In a world of complete freedom.

A land of endless distractions.

A society hooked on easy.

Discipline is a lost art.

Whoever has the key to open the door to a disciplined life now holds the key to becoming the best in the world at whatever they please — and rise from the crowd of sleeping zombies.

This memo will give you the keys to a disciplined life if you so please.

A systematic approach to something with such unease, I’ll distill discipline into 3 steps anyone can follow as long as you have the courage to do so.

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Step 1: Architect a disciplined life

Step 2: Cultivate willpower

Step 3: Systemize consistency

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Why Discipline Is King, And The Path To True Freedom

Think about the role of the king in the kingdom. Or in the modern world, the CEO of the company.

They provide structure to chaos. Without the King, the CEO, or the single source of structure, all else becomes untangled.

Similar to discipline as a virtue in your life.

Discipline is the rails on which true freedom sits atop of.

Freedom to truly live a life of your choosing, not that which is given to or allowed through the path of least resistance.

Freedom is born of self-discipline. No individual, no nation, can achieve or maintain liberty without self-control. The undisciplined man (or woman) is a slave to his weaknesses. — Alan Valentine

When you want to accomplish something, the vehicle of accomplishment doesn’t always come from luck or skill, but it always comes from the discipline to do what is needed, regardless of emotion or temptation to abandon.

So as long as discipline is present and you give yourself enough time, anything can be yours that you say is mine.

No man is free who is not a master of himself. — Epictetus

Discipline is freedom.

Discipline vs. Willpower

Do these 2 words mean the same to you currently?

For most, it’s a blur of something along the lines of self-control.

To see these as the same would be limiting yourself in self-mastery.

1. Discipline = Your ability to regulate and manage one's actions and behaviors in alignment with long-term objectives or values despite temptations to abandon it.
2. Willpower = the mental muscle of discipline; your ability to resist short-term temptations or impulses to maintain self-discipline; your ability to make the right decisions based on the rules set by your discipline

Discipline is the sum of your willpower, but willpower is only as useful as your life is disciplined.

If discipline is the system, willpower is the adherence.

You become disciplined, by using willpower.

You don’t use discipline to be disciplined.

Discipline is an outcome of actions based on a pre-set of rules, goals, rights & wrongs.

To say you’re self-disciplined is to say you have used your willpower to correctly make the decisions repeated relative to the goal you’ve set for yourself around the area which you’re claiming self-discipline within.

Step 1: Architect a disciplined life

The goal here is to create a life that is in complete alignment with the goals. There are 2 ways to think about a disciplined life:

1. Be, do, and have the aligned things — If your goal is to become shredded, then having workouts part of your daily life would be aligned
2. Eliminating and adding friction to unaligned things — Think about this as a metric called ‘desires resisted’. You want to craft a life where the number of times you need to resist yourself from unaligned desires is minimal. You do this by removing as many possible triggers of unaligned things from your life.

Since we’ve redefined discipline and willpower, what you're truly doing in step 1 is simply creating structure and systems that are congruent to your goals. First, what is your goal(s)?

Goals

To be disciplined you need something to be disciplined for. This is the Achilles heel of the discipline. Without a target to know if you’re progressing, stagnating, or regression, how does one know if they’re being disciplined? Or if what you’re even doing is the right thing to be focused on?

Have goals. You don’t need many but you need one, and it needs to be of some importance to you, ideally very. Side note: The bigger the goal you’re setting the more weight you must put on the importance of the goal to you.

You want goals that force long-term thinking. 1-5-10-50 years.

But whatever the goal, nothing else matters if you don’t know what the goal is at all times. (!!!)

You must never. I mean NEVER, lose sight of the goal or the system crumbles fast. In today’s world, you can lose sight of your goal for just a few hours and if the right tweet, ad, or text comes to your awareness, you may never return to that goal again.

Focus is fleeting, distractions are forever. 

We must continue to train our focus AND have an insanely great structure in place to reduce the likelihood of distraction.

This isn’t a memo on goals, so figure out what your goal is but then do this to never lose sight of them:

1. Write them down.
2. Make multiple copies of them
3. Place them in visible sight: Your office, bedroom, bathroom, car, and phone)
4. Read and reread them daily, ideally multiple times a day
5. Rehearse them in your head or aloud multiple times a day

I’m not exaggerating here either. Your goals, specifically your MOST important ones, should be the topic that consumes your mind the majority of the time. 

We become what we think about most of the time, and that’s the strangest secret. – Earl Nightingale

Note on rewards & enjoyment

You will have a much higher chance of success by being disciplined toward a goal when there are constant rewards along the way and a sense of enjoyment. Discipline doesn’t have to be this cold, rugged, no-fun part of life. When you do it right, it becomes extremely fun. Fun is subjective. Pleasure is subjective. 

Winning is more fun than fun is fun – Tom Thibodeau

How much better to pursue a straight course and eventually reach that destination where the things that are pleasant and the things that are honorable finally become, for you, the same. – Seneca

Gratitude, celebration, and knowing the ultimate game are cornerstones to feeling a sense of reward and enjoyment for progress being made toward a worthwhile meaningful goal. 

Steven Bartlett’s Equation for discipline | Discipline = (Importance of goal x psychological enjoyment from pursuit of goal) - psychological cost of pursuit

Your goals dictate all else in architecting a disciplined life as all decisions must be made through the lens of progression/regression of goal.

To the degree you don’t have goals, is the degree your life will optimized around someone else’s.

Organization

Now that you know your goal, the chief aim in your life currently, we can build the organization to align with the goals and life we aim to strive for.

Organization typically comes with cleanliness and tidiness. Start here.

Upkeep a clean & tidy world. Depending on your starting point this may be a major task initially, then the ongoing work will be rather fluid and effortless (but still requires effort, never forget this)

I’ve yet to find a justifiable reason to live/operate in a dirty mess. There’s no benefit to it. Stop being a slob, clean up, and keep it that way, you’ll be a more disciplined person because of it.

Eliminating all that isn’t aligned

As you go on your way cleaning and organizing, I want you to remember a very important concept here. 

If it’s not supporting you and your ability to progress towards your goal, it’s slowing you down or distracting you.

Don’t organize your video games, throw them out

Don’t organize the junk food cupboard, throw them out

Don’t organize all the clothes you never wear, throw them out

Don’t organize all the useless apps on your phone, delete them

What’s in your life that doesn’t have a place in your life? Get rid of it.

Less is more.

Open loops & discipline

Open loops: Anything that’s not complete or out of place

Anything that does not belong where it is, the way it is, or is unfinished will be pulling your attention if it’s not appropriately managed.

For most, this shows up heavily in the mind, but can also show up in your surroundings as well. For example, you have an unpaid bill sitting on your counter you walk by 4-5 times a day, with each passing you glance down, feel (insert emotion unpaid bill gives you), and go on with your day, with a little less energy, focus, and clarity. 

OR worse, you become completely thrown off altogether and lose a day of productivity. I’ve had this happen many times in the past.

Aesthetics & discipline

Oddly enough I’ve come to realize when something looks good and feels nice to use, we tend to want to keep it that way. So when you’re thinking about organizing your things, if you’re able to, how can you make it look better as well?

It’s a fun game I play with myself (see picture of desk below) where I constantly just tinker with the structure of my surroundings, phone layout, etc. to see if I can make it more pleasing and simple. Goes a surprisingly long way with discipline.

Surroundings — Clean space, clear mind

Clean, then organize your house, car, and office. Then keep it this way in perpetuity until you find better ways to stay organized. My rule of thumb is everything either has a place or it doesn’t belong. Constantly audit for any open loops and optimize as needed.

As I write this I have my glass water bottle, coffee, salt lamp, Flourishing Self goal book, essential oils, Mont Blanc pen + case, laptop, timer, and a stack of books on my desk. That’s it. No junk, no mess, and nothing that’s not supposed to be here. It’s like this 99% of the time and when it isn’t? I clean up at the end of every day.

80% of the stuff you have lying around is junk, unneeded, or isn’t where it’s supposed to be. clean, and organized. Do not underestimate what a clean space will do for your self-control.

End goal: Maintain a clean house and office space at all times.

Mind — Clear mind, clear thoughts

The mind. A topic for another memo altogether, frankly many memos.

Today I will bring your awareness of an important aspect of the mind as it relates to a disciplined life:

Keeping your mind clear. Empty. No open loops.

That may sound like a far-fetched idea, especially if you are a high achiever busy mind.

Here’s the basic idea, then the process of how to make it a reality.

Your mind is filled with open loops, the more hectic your life, typically, the more open loops you will have. Your brain isn’t meant to be a to-do list. Stop using it like so. Open loops in the mind slow & distort your ability to think. When you can’t think effectively, you become less disciplined.

You eliminate this by implementing a capture system.

This is a single source for capturing all open loops AKA tasks, ideas, learning materials, or goals that come into your awareness. For my community, I’ve created something called AboveOS that does this, but you can do things like a To-Do list app + Apple Notes as an alternative.

Whatever you do, just don’t let open loops fester in your mind any longer.

IF I have a new task I need to do THEN I will capture it

This consistent, unproductive preoccupation with all the things we have to do is the single largest consumer of time and energy. — Kerry Gleeson

Like cleaning your surroundings, capturing all current open loops in your mind will be an upfront heavy-duty task I strongly encourage you to complete ASAP. Set time on your calendar and BRAIN DUMP. Get it all out. Here is a generic list of areas of life to prompt open loops lurking in your mind: Trigger Lists

End goal: An empty brain and a capture system for all open loops that spring up in your mind.

Digital — Clean phone, everything is infinitely better

2 main places we tend to live digitally: Phones and computers.

Keep them clean and organized as well.

Phone:

• Purge all apps that are dumb, pointless, and not aligned with your goals
• Clean up your layout, make it organized and flow well.
• Audit your notification settings, turn off all that aren’t time-sensitive

Computer:

• Purge home screen (add screenshot)
• Audit your internet browser bookmark bar
• Audit your notification settings

End goal: Maintain a clean and organized digital space.

Spirit — Clear conscious, clear intent

This also can be an entire memo itself, basically dabbling in emotions, trauma, etc. But I did want to just make you aware that your emotions and past baggage will disrupt a disciplined life. If you have lots of past stuff lurking around, it’s worth exploring how to balance out and eliminate it.

Final notes on organization

Reminder, this will take a significant amount of time for most of you. Once done, if you commit to keeping everything clean and organized, the ongoing upkeep is minimal and meditative but requires constant recommitment.

I have a habit I’ve installed as a result of this reality of constant upkeep. I call it Recommit to Clean. Each night, I will run this algorithm in my office and house. Scan the area for anything that’s out of place and tidy up. When done daily, takes 5-10 minutes.

People

Be around disciplined people willing to call you out on your lack of discipline. 

Environment, as we’ve just unpacked is so important. People fall into the environment bucket. Stop hanging around losers. Find people who are disciplined, stick to their word, and are willing to call you when you’re not disciplined. This is rare but worth the pain of seeking them out.

In today’s connected world, you can join a community, like AboveMen, where there’s an emphasis on self-mastery. Now, from my experience, it’s rare to find communities that will have people who will call you out on your entropy but paying a great coach can typically solve this.

Either way, just being around others on the path towards self-mastery, you will find yourself more disciplined as a result.

Of course, the bigger quest is seeking out in-person relationships that can also do this. This takes time but again, the ROI of this is INSANE.

I’ve lived with several radically different types of people in my short life. From 6 college students in a house where the kitchen was a garbage dump 24/7, to living by myself in a city I knew no one, to now living with a guy (I call him my brother) that we’re on a very similar life trajectory.

I can tell you, being around other disciplined, ambitious people is a huge hack. This goes with anything you’re trying to achieve.

Schedule

Create a schedule and follow it. This fosters discipline, consistency, and stability. Taking the time to make the right decisions around what to focus on and when, based on your goals allows for ongoing discipline to be embedded in everything you do.

Use a calendar and look at multiple times a day. I use Notion calendar (I love it)

Have repeating events scheduled in your calendar to give your days a proactive structure

Wake time + AM Routine

Breakfast, lunch dinner

Workouts

Time block your tasks and work sessions daily

My workflow to time block my days

1. During my end-of-day shutdown (more on this during step 3), I get clear on tomorrow’s tasks I’d like to complete within the constraints of any scheduled events already on my calendar
2. Once clear, I’ll open Notion Calendar, and time block my day with the tasks I’ve assigned myself.

The hardest part of a schedule, specifically a self-induced one, is following it. This is where willpower and self-trust come into play. Saying no is important here. A blind spot I see for most guys is saying yes to events that disrupt their weekly schedule. Be very mindful of what you commit yourself to. 

Disciplined Energy Fundamentals

If discipline is the system that creates the rules for us to abide by then we must get clear on what decisions are the right ones within our energy.

Without proper systems around our energy, we lack alignment towards our goal, and become prone to fluctuations in energy levels, leading to fluctuations in output, leading to more chances for our life to entropy out of discipline and into chaos, distraction, and misalignment with goal.

Here you need to take the time upfront to figure out what are the best inputs around your energy to have the highest energy levels consistently. Then create a structure that fits within the constraints of your life and goals. 

Atop of that, given we do these every single day, they are opportunities to develop discipline.

Every time you follow through on your sleep schedule, more discipline

Every time you follow your meal plan, more discipline

Every time you hit your workout targets, more discipline.

Nutrition

I created this concept called the OSOM principle. The idea is simple you eat One Set of Meals (OSOM) every day for weeks and months on end before making changes to your diet.

This creates an insane amount of discipline. Our society is hooked on overly flavourful foods that are keeping you weak.

What I want you to do here is create one day of eating that works for you, and stick to it daily.

Pair this is my 90/10 rule and you can do this for months or even years. I’ve eaten roughly the same OSOM for 2 years running.

THE 90/10 RULE

1. 90% of your total meals in a week are solely consumed for energy. enjoyment of the meal, although not abandoned, is secondary and never to be put at the detriment of your energy.
2. 10% of your total weekly meals CAN be consumed for enjoyment first, energy second. Keyword, CAN. This doesn’t mean you must deviate from an energy-first framework, but it’s available for you.
3. Only dip into the 10% on days or the following days, in cases where you have a 10% meal during dinner, where your work isn’t priority number one. For most this will fall on the weekends, but adjust accordingly

But what are the basics on what should go into your OSOM?

The core principle you want to follow: Eat as close as nature intended.

Eat organic whole foods.

I’ll be writing an entire memo on the AboveMan’s eating philosophy in the future but here are the basics:

1. High fats, high protein as your first meal
2. Fast for the first 3-4 hours of the day
3. Avoid the FAT3: Seed oils, refined sugars, and refined flours

A Note On Carbs

Carbs are the most readily available energy source in food, but when eaten alone or too much in one sitting, it’ll cause a spike in energy, leading to a following energy crash shortly after.

Avoid eating any significant carbs in the morning to keep sustained energy throughout the day.

Lastly, eating high amounts of carbs, specifically sugars right before bed, will cause you to feel groggy/low energy in the morning and potentially affect your whole day

If you want my gold-standard meal I eat and prescribe to all my clients for masterful energy: Grab it here

Questions to answer for a disciplined life:

1. What’s your eating schedule? (Put it on your calendar, repeating)
2. What’s your nutrition plan? (Write it out)
3. When/how will I prep my meals? (Put it on your calendar, repeating)

Sleep

You know it.

You know you need more sleep

6 hours isn’t enough.

6 and a half isn’t enough.

Prioritize your sleep and watch your energy soar.

If you don’t believe me, order a Whoop, track your sleep for 2 weeks, and pay attention to your willpower vs. hours of sleep (Oh and I’m talking time asleep, not time in bed 🙃)

Besides just sleeping more, the number one hack to quality sleep is consistency: Sleep at the same time and wake at the same time.

Lastly, an easy-to-implement sleep hack is the 10-3-2-1 rule:

10 hours before bed, no caffeine

3 hours before bed, no food

2 hours before bed, no drinks

1 hour before bed, no screens

Questions to answer for a disciplined life:

1. When do you want to be up?
2. When do you want to sleep?
3. How will I make sure this happens?
4. When do I need to stop drinking caffeine? 
5. When do I need to eat my last meal?
6. When do I need to stop drinking water?
7. When do I need to put my tech away?

Great, now follow it.

Movement

Your physique represents your dedication (or lack) of mastery. The physical realm is interesting as it’s so limited yet the most tangible way to observe our progress towards mastery.

Developing your physique is your physical anchor to life mastery. Working towards the endless pursuit of a warrior physique demands control over mind & body. Working on your body, training it, and disciplining it, is also disciplining your mind.

Exercise is a wonder drug you can take at any moment to boost your energy & willpower.

That’s the experts saying that, not me btw.

But I strongly agree. Moving the body never fails to make me more committed to my goals.

Oh, and it’s building your pre-frontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for regulating our thoughts, actions, and emotions. More on this under the ‘lead into pain’ section in step 2.

I don’t care what you do but just move the body daily. FOLLOW A WORKOUT SCHEDULE.

A fun little hack I’ve coined REPS4REST, it goes like this: Pump out some pushups, pullups, squats, or whatever you want to do to move the body INSTEAD of jumping on your phone when you’re taking a break from work.

Something I recently started doing to take this one step further and making it a fun game with myself: Keeping a running count on my whiteboard of how many pushups and pull-ups I bang out in a day.

My high score so far after a week? 120 pushups 130 pullups.

Questions to answer for a disciplined life:

1. What is your workout schedule? (Put in your calendar)
2. What workouts will you do?

Mediate

“One study found that just three hours of meditation practice led to improved attention and self-control. After eleven hours, researchers could see those changes in the brain. The new meditators had increased neural connections between regions of the brain important for staying focused, ignoring distractions, and controlling impulses. Another study found that eight weeks of daily meditation practice led to increased self-awareness in everyday life, as well as increased gray matter in corresponding areas of the brain. It may seem incredible that our brains can reshape themselves so quickly, but meditation increases blood flow to the prefrontal cortex, in much the same way that lifting weights increases blood flow to your muscles. The brain appears to adapt to exercise in the same way that muscles do, getting both bigger and faster in order to get better at what you ask of it.” — Kelly McGonigal, The Willpower Instinct

Need I say more?

Oh yes.

Go meditate. Daily.

Limit inputs

The opposite of focus is distraction. 

Eliminate distraction and you get focus. It’s easier to just do that than it is to focus.

Here are some inputs you should consider limiting or eliminating

Your phone: Keep it completely out of sight when you’re not using it. As I type this, my phone is in my bedroom hidden from my plain sight.

Apps: When you’re on your phone, it’s easy to become distracted by other apps that aren’t aligned with what we’re on the phone for. Hopefully, you delete the completely useless ones. But some like social media, email, etc have a purpose at other moments. During the times they don’t use an app called AppBlock to set restrictions on usage throughout the day to prevent them from sucking you in. This app has saved my focus and mental health countless times and I couldn’t recommend it enough

Food: If you have a ton of food in your home that is outside of your meal plan, throw it out or hide it. If every time you open your cupboard and see chips or chocolate, what do think is going to happen?

Noise: Block out any noise that will be a distraction while working. I use brown noise, music, or binaural beats.

Visuals: Coffee shops are fun but more often than not, they are just input overload and cause more distraction than focus. Be mindful of the visuals in your awareness as you go about your work. Even while you go to the gym and daily commutes are examples where visuals in your awareness can cause distraction. Going to a gym with TVs, Driving by Mcdonald’s. Small details but it adds up over months and years.

Social life: If you’re serious about your goals, and your social life constantly gets in the way… downsize it and simplify

Hobbies: Do your hobbies align with your goals? If not, eliminate them or simplify them.

Conscious sacrifice: Giving everything to win

The key has always been simple, though: discovery. Even though other people had started voicing their opinions on my potential, I remained silent. Until I discovered exactly what it is that I wanted to do: become a mixed martial artist. That discovery gave belief to my inner dreams because I started seeing the concrete possibility that I could become a fighter, a true fighter. And so the change was going from having visions about my life to living them concretely. At this stage in my life, I left many, many things behind. I constantly heard Kristof’s words whispered in my ear, and it triggered a reaction inside me and I realized: this is what I want to do. I want to become the champion of the world in mixed martial arts. And then, all of my energy, everything I had inside of me, went toward achieving that goal. I wasn’t making sacrifices anymore, I was making decisions. Train instead of party. Work instead of play. Perfect practice instead of casual repetition. I started living life with purpose and direction. In the words of Buddha, ‘First, intention; then, enlightenment.’ – George St-Pierre

Bringing step 1 to a close by having you consider an audit of what you say you want to do and the goals you set vs. what your actions are saying you really want. 

Practice what you preach (especially to yourself). I found there’s an interesting anecdotal correlation between how aligned you are with your word and how disciplined you tend to be.

Put bluntly, everything in your life currently that isn’t aligned with your current goals, must go if you’re serious about being disciplined. This is called sacrifice to most, but you should see it as a conscious decision if you’re truly dedicated to winning like George. 

I’ve done this time and time again. Constantly shedding the layers of distractions and misalignments. I moved across the country, gave up drinking, partying, weed, alcohol, and hardly have a social life. I spend no money on fancy things (currently in start up mode). I have no money invested in anyone else’s business besides my own. I’m not on all the social media. I eat the same OSOM daily. I don’t stay up. I don’t sleep in. I don’t watch Netflix on weekdays. I don’t eat candy. I focus on my craft. On building my business. Because that’s my goal and I’m 100% all in on succeeding.

So I have a worksheet for you called the 7 Day Time Audit. You’ll be able to access it inside my community

Step 2: Cultivate Willpower

Everything in Step 1 is designed to remove the need to use your willpower in the first place. However, day to day there will inevitably be many decisions you need to make that require your willpower. So in step 2, our goal is strengthening our willpower, today and forever.

Watching myself slowly shift the momentum to the upside through the continued effort to cultivate stronger and stronger willpower has been incredible. I can confidently say willpower is a muscle that can be developed the more you work it.

Willpower: Infinite or Finite?

There are two schools of thought: Willpower is infinite or finite.

The truth is, it’s both!

First, there have been studies done by Roy Baumeister, author of the book, Willpower, who showed overtime humans tend to lose their willpower the more they ‘resist desires’. (Remember back to the 2 goals of step 1?)

Pair that with poor fundamentals such as eating junk food, being short on sleep, and never meditating… you definitely will shortcut your way to very little willpower. That’s of course, NOT the path we’re here to take.

With that statement, if you put yourself in a position where you’re not having to resist desires in the first place, then your willpower will be less likely to deplete day to day. This is why we covered everything in step 1.

However, Roy also tells us, that willpower is highly influenced by how we perceive our own capacity of willpower, specifically when one explicitly reaffirms that there is no limit on their willpower.

For me, I believe you certainly can have infinite willpower. Epictetus or Victor Frankl comes to mind here as the shining exemplar of infinite willpower. One a slave for 25 years before becoming free as a now-iconic philosopher, the other a prisoner of war in a concentration camp for 3 years, and now a best-selling author.. David Goggins of course would make this list here as well, doing insane physical feats lasting days at a time.

Willpower. Infinite or finite? Answer: You decide.

Playing offense vs. defense

Roy Baumeister says the most optimized, flourishing people play offense, not defense with their willpower.

Pre-commitments

Everything in step 1 is one big pre-commitment.

What’s a pre-commitment?

It’s making the right decision now, that prevents or creates added friction to making the wrong decision later.

This can be used with ANYTHING. So as a principle to cultivate willpower, use a bit of willpower on offense to make pre-commitments anytime you foresee a situation where you might have needed to use your willpower on defense.

Example: If you’re going out with friends but you want to ensure you’re back home to get to bed on time… Use willpower on offense by pre-committing to your friends in the group chat that you’re coming out but have to leave by X time. Then reaffirm the decision when you first arrive.

Developing habits

Habits are a huge hack most overlook to a disciplined life, they are in the same bucket of goals. Everyone knows about them, knows they are important, and says they work on them, but when it comes to effectively installing habits, no one actually gets it OR sees the real importance of habits.

Now this isn’t a memo on habits… I will make one on the ins and outs of habit design eventually.

Here I just want to point out willpower’s role in habit design and how to use it properly.

“The same thing happens when a rocket ship launches. The space shuttle uses more fuel during the first few minutes of its flight than it does the rest of the entire trip. Why? Because it has to break free from the pull of gravity. Once it does, it can glide in orbit. The hard part? Getting off the ground. Your old ways and your old conditioning are just like the inertia of the merry-go-round or the pull of gravity. Everything just wants to stay at rest. You’ll need a lot of energy to break your inertia and get your new enterprise under way. But once you get momentum, you will be hard to stop—virtually unbeatable—even though you’re now putting out considerably less effort while receiving greater results.” — Darren Hardy, The Compound Effect

When you use your willpower to focus on a new action you want to turn into a habit, you’re playing offense here, by installing this habit to eventually run on autopilot.

So yes the first 30-45 days will require your full commitment to the habit but after it just happens! From the perceptive of the brain, where you execute habits vs conscious actions are two separate places… aka not using your willpower anymore. WILD STUFF.

Back to the idea of the compound effect… if you did this every 30 days for 3 years, that’s 36 habits you’ve either installed or deleted from your life… how different would your life be? 36 habits seem like a completely different person… even after 1 year and 12 habits.

This is the number 1 principle I need you to understand if you want to be disciplined. Play on offense by making pre-commitments to the right decisions.

Master the energy fundamentals

A conversation about willpower is never without a strong focus on the fundamentals. If you’re not mastering the basics around your energy levels, good luck sustaining any real amount of willpower needed to achieve true self-mastery.

High energy = High willpower. Simple as that. Go back to step 1, and make sure you nail those into your life as they will be the foundation of everything else you do to be disciplined. 

If you start becoming aware of how strong your willpower is vs. your adherence to the fundamentals you’ll be blown away by the correlation between the two. Start mastering the fundamentals today.

Ps. This is the biggest focus inside AboveMen, so if eating, moving, sleeping, or meditating has always been a challenge for you. Book a call with me and let’s see if I can help you master these critical variables to being disciplined. 

Intraday willpower recharging

Do you know the number one way to kill your willpower at any moment throughout the day? Right after NOT mastering the fundamentals, it’s stress and poor emotion management.

Think of your phone.

You have all these apps on there.

Whenever you open one, it just stays running in the background, until you close it.

Some of these apps suck up way more power than others, like a video editor or game.

Stress, anxiety, uncertainty, anger, (insert draining emotion here) are like those energy-sucking apps, but for your willpower.

So at any moment throughout the day, you can come up against these, that’s inevitable as someone going for mastery in life.

What’s not inevitable is having to sit with them till they slowly dissolve on their own.

You can close out these ‘apps’ at any moment IF you run the right algorithms.

Can I eliminate all your stress and negative emotions? No, everyone is different but here’s a general practice that works well.

First, this is what not to do when you’re stressed, etc:

• Go on your phone, scroll social media
• Play video games
• Eat a bunch of food
• Hit the vape
• Watch Netflix, Youtube

These are all highly stimulating and distraction.

Keeping you wired and avoiding the issues.

Here’s what you should consider doing

• Meditate
• Read
• Walk in nature
• Genuine human connection
• Journal your thoughts
• Deep breathing
• Make a plan to overcome the source of stress/negative emotion

The faster you can become aware of the stress or negative emotions, the quicker you can recharge your willpower and carry on with your day.

Cheap vs expensive dopamine

The best things ain’t cheap, and where you get your dopamine from is no different. Stretching the time between desire and fulfillment is a great way to cultivate really strong willpower. 

This will be hindered of course if you constantly have cheap sources of dopamine lurking in your life. If you ever want to be a truly disciplined person for life, you need to eliminate at large, the sources of cheap dopamine from your life.

You know this too.

For some, it’s been the very thing keeping you broke, depressed, weak, etc.

Snap out of it, stop being a hedonic boy, and start being that AboveMan you were born to be.

Evaluate your life for these sources of cheap dopamine:

• Vanity metrics (Likes, story views, etc) — There’s literally 0 reason to be checking these daily… even if you’re a content creator
• Snacking — This is defined as eating food outside of your meal times. If you didn’t make the commitment to eat at a certain time and you’re now eating, that’s snacking.
• Porn
• Vaping
• Fast food
• Weed
• Alcohol
• Social media
• Phone
• Video games
• Anything where you have desire, you fulfill desire very fast with little effort

Work to remove these as much as you can from your daily life, they don’t serve your ability to progress towards goal.

During my habit memo, I’ll go into detail on ways to strategically remove these with ease.

Lean into pain

The body should be treated more rigorously, that it may not be disobedient to the mind. — Seneca

Cold plunge, working out, tough conversations, long runs.

Anything you feel yourself resisting is an opportunity to strengthen self-control.

Leaning into pain is so powerful for one main reason: You’re constantly re-affirming to your mind, YOU are in control

For example, when you say you’re going to do 10 reps of this exercise, and at rep 8 your mind/body wants to quit, those last 2 reps are an opportunity to build discipline via willpower. Or if you’re at 10 but could do 11, do the extra, especially when your mind wants to quit.

Building self-trust via the Do-Say method

Being able to trust yourself is an incredible way to supercharge one’s willpower.

The idea here is to practice cultivating self-trust through tiny commitments throughout the day that give yourself wins and momentum.

Commit → Fulfill

I’m going to make my bed the moment I get up in the morning → Make your bed the moment you get up

I’m going to do 10 pushups after lunch → Do 10 push-ups

I’m going to read 10 pages → read 10 pages

All of these are laughably easy, yet when you clearly define the micro-commitment you’re making with yourself, you’ve now built the gap.

For every time you hit it, it’s a mark on the board for trusting what you say you’re going to do.

If you do this day in, and day out, when the big commitments come around to being made you’re going to have your self-trust by your side to empower you to follow through with this decision.

Your future self, the rule of 10, and 2nd-order thinking

You’re in an MRI machine.

Think about yourself — One area of your brain lights up

Good.

Now think about a stranger — another area lights up

Good.

Now think about your future self 10 years from now.

Depending on your relationship with yourself and how clear your vision for your future is… either the stranger part will light up or the self part will.

Here’s what is fascinating: Those whose stranger part lights up, tend to have less willpower than those who have a clear vision of their future self.

This goes back to having goals and keeping them really clear.

But go one step further and we want to strengthen our connection between you and your future self, so you are considering the impacts you’re having on yourself.

The rule of 10 is an easy way to do this.

First think about the version of yourself in 10 years: How will decisions today affect yourself in 10 years?

How about 10 months?

10 weeks?

10 days?

10 minutes?

This brings us to the concept underneath the rule of 10: 2nd order thinking

I got this concept from Ray Dalio, Founder of Bridgewater Associates.

I can honestly say this has been such a game-changer for both my willpower and focus. I’ve trained myself to think about the long-term consequences, good and bad, more and more often. AND I’ve noticed, that the more I care for myself and future Cameron, the more I really want to make the right choices for HIM.

It goes a bit like this:

The desire of a donut comes up.

I then entertain how good that’d taste right now.

2nd order consequence: Right after I think about how I’d feel shortly after eating it.

3rd order consequence: Then how my energy levels would plummet and I wouldn’t want to do anything productive.

4th order consequence: This could lead to me eating more shitty foods and breaking other parts of my protocol… hmm it’s already 6 pm… I might even end up staying up late like I have in the past.

5th order consequence: If I stay up late, I’ll most likely want to sleep in, which means I won’t get my deep work session done tomorrow and I’ll feel behind on my day

I could have kept going but you get the point. The more rocks you stack on the negative consequence side, the easier it is to dismiss tempting impulses and desires in the moment and re-focus on what matters.

Keep Your Focus Sharp

If being disciplined is making the right decisions repeatedly based on the goals you’re optimizing for, then your ability to stay focused (or not get distracted) on the goal becomes a variable we need to account for.

Focus can also become a leverage point in your progress towards any given goal. The sharper, more narrow your focus can be on a single point, faster you typically can solve the problem/achieve the goal.

You want to keep your focus sharp at all times, like a smart lumberjack would with his axe.

Focus is also influenced by willpower, more specifically, your energy. When physical energy levels are low, you tend to have a harder time to focus. Think back to last time you were short on sleep and how effective your work was that day.

And on the inverse, focus influences willpower, just like the whole concept of a disciplined life does. Most of these focus tactics I’ll talk on, simultaneously strengthen your willpower. So this stuff is super important to be disciplined, let’s dive in.

Focus is the absence of distractions

The easiest way, just like living a disciplined life, is to just remove all distractions. Without distractions, there’s only focus. Easier said than done, but a good maxim to keep top of mind

Resist impulses

Any time you have the urge to go do something that isn’t the task at hand, the goal in focus, practice letting go of the urge by becoming aware, then release. The commons ones today are: wanting food outside of meal times, wanting drinks (sugary bs), checking social media/phone, checking (insert thing that’s not important but has you hooked), or go do another task (capture it vs. go and do).

If you have low self-awareness, this will be hard for you, and by default your focus sucks. Meditation is the only tool I know of that will help increase self-awareness without fail.

W.I.N

What’s Important Now? (WIN). This is a great concept to keep pinging to yourself, almost like a feedback loop or guidelines. I ask myself this multiple times a day and on a different level, throughout the week to ensure I’m focused on the right task, project, or goal.

When first beginning to use this question, the more often you check in with yourself and ask, the better your focus becomes by default from cutting the time spent on distractions.

What’s important now? Do it and don’t deviate.

Create space

Deep, quality focus can take time to drop into. If you’re constantly shorting yourself on time to get into this focused state, you may feel like you can’t focus, but in reality, you may just constantly be attention switching from thing to thing.

When I want to get my best thinking done, I give myself 3-4 hours of uninterrupted time to just zone in on a single task or project… like I’m doing as I write this memo… I am at hour 5 as I type these words on a Friday afternoon.

The longer I can let my mind soak in a singular problem to solve, the easier and more fluid working through it becomes. Like a hot knife through butter.

If you’re trying to progress a project forward, set large time blocks aside to do so. Even 1 hour of zero distraction work can be better than 10 hours of constantly distracted work.

Focus on a calendar equals time blocks.

Be a no man

For every yes, there’s an unspoken no.

I used to be completely blind to this. I’d get excited for something, and immediately say YES, I’m in. What I failed to realize time and time again was what I was indirectly saying no to.

When your friend asks if you want to go out for dinner at 8pm, you say yes, while your bedtime is at 9pm, did it cross your mind that you just said no to the commitment with yourself to be in bed at 9pm?

Or when you say yes to another project or another revenue stream in your business, did you consider you’re saying no to being ALL-IN on your first revenue stream?

Practice saying no more often by saying yes to your goals, your protocol, and your schedule.

No no no… no no..no.. no. This is what focus looks like in action.

Want to go out? No.

Want to partner on this business? No.

Want to go on this trip? No.

Want to.. No.

4 Jedi mind-hacks to making the right decision

1. Breathe, Pause & Plan, Act: If you’re being tempted by an urge or impulse, science says, taking a moment to breathe is the fastest way to ‘cool down’ your impulse and gain some clarity on what the right decision is to make. 4 seconds in, 6 seconds out.
2. Live streaming: Imagine this decision you’re about to make will be broadcast out to 1M people. Visual everyone watching. What is the right decision?
3. Your Daimon: Ask, what would my highest self do? You always know the answer but you never listen to what it is.
4. Your Hero: Who is someone you look up to, respect, and know well? In the moment, ask what would my Hero do? How would they approach this?

Step 3: Systemize consistency

You have a disciplined life now. You’ve aligned your entire life towards your goals, everything is optimized for the achievement of the goals. You’re bursting with willpower, you’re able to make the right decisions time and time again based on your goals.

Now we just don’t want to stop.

We need to do everything we can to stay consistent.

To stay on the path towards success.

How do we do this?

With feedback loops to keep us accountable to the structure we’ve built for ourselves.

And lets us know very clearly when we’re deviating from the protocol

We need metrics, and controls

Then we need observers to monitor those metrics and controls.

Some reminders from earlier to stay consistent:

1. You need to have a goal, nothing else matters without something to optimize for.
2. You can never forget this goal. Forgetting is the same as not having one.
3. Keep things organized.
4. Limit your inputs. A simple life is easier to keep consistent.
5. Have a daily & weekly schedule and follow it
6. Have a meal plan and follow it
7. Have a workout plan and follow it
8. Have a sleep schedule and follow it

Installing feedback loops

Anything that captures the outputs and can be used as data for future inputs is a feedback loop.

Feedback loops are so bloody powerful. If you truly commit to having them in your life. You can’t lose. Here are 7 reasons why you need to install them into your life:

1. Clarity — You will never lose sight of what you need to do
2. Focus — Forces you to stay focused on the most important inputs
3. Accountability — Did you do it or not?
4. Progress — Am I getting better or not?
5. Optimizing — Moving closer towards goal, faster or easier
6. Getting back to baseline — Knowing WHEN you go off track
7. Allows you to think differently, optimizing quicker mentally

The feedback system of an AboveMan

Here is what you want to implement for feedback loops

1. Habit tracking — This will be different for everyone but you want to get clear on the habits that allow you to be and stay at your best self. For me, some examples of what I track: Did I meditate? Did I do my AM breathing? Did I fast for 13 hrs? Did I drink 4L of water? Did I go to bed on time? Did I follow my OSOM? Did I refrain from snacking? Did I do 3 hours deep work? Did I start the day without my phone?
2. Goal metric tracking — What are your goals? Then what metrics are important to track to measure progress towards it?
3. Weekly input tracking — I also find week to week, my most important inputs change,  and in doing so, I’ll set up weekly inputs that are one-off, not habits (unless I’m building a new habit). For example: I have 3 inputs I’m tracking this week: Writing my VSL, this memo, and creating 11 short form videos.
4. Sleep tracking — Many tools can do this now, but Whoop is the best IMO. You want to know Total time aside, sleep efficiency, restorative sleep %, HRV, HR, and awake time.
5. Movement tracking — Depends on what you’re doing, could be as simple as marking down if you consciously moved that day, to what Whoop tracks, Strain score.
6. Nutrition tracking — Tracking your meals can reveal an abundant amount of data and patterns you’d never be able to pick up on by subjective reflection alone. You want to track when you eat what, and how much
7. 3rd party observation — This can be as informal as a friend you talk with weekly and hold each other accountable to having a coach & community. You can access the latter in AboveMen. When you’re first starting down this path at a serious level, having a coach to hold you accountable is a MAJOR hack.

The Tools I Use

1. Nutrition tracking — I use Cronometer
2. Habits tracking — I use Heroic as of now. This is a start-to-end list of key habits I want to engage or refrain from each day. I swipe off the habits as I complete them.
3. End-of-day reporting — I use a custom Notion database (see screenshot below). This captures at a high level my core output metrics that are important to my goals my protocol. Along with a subjective take on things like mood, what went well, what needs work, etc.
4. Whoop band — Tracks your sleep, recovery, and movement each day. Whoop provides great weekly and monthly reporting to see changes.
5. Outside accountability — I’ve built this into my life as a coach for the men inside AboveMen. For you if you want outside accountability, we give it to you at an intense level inside AboveMen

If you feel overwhelmed, start here

Just track your habits daily and metrics that relate to your goals. Start here and add as you get into the flow of the disciplined life.

Join my free community if you want the free tracking resources I’ve built for this memo.

Progress > Perfection, Perfection <> Discipline, Discipline = Commitment

As we bring this one to an end, I need to make this really clear.

I’m not preaching perfection.

I’m teaching commitment.

Commitment to a goal long after the motivation of the decision has passed.

To live a life of true freedom.

You’re going to mess up, deviate, fall off.

That’s okay.

No one’s perfect.

You and me aren’t going to be the first, brother.

BUT

You can always progress.

Getting just 1% better, each day.

Progress over perfection.

When you inevitably fall off.

Don’t shame or guilt yourself.

Those emotions do no good.

Get angry? Sure, but direct that energy to action.

But what you really want to do is RE-COMMIT.

Get clear on WHY you feel off (feedback loop)

Flip the script, every time you fall off or mess up, see it as a new data point you’ve just collected (if you track) that you know get to use to become better by fixing that bug that caused the fuck up in the first place.

This is when you tap into Ray Dalio’s Mistake learners high:

Life becomes really fun when you see your downfalls become the best chances to grow.

So I want to give you a free tool called the Discipline Diagnosis Checklist.

I’ve dropped it inside my free community to easily access along with the rest of the resources.

The purpose is to give you the entire system of being disciplined in a single checklist that you can review to see where you’re falling short which may be causing a lack of discipline.

Think of it like a quality control checklist but for discipline. 

Which by the way, the 4 major reasons I see guys fall off the rails are: 

1. They lose sight of their goal
2. They stop engaging in the energy fundamentals at a high level
3. They stop abiding to their protocol
4. They stop tracking

Conclusion

As I write out the final words for this memo, I feel I’ve still left so much unsaid here on living a disciplined life. So to leave this open-ended, I encourage you to share where the gaps are for you after reading this. I want to know what you’d like me to go deeper on. Please do this inside my community.

In summary, the 3 steps to systematically becoming disciplined are:

1. Architect a disciplined life (Structure)
2. Cultivate willpower (Adherence)
3. Systemize consistency (Feedback)

This isn’t a read one-time memo. This is to be studied and returned to as you implement the learnings into your life. Save this. Share this. Study this.

Here’s to becoming a more disciplined man, today & forever.

With Gratitude + Love + Discipline,

Cameron, Your Big Brother

Ps. A principle of mine is to practice what you preach. So to share the BTS of this memo, I’ve spent 5 sessions ranging from 2-5 hours of deep work with little to zero distractions as tracked via Rize.