In this episode, Tim Pecoraro discusses the importance of discipline in achieving goals, improving health, reducing stress, increasing productivity, enhancing self-esteem, and improving relationships. He emphasizes the need to embrace discipline for a better future and provides strategies for incorporating discipline into daily life. Tim compares the characteristics of a disciplined person with an undisciplined person in various areas, such as routines, goal setting, time management, stress management, health habits, productivity, focus, self-control, resilience, and achievement. He shares personal experiences of rebuilding his posterior chain and highlights the advantages of discipline in overcoming setbacks and achieving long-term success.

Takeaways

• Discipline is essential for achieving goals, improving health, reducing stress, increasing productivity, enhancing self-esteem, and improving relationships.
• A disciplined person follows through with commitments, sets and accomplishes goals, manages time effectively, handles stress better, maintains healthy habits, and exhibits self-control.
• Being disciplined requires flexibility, mindfulness, managing technology use, simplifying commitments, and focusing on what matters.
• Incorporating discipline into daily life takes consistent effort and a commitment to cultivate discipline.
• Discipline is a reliable friend that helps overcome setbacks and achieve long-term success.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Overview

08:18 Embracing Discipline for a Better Future

13:06 The Advantages of a Disciplined Life

16:21 Comparing a Disciplined Person with an Undisciplined Person

22:55 Building Discipline: Personal Experiences and Insights

Well, hello and welcome to Blank Pages, the podcast, a podcast for people who appreciate the new beginnings of a clean slate, but strive for the courage, willingness, curiosity and creativity available only on the blank pages of new possibilities. It's the potential to move beyond and forward where people are willing to make new decisions from fresh perspectives and are ready to write in a much better way.

The world is waiting and nothing listens better than a blank piece of paper. So hello there and welcome to episode number 27. Yes, episode 27. And I'm excited to continue. I think what I'm going to do is, well, I decided to, what I'm going to do is go and continue on with discipline.

And I'm so excited about it. So, yay. I'm excited to talk about discipline and says not many people often if ever. So, but yeah, I'm going to talk about that. But before we do, I want to say thank you for those of you who have been listening and those who are subscribed to the show. Thank you so much. And if you haven't subscribed to the show, you can do so where you listen to your favorite podcast.

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So thank you so much if you have done that. And if you haven't, please do so. Looking forward to getting your ears, hopefully to listen in and provide you with some useful information that will help you in your life and your journey. So, yeah, also there's my monthly newsletter. I want you to know that you can find that at the Instagram or on my Instagram account at Tim Pecoraro. And on that newsletter, if you go to the bio link, you click on there, you can see the newsletter, you can actually subscribe to the podcast there. You can actually purchase my first ever

children's book on there, Flit Learns to Fly, which is cool. I got some cool stuff coming up with that here soon. But the newsletter, that's where I just monthly reach out, kind of recapping the month of the topics I've been on, things that are coming. And I'm also going to be doing some what's called show and tell and sharing some of my favorite things. So I'm going to be incorporating more of that into the show, things like show and tell. And like so today, as an example of that. So don't forget on Instagram at Tim Pecoraro, you can find these things in my link.

And you will also, if you go follow me on Instagram, you'll also be, this is a show and tell item right now that I'm telling you about is this is a book I'm going to recommend people read. especially if you're a gentleman like myself who has had father, issues or wasn't sure about the father. Maybe you lost a father, didn't know who your father was. I mean, just different, whatever the reason is, it's called, will the circle be unbroken by Sean of the South, Sean Dietrich, Dietrich or Dietrich. So.

I will talk more about it on Instagram. Hopefully you will follow if you want to be, you want to know more about it, but it's show and tell this book right here, I would say is one of the books that has touched my heart in the last 10 years and it has been great. Okay. Moving on to today's topic and discipline. So remember, if you listen to last pot last week's podcast, I talked about, you know, discipline wants to be your reliable friend. I talk about.

You know, when I establish a routine or ritual, right? There's an important part of that. There's a rationale to be consistent with routine. It will reduce your stress and your mental friction. And, and then I talked about the second step would be to break tasks into small manageable steps. And, and then the third thing was, you know, focus on action and not on the feeling. Don't wait to just feel it. Right. A lot of times that's what we do is we're waiting to feel something and feel our way into doing it. And yeah.

That's not really a good strategy. Feelings can, you know, feelings are good, but you got to move past your feelings. Sometimes you just got to understand that if you're waiting to feel it, you may never feel it and you may never do it. And if it's something important, that could be a problem. So, but that's not what we're going to get into. What I want to get into is just that this, I want to go into more of this value of this discipline and...

And discipline that I want you to look at it in different ways. I don't want you to look at discipline as this thing that just feels so rigid and sterile. And maybe it needs to for you. Maybe that's what you need. Maybe there are those people that need discipline to them and whatever images it conjures up in their mind, as long as it's healthy and productive. I mean, it doesn't really matter. So in your mind, if the perfect ideal picture of discipline is a person in maybe in a neatly tailored suit,

very spit spot buttoned up everything neat and manicured cuffs exactly right. And if that's an image of discipline and then when you see people the way they do their job and the way they do details and if that's discipline if they weigh if it's a sport and the way they do their preparation and that however that is, however you see it and if it looks more militant than not, that's your choice. The key though is to find the discipline find.

the advantage of discipline, find the signs of discipline, and then, and what are your strategies to become more disciplined? And, and I mean, I mean, how do I embrace discipline for a better future? I mean, how do I cope with the unpredictable stuff, remain disciplined, and cope with unpredictable stuff in a noisy world? Like, how do I do that? Right? So that's, I mean, it matters. I mean, discipline matters, right? So,

Let me just start with embracing discipline for a better future. So living a disciplined life might seem, it could be challenging. It could be, it could seem like it's impossible to do, but it's entirely achievable. It's incredibly rewarding, right? And this is important. I'm bringing this up because I am not at all trying to put myself in the spot to say I'm Mr. Discipline, Mr. Ritual, Mr. No, this is something that in where I am in my life, I am really starting to...

really appreciate the more the importance of discipline, just so much more in all the areas of my life. And it's not because of a certain event. It's because just my eyes just being opened and like there's so many connections happening that are so immediate. And I'll talk about one of those ways in a minute and how it's changed my life for that purpose. But

Living a disciplined life might seem challenging, but it's entirely achievable, right? So imagine if you can wake up every day and you just have this simple clear purpose knowing exactly what steps to take to reach whatever the goal is that you want. See, that's the power of discipline. That's what I'm talking about. I just want to wake up each day with a clear purpose knowing exactly what steps I need to take with what's in my control. What I know works.

What I know that I am, when it works, there's no excuse because I always get back to it. One moment, I'm gonna clean my throat here.

So.

Why discipline matters, right? So I'll just give you a quick little list of why it matters, right? So to achieve your goals with discipline, you can set and accomplish them, right? It can give you that fulfillment. Fulfillment is important. Life, if you feel unfulfilled, that means you're missing something. If you feel unfulfilled, that means there's unrealized potential that's not being used or it's not being used where you would like to place it.

And so therefore, if you're not using it where you like to place it, there can be no goals that you can set in order to accomplish, in order to be fulfilled in the thing that you would like to do in the place that you like to do it. Man, that's a lot, right? So with discipline, you want to be able to set and accomplish meaningful goals when you have that opportunity to fulfill them and be successful. So it'll improve your health consistently. Just think about it. Exercise. If I'm just doing my exercise or how I eat or how I sleep, right?

My physical and mental well -being will be good. And when I'm disciplined, when I'm disciplined, it reduces my stress. Why? Because if I can put myself in structured routines and effective time management, it's going to help me handle stress better. Well, let me change that. Not time management, effective self -management with the time that I'm given. Let me say that again.

When I'm disciplined, discipline matters as it relates to stress because when I have structured routines or things that I have structure in and effective self -management with the time that is given to me, it's going to help me get things done and handle the stress that comes with it. It's going to boost my productivity when I have discipline. Focused effort will increase my efficiency because of that when I focus on the effort.

I don't get distracted by things. I become more efficient and it's going to help me get more done in less time. It's going to build my confidence. Think about that discipline builds confidence. So achieving my goals and maintaining self control, right? It's managing myself. It's going to enhance my self -esteem, which is going to build my confidence. I'm going to feel like I'm all right. I'm going to feel okay. And then it's going to strengthen my relationships, right? It's going to matter because my relationships get strong.

I'm going to be reliable and consistent when, when it's going to, yeah, I'll be reliable. I'll be consistent in the friendship when people are trying to work with me or do things with me. It's going to, it's going to then by, by virtue of that taking place by people working with me and, and, and, and I'm because I'm consistent and I'm reliable and they work with me, it's going to improve that part, but it's going to build me up personally, professionally as well.

It's going to improve the way I show up because I'll have the confidence, but also the confidence is going to be met and verified by people who are experiencing the same on their end. There'll be no doubt that it's happening, that it's there. All right. So I want to give you an aspect of life and just so a comparison chart, and I will get this put up, this comparison chart for you to be able to see. And I'll share it on.

more than likely on Instagram as well, but a comparison chart illustrating the differences between a person with a life of discipline and one without, right? So, and then remember there's the advantage of this discipline life. I just went over these advantages a second ago, but I'm going to really go drill into these. So here's the aspect of the life when it comes to routines. A disciplined person will do it consistently, daily habits and routines. An undisciplined person will do it consistently, daily habits and routines.

will be inconsistent without routines. Okay? So then, now let's move to the next thing. So when it comes to the routine area, discipline versus undiscipline, as it relates to goals, because in order for you to execute a plan or to, I don't know, to see your dreams come true or to accomplish something, you need to set goals. So a disciplined person with a routine moves into goal setting with clearly defined goals and plans to achieve them.

The undisciplined person will be inconsistent, no routine, they'll be vague or no goals and lack of direction. So then when it comes to their time management or using the time available to them, the disciplined person with a routine and goal setting will use that as efficient use of time. They'll be efficient with it and they'll prioritize tasks. On the opposite side of that, the undisciplined person will be inconsistent, no routine, vague, no goals, lack of direction, poor self -management, and they will procrastinate.

Let's move over to a disciplined person when it comes to stress management. Well, they'll be better with stress because they're better at handling stress now. So now that they're in their routine, they're doing their thing, they're doing their day to day, they got the time available. Now things are going to hit them. The disciplined person going to handle the stress because they have structured activity. Undisciplined, easily overwhelmed, and they're going to be reactive to the stress.

Then there, now you're going to get into the healthy part because now they're working, they're moving along. It's in the day to day. It's at their job. It's in their community, whatever it is, it's in the family and the disciplined person is going to maintain exercise. They're going to figure out how to prioritize that to get it done. They're going to get healthy in their eating. They're going to pay attention. They're going to stop making excuses. They're going to say, what's it matter if I eat this or whatever? And then you're going to, because you're tired of being unhealthy or complaining about being sleepy or whatever it is.

And your sleep habits are bad. So you're going to stop with the things that you can do and you get to do because we have a lot of us just have that first world problem of a lot of things available for us to do that distract us from our greater need, which is to sleep. And so the disciplined person will go to sleep. The undisciplined person irregular with that poor diet and consistent sleep. So now you're still back at work and productivity is expected now.

So the disciplined person, because we know what they do, routine, goal setting, management, stress management, their health, and they prioritize it. Now the productivity is gonna be high because they're gonna meet deadlines and be consistent with it. And the person who's undisciplined, you know, with no routine, no goal setting, no management of the self and time, no stress management, health is gonna be inconsistent with it, their productivity is gonna be lower, and they're gonna often miss their deadline.

The disciplined person as it relates to focus because they're producing now because they produce their focus becomes stronger and they even they continue to build the muscle of avoiding distraction for noisy world. But then the undisciplined person is going to be easily distracted and they're going to lack that concentration. And then the disciplined person is going to have self -control. They're going to exhibit self -control and they're going to delay that instant gratification and they're going to wait and they're going to play more of the long game and they're going to invest deeper roots.

But the undisciplined person will become impulsive. They're going to seek immediate gratification only to find that that's just it's just fluff. It's like there's nothing in the center. And then the disciplined person, they're going to find that resilience. They're going to have a higher resilience that resilience that's there. There's going to be this greater ability to bounce back from setbacks. Why? Because they have such a history in a log of learning through becoming disciplined.

They're going to have so much historical information and evidence that gives them confidence to continue to choose discipline, the reliable friend over anything else. The undisciplined person is going to have a lower resilience with struggles and setbacks. And then when it comes to the achievement, man, this is the thing about discipline. And this is why it's so important to me because more likely to achieve long -term success and the undisciplined person is going to struggle to achieve significant milestone. Why? Because they're un...

They're undisciplined person, no discipline. They're going to be inconsistent without a routine, vague with no goals, lack of direction, poor time management. They're going to procrastinate. They're going to be easily overwhelmed, reactive to stress, irregular exercise, poor diet, inconsistent sleep. That's going to produce low productivity, often missing deadlines, easily distracted when lacking concentration. They're going to become more impulsive, seek immediate gratification, lower resilience, struggles with setbacks.

and then struggle to achieve significant milestones in their life. Bam. That's undisciplined. Discipline on the other hand is a disciplined person will be consistent in the daily habits and routines with clearly defined goals and plans to achieve them. They'll be efficient in how they manage themselves in order to use their time given to them prioritizing their tasks. And they'll be better equipped at handling stress through

their structured activities, they're going to be able to maintain or they're going to prioritize maintaining regular exercise, healthy diet and their sleep habits, saying no to the things that are easily accessible to them, that are readily accessible and causing noise. They're going to be high productivity people that meet deadlines consistently with a strong focus, avoiding more and more the distractions that are tapping them on the shoulder.

They're going to exhibit self -control. They're going to delay instant gratification. They're going to have a higher resilience bounce back from setbacks quicker, more rapidly, more surely, more confidently, and they are more likely to achieve long -term success. That's discipline, person. Man.

So for me, why is this important? I want to help each one of you realize there's that advantage to the discipline life to achieve goals, improve your health, reduce stress, increase productivity, enhance your self -esteem and improve your relationships. I mean, that's it. And so how do you know there's signs of it? Well, the signs of discipline in your life should look like this.

They should look like consistency, right? You should see consistency regularly following through with the commitments in your routines. So these are the signs, right? So if you, I'm telling you what to do and to work on, but these are signs that you're getting there. And then I'll wrap why this is so important to me right now. Consistency should be a sign of discipline in your life, regularly following through with commitments and routines. The second one is goal achievement that you're setting and accomplishing short term and long term goals.

The next is healthy habits. Third, you're maintaining a balanced, you're trying to find that balance of, of some exercise, walking, running. I don't care what it is being still just be healthy, healthier, eating adequate sleep, fuel the machine that you live in, fuel the machine, fuel it, efficient time use, right. And efficient that's you prioritizing tasks and managing yourself with the time you have effectively.

And then the fifth one that I want to share with you on signs of a disciplined life is the resilience. You'll notice you'll quickly recover from setbacks and you'll continue to move forward. These will be signs of discipline in life.

But you can start that now. And the reason I'm saying that is because I and I may have shared a little bit here and there, but I had to rebuild my posterior chain because I'm I'm bowleg. I've had injuries in sports. I had several knee surgeries and I have no cartilage in either knee. So they're arthritic and I have watched my legs degrade over time. And, you know, and my my physician doesn't want to replace them. I'm too young to do that.

But said let's go down the path of hard work and rebuilding the posterior chain and and every day that is what I do and sometimes it's too painful to do but every single day I'm working on certain parts of the my posterior chain and leg from the waist down Building the thing that needs to support me thing that I need thing That's functional all of that every single day to rebuild all those large muscle groups And now I'm into the finer soft tissue areas

But by being consistent, setting goals with it and creating a healthy habit around it and then efficient with the time that I have available to do it. I'm noticing even when I get some comfortable and it's painful, the resilience is there. Now I realize I have discipline in my life, but I'm also seeing the results of it. I have literally been able to build as a person who's considered like in their, you know, 50 and older that I am actually making something so strong and rebuilt something that was suffering. So with.

my, my physical therapy, you know, a little bit of, I have some, some gel injection I get in my knee. That's just a basic thing. And that's it. And getting into that. And now I'm able to, because of my goals that I wanted, I'm able to like, I squat down all the way down, like my little grandson's doing now. Like I can walk and play and do things with them because that's what's on my mind.

I want to be able to do those things and move and function as a person who was very active as an athlete and all of these things. And it's difficult. I see people who get to run, could run, and they just don't run. And I go, man, you won't do something with that. And I just want to. So that's my drive on one area of my life and me finding to go deeper and even that you're older. So here's the thing. I was a disciplined athlete. I did things. I worked hard to keep my body strong and I still got injured.

but I wasn't disciplined in my recovery. And one of the things that this has taught me is this, I'm always very good and disciplined at building things. I'm also disciplined when I know there's an injury or something that needs to be fixed. But where I'm not really disciplined is in the long -term process of recovery and rebuilding something.

And that's where I'm getting better and disciplined at. And one of the ways I'm doing that is with my body. And it's an unpredictable world. So it's noisy. And so the thing with discipline is I want you to know this because of all the noise in the world and because of how hard it can get, you have to know in order to deal with all the noise in order so that you don't lose discipline.

Be flexible, be ready to adjust your plans guys. When you set a plan, adjust. Also practice, practice mindfulness. You know, practice mindfulness techniques to always stay present because things are going to get noisy, but you don't want to sacrifice discipline and the noise. So learn to stay present to reduce stress and then technology stuff, man, manage that technology in your use of it. You know, manage it to your advantage by setting even boundaries necessary to

vent your own overload with this cool new thing. You remember email is a great idea until everyone started sending for the wrong reason and using it not the way it makes sense or should be used for people to understand how to follow you or not to be overwhelmed, etc. And then simplify your life, focus on what matters. Like for me, one of the things that fed me and gave me fuel was and that gave me the energy to continue to move to build the discipline.

was focusing on what mattered. And I simplified my commitments so I didn't feel the tug of war in my heart, knowing that a lot of things matter to me, but realizing that I can't do everything right now. And so I had to really get down into scrutinizing some of the things and being okay with not making everything be number one because everything cannot be.

So I'm hoping that you can incorporate these strategies and you can put in a consistent effort to cultivate discipline into your life. I hope that when you're looking at the value of discipline, when you're looking at the importance of discipline,

If you think discipline needs to be the thing that looks or the image or the avatar of a person in military military dress, that's great. If it's your image of an athlete lifting weights, that's great. If it's a person with books laid out everywhere with with with chalkboards full of notations and in theorems or whatever, that's awesome. But whatever it is, don't just leave it as an image. Get it into your life.

Invite discipline to be your reliable friend and continue to work at it. And if you would, you know, share with someone, let someone know how you're working discipline into your life, how you're making discipline your friend and what are you doing to improve and grow in that area. And if you would also share with me, send a comment, comment on one of your, on one of the social media apps.

Sorry, I'm one of the podcast apps, platforms or in social media at Tim Fekoraro on Instagram. But until we talk next time, I hope that you have an amazing, amazing and prosperous week. Do all that you can do it. Well, do it with all your heart and be present. And most importantly, every day is an opportunity to build that discipline. We'll talk soon.