Control Your Life

I love self-improvement. I love the idea of improving and becoming the best version of myself that I can be. Everyone wants to be better but it’s hard to know where to start. We can all think of areas where we need to improve and of things we want to be able to do. Whether that’s to be able to do 10 pull-ups, keep your room clean, wake up early, or any other goal that you have for yourself. 

These things all have one thing in common: Discipline. 

My Introduction to Discipline

My introduction to discipline began when I was introduced to the gym. After a year of working out, I had seen some results and I wanted more. The gym helped me become far more disciplined than I previously was. It showed me what consistency and hard work got me. 

But I loved going to the gym. I enjoyed working out and I had friends to do it with. It wasn’t uncommon for me to be there for two, sometimes even three hours. But what about other areas in my life where I didn’t like or enjoy things that I still needed or wanted to do? 

What about having the discipline to wake up early in the morning, keep my room clean, or save and invest my money properly? How could I get the same discipline for those things? Just as I had progressed in the gym, I wanted to progress in the rest of my life too. As Jocko Willink says “Discipline equals freedom.”

It took me a long time to find answers to these questions. I read several books, listened to hours of podcasts, and watched hours worth of YouTube on my quest to find discipline. With a lot of knowledge and trial and error, I hope to share what I’ve learned in this article.

So how is that done? What does that look like? Who am I trying to become? I believe that the key to these questions is control.

What is Discipline?

Before we get into discipline, let’s quickly define it. Discipline, when boiled down, is essentially delayed gratification. It’s delaying immediate gratification for better gratification in the future. It’s delaying (or saying no to) the donut so that you can be healthy in the future. It’s reading instead of watching Netflix so you can be smarter in the future. It’s getting out of the comfy bed early in the morning to get ahead on your work and projects.

Being disciplined isn’t complicated. It’s just having the ability to say no to something you want now so that you can have something better in the future. It’s taking back control of your life from all the gratifications that you allow to control you. It’s time to take back control.

What I’ve Learned

One thing I’ve learned from all the books and podcasts I’ve read and listened to is that everyone has their own “key,” their own “secret sauce” to becoming more disciplined. I don’t want to add to that by saying I’ve uncovered some hidden ancient Hindu practices that will teach you how to become disciplined in 3 steps. I don’t have that. In fact, I don’t feel as though I know much about anything. I am not a professional. I am not a doctor or a researcher. I just have my life’s experiences and I know what has and what hasn’t worked for me.

Control is what has worked for me. Controlling my life, and my decisions instead of being controlled by them. It’s a way of thinking that can help you see the biggest areas you need to make a change in.

Control

Let’s talk about waking up in the morning. Waking up in the morning is one of the easiest examples of the concept of control. How are your mornings? Do you wake up early or do you wait until right before work to get out of bed? If you’re like me, then you probably struggle a great deal with the mornings.

Before I get into waking up in the morning, I want to set the record straight on waking up early. I believe that many people could greatly benefit from waking up early in the morning. But I recognize that many people work nights so waking up early in the morning isn’t always an option. I also recognize that there are some people who are naturally night owls and aren’t going to be as productive at 5:30 AM as other people may be.

With that being said, however, that’s still no excuse for oversleeping and wasting the precious time we’ve been given. I’m not here to tell you to wake up at 5:00 AM every morning. I’m not here to tell you to get up at any specific time. I’m here to tell you to not let your bed control you but for you to control it. Let me paint you a picture of what is happening when you sleep in.

Your alarm goes off at 7:00. You wake up and turn off your alarm. You think about getting out of bed and going to the gym or getting to work on a project but instead, you lay back down on your soft pillow and cover yourself with a warm blanket. “I’ll get up early tomorrow morning, I want to catch back up on sleep today.”

Sound familiar?

What’s really happening here is that your bed is controlling you. You’re a slave to your bed. What you need to do is take back control over your bed and over your mornings. This doesn’t mean waking up at 5:00 in the morning, but it does mean that when your alarm goes off, you get out of bed. This concept of control can be applied to almost any other area as well. What else controls you? I’ll give you a few examples from my own life.

I’ve been controlled by the mess in my room. It controls me by inhibiting my productivity and organization. I need to control my room.

I’ve been controlled by my diet. It controls me by demanding fattening and sugary food which inhibits my ability to be healthy and maximize my training. I need to control my diet.

I’ve been controlled by my TV. It controls me by wasting my time and keeping me from writing more and working on my projects. I need to control my TV.

It shouldn’t be hard to think of areas in your life that control you. What are the areas in your life that you know you don’t control? Is it your morning, your room, your emotions? No one likes to be controlled. Imagine if someone told you, “You will sleep in for the next week straight.” I don’t know about you, but I’d be getting up early every morning just to spite them. The same thing is happening right now except the person saying these things, is you.

Final Thoughts

You may be saying to yourself, “Well this sure isn’t anything mind-blowing.” No, it isn’t. But it’s how I’ve been able to uncover many areas in my life that I didn’t even realize I needed to work on. It made me realize what I really control and what all controls me.

I believe that discipline equals control. But discipline is a blurry concept. Every time I hear people talk about discipline, I hear them talk about the same things: wake up early, work out more, and have better time management. While these are all very good things to work on, discipline can be so much more than that. This is why I try to think about discipline in terms of control. It takes discipline to take back control of your life.

Control is power. And we willingly give this power away to all sorts of things that make us happy in the short term. We give our control, our power, to our bed, TV, and our food. 

Take back your power, take back your control, take back your life.