Put your leaders in stressful scenarios. Make them figure out solutions under pressure. See if you can make them frustrated, angry, and flustered, and then demand decisive leadership from them. They will be challenged at first, but they will get better over time.
— Jocko Willink
Ever since I was a little kid, I wanted to be in combat.
The moment the alarm goes off is the first test; it sets the tone for the rest of the day. The test is not a complex one: when the alarm goes off, do you get up out of bed, or do you lie there in comfort and fall back to sleep? If you have the discipline to get out of bed, you win - you pass the test.
It's really hard to guarantee things in life. I guarantee if you get up in the morning and you work out, and you work hard, you will have a better day - 100% guaranteed.
Just on a practical side, if you wake up early in the morning - like at 4:30 in the morning - you're going to have some free time to yourself to make things happen, to take care of things that are important to you.
There are people in the world who have skills and strength and talent that I will never have. Never. These notions that you can 'be whatever you want to be as long as you want it bad enough' are not true. They are fairy tales.
One of the best mental disciplines for people to implement is simply putting together a schedule or a task list and actually executing it. Write the list or the schedule the night before, and then do what you said you would do. Life becomes much better when you do that.
Don't think in the morning. That's a big mistake that people make. They wake up in the morning and they start thinking. Don't think. Just execute the plan. The plan is the alarm clock goes off, you get up, you go work out. Get some.
The more you practice, the better you get, the more freedom you have to create.
I would say there are some foods that I strongly recommend that you do not eat. No. 1 on that list, I believe, is doughnuts. Comfort food. Zero value. Don't eat them.
What makes you a SEAL, what makes you a SEAL is being a good tactician on the battle field, understanding how to shoot, move, and communicate, knowing small unit maneuver warfare. That's what makes a good SEAL, and so that is the course of instruction that I taught, was getting SEAL platoons ready for deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.
Being a kid's not easy. You're transforming and becoming a human being. At some point, you have everyone taking care of you, and then, all of a sudden, you're out in the world.
The temptation to take the easy road is always there. It is as easy as staying in bed in the morning and sleeping in. But discipline is paramount to ultimate success and victory for any leader and any team.
Discipline starts every day when the first alarm clock goes off in the morning. I say 'first alarm clock' because I have three, as I was taught by one of the most feared and respected instructors in SEAL training: one electric, one battery powered, one windup.
It's not fun to get out of bed early in the morning. When the alarm goes off, it doesn't sing you a song: it hits you in the head with a baseball bat. So how do you respond to that? Do you crawl underneath your covers and hide? Or do you get up, get aggressive, and attack the day?
Most of us aren't defeated in one decisive battle. We are defeated one tiny, seemingly insignificant surrender at a time that chips away at who we should really be.
Don't worry about motivation. Motivation is fickle. It comes and goes. It is unreliable - and when you are counting on motivation to get your goals accomplished, you will likely fall short.
Freedom is what everyone wants - to be able to act and live with freedom. But the only way to get to a place of freedom is through discipline.
Just do some kind of workout. Doesn't matter if it's going for a walk around the block, going for a jog, doing some calisthenics, lifting weights, going to a pool and swimming - you name it. But do something that gets your blood flowing and gets your mind in the game.
I would venture to guess that the biggest reason creative types don't produce isn't because they don't have vision... or talent... in most cases, it's a lack of discipline.
If you continue to keep low performers on your team, that are actually dragging the team down; you're failing the whole team, and eventually, the whole team is going to fail.
I did 20 years in the Navy. I joined the Navy right out of high school and went through Navy boot camp, went to SEAL training, got done with that, and then showed up at a SEAL team, where I did 20 years. That was pretty much my whole adult life.
If all you're doing is grinding for the man, it's going to burden you. Once you say, 'Hey, I'm grinding for the man, but I'm putting money away, and this is part of my exit strategy,' you're working for you.
Waking up early was the first example I noticed in the SEAL Teams in which discipline was really the difference between being good and being exceptional.
If I went back to my 20-year-old self, what I would tell my 20-year-old self is, 'You don't know anything.' Because everyone, when they're young, they think they know what's going on in the world, and you don't.
If you try and work out at 4:30 in the afternoon, how many people are going to chip away at that time? Your boss, your job, your work, your family, your other obligations that you might have. At 4:30 in the morning, all those people are asleep, so you can do whatever you want.
We all have limitations. I don't have the right genes to be an Olympic weightlifter. I don't have the right genetics to be an Olympic sprinter. Or gymnast. Sure, if I trained my whole life, perhaps I could have become fairly decent in those sports.
We all have a tendency to avoid our weaknesses. When we do that, we never progress or get any better.
If you're going to wake up early all the time, and you're working hard, and you're working out, sometimes you're going to get tired. It's OK. It's acceptable - somewhat. We're all human, unfortunately.
That nice, soft pillow and the warm blanket, and it's all comfortable, and no one wants to leave that comfort - but if you can wake up early in the morning, get a head start on everyone else that's still sleeping, get productive time doing things that you need to do - that's a huge piece to moving your life forward.
We have food all around us all the time, and if we haven't eaten for three hours, we think we're starving. You're not starving - human beings can go for 30 days without food.
We named the book 'Extreme Ownership' because we really found that when we looked at not only at leaders but at teams that were the most successful, we found that the ones that had this attitude of extreme ownership were the ones that did the best, and it's definitely an attitude that I had.
While discipline and freedom seem like they sit on opposite sides of the spectrum, they are actually very connected.
