9 Crucial Lessons That Will Help You Reach Your Freedom

Why couldn’t you accomplish your goals? Why aren’t you living a fulfilled and happy life? What is your excuse not to do things you want to do or not achieve the goals you want to achieve? This is what the book, “Discipline Equals Freedom” by Jacko Willink, helps you to identify. From having a healthy diet to having a fulfilled life, you need to have discipline in your life. This book, as it states in its title, is a field manual for a better version of you.

Here are the 9 Lessons you should keep in mind from Discipline Equals Freedom:

Lesson 1 — Self-improvement is a slow and tedious process and we should all aim to improve ourselves daily

“There is no easy way. There is only hard work, late nights, early mornings, practice, rehearsal, repetition, study, sweat, blood, toil, frustration, and discipline.” — Jacko Willink

There are no shortcuts in life. There is no magic formula that will help you win big in a very short period. The truth is, if you want to achieve big, you need to be prepared to do difficult and uncomfortable choices. That’s why you need to have the discipline to push you out of your bed and encourage you to do what needs to be done today. But without knowing your purpose and mission, it is difficult to keep going. So you need to know what you are fighting for.

Lesson 2 — No one has the power to control you, only you choose to be controlled

“Don’t let your mind control you. Control your mind.” — Jacko Willink

Only you can control your actions. If you can’t exercise or find time to do your work or spend quality time with your loved ones, don’t look for an excuse or try to blame others. Accept the fact that you are the person responsible for your actions. Once you set your mind, you can find the way to go out for a run after a long day at work; you fill your cupboard with healthy snacks instead of chocolate bars and crisps; you can wake up early to meditate; you can leave everything aside and spend quality time with your family. Only you can make that choice for yourself, no one else.

Lesson 3 — You can never avoid stress, but you can choose to overcome it

“Don’t fight stress. Embrace it. Turn it on itself, … Use the stress to make you a better you.” — Jacko Willink

Whether you make the most difficult decision of your life or choosing something to watch on Netflix, stress will be there; it is unavoidable. Because stress is part of our life. The key to being successful in life (whatever that means for you) is facing the stressful situation and overcome what you can control and accepting what you can’t and then getting on with it. So you need to accept the fact that stress will always be there and you cannot avoid it.

Lesson 4 — Discipline allows you to be aggressive to execute your goals

“Don’t expect to be motivated every day to get out there and make things happen. You won’t be. Don’t count on motivation. Count on Discipline.” — Jacko Willink

This aggression is only towards laziness. When your alarm goes off at 5 AM, instead of going back to sleep, your aggression tells you to jump out of your bed. Discipline combined with aggression is a powerful weapon against laziness. It is a fire that propels you to go after what you want.

Lesson 5 — Your choices will define your future version

Ultimately, who you become is based entirely on your choices. Luck has no say on who you are and who you will become. You make either difficult choices and work hard to become successful or you can sit down and wait for luck. And it will be a very long wait that most definitely will never arrive.

Lesson 6 — Failure is unacceptable

You will make a lot of mistakes on your way to accomplish your goals. If you don’t have discipline backed with aggression, those mistakes will force failure. This is not OK. But a good discipline uses fear of failure (not fear of making mistakes) and encourages you to keep trying and moving forward, so you strive to become a better version of yourself.

Lesson 7 — Regret stops progress

“The only thing valuable in regret is the lesson you learned. The knowledge you gained…So Learn and move on.’’ — Jacko Willink

Never dwell on your mistakes. You can never change and control what happened in the past, but you can certainly do something now to have a better future. If you are regretting something that happened in the past, think about what you could do now so you won’t repeat the same mistakes.

Lesson 8 — Better habits create a better version of you

If you exercise regularly and eat healthily, you will focus better and will have more energy to deal with problems you face. Mentally you will be stronger and more resilient to face obstacles and overcome them. Each good habit you develop will contribute to creating a better version of yourself in the future.

Lesson 9 — You always have time for exercise

Lack of time is the most popular (and lame) excuse for someone who doesn’t exercise regularly. If you can’t find at least 5 to 10 minutes of time slot during your day, you should definitely review your schedule. If you can’t effort to go to the gym, you can do stretches, walking, riding a bike, or just jumping jacks for few minutes. You just don’t have any excuse to be lazy.

Final Say

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