Building a Disciplined Life

A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog post on how living a disciplined life brings an abundance of benefits. This week’s question was inspired by just that blog post. 

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Episode 239 | Script

Hello and welcome to episode 239 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host for this show.

So, what is living a disciplined life? Well, it’s not living a regimented life—that’s a kind of life that is very restrictive and doesn’t allow any flexibility. A disciplined life is a life lived with a few core tenets that provide the building blocks for a healthy, productive day. As Jim Rohn said, “Success is a few simple disciplines practised every day.”

This is very much in contrast to living an undisciplined life where anything goes and can, over time, lead to the destruction of careers, marriages, health and dreams. 

The great thing about living a disciplined life is you feel great about yourself. It builds self-confidence and self-respect and is the foundation to living a successful life because those little things you do every day move you closer to living the life you dream of living. 

So, with that said, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question.

This week’s question comes from Cindy. Cindy asks, Hi Carl, a few weeks ago, I read your article on living a disciplined life, and it got me wondering about what would you consider being the right sort of things to bring to a disciplined life. A few pointers in the right direction would really help me. 

Hi Cindy, thank you for your question and for reading my article. 

The great thing about building a disciplined life is that we have a blank canvas on which to draw up what we want to focus on. In many ways, this will start from knowing what your long-term, life goals are and what your areas of focus.

If you have taken the time to establish what you want from life and what is important to you in terms of your career, relationships, finances, health and lifestyle expectations, creating a disciplined life around these will give you a fantastic platform on which to build.

For example, if your long-term goal is to build a beach house so you have a place to go for long holidays, then you will need to be disciplined about your finances. To build (or buy) a beach house, requires money. Leaving this to chance is not going to work. Sure, you may buy lottery tickets every week, but the chances of you winning a sufficient amount to purchase a beachside property are very slim. You will need to be deliberate with your savings. How much you spend today, will have an impact on your future goal. 

You will have to become a saver instead of a spender. 

Now imagine you have a long-term goal to travel the world when you retire. Aside from the money, you will need, you will also need your health. If you let your health go now, when you retire, you will find many of the places you want to visit will be inaccessible to you. For instance, climbing Mount Kilimanjaro to see the sun rise over the African savanna or visiting the Angkor Wat temple in Cambodia, both of which require a reasonable level of health and fitness to access. 

I don’t know any people whose long-term goal is to spend their final years in and out of hospital waiting for the next heart attack or stroke. 

Statistics from the American Heart Association state that almost half of American adults have some form of cardiovascular disease. This figure is probably similar for most other western countries. People need to take notice of these statistics. 

Cardiovascular disease is the biggest killer in the developed world today. But it’s not that you are shortening your life expectancy that’s the real problem here. The biggest problem is most people have dreams and goals that they are waiting for—living an active retirement, being able to walk their daughter down the aisle or being able to play games with their grandchildren. If you are not disciplined about what you eat and how you exercise, none of those dreams will happen. 

Living a disciplined life is about getting the basics right and being consistent with them. Having a healthy eating habit that ensures you get the right nutrition and doing some form of exercise every day. A thirty-minute walk each day would be enough. If you can do more, then the better. 

I think the biggest problem with the word exercise today is we associate it with running or going to the gym. That’s just a modern concept. Not everyone likes going to the gym or going out for a run. Exercise simply means movement. Walking, taking the stairs, doing housework (a great form of exercise), doing a little gardening each week or taking your kids out on a bike ride every weekend. All these activities are exercise. 

So what are the basics? In theory, these will differ from individual to individual, but your health is certainly one area you should be disciplined about. Finances would be another. Working for thirty to forty years and having nothing saved for your retirement would be a disaster. I’m no financial expert, but you should be saving at least 10% of your salary each month for your long-term future. 

I like the way Jim Rohn puts this—see that 10% as a tax for your future. If the government decided to raise income tax by 10%, you’d grumble—perhaps get angry—but you would pay it. Stop finding excuses, and start putting a minimum of 10% of your income away each month. 

Another essential would be planning the day. Let me give you an example. 

Each day I have a few core activities that must be included in my day. These are writing my journal (for my mental health), exercise (for my physical health) Taking our little dog out for a walk with my wife (for quality time with my wife and little Louis) and creating something to help people improve their lives (linked to my purpose in life). 

This means when I sit down at the end of the day to plan the next day, these activities are built into my day. There can be exceptions—for instance if my wife is away or we are on holiday—but on the whole, these activities are scheduled on my calendar and are non-negotiable. 

This is an example of living a disciplined life. These core activities form the non-negotiable part of my day. When I woke up this morning, I wrote my journal. Writing this podcast, is how I can help people and once this script is finished, I will be heading out for a run at the local park. After dinner, my wife and I will take Louis out for his daily walk. 

In total, these activities will take up around three hours of my day. That leaves me plenty of time to deal with my email and other work related matters. I have enough time to eat and sleep and perhaps have a little time at the end of the day to relax and learn something. I don’t feel stressed or overwhelmed. I feel comfortable, relaxed and I know at the end of the day I will feel great because the important thing in my life have been given time and attention. 

If you flip that and look at an undisciplined life. The day starts with no plan. There’s no consistency and no reason to wake up except to get to work. This means wake up time is often decided on how much time it takes to boil the kettle and brush your teeth before heading out the door to go to work where you spend all day being told what to do, where to stand or sit.

Lunch is whatever everyone else is having, be that pizza, fried chicken or a highly processed pre-packaged sandwich which leaves you feeling tired and mentally drained all afternoon. 

When you get home at the end of your work shift, you feel so fatigued and worn out, all you can do is crash on the sofa and binge-watch whatever you can find that may be interesting on TV or mindlessly scroll through your social media feeds being triggered by whatever opposing political view you happen to read—which then puts you in a foul mood for when you finally fall asleep. 

You repeat that every weekday. I know which kind of life I want to live. 

Living a disciplined life is about making decisions that are in your best long-term interests. Discipline is like a muscle, the more you exercise it the stronger it becomes. 

It’s that discipline that makes each day feel constructive and meaningful. It prevents you from feeling you are wasting your life and it leads to better relationships because you are dependable, solid and inspiring to other people. 

One of the interesting things about following a disciplined life is that after a few months, living that life becomes easy. It becomes something you just do. I write my journal every morning. It feels effortless, to make a cup of coffee, sit down with my iPad and write for ten minutes. I write about how I feel, what’s going well and what’s not going well. I write about my dreams, how I would like to live my life and where I feel I can improve. It’s just who I am. I write a journal. 

To begin living a more disciplined life needs to start small. It could be something as simple as doing the washing up before you go to bed, or it could be you make your bed before leaving to start work. Once that becomes something you “just” do, you can then expand that something else. For instance, going out for a thirty minute walk after dinner—a fantastic way to help control your blood sugars by the way—or perhaps sitting down after your walk and spending ten minutes planning what your objectives for the next day will be. 

I should say, planning my objectives for the next day is one of my favourite times of the day. It gives me a sense of control over my life. Instead of waiting for things to happen to me, I feel I am making things happen for me. It gives me a focus for the day and when I complete those objectives I get a wonderful sense of achievement. 

The key to living a more disciplined life is deciding what you want out of life and finding a few little things you can do each day that will move you a little closer towards achieving those things. 

I’ve seen so many people destroy their lives because they lived an undisciplined life. People who can no longer say yes to doing new exciting things because of health issues, or relationships breaking down because of a lack of attention and unreliability. 

Don’t be one of those people. You can take control of your life and build amazing things with a little discipline. It’s how we humans thrive, flourish and grow. 

It can be hard to become disciplined; I understand that. This is why you want to be thinking long-term. Start small. Develop your self-discipline strength and think of it as building a life you want to live small step by small step. I can promise you once you get started, and you begin to see results you will continue to grow.

Thank you, Cindy for you question and thank you to you too for listening. 

It just remains for me now to wish you all a very very productive week.