listen to my interview with Ray. and take anything you want to away with that, but please don't let your kids listen. I use some really nasty language that I don't want my kids to hear, and I sure as heck don't want your kids to hear it either.

Folks, that's all I have. Thank you for listening today. Thank you for letting me get all this off my chest because it's just that important to me, and I can't wait to talk to you soon. When you understand the power of willpower, when you understand the power of consistency and how consistency brings you success, you will be able to get rid of the lie of self-discipline. and when you can do that, you will know what it's like to experience everyday espionage. Everyday espionage is dedicated to one thing, educating everyday people.

I know that not everyone will listen, but those who listen will learn. If you learned something new today, click subscribe, review, and share the podcast with a friend. Find me on social media at Everyday Spy or on my website, Everydayspy.com. If you are up for a special challenge, visit Everydayspy.com forward slash operations and join me for an authentic spy training mission. And above all else, remember that knowledge is freedom.