Discipline Equals Freedom
If you’ve ever played paintball, you know the feeling of being pinned down in a bunker.
Your body curled tight behind cover. Paint plastering the wall behind you, spraying like shrapnel in a firefight.
Your vision narrows, looking for a lane of escape.
Your hearing fades, limited to the pop of paintballs exploding overhead.
Your heart is climbing, one beat at a time, from the comfort of your chest to the tightness of your throat.
It’s a full body overwhelm. Your senses are taxed, and your brain is running at full capacity, humming and heating up like your laptop during a Netflix binge.
These feelings are extreme, acute, and temporary. But if you can imagine grabbing that experience by the edges and stretching it like Silly Putty, that’s the feeling of overwhelm in your life.
Less intense but longer lasting. This is the feeling you have when big life events converge in a short period of time.
For me that’s happening right now.
I just started a new career in a new industry. I’m getting married this weekend. I’ve been traveling more than normal. My wife and I are moving to a new state. She’s starting a new job. Life is changing in many different ways, all at once.
I’m feeling slightly overwhelmed, but much less than you might expect. I’m here to share my secret with you, but first, a short story.
Every morning, while the world is still wet with dew, my dad walks into his driveway and wipes the bugs from the front of his truck. With the moisture of the morning and the freshness of the flies, they peel off with ease.
His vehicle is one of the cleanest I’ve seen. The truck always looks like he drove it straight from the showroom floor.
This method reminds me of a motto from Jocko Willink—discipline equals freedom.
Because my dad has the discipline to wipe the bugs from his truck every morning, he has the freedom to drive a shiny, spotless rig.
If he were to wait months, fill a bucket with hot, soapy water, and head to the driveway in the hot summer sun, the caked and crusty bugs would win. My dad would lose the battle with entropy. He would forfeit the freedom to drive a spotless vehicle.
While I’m not as diligent with bug cleaning as my dad, I apply Jocko’s discipline equals freedom mentality to fight entropy in other areas. It’s helped me tremendously in managing the stress and overwhelm of the last couple months.
Routine is exactly what Jocko is talking about when he mentions discipline. If you have the routine to consistently do difficult things, you’ll inevitably have the freedom to sail unharmed through a storm. Let me be less abstract.
You apply the discipline of saving to enjoy the freedom of retirement.
You apply the discipline of stretching to enjoy the freedom from injury.
You apply the discipline of writing to enjoy the freedom of clear thought.
The discipline takes place now, every day, for a freedom realized in the future. Before you can cash the check of freedom, you must save your dollars with discipline.
I often hear people mention their “wedding diet”, or their “wedding workout” a few months before getting married. Everyone wants to look great for their wedding and honeymoon.
I didn’t do a wedding diet or a wedding workout.
Instead, I maintained the discipline of consistent exercise and reasonable eating habits for years before my wedding. This discipline allowed me the freedom from a few miserable months of grinding, trying to sculpt a squishy body back into wedding ready shape.
Staying ready means you never have to get ready.
Another example is my meditation practice. I don’t meditate anymore. I actually haven’t meditated in quite some time. But over the last few years, I spent longer chunks of time taking meditation very seriously. I went through a 50 day meditation practice, and I spent months on end meditating every single morning. Eventually, I reached the point where I was feeling all the benefits and didn’t need to maintain the daily practice.
I could clear my head almost on command. I could focus in nearly any situation. I was rarely anxious because I taught myself to manage my mind. The discipline of consistent meditation gave me the freedom from wedding induced monkey mind.
I could switch my mind from working on something job related, to helping Ashleigh plan our wedding, to scheduling apartment tours for our upcoming move. Of course, I still felt stress, but having complete control over my mind—from the discipline of practicing meditation—allowed me the freedom to effectively manage many different tasks without insane anxiety.
One final thought on discipline.
Being disciplined for years in many areas has allowed me the freedom to let my discipline lapse during the busiest time of my life.
I spent years writing regular articles. When I didn’t have time to write recently, I had the freedom to search my archives and send an old essay to my email list.
I spent years exercising almost daily. I have a solid fitness base. In the last few weeks, it’s been harder to fit in the workouts. But my fitness discipline allowed me the freedom to workout less and still be fit.
I spent years saving a high percentage of my income. This allowed me the freedom to take a lower paying, more enjoyable, job. It also freed me from worrying about the cost of moving or the unexpected wedding and honeymoon expenses.
We rarely recognize the benefits of our good habits until we experience discipline droughts. Those times make us appreciate the work we’ve done—they help us realize the freedom we experience as a result of our discipline.
The experience is ironic. You only have it if discipline is your norm.
As an alcoholic grows accustomed to groggy mornings, a man without discipline knows chaos as his baseline. The disciplined person knows how good it feels to be dialed in, so when life throws him curves, and his discipline wanes, he feels the physical and mental slip. It makes him appreciate his baseline state even more.
All this to say, discipline may feel restricting in the moment, but it’s liberating in the long-term.
It’s the key to success.
It’s the antidote to overwhelm.
It’s the elixir for everything.
As Jocko would say, “GET SOME!”
