Book Review: Discipline Equals Freedom: Field Manual
Book: Discipline Equals Freedom: Field Manual
Pages: 199
Copyright: October 1, 2017
Rating out 3.5 of 5
Buy or Rent: Get it from the Library.
Summary:
The author, Jocko Willink, a retired 20 year Navy SEAL officer, details the importance of discipline. Jocko argues that discipline is a foundational quality and the basis and the root of all good qualities.
Discipline Equals Freedom: Field Manual is laid out with two sections: 1) Thoughts and 2) Actions. The discussion surrounding discipline is focused on your physical and mental health.
From my perspective, there are a few key themes:
Discipline is all on you - When you control your self-talk, take action, and continue to improve, you are developing and using your discipline.
Choice = Discipline
Don't fade or make even one excuse. Adopt to use discipline to move forward. Use your Mind for Discipline.
My 3 Take-Aways:
1. Don't give in just once while exercising - always do something - I will procrastinate on procrastinating until tomorrow
2. Create a big enough emotional and logical why for my 12-week goals - that way, I can rely on both when one fails
3. Identify my weaknesses in relationships, roles and identify actions or systems to allow me to improve on all of them.
Overall:
This is an easy read, and I recommend this for anyone who responses to no-nonsense recommendations and wants to improve their self-management. The theme is "This is all on you."
Break Through Perceived Limitations
We all face limitations; are they real or perceived?
The majority of limitations we face or think we face are perceived, not real.
Merriam-Webster defines limitations as “1 : an act or instance of limiting. 2: the quality or state of being limited. 3: something that limits: restraint. 4: a certain period limited by statute after which actions, suits, or prosecutions cannot be brought in the courts.
Even physical limitations can be perceived.
When scientists study physical exhaustion, they find that exhaustion occurs not when the body faces a hard limitation like glycogen depletion but rather when the person experiences the maximum level of perceived effort they are willing to tolerate. The scientists argue that perceived effort tolerance’s psychological limit is reached before the true physical limit is reached. Read more about this in Fitzgerald Matt, How Bad Do You Want It?
Okay, we encounter a limitation; how do we determine if it is real or perceived? Step back and objectively ask these five questions:
· Have I faced this limitation before?
· If so, how did I handle it?
· If I didn’t break through it, what could I have done differently?
· Have a successfully navigated a similar limitation before and pushed through?
· Here is how I moved through other limitations before; how can I use what I learned from that experience?
Get Your Self-Confidence where it needs to be.
Now we have put the limitation in the proper perspective. We need to get our confidence and self-worth in an excellent place to be then able to tackle it.
Do you have the proper confidence or self-worth? This is critical. If you constantly compare yourself to others and if losing, or backing down to limitations, makes you feel worthless as a person, it should be clear why this is damaging to your mental health.
It would be best if you worked diligently to maintain a positive view of your self-worth. Remember, self-worth is 100% internal; and 100% in your control. Own your self-worth.
Let’s attack the limitation.
You’ve got your self-worth on a great track, now what?
Attack the limitation with these Five steps made popular by Hugh Culver:
1) Become crystal clear about the challenge (we already did this!)
2) Determine the best possible solution,
3) Adopt a belief that you will succeed,
4) Take action and pay attention to evidence of your success, and
5) Repeat.
You’ve tried everything – time to break the rules if the rules don’t work for you.
Don’t always follow conventional thinking when there is a better way. Look at things from a different perspective, attack them from the opposite side. Flip your attack.
It may be time to bring in Discipline and Persistence.
Persistence is essential because success is rarely imparted on the first attempt. One of the keys to successfully executing the complexities of anything is a devotion to the principle of persistence.
Take your actions and break them down using systems thinking. Focus on creating a process that generates a hammer that will break down your limitation over time. Focusing on executing the strategy vs. ruminating on the limitation will provide you the willpower, discipline, and energy to move forward.
In the end, only you can push through, so do it. But as Tony Robbins puts it, “here’s the truth: the ultimate thing that stops most of us from making significant progress in our lives is not somebody else’s limitations, but rather our limiting perceptions or beliefs.”
You and only you can place limitations on your progress - you completely control your trajectory.
In the end, no one can do the job of you better than you can! Break down those limitations.
What limitations have you broken through? What techniques were successful for you? Let us know in the comments below.