Do you want to know a secret?

A secret very few people know about?

If so, here it is:

Discipline is the key to success.

Very simple, but not everyone does it.

Heck, if everyone did it, the world wouldn’t be so chaotic.

Now, let me ask you this:

Do you want to know the importance of being discipline and why it is necessary for you to live the life you want?

If so, read on to know why being self-disciplined is important and what you can do about it starting today.

1. You Relax

Here’s the thing that happens when you are self-disciplined:

You become the magic wizard with a crystal ball in your hand who has a magical ability to predict the future.

You read that right.

Let me explain why this is the case.

The thing that causes fear in everyone is the fear of an unknown outcome.

People, like yourself, love certainty.

When the thought of an uncertain outcome arises, you, understandably so, become very stressed out and a bunch of questions come into your mind like “What’s going to happen?” “How is this going to affect my career?” “Will my wife find out that I cheated on her (don’t do this)?”

Whatever your situation is, fear stems from uncertainty.

However, discipline is the way to get rid of this uncertainty (at least when you are developing yourself).

The reason discipline gets rid of this uncertainty is because when you follow a process that works day in and day out, you already know how it’s going to operate and you can assure yourself that it will all turn out fine in the end.

Let me give you an example to prove what I mean.

I did extremely well in university, specifically the last 2 years where I literally crushed my classmates academically and made them wonder how I was doing what I was doing.

There are 2 primary reasons for this.

       1. I had the specific knowledge in terms of knowing what the research says about studying and how it needs to be approached

       2. I executed self-discipline

Those are the 2 ingredients for success (with accountability technically as a third, but that’s if you are going off track, which didn’t happen with me in the last 2 years).

Of course, you can’t just have discipline. The specific knowledge to successfully achieve your goal is crucial to getting what you want. Without it, you can have all of the discipline you want, but you are not going anywhere.

Assuming that you have the specific knowledge to achieve what you want, discipline allows you to eliminate the uncertainty because you simply follow the path and you get what you want.

And that is exactly why I was able to avoid all-nighters and the rest of my classmates were drowning in time management issues and did not do nearly as well.

In other words,

2. You Control Your Environment

That’s right.

The circumstances don’t control you.

When you follow a proven system for success and you don’t deviate from it, nothing can stop you from getting what you want.

Hence, nothing around you can stop you.

It’s like a 3^rd degree black belt fighter knowing every trick of his trade and knowing every one of his opponents’ moves.

He has the specific knowledge in order to fight successfully.

All he has to do is follow the system set out for himself.

And if he dies that, the circumstances have no chance.

He will win every time.

When you master yourself, you master the world.

Note this point that I am about to make:

In reality, you are only competing with a handful of people if you have the specific knowledge and discipline to get what you want.

Read this sentence again.

Most people will bail out of what they do because they don’t discipline themselves to get what they want.

They might have all of the knowledge in the world, but the reality is that they don’t execute.

That’s why many things in the business world don’t get done.

There is no system for success that is followed and enforced to the tee.

That’s why sports teams that have all of the talent doesn’t guarantee success because the team isn’t disciplined and lack accountability.

In short, that’s why people are scared.

And knowing this gives you a great advantage.

Remember this:

Simplicity makes things less complicated.

Do you know the phrase “Keep It Simple Stupid?”

It’s there for a reason.

Yes, you might need to deal with complicated things to get what you want (ex. building a rocket ship).

But the approach to handling these complicated things must be simple and made with common sense above all else.

Listening to your gut to obtain the specific knowledge you need along with following the system to achieve the goal is the simple solution to most problems.

And when you know this, you are in control of everything while everyone runs around in chaos spilling coffee on their computer and getting reprimanded by the boss (aka: you J).

And fired while they are at it.

And all of this simplicity starts with discipline.

Now over time, what you will notice is that you compound your success with another success and this marks the sign of something cooking in the kitchen that smells good.

Oh and when it smells good, you know everyone wants a taste if it!

And that thing smelling good in the kitchen is this:

3. You Become Excellent

Excellence is achieving a great result repetitively over a long period of time.

This doesn’t happen by accident.

In order to achieve excellence, you need to be consistent.

And to be consistent, you need to be disciplined.

It’s all a simple recipe that is followed by everyone who has achieved great things.

Now, to prove my point, let me elaborate on how my academic success in college clearly signifies excellence and how it applies and benefits you.

I followed routine.

Yeah yeah, routine is a boring word for sure. After all, you might be tired of having a routine of going to work every day in your car to a boss you might hate.

But routine is the key to consistency and discipline.

I would follow a set plan for how I’d study and I followed it every single day.

I didn’t skip a step nor did I take a day off (unless I was sick).

I followed the research backed study secrets to the tee and I didn’t take my foot off of the gas.

I envisioned the ending that I wanted and I worked until I got it.

Along the way, I achieved perfect scores on some of my tests and I walked away from a lot classes with some of the highest grades and if not that, the highest grade.

Sometimes, I would get something like this:

Oh trust me, that’s rare in college. To get a complement from a professor on a test score means I really showed up.

And yes, I showed the graduate students who the boss was 😉

Here’s a key point that is really important for you:

Always work with the ending in mind.

Don’t think about the process. From what I’ve experienced, thinking that you are going to be perfect will, as a worst case scenario, result in excellence for you.

This was a quote from Vince Lombardi, the first ever coach to win the Super Bowl (hence, the Lombardi trophy).

I remember one guy from my classes saying that I was “taking it a little bit too far.”

Let me tell you something, if someone tells you that with respect to you pursuing what you want, you’re doing something right.

The person who says that, a lot of times, wants to see you fail so they can get ahead.

Guaranteed.

They’re just jealous.

When you start to achieve success, people will envy you and want to take you down.

Ignore them.

They’re losers and they’ll stay losers.

Instead, embrace the fact that you are doing an excellent job and build on that momentum.

Every time I studied for a test, I was always looking at myself getting a perfect score and earning a 4.0 every semester like a champion.

And you know what?

The scores were almost always close to perfection.

So let this be a testament that if you look at yourself getting the best possible outcome and you work consistently to that vision with the correct specific knowledge to get the job done, you will most likely achieve that vision or as a worst case scenario, end up with considerably great results.

This is not an imaginary pipe dream. If you are not in some dictatorship country, this is reality.

And when you understand this,

4. You Can Do Anything

Here’s the thing:

When you set your mind to something and actually accomplish something you do set your mind to, your self-belief skyrockets.

Let me explain.

When you accomplish something, your mind tends to “graduate” into the next phase of success.

This next phase of success involves achieving a bigger and better thing for yourself.

And you can accomplish this bigger and better thing because you have a process that you have learned already in achieving anything in general.

You’ve gone through the process of learning the specific information you need to learn and putting in the discipline and consistency towards getting to where you need to go.

It’s just a matter of taking the process you’ve learned and applying it to the next step.

In other words, you are handling the same situation again and again and the procedures don’t change in this general scenario.

But of course, you can only make this formula work with discipline or it won’t operate.

Let me tell you something that should convince you if you aren’t convinced of this by now.

Research has been done on the topic of discipline and these studies verify that those who are self-disciplined achieve more in school, work, relationships, financial life and in their physical life.

Additionally, they are happier with their lives and feel more confident in their abilities to achieve anything they want.

If you are from the United States, ask yourself this:

Do a lot of people say that those from Asian countries are naturally “smarter” than us?

While it’s true that these people significantly outperform Americans in a lot of areas, this performance is due to one thing and one thing only and that is:

Self-discipline.

They have a COMPLETELY different culture (excluding North Korea, which is another planet as far as everyone is concerned).

One where the values are so different and the environment is clearly obvious as to why they exert much more effort than the vast majority of Americans.

If you go to the third explanation in the research attached here, self-control is one of the factors that contributes to their success in school and, later, in the professional world.

Hence, it verifies the reality of using self-control to achieve bigger and better things all of the time.

And let me leave you this section with a quote.

Theodore Roosevelt, the 26^th President of the United States, once said something about self-discipline being the key to achieving anything and it goes like this:

“With self-discipline, most anything is possible.”

Think about that quote for some time (and act on it) and you’ll understand the meaning of it.

Now here’s what happens when you achieve success with the same thing over and over again with self-discipline.

5. You Become More Confident In Life

Let’s face it.

Confidence comes from predictability.

Predictability comes from knowing what you are doing.

Knowing what you are doing comes from having the recipe and understanding what you need to do.

Look, if you are disciplined, you know what you need to do.

And because of this, you are naturally confident.

This is the foundation of doing anything you want and achieving abundance in your life.

In this regard, you become unstoppable in pursuit of what you want and you feel like you can conquer your environment.

Let me show you how this is a real phenomenon for you with self-discipline (not to brag of course, but to prove a point).

As I’ve mentioned earlier, I was a pretty damn good student in college.

I would walk into many of my classes and it got to the point where the question was not who was getting the high score in the class, but was Evan going to get a 100% on each test?

Why did it get to this point?

Because since I developed the system through which I simply follow to get the results I want, I was able to predict the outcome ahead of time.

This gave me the confidence to control what I was doing and to influence the outcome of my scores (and sometimes, even the results of my peers).

Hence, I became the alpha male of my exams and since I predicted every one of their moves (well, almost; we are not perfect), I was able to obtain the result in my favor.

As a result, classmates gave me jaw-dropping looks, called me “brilliant” and even asked to study with me.

If you didn’t notice by now, self-discipline gives you confidence and confidence brings you abundance.

When you win at what you do, people start coming up to you and wanting to be around you (aka: the friends you didn’t know existed).

At this point, opportunities start to open up because your presence provides more value than the time they are spending to be with you.

As a result, you create life and you create a world.

And your self-belief increases because of all of the confidence you have.

Of course, this is a school example and not a real world example, but the principles are exactly the same and you can apply it to your own life right now.

In fact, take out a sheet of paper and write down what your goal is.

If you haven’t identified a goal yet, please read my post on how to redirect your sexual energy so you can know the surefire way to set goals that will allow you to crush what you are doing.

Next, write down exactly what you are doing to achieve the goal and what temptations you fall for.

Now with the temptations you identified, you must work on removing them.

To begin that process, I encourage you to read another post I wrote titled “What are Poison Pills and Why They’re More than Just Deadly!” and enforce that post to the tee.

Basically what you’ll do is you will punish yourself when you do something that is off track from what you are supposed to be doing.

This practice of negative reinforcement (imposing a penalty when you don’t do a particular thing) is research backed to be effective when combined with positive reinforcement (receiving a reward when you do a particular thing).

You can see 2 studies done on the topic here and here.

Now with your self-belief and your commitment, you obtain a key trait that every successful person has and it’s this:

6. You Become a Vigorous Worker

You work, you work, you work.

It all boils down to that.

With your heart, energy, determination and drive, you are more motivated to be on the field and on the front line even when no one else is there.

That’s what separates the professionals and the elites.

Now, this next story that I’ll tell you might be cliché if you are into basketball, but you will quickly see what I mean.

Kobe Bryant was arguably the hardest working basketball player ever.

He was even more hard working than Michael Jordan.

Kobe Bryant would get up at 3 am in the morning and begin practicing like an animal all the way into the morning.

He’d work on every part of his game and he would do so relentlessly until it was absolutely perfect.

In fact, he said one time that when he played in the game, it was easy because he had practiced it about 1000 times beforehand so it was only a matter of doing it again.

Think of when you took a test in school and you did the same problems a bunch of times before the test and the next thing you know, the problems showed up on the test.

Didn’t you feel confident that you could solve what you needed to solve?

That’s how Kobe felt every time he stepped onto the court.

One of his coaches once saw Kobe Bryant show up 2 hours before practice was supposed to start and immediately thought that Kobe was going to be great; special even.

And this was when Kobe was an 18 year old rookie.

And of course, you don’t even need to know about basketball to know what Kobe has done.

You can read the full story here if you wish.

Now let me introduce you a story about someone who, in my humble opinion, should be introduced to every child in America.

In golf, there is a legendary golfer named Gary Player who by all accounts is arguably the hardest working golfer to exist.

Period.

Even harder working than Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer combined (forgive me if you don’t know who these guys are).

Let me tell you something about this man.

Every single day, this man does 1000 pushups and 1000 sit ups even though he is 85 years old.

This man has been doing this for years now.

On top of this, this man had the most no quit attitude out of any golfer that has ever played the game.

I have never seen an instance where this man bowed out of any challenge.

And as you can see in this interview here, he did not take any Human Growth Hormones.

This means he did it the correct way and all of his efforts were honest unlike, probably from what I see, many golfers today who take HGH (honestly, from experience, many of them just want to hit the ball far to look cool; please don’t do that. Win the game the correct way).

Ever since he was 9 years old I believe it was, he worked on his body, his mind and his game all the way up until he got on tour and throughout his playing career where he became the first player to win the Grand Slam, which are the 4 major tournaments consisting of The Masters, The US Open, The Open Championship (aka: The British Open) and the PGA Championship.

I dare you to play those tournaments.

You certainly can try, especially trying to catch Dustin Johnson scoring 7 under in the 3^rd round of The Masters and at 16 under par with a 4 stroke lead.

Ok, that was a little crazy, but for most players, that’s how it is.

Trust me, winning consistently, especially golf, is NOT easy.

It is a process.

You build it over time.

You do it correctly.

And when you do that,

7. You Enjoy Your Life More

The harder you work, the luckier you get.

That was what one of the golf’s all-time great and 9 time major championship winner Gary Player once said when he described his success.

And it’s the truth.

When you work at what you have to do and you do so with a vision and with excess determination in your head, you eventually create your own luck.

It happens every time.

Do you know what it’s called?

Karma.

If you pay the price, you get all of the rewards you want in the future.

Hence, you become like Andy Dufresne from Shawshank Redemption.

You become happy, free, independent and in control of your destiny.

Hence, you get to live life the way you want with the outcome that you desired.

And that’s the sign that you succeeded at what you did.

So I encourage you to take the step today to become a more disciplined you.

Ask yourself what is discipline for you? What will it be and what will it reward you with later.

Be clear on this as this will drive you and motivate you to where you want to be.

Unlearn the things you have learned that might be holding you back.

You will win more, you will thrive more and more people will respect you as a result.

That is what you get when you become disciplined.

So use it starting today and watch yourself create life around you.

If you got a lot out of this post and you want to see more content that’ll make you massively more productive and get you to your full potential so you can control your own world, definitely subscribe to Join the Island, the world’s greatest blog, below with your email! New posts will be sent straight to your inbox once they are published!

Until next time,

This is Evan signing off.

PS: Comment below with the results you got from following this post and becoming disciplined in what you do. It’d be great to know!