Working Towards Our Purpose

Welcome to episode 60 of Working towards our Purpose. Thank you

for being here. In today's episode, we are going to talk

about discipline. But before we get into that, we're

going to have our normal check in with ourselves.

So take a moment and think or check in with yourself

with your thoughts. How are you treating yourself? How are you talking to yourself this

morning? Yeah,

for me, I think I little bit

mixed. I feel a little bit good

and bad, if that makes sense. Yesterday I had a pretty

good day. I was on my

friend's inaugural podcast and that was

pretty cool. It's a cool experience to be interviewed. I haven't

done that in a while, so that was kind of cool. And definitely

I'll. We'll let you know when that comes out so you could support my friend

Young Lee and got into

some writing yesterday, feeling pretty good about some writing. So I felt good about

that and then kind of woke up. Not, I don't know,

just not. It was freezing this morning, went for a cold run.

Yeah. Just as I was planning for the episode, feeling a little bit of self

doubt and

sort of combating that and then also thinking about yesterday

and yeah, I think it's okay to be both. I think

always sort of battling that self doubt and

yeah, today is not an exception. So I think

sometimes it takes discipline to realize that

it's is sort of an old ingrained pattern, a

self belief that is sort of making you

feel that way is making me feel that way. So you know,

you got to kind of push through it sometimes and recognize that

it's not a personality trait, it's just kind of a way you feel.

So that is a long answer to how I'm feeling today.

But sometimes that's what you need. So yeah, today's episode we're talking about

discipline and I think this kind of comes

as a follow up to the, to the past few episodes where we were talking

about self love and being kind to yourself. And I think

sometimes people can think that if you're

being kind to yourself, then you won't get anything done

because you need to be disciplined and hard on yourself.

So I kind of wanted to break that down today and to talk about that.

So first off, like, what does discipline mean? Like what is discipline?

I think there's like two different ways you can think about

discipline. One of them being like

scolding like a child for doing something wrong. Right. Like I think

if you ask some parents, like hitting a

child is a form of discipline, maybe not socially accepted anymore.

Punishing, yelling, like putting a Child in timeout is a form

of discipline. Some people feel that that's necessary to

show a kid right from wrong. I'm not a parent, so I guess I can't

really speak to that topic too much, although I do have my beliefs.

But that's like one form of discipline. Like, you

know, like, being hard on yourself and being mean.

That, I don't agree with that necessarily.

The other sort of discipline that I'm thinking of is

being consistent, showing up, showing up no matter how

you feel, making sure that, like,

you're putting in effort and,

yeah, like, being consistent. So I think that one

of them is sort of negative, and one of them is a lot more positive.

And to me, I think that

discipline can be a good thing and it

also can be a bad thing. So, yeah, I think there's

two differences there. I'm not saying that any of them are wrong,

I guess, inherently, but I do always tend to

focus more on the positive thing instead of the negative thing.

So, that being said, I think in the discussion today of

discipline, I think I want to talk more about how can we

show up for ourselves and how can we be

consistent even if we don't feel good? And.

And, yeah, so. So that. That's kind of the context of discipline.

I also want to talk about how

discipline, like, it's kind of nuanced, I think.

I think when I was younger, I

thought that I had to have discipline for everything.

I think that, like, when you're in school, you know, there's always teachers telling you,

like, you have to be disciplined. You have to study, you have to work hard

at every subject at math, English, whatever it is, because that's what you have to

do to get good grades. That's what you have to do to pass

go to college. You got to be disciplined in your major, and then you get

into the workforce, and you got to be disciplined. And from, you know, to your

boss or whatever it is that you're doing at work.

And, yeah, it's just sort of this blanket, like, you have to be disciplined for

everything. And another thing that, like,

you know, comes up if you're not in, like, the corporate setting.

Entrepreneurialism is definitely. There's a lot of

people yelling at you online saying, you need to do this.

You need to wake up at 5. You need to, you know, do

these 10 different things every single day. You know, in the

fitness space, there's. There's. You have to work out every day.

You have to do this every day. You have to be disciplined. Um, so, yeah,

there's just a lot of people yelling at you to do something, like,

regimented in order to, like, be successful. And

I think, although those are.

Could be good things, I think we have to think about, like, how we're

applying discipline and do we

need to be disciplined in everything? And I don't think that we do.

I think that not a lot of times

in my past did I ever think about, like, why am

I being disciplined for something? And when

it came to, like, engineering school, it was. I

didn't want to fail, so I was disciplined and I, you

know, got through it. And it seemed extremely difficult at the time, and I

did not like it very much. It. There's parts of it I liked, but

a lot of it was really hard, and I wouldn't want to do it again.

So thinking about, like, how do we apply discipline?

And basically what I'm getting at is I think it's a myth to have to

apply discipline to everything. I think some kids aren't good

at math, and they shouldn't have to be disciplined to

excel at math when it's just not what they're into. And,

you know, I guess you got to get through school at some point, but.

But, you know, once you become an adult and you're in the adult world

and you get to decide what you want to do with your life, and you

get to choose how you spend your time and where you want to put your

work, I think that we don't really need to be

disciplined in every aspect and really, like,

finding the thing that we want to be disciplined is kind of like

what I've been doing. And. Let me talk more specifically. I feel like I'm getting

a little too abstract here. Let me. Let me talk about my experience,

because that's what I know. So, yeah, school

didn't feel good for me. Once I got to the engineering world, it didn't

feel good for me. I tried to be disciplined at first and, like,

do really well and, you know, stay late, and I. And

I worked more than eight hours a day, and I came in on weekends sometimes,

and it never paid off for me. And I never

enjoyed it. Like, I never. It never felt

good. So eventually I realized, like,

engineering wasn't for me. So it made sense that I, you know, didn't want to

be disciplined for that. But then once I got

into leaving that engineering

world and I had a business, I then

became disciplined with myself on business stuff, and I started

listening to, like, everybody online who talks about business

and who tells you you should be doing this. And you should be doing that.

And I was very all over the place with what I did because I didn't.

I didn't really have a direction. I didn't think about,

like, what I was doing. I was only listening to

what looked like successful people who had a business

say I should do so. So I was very confused. I did a

lot of things that didn't make sense. I put a lot of time into things

that I really didn't need to be. And

eventually I found out that that business wasn't right for me and the business

that I created wasn't right for me. So

now I finally feel like I have something

to where I should be disciplined in, to where I want to be disciplined in.

And that for me is huge. And

so before I get into that, before I get into, like, explaining that, I

want to give this very simple analogy that maybe you've heard

before. But it's,

you know, if there's a plane that's flying from the east coast to the west

coast, if it picks a direction to

get to la, say from Hartford, and just flies in that direction

and doesn't correct course the whole way, there's obviously

tons of wins. And, you know, even if you set

perfect, the perfect angle from Hartford to la,

you would be so far off course because they didn't course correct at all.

But if you course correct along the way, which is

what planes do, they're always course correcting because of different winds and,

you know, stuff I don't understand because it needs

to constantly see where it's at and readjust. I feel like a lot of times,

you know, with thinking about what we want to do,

we make a decision one time and

just like set our sights on it and we're like, yeah, we're going to do

that. You know, I was in high school, I decided I wanted to be an

engineer for, you know, reasons that weren't very

good, mostly outside influences. And

I closed my eyes and I went through engineering school and then I worked in

engineering for six years. So I spent 10 years of my life doing this thing

that I didn't know really why I

was doing it. I didn't really spend a whole lot of time thinking about

that decision or making that decision. So it makes

sense that it kind of didn't really work out. And I don't say that in

a regretful way, but I say that in a way

of, like, thinking about what we're doing.

And so if we bring this back to discipline, hopefully this makes

sense and you're following Me, if you bring back to discipline, like, we can't just

apply discipline, blanket statement to

everything because we're going to end up far off course. But if

we really hone in on something and find something that we want to be

disciplined for now, we can apply discipline and like

multiply our success. We could double down on what we're doing

because we feel like really confident about that being the

right choice. And I think that that's the thing that

gets missed a lot when we talk about discipline. It's

do we feel like we're doing something that rings true to us

and if it is, then we can be disciplined. But

anything else, I feel like, you know, it doesn't make sense to be

disciplined. So, yeah,

getting back to the story of like me now

and applying discipline, I feel like this podcast

is something that feels true to me in this moment and

it feels like something that I want to work really hard at. And

it has been something that I've done that with. I have worked really hard at

it and I am proud of like, what I've been able to

build. You know, when we're on episode 60, that's, that's, that's a cool number.

It's, it's, you know, I've done it for a while. I'm doing two episodes a

week. We're on YouTube substack. Like, I, I'm really proud of the system that

I've built to be able to spread the

podcast out and to see growth. And I've seen growth on YouTube

and it's been cool to really

show up for myself in this way and to be disciplined and not in a

negative, harsh, self critical way, but in a,

hey, maybe you don't feel as good as you need to today, but we're

gonna show up anyway way if that makes sense. So there's a

difference. One of them is self supporting and one of them is

like tearing yourself down. So

hopefully that makes sense and hopefully that like

strikes a chord because it, because it really does for me. And I'm still trying

to figure out how to articulate that well. But that's,

that's the best that I have right now. And,

and yeah, that, that brings me to this quote in this book here, the Book

of Dharma. I've talked about it before by Simon Haas.

One of the four principles of Dharma is discipline.

And when I first got to that, I was like, discipline. Ooh. I don't know

if I like, agree with that. I don't know if I like that. But then

when I read through the chapter, I was like, oh, okay.

It really, like, helped me synthesize

my experience of discipline and to be able to articulate it in a

way now to where I see discipline not as a

beating of yourself up, but as a supporting of yourself.

And there's just a quote in here that I'm going to read that I think

really helped define discipline. And

this is how the quote goes again from the Book of Dharma.

Discipline is about subjecting ourselves willingly to fire.

However, fire doesn't mean pressure exerted on us

by others against our will. Rather, it means the

fire of passion that burns in the inner chamber of our being.

So to me, again, it's not the

we're not being disciplined by the outside pressures of other people,

but by the thing that we feel true to as our

calling as, you know, anything in the moment that we feel, like,

strongly about. So, yeah, that's just.

I think that that really rang true for me. And

that brings us to the next section of this episode, I think. So

how do you know, like, what you should be

disciplined in? How do you know the thing?

Should you be disciplined in it or should you not? And I think you can

ask yourself one question. Is whatever

it is the thing that you're thinking about being disciplined in, who are you doing

it for? And not necessarily who are you doing it for,

but are you doing it for the right reasons? And what I mean by

that is like, yeah, who are you doing it for? Who are you doing it

for? Sorry, I had a weird noise in my voice there.

So, yeah, the one question is, are you doing it for the right

reasons? And what I mean by that is, who are you doing it

for? Are you doing it for someone else? Are you doing it for prestige?

Are you doing it for money or

maybe a title? Or are you doing it from

something that comes from within you and something that you feel is true?

And I think if you can

say confidently that, like, I believe this to be true and this is

what I want, then, yeah, be disciplined.

But if it's a no, then you

don't need to be disciplined. And if it's a maybe, I would

also say don't be disciplined. Because I think

it's not until you figure out that thing for sure

that you want to be disciplined. Because, again, you don't want to be on that

airplane, set your sights and not think about it. You want to

know that you're confident in doing this thing

before you hunker down and work hard and,

you know, ignore the distractions and really be

disciplined. With yourself. And yeah, I

think, like, I don't know, I think if I, if I thought about that

in my younger years, it would have been. I would have been in a much

different spot. And again, not to say that in, like, a regretful way, I needed

to learn all the experiences that I had, but I

think if I were to, like, tell somebody,

you know, at a younger age who was thinking about,

like, going to school or, you know, taking a job or

starting a business or starting a YouTube channel, I think that, like, that's

the thing. Like, make sure that, like, it's this thing that's like a fire in

you and then be as

disciplined as you want. But anything else is kind

of just a distraction, really. And. Yeah,

I don't know. Let me, let me know what you think about that. Let me,

let me know in the comments. I feel like for me,

it's sort of like eye opening and

like black, black and white. I don't know if I want to say that,

but it's obvious to me now that this thing that I'm doing, the

podcast, the working towards a purpose, like, this is the thing I should be disciplined

on. And now with the clearness of understanding of that,

I can look back at everything else and be like, yeah, I didn't really need

to work that hard at any of that other stuff. And

yeah, that's, that's, that's sort of what

I want to say about it. So, you know, I do feel

like I could articulate this idea a little bit better. But that's what I got

for you today. And let me know what you think of it. Go to YouTube,

you can leave a comment. And

yeah, I will see you in another

episode real soon. Thank you for listening as always. You, you can

go to workingtowardsourpurpose.com to leave a feedback

form if you want to tell me what you think about discipline. And

you can also get some Working Towards Our Purpose merch. And you can follow Working

Towards Our Purpose on substack for some more reading and

writing about purpose. So thank you for listening and I'll

see you in another episode real soon. Take care.

Holy.