Learning This About DISCIPLINE and FREEDOM Changed My Life

If I could shake everyone on Earth by the shoulders and deliver one essential message, it might be this.

To begin with, you need to understand that freedom and discipline are only opposites because they are inextricably linked.

They are connected - everything in this universe is connected - and freedom and discipline create each other, just like light creates darkness, life creates death, and East creates West.

Because of the fact that everything is connected, it’s true that literally everything you do matters. Which, by the way, is the literal DEFINITION of a meaningful life.

The straight, inescapable fact that every single action you take has SIGNIFICANCE means that your life matters - YOU matter - even if it doesn’t always feel like that’s true.

But hey, I’m getting ahead of myself…

This piece is about Freedom, and it’s about Discipline, and how they inform and CREATE each other - work TOGETHER - in order to help you get what you want and live a life with no regrets.

Another hugely important statement that needs to be tattooed on your brain if you’re to achieve success and fulfillment:

Understanding this puts you ahead of literally 98% of people on this planet who will ALWAYS take the easy way out, believing that it saves them from experiencing pain and frustration, and who don’t realize that that pain and frustration is GATHERING STRENGTH and will hit them harder and faster later on.

Most people think that “motivation” is magically going to come to save them; they think they need to be motivated to do something in order to do it when that’s the furthest thing from the truth.

Winners act in anticipation of motivation, ahead of time, knowing that the motivation will usually show up after they get started. Sometimes it won’t show up. Winners know that too.

And then they act anyway.

Winners-in-the-making like you read The Competitive Advantage, and so by the end of this piece, you’re going to know exactly how to get what you want in life by bending the universe to your will because you’ll know that everything is connected, freedom comes from having discipline, and winners take action while losers wait for motivation.

To illustrate my point, here’s a story about two individuals who are both dissatisfied with how their bodies look in the mirror. Maybe you’ll see yourself in one of these two people:

The Free Man can’t understand why the Disciplined Man would subject himself to such a ridiculously harsh training regimen, complete with heavy barbell squats, relentless sets of pull-ups, hours and hours on the treadmill, and more punishment.

The Free Man says, “That must suck to have to track all your calories like that, miss your favorite shows that come on after 10 pm, and all the rest of it. I don’t want your life, that’s for sure!”

The Free Man gets to do whatever the hell he wants. He stays up binge-watching Netflix specials and skips 365 workouts a year. He’s “free” to live it up! To live as he pleases! To party it up!

You’re smart enough to know where this is all leading, and it’s nowhere that you want to be. The Free Man will get older, he will get sick, he will be stuck in his same dead-end job, and he will be dating the same losers if he can even get a date at all.

This is the fate of the Free Man who neglected to follow the example of the Disciplined Man, who now has all the freedom he can imagine:

*The freedom to date the most attractive people in the world.

*The freedom to jump on a plane in the middle of the afternoon and head to Greece just because he feels like it.

*The freedom to move, pain-free, with speed and agility when other people his age are breaking down physically.

THIS is true freedom. This is what a life of “hard choices” will gift you.

Sadly, this is not most people’s reality. Far from it.

In fact, you will advance so much further ahead than most people that you won’t even seem real. You’ll seem untouchable, your lifestyle unattainable, your “freedom” out of reach.

But it’s only because you heeded the advice of the Disciplined Man and made the hard choices that were leading you to the easy life that you desired all along.

Look: Most people have less money than they want, fewer dates than they want, fewer options than they want, they’re less happy than they want to be, they have less energy than they want to have, and less FREEDOM than they desire because they are UNDISCIPLINED.

This is the key to everything.

This is what unlocks a life of limitless adventure and freedom and vitality. This is what helps you come alive.

You need to declare Martial Law on your own MIND. That’s how you become free in this world. That’s what the majority of people fail to understand.

You and I need to understand the wise yet demanding words of the U.S. Navy SEAL Jocko Willink when he says:

You have to ask yourself: So what do you actually want? You want to accomplish your goals, right? So you don’t want to be free! 

When you’re free to do anything, you’ll end up accomplishing nothing.

When you’ve got the OPTION to give up, to do something easier, to take the easy way out…that’s when you’ll fail.

You wanted your freedom before you paid for it with your discipline.

So no, you don’t actually want to be free. You want to accomplish your goals - to get what you want - and this requires temporarily restricting your freedom with high levels of discipline and deprivation.

It's the very presence of limits that ensures your own mental freedom. Unlimited freedom, by contrast, would be terribly disorienting, and you would never be able to zero in on what does add meaning and structure to your life.

Discipline and freedom work together to help you create the kind of life you want for yourself, and it's only when one tries to completely suppress the other that your life gets out of balance. Too much discipline and structure would be stifling, and with too much freedom you'd never be able to focus on anything important.

The answer is to embrace self-discipline as your friend and see it as just as important as your personal freedom, as necessary to your freedom:

That was from Jocko Willink again. His book, Discipline Equals Freedom is definitely one that I highly recommend checking out. You can also read my free breakdown first so you can decide for yourself whether or not you want to read the whole book.

Now I want to share one more quote that’s going to clarify this idea even further…

In my breakdown of Discipline is Destiny, by Ryan Holiday, I wrote the following:

Now let’s wrap this up. We know that making hard choices will lead you to an easier life overall, and that discipline equals freedom.

But by “freedom” I hope you see that I mean everything that you could possibly want in your entire life! Achievement, success, happiness, health, wealth, quality relationships…EVERYTHING you want is on the other side of ruthless, relentless, reliable discipline, which is why you need to get this handled NOW.

The greater your discipline now, the greater your freedom later.

You can either discipline yourself now or remain chained to your circumstances later on in life. Control yourself now, or be controlled by other people - by life itself - later.

You think disciplining yourself is hard? Wait until you give up your agency to other people and outside events.

Discipline yourself now or become a slave later. Discipline yourself while it’s still under your control, or wait until it’s NOT your choice later on.

Those are your two options.

Only YOU can give yourself any real freedom. Light and Dark. Pleasure and Pain. Success and Failure. Happiness or everlasting regret. The choice is yours…for now.

All the best,

Matt Karamazov

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