This is a transcript from the Business Secrets Podcast With Robert Kanaat. Click here to view and subscribe on iTunes.
Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of Business Secrets. My name is Robert Kanaat, the founder of Wanderlust Worker, the premier online destination for all things inspirational, motivational and self-development. Thank you so much for joining me here today.
Today I want to talk to you about something that’s really important, and that’s about self-discipline. Now I don’t know about you – but I have a bunch of self-discipline today, but I didn’t have it a little while ago. I wanted to kind of reveal to you what I have learned along this journey that I call life, and how I’ve been able to instill self-discipline.
Because as you know, self-discipline is pretty much like the gateway to everything. The ability to accomplish anything relies on how much discipline you have. That also says a lot about you when it comes to your habits. Because the types of habits that you have today have a lot to do with how much discipline or lack of discipline you have had in your life.
I know that it’s definitely possible to change your life, and everyone can kind of turn things around. But if today, right now, you do not have a lot of self-discipline – then this is definitely the episode for you. Because I’m going to break down kind of what it takes to instill a bunch of self-discipline into your life. Actually, I – not that long ago, I crafted a cheat sheet about this.
But before I tell you about the cheat sheet, let me tell you about the self-discipline post that I did not that long ago. Okay, maybe it was a few years back? So it was a little bit, a little while ago. I think it was called like, “How to discipline yourself with 10 habits?” But the cool thing about that is that it’s ranked number 1 for self-discipline on Google for, I don’t know how long? I don’t know if – by the time you’re listening to this, it’s going to be ranked number 1 if you Google “self-discipline” where you are in the world. But for a long time already it has, maybe for the past couple of years or so.
So anyways, I wanted to tell you – there’s actually – what I had done is, I distilled down a bunch of the discipline strategies into a free cheat sheet that you can download. This is not a pitch or anything like that. So you can just go there, it’s called disciplinesecrets.com. Download the free cheat sheet, it’s pretty cool. You can kind of get some more insight into – if you’re serious about having more self-discipline, go there. Download the cheat sheet, and you’ll check out kinda what it’s all about.
But self-discipline is really at the heart of pretty much everything that we do in this life. If you want to be successful and if you want to accomplish things in business, then you absolutely need self-discipline. So the crazy thing is, that a large part of our lives – like a big part of our behavior comes from our habits. I’m talking about a majority of our behavior. So everything that you do and say and think in the day is pretty much habit driven.
So where do those habits come from? The habits come from your – ultimately your discipline. But that comes from your thoughts, and that comes from your emotions and all of that stuff. So all that stuff creates behavioral patterns. How much discipline you have says a lot about, kind of like your character and like where these things develop from. That’s okay if you don’t have a lot of self-discipline in your life right now. Maybe things have kind of gone south for you, and that’s okay. I have been there and done that, believe me.
Not that long ago, I know that I shared this in one of the first episodes – was origin story. I told you about – kind of my life crashed all around my eyes. I had worked pretty hard, I had built up a really cool business. I built up an awesome software platform. Again, this was circa 2011, and then I kind of stopped paying attention. I started partying a little bit. Well not a little bit, but a lot.
Really just, I surrounded myself with the wrong people. Then everything came crashing down around me. I had really bad habits, and it just wasn’t a good scenario. It was probably like one of the most destructive periods of my life. It’s crazy how like you can build up so much, and then everything can come crashing down around you when you stop paying attention.
When you think you’re like on top of the world – I think that kind of happens, but you have to build a solid foundation. So self-discipline really gets you there. If I had had a lot of self-discipline at that time, oh man I could’ve made just the most insane progress. Now everybody can change, so take it from me literally like – don’t put me up on this big pedestal or anything like that. My life was royally screwed up for a while, and all I was trying to do was pick up the pieces.
So I know all about failure. I’ve written a lot about failure. If you Google stuff like “failure lessons,” or “what is failure,” and things like that – you’ll find all my articles there. I believe failure is there to serve us and not to hurt us. So it’s okay if you’ve failed. Failure is definitely how we get molded and shaped into better human beings.
So onto the discipline part of this podcast. I want to kind of share with you guys what you should do to create more self-discipline in your life. Or I will relate what I have done, and I think that this information will be really useful to you. Remember, you are the entrepreneur, you are at the heart of your business. So if you are not disciplined, you can’t expect your business to explode, you can’t expect to scale. You can’t expect to build momentum. It’s going to go the opposite direction.
So focus on building self-discipline. It’s just one day at a time, literally. Like literally like take it one step, one day at a time and things will kind of build from there. It’s really hard in the beginning, especially if you’re changing your ways. But everyone can change. Do not believe in the whole like, “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” Like that’s totally mumbo jumbo.
If you believe in yourself wholeheartedly enough, if you have enough passion, if you have big hopes and aspirations and dreams – you have something burning inside of you, you can do it. It doesn’t matter. It does not matter what you have or do not have. You have the faculties of your mind, you can reason. You have the ability to create logic, to speak and read and write and listen. So that is really important. Never take for granted what you have.
So speaking of never taking things for granted, that’s the number one most important thing. That’s the number one most important habit to develop before you do anything else when it comes to self-discipline – first you have to be grateful. So you have to live in a state of abundance and gratitude. When you can do that, some of the most incredible things will happen in your life, I assure you.
But every single day, write down what you are grateful for. Now if you tell me, “Robert, I have nothing to be grateful for,” then I’ll tell you, “That is absolutely ridiculous.” I just named off a few. Number one, you are six feet above ground. You are not dead right now. You should be grateful for that. There are people who are dead right now. You are not dead, so you are six feet above the ground. So be grateful for that. Write that down.
Be grateful for the fact that you can hear, you can speak, you can read, you can write, you can reason, you can logic. You have the ability for language. Whatever you have in your life right now, be grateful for it, okay? You absolutely have to. You be grateful for the heart in your chest. Be grateful for your lungs.
Be grateful for everything. Because that is so important, I can’t tell you how important that is. Every single day live in a state of gratitude, and that will create abundance in your mind. Spend 10 minutes every single day writing down what you’re grateful for. Do it when you wake up, and do it before you go to sleep. I can’t tell you how important this is.
Now I know that in my life, I harbored a lot of resentment that I had to let go. It’s really hard kind of succeeding in business or succeeding in the path that we want to go on, if we’re constantly resenting things or like we’re feeling guilt or remorse or whatever it is. It’s okay to live in that state for a very short period, but you cannot carry that with you, right? Those states and those emotions will not serve you. They are going to push you down, right? So you have to move out of that. You really have to lift yourself out of that.
You can do that by literally just forgiving yourself. Forgive yourself for everything. It doesn’t matter. Forgive, doesn’t mean you have to forget what happened. You just forgive, because literally the emotion of hate is far more powerful as far as holding us back, than the emotion of love. Love definitely overcomes all, but that hate will get in the way. So like if you harbor this hate and resentment and anger and guilt, then you can’t move forward. Replace it with love, replace it with forgiveness. That’s really, really important.
Every single day, another great thing to do is meditate. In a previous episode I talked about kinda doing things for 15 minutes a day. When that comes to like meditation or when that comes to things like working out, or like walking around the block – or doing anything like that, do it for 15 minutes every single day and watch how things kind of escalate from there. So like, so meditation is a great way to kind of – to center yourself and align your body with the energy of the universe, the energy of the earth. I think that’s really, really important.
So I know that I’m talking about a lot of different things aside from actually discipline. But the thing is that most people don’t talk about, is what you need to have in order to actually get there. Because all these things are going to stand in your way. So I assure you, if you are not doing these things, then you’re going to find it really, really hard to move forward.
There are a lot of other things that you can do to be more self-disciplined. Set goals. In the previous episode we talked about like goal setting. Goal setting – active goal setting is really, really important. That means like every single day you’re tracking what you did. The more you track your goals– Let me just tell you this. The more that you track your goals, like the more frequently you track them – not just every day. Like if you track it every hour for example, the more likely you’re going to be to move towards it.
Because when we track something, it grows. When I say it grows, I’m talking about our finances, or it improves in a way like for example – if we’re trying to lose weight. So everything should be tracked. You should track it down to the minute scale. Be meticulous about it, I mean that’s super, super, super, super important.
Then other things like sleeping and exercising and eating healthy and being organized and properly managing your time – all that stuff is really, really important. We’re going to talk about time management in a coming episode, so I’m not going to talk about it here. But all I wanted to say is – if you are working towards a bigger and better life, if you are trying to be more disciplined – don’t be upset with yourself if you fail. Don’t be upset with yourself if you falter, if you veer off track and things don’t go your way every single time.
That’s okay. What is not okay is giving up. It’s not okay to not be persistent. When you – when race car drivers are driving, they’re taught like if you’re in a spin out, never look at the wall, right? Why should you never look at the wall? Because once you focus on the wall, you’re going to the wall. Look at the road ahead, right? The same thing applies to whatever you want to achieve in life. Look at the road ahead, don’t look at the wall, okay? If you look at the wall, you’re going to crash into the wall. Look forward. If you crash, you will recover.
But look forward, okay? That’s the most important thing. So just never give up on your hopes and your dreams, and every single day just be meticulous about it. Be meticulous about being grateful. Be meticulous about doing all the other things that are going to move you towards being more disciplined and being more kind of like in that element of achieving your goals.
So let go of all those bad emotions, and spend the time meditating, and spend the time eating healthy. Really care for your body. Care for your body because your mind will operate at optimal levels when you care for your body, right? So just eat clean. Be healthy, have a sound mind. Avoid substance abuse. I cannot say that enough. Avoid substance abuse. That will linger for six months in neurochemistry of your mind. Whatever it is. We’re talking about cigarettes. I’m even talking about prescription pain medication. Any type of drug, like literally all that’s going to linger around in your mind. Alcohol, everything.
If you’re serious and you want to make a big change in your life, you can. You just have to make some sacrifices that are not going to feel good in the moment, but they’re going to feel good later down the road – I can assure you of that.
So thank you so much for joining me today, on today’s episode. I really appreciate you being here, and hopefully you stay tuned for the next episode of Business Secrets. Again, if you like this podcast, please share it, please like it, please comment on it, please subscribe to it. I greatly appreciate it. Talk to you guys soon. Thank you so much.