CRAIG BALLANTYNE ｜ The Dark Side of Discipline
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Summary
In this episode, my guest Craig Ballantyne makes the case that discipline, although a powerful force for productivity, does come with strings attached and isn't the end-all, save-all it's often made out to be.
Transcript
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Every single man listening to this podcast is familiar with discipline and has applied
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We generally think of discipline as an overall good thing, and I think it is, but it can
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often lead to bouts of frustration and unnecessary suffering if utilized incorrectly.
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My guest today, Craig Ballantyne, makes the case that discipline, although a powerful force
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for productivity, does come with strings attached and isn't the end-all save-all it's often
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Today we talk about what true discipline is not, why chasing the wrong target is so common
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among men and what to do about it, what I call the self-help hangover and how to avoid
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it, why you should know the distinction between standards and expectations, and how to avoid
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You live life to the fullest, embrace your fears, and boldly chart your own path.
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When life knocks you down, you get back up one more time.
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Every time, you are not easily deterred or defeated, rugged, resilient, or strong.
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At the end of the day, and after all is said and done, you can call yourself a man.
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I am Ryan Mickler, and if you're not familiar with what we're doing here, it's my job each
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and every week to bring you some of the most incredibly successful men in their own right.
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Entrepreneurs, athletes, scholars, fathers, business owners, New York Times bestselling
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If they have a story to tell, if they've been through hardship, overcome that hardship, and
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have lessons that we can extract and learn and grow from, I want to bring those guys to
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We've also got courses and programs and other things available, but this is some great information
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I think we're almost at 1,600 episodes that we've done now, so I want to thank you for
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Outside of that, I just want to introduce real quickly my good friends and, of course, the
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people that help make this show possible in addition to you is my friends over at Montana
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I'm in the process right now of packing for a trip to Hawaii in the next couple of weeks,
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a hunting trip out there with my son and good friends, and, of course, I do not leave home
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on a hunting trip without an American-made knife built in America by Montana Knife Company.
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Sometimes I give those to my friends, and sometimes I keep them for myself.
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Anyways, if you're looking for a good knife this year, whether you're hunting or cooking
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in the kitchen or an everyday carry or even a tactical knife or something out in the field,
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Again, 100% made in America by great folks over at Montana Knife Company.
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When you do pick up your knife or any of the gear that they have over there, make sure to
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That lets them know you found them here and also saves you some money.
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He's an author, and I've known Craig for, gosh, probably seven or eight years now.
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He's also a high-performance coach, and he's really well-known for his expertise in productivity
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and discipline, which is obviously the focus of this conversation.
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He first rose to prominence in entrepreneurship and fitness as an expert and creator of the
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Turbulence Training Program, but he transitioned into personal development and has written several
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The Perfect Day Formula, which is one I highly recommend.
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Also, a book called Unstoppable, and then his newest book, The Dark Side of Discipline.
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Craig's also the founder of TheEarlyToRise.com, and he has helped thousands of entrepreneurs
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to build successful businesses through his views and perspectives on structured habits
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Craig, I think it's really important that we talk about what discipline is because it
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seems to have become one of those words that gets tossed around so much that it's deflated
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So I've come down to this very simple definition.
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Discipline is putting a level 10 effort into your level 10 problem.
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And if you're not doing that, you're just not as disciplined as you can be.
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And a lot of people, unfortunately, are chasing what I call perverse forms of procrastination.
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They're doing a lot of good things that are getting in the way of the great things and
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getting in the way of them actually being disciplined and putting that level 10 effort
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When we start talking about those levels, I think sometimes that's obviously subjective,
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Or my level 10 in a year could actually be my level 7.
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But how do you know if you're pursuing a level 10 problem?
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Because I know that there's a lot of men out there who are lacking purpose and
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direction in their lives and they feel like there's something more, but they don't really
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know what they should be pursuing or if what they're pursuing is something worth pursuing.
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Let me give you a little background on this whole idea of the level 10 thing.
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And so, you know, Bedros Koulian is a good friend of yours, good friend of mine.
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And for years, he ran this thing called Fitness Business Summit.
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And Fitness Business Summit is this event where personal trainers would come in and gym
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owners would come in to learn about sales and marketing.
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And I would look out in the audience because I spoke at it every single year.
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I'd look out and there's James and Jenny and Johnny.
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They're out in row 10, same seats as last year.
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And they have eight bucks in their bank account.
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And they would come to the event and we would teach them all this sales and marketing.
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Instead, they would take all the information they got from all the other personal trainers
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And so they'd come back the next year and they'd be 7% body fat and they'd have seven
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And this is just an extreme example of them going home and putting a level 10 effort into
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a level one problem, which is their body fat, their fitness.
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And a lot of men listening to this are out there already really jacked, already really fit.
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And you're putting a lot, you know, you're doing your two-a-day workouts and you're rucking
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But are you having the difficult conversations with your business partner or your team members
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You know, are those molehills in the most important areas of life becoming mountains because you're
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too darn busy putting a level 10 effort into getting, you know, 1% lost body fat when you
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already got veins, you know, coming out, you know, of your arms and your shirt.
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You want to have great, you know, trucks and cars and a home gym.
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And you want to have a great marriage and you want to have awesome kids.
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You want to raise them and you want to have freedom and you want to be wealthy.
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If you're an entrepreneur, you want to have it all.
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But when you want to have it all, you know, if you're a wild horse, you're just off running
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And I feel like because of this thing, the phone, that our ability to be reactive or
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our opportunity to be reactive to all these things that pop up, you know, there's this
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challenge, there's the ice baths, there's the ultra marathons.
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Because if you just run marathons these days, like you don't even run, man.
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And then, you know, the ultra marathoners get looked down on by the Badwater ultra marathoners.
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And, you know, it's just all this, you know, peeing contest of like, who's the most insanely
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But that's not really what discipline truly is.
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To me, discipline is knowing what really matters in your life and then putting the blinders
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on and pursuing only what really matters to you, to your core values inside of your heart,
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And so to figure that out, we have to do the hardest thing of all, which most people
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And most people have never done this in history because it is so hard.
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And it's even harder in this day and age with all the great podcasts and all the great
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audio books out there to always have inputs going into your head.
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But what you need to do is you need to stop the inputs.
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You need to spend some time in silence and figure out, all right, what really matters
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Where do I want to be in the next three to five years in my business, with my family?
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Not as, you know, not what is Joe Rogan's specific definition of success or this guy's
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specific definition of success or, you know, what I saw from some guy I've never seen
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And when you have spent some time in that self-reflection and introspection, you get
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And this is what's missing from a lot of people's lives is, is not that they're not, it's not
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It's just that you're going in the wrong direction because you haven't stepped back and
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And when you do that, when you finally figure that out, then all of your efforts go in the
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And so we take people through a little vision exercise to figure out what matters for the
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You know, we're talking about big why and core values for their family and for their
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And then also just that phrase, what is your specific definition of success for the short
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And then we get you running your own race, even if it's in the other direction than what
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Yeah, I think that's, you know, one thing, as you were saying that, one of the things that
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I've seen is when we help our men with their, their goal planning, um, one of the areas
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And so that's getting right with yourself, your mental, emotional, and spiritual wellbeing,
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um, or maybe it's condition and that's your physical health.
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And I'm using a, uh, obviously a silly example, but if somebody says to me, you know, um, I'm
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And then I ask him and I say, okay, that's great.
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It's like, okay, well, you're already doing that.
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It's the same thing as your, your fitness guys where they're like, yeah, I really want
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to get fit and shredded and I want to work out as hard as I can.
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And you ask them, Hey, what are you doing right now?
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They're like, I'm getting fit and shredded and working out as hard as I can.
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It's like, well, good, you're already doing it.
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So maybe there's something else that you can pursue that is more meaningful.
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I would never make a goal in my life to brush my teeth daily because I think, I hope most of
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us listening to this podcast are just already doing that.
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But push yourself outside of your comfort zone and give yourself something to do that
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you've never done before or that you're hiding from.
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A lot of people know what they should be doing, but they hide from it.
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And that's the level 10 problem is that when, when people say, well, how do I figure out
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It's like, you know what your level 10 problem is.
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You know, it's the thing that you, you dream about that you wake up in two o'clock in the
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morning and go, Oh my God, I don't want to dream about that anymore.
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Or you wake up in the morning and it's cloudy outside.
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So you immediately get in a slightly bad mood and all of a sudden your mind turns to that
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And oftentimes it is actually a difficult discussion and the difficult discussions in our lives
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really need to be with, you know, if, if we own a business, it's either a business
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partner or a team member where things are, you know, they started going sour about six
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We push it off, we push it off and Oh man, or, you know, in your relationships, it's
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something that is festering between you and your wife and you need to sit down and have
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You know, people, I joke about this on Instagram and people always like this one is like people
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will go and do the most incredibly difficult things in order to avoid a hard conversation.
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You will do ultra marathons, you will cold plunge all to avoid having a difficult conversation
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And listen, I'm, I've ran from difficult conversations in the past and it sucked.
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In fact, you know, we have a coaching program for business owners and we, we actually built
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out a two page worksheet to help somebody have a difficult conversation because we see this
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And, you know, it's like putting yourself in their shoes.
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What do you think is going to be their worst reaction?
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How can you reframe this problem in their mind so that it's not really a problem?
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How can you take person full, we have people start by saying it's, I take full responsibility
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for the, you know, the, the situation and how it's gotten to this point.
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And, you know, so that we bring down their defenses because everybody is just really, really,
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Most people are really fearful of the difficult conversation.
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But if you think about where most people's problems in life come from, it's because they've
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And if they just would have had that conversation six months ago, yeah, it would have sucked,
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And now all of a sudden, you're not talking about ripping the bandage off.
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You're talking about divorce, divorce lawyer and some real hard conversations all because
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And so we just want people to, to, you know, attack that head on.
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And then you can make time for all the other stuff that you want to do as a wild horse,
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like, you know, the CrossFit and all that stuff.
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But, you know, make sure that you're taking, you're taking the time to focus on what matters.
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I think I heard Jordan Peterson or I think it was Jordan Peterson say something like the,
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the, the answer, I'm paraphrasing, but the answer you seek is in the place you're,
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The, the, the, the answers you seek are in the cave that you fear to go in or something.
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It's like when, when I think like of in the past of areas where I want to improve on,
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because I used to have really introverted tendencies and, you know, so, but I also wanted to be the
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speaker and, you know, the kind of incongruent because, you know, you can go up there
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and speak, but people want to talk to you after.
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And if you like rush out of there, people are like, Oh, what's going on with this guy?
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And they're not going to like want to see you speak again.
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And, you know, one of those events that Bedros had, um, you know, the fitness business summit,
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I went to it and I made this public declaration.
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I'm going to hug a hundred people at this event.
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And like some people listen to a hundred, hug a hundred people at a big event.
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But for me as an introverted type of person, it was very difficult and I did it.
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And I got a lot of weird looks from people who had known me for a long time, but that
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And now social settings are so much easier for me because I kept on doing those types of things.
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It is interesting though, because when we look in that cave that we're, we've been unwilling
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to look, um, you know, it looks a lot scarier than it actually is.
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And when you get in there, I've realized I actually went on a hike yesterday and there
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was a bit of a cave and I was looking in there with my phone.
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It was a lava tube and we're looking in there and I've got my flashlight.
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I'm like, I don't know if I want to go in there.
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It opens up and it's got this like really cool view.
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And it kind of opened up on top, but I would have never been able to see that if I just
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stayed on the outside and just looked at it from, from where I was in relative safety
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But you get in there and you realize, oh, there are so many incredible blessings in here that
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I would have missed if I didn't have the courage to step into it.
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You know, I'll just tell a quick story about, you know, it's an embarrassing story.
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Um, I went to South Africa on a safari in, in 2018 with, with a bunch of friends that
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are friends with Bedros and they, we went to this place in, in Zimbabwe called Victoria
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It's called the, it's a swing where you jump off and you do 275 feet down and then it swings
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And at the end of it, I was like, why didn't I do it?
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And I was thinking about it for like the next 12 hours.
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And then luckily the kids wanted, uh, my friend's kids wanted to go back cause there was a zip
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And I was like, okay, I'm going to go and do it.
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And I, um, I'm a big fan of Tim Grover's book, Relentless.
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And in it, he just says, don't think, you know, just stop, you know, stop thinking.
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And so I was just like, I thought quickly and I said, listen, people do this all the time.
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I'm just going to go up and they put the harness on me.
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I didn't think, and I jumped and it was a great experience.
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And I actually truly believe that it was then helpful for me to enter another cave.
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Um, you know, cause I was single up until 2019.
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And so, you know, I pushed off the relationships for all types of reasons.
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And then I just decided to like, you know, I got to put my ego aside and ask for help.
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So I asked a bunch of my female friends who have large social networks to introduce me to
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And sure enough, you know, long story short, one of them became my wife.
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And now we have three kids today, all because, was it because I jumped off that cliff in Zimbabwe?
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Man, maybe I would have done the other thing too, but it really did help.
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And so, um, every time you push yourself to do that thing, whether it's, you know, you're
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a bodybuilder and you go and run a marathon like Bedros did, you know, 15 years ago.
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Like he learned a lot from that and he still talks about it today, but it was something that
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So, um, you know, I don't know if you ever heard his story, like the first, first week
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of marathon training, he ran in Chuck Taylor Converse.
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And he didn't know why he was getting shin splints.
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But, but his, he was always about these six week challenges about trying something new.
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And, and if you can listen, you can be jacked and you can read a book a week and you can kind
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But the real growth comes from, you know, when you put yourself in those beginner shoes and
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you're willing to set the ego aside and be humble and go into those caves, um, you know,
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you know, literally for you, uh, metaphorically for me, and you're going to come up better on
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Do you, you talk a lot about, I mean, you dedicated a whole section in the book, the
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dark side of discipline to the, the concept and idea of suffering.
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And we were talking earlier about, you know, how people suffer when they're not willing
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to have these challenging conversations or they're not willing to address some scary
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Is that the suffering that you're talking about or is there suffering in just the monotony
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and grind of the modern day version of discipline that we hear about?
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I think there's, there is suffering in what I describe as suffering is when you miss out
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on something, when you have a regret, when you lose something, um, when you underperform
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to me, my suffering, whenever I feel really bad.
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And I do feel bad, uh, from time to time is when I, when I know that I could have done
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this level, like I could have done performed at X level and I underperformed and I underperformed
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Um, you know, I just didn't give it my all for whatever reason it was, or, you know, I
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fell back on bad habits and, you know, it could be in a conversation with my wife, it
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But every time I feel something negative inside of me, it is because I underperformed and, and
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And we, you know, we don't want to dwell on the past, but I, you know, I have to suffer
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about that thing, like that underperformance, like I can't do anything about it.
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We sacrifice, you know, getting up early and doing what we have to do for, for our wife
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You know, like when you go in and you go through a hard workout, it's not suffering to me, even
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though some people might think it's suffering, but I don't think it's suffering.
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But suffering is when you regret it and, you know, living a life of regrets.
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Like I'm not, I'm not an expert in this area and I, maybe I shouldn't speak about it, but
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I see a lot of women suffering who hit 35, 40, 45 years old with no kids because they have
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made a decision to, you know, chase their careers.
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And I think that that is a, is a type of suffering, which is so sad.
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And we see it, my, my wife and I see it all the time in people because they, you know, were
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sold, you know, an idea that, you know, they shouldn't have bought into and they bought into
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And now they're stuck because maybe they found the guy and they can't have the kid and
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And so I want, you know, and men can have their own version of it.
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You know, like I lead off the book with about a friend of mine who chased discipline activities
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and his wife walked out on with the kids because he was spending all his time doing that.
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He didn't put his level 10 effort into his marriage.
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Like that, that story made me write the book because that is suffering.
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And, you know, I'm sure there's guys out here who've made a mistake in the past and
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And unfortunately some men are suffering because they don't get to see their kids as much.
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It, you know, doing a hard workout is not suffering.
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It's sacrifice, but missing out on what you love, having regrets is suffering.
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And if you figure out what you really want and you put that level 10 effort into it, you
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at least give yourself the greatest chance of not having to suffer through regret.
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I can appreciate the distinction between sacrifice and suffering because I have heard people often
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talk about what you dub sacrifice as suffering.
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And I can't help but think that if you need, if you feel like you're going to suffer doing
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something, you're going to be less likely to do it.
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If, if people constantly tell you how horrible this is going to be and how hard it's going
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to be, and it's going to suck and embrace the suck and embrace the suffering.
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And I actually don't feel that way when I go train because yeah, it's hard.
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Some days I don't feel like going, but I've managed to find a sense of joy and satisfaction
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So even when it's difficult, I'm not suffering.
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And that's way more manageable than just being miserable all the time.
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I just don't think there's any, any place for misery in somebody's life unless it's an
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But you know, you can choose a path of sacrifice and achieve your greatest dreams.
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And I don't think that suffering or misery needs to be alone there at all.
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It's like, you're going to make a story up about something, make one up that serves you.
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And, and I've seen, I can't remember the exact wording of it, but I did see a good Instagram
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meme of, you know, it's like, there's a, a, a split picture and one is an overweight person,
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And, you know, it's like the path to hell looks like heaven.
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And then on the flip side is, you know, this person working really hard, but they're in
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And the path to heaven looks like hell to some people.
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And it's kind of like a similar thing to what we're talking about.
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You know, the person who is fit, they're going to live, you know, in most cases, they're
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They're going to have the systems in place that are going to give them back their time.
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That's, that's the result of work, but it's not suffering.
00:24:34.800
On the flip side, the person who's, you know, just eating fast food and overeating and drinking
00:24:40.940
and smoking weed and pornography and all that stuff, like they might get instant gratification.
00:24:48.920
Man, I'm just going to take a break from the conversation very quickly.
00:24:52.380
I've read so many books over the years and it's become increasingly difficult to keep track
00:24:59.500
And with all the book recommendations I've given over those years, some of the best books
00:25:03.260
on masculinity and manliness do tend to get lost in the clutter.
00:25:07.920
And that's why we created the Order of Man Bookshelf.
00:25:10.080
It is a curated collection of powerful, very principle driven books, and they're all designed
00:25:18.960
And most importantly, equip you as a man in leadership and fatherhood, discipline, like
00:25:24.800
we're talking about today, sovereignty and purpose in your life.
00:25:27.780
Now, each of these books is a book that I have personally read and found immense value in.
00:25:33.200
And they're all aligned with our mission of helping men become protectors, providers, and
00:25:36.680
presiders over themselves and for their families.
00:25:38.840
Guys, this is not just a shelf of random books you should read.
00:25:44.020
It's really a foundation for building a legacy in your life.
00:25:56.760
There's another meme, I'm sure you've seen it, where it's this, on one side, it's this individual
00:26:05.580
who, like you said, is maybe obese and broken down and drunk and alone and just miserable.
00:26:13.580
And then on the other side, you have this gentleman who's healthy and sober and pursuing passion
00:26:21.900
And on the left side with the guy who's miserable, it says, why are you this way?
00:26:25.220
And he said, well, my dad was a drunk and he was abusive and he was an alcoholic and he
00:26:31.340
And then on the right hand side, it says, why are you this way?
00:26:34.080
And that guy says, well, my dad was a drunk and he was abusive and he was an alcoholic and
00:26:38.420
So two, and I know this is a made up story, but it's probably got some validity.
00:26:44.460
Well, it's like, it's the same story, but it's how you choose to look.
00:26:50.280
If that person was like that, it can compel you to be that same way or it can compel you
00:27:06.200
So for people listening, you're like, who is this person?
00:27:11.340
You know, he has the stumps and then I believe he just has a stump on one side and then he
00:27:17.400
has his arm on the right hand side and he has one finger and it's his middle finger.
00:27:25.100
He's one of the best motivational speakers in the world.
00:27:30.720
Like he could, he drives like Dodge Chargers and, and Ford Mustangs and like has these.
00:27:37.760
I mean, he's living life and he, so, you know, the doctors told his parents to abort him.
00:27:44.220
And so, I mean, his parents are, I mean, as, as you know, Nick's, Nick's the hero, but I
00:27:52.060
Um, and, but they raised him to, to be this incredible human being.
00:27:56.440
And, and it's like, look at the choices that man has made.
00:28:00.760
And, uh, I had a mentor who was in a similar position.
00:28:03.760
Did you ever meet Sean Stevenson, the three foot giant?
00:28:10.220
Sean unfortunately passed away because Sean had, um, you know, this is very inspiring and, and he was an
00:28:15.020
amazing speaker, an amazing public speaker, but Sean was born with a disease, uh, some type of bone
00:28:21.900
disease and he broke his bones 280 times in his life. Like when he was playing as a kid, he would
00:28:26.620
break his femur just playing. And so he only grew to be three feet high, but this man became again,
00:28:32.800
an amazing motivational speaker. He was funny as heck. He, he got married. Um, eventually,
00:28:39.000
unfortunately he fell and, and hit his head and because his bone bones were so fragile that he,
00:28:44.220
he passed away, but he touched lives, man. Like I hired the guy for a full day of, of, you know,
00:28:51.840
he's, he was a therapist and, and, um, a counselor and, and coach. And, you know, he really did help
00:28:57.960
me out with a lot of things I needed to get out of my own head about. And again, this is a person who
00:29:03.760
was gifted this situation and decided to make certain decisions, but you know, you wouldn't
00:29:10.620
judge him for being like, no, I'm just going to go play video games and I'm going to hide from the
00:29:14.280
world. Like I wouldn't, I wouldn't hold that against him if he decided to make that choice
00:29:17.800
because that's tough. But instead he decided to go into that cave that, you know, most people fear to
00:29:22.720
enter. Yeah. It's pretty amazing to see people in those circumstances where they do those things
00:29:29.760
and then it strips away all of our excuses and almost totally me at times feel, you know,
00:29:35.460
inadequate. You're like, man, if somebody like that can do that, what am I, what am I complaining
00:29:40.480
about? Why? Like I, I almost as if I have it too easy that life has become too easy or convenient
00:29:46.780
that it, this goes back to the point you were making earlier about things are good. So I don't
00:29:52.460
really have a reason to make them better because they're pretty good. Well, this is where I
00:29:59.460
have my internal feelings of regret because I know that so many other people have started out
00:30:04.860
in life with less than me, have started out in harder circumstances and have done more. And so
00:30:09.660
when people ask me like, Hey, what's your motivation to keep on doing stuff? It's that it's, have I
00:30:14.340
really done the most with the gifts I've been given? And Ed Milet has this great little story that
00:30:20.000
he teaches on stage where, you know, he believes that when Ed Milet dies and he goes to heaven, he's going
00:30:25.760
to meet the God's going to bring out like, this was the best version of Ed Milet that you could
00:30:29.580
have been. And Ed says, I want to make sure that I'm a hundred percent that person. And it's a really,
00:30:35.260
really good visualization. It really gets you thinking, okay. Yeah. So, I mean, like, you know,
00:30:39.860
John, who's listening to this, John's like thinking, you know, I could have done better at this. I could
00:30:44.680
be a better leader. Like I'm capable of doing those things. And so I got to keep going. I got to keep
00:30:50.760
going because man, when it's easy to be complacent and especially if you started from nothing and you
00:30:56.920
got to a place in your life where you have a lot of stuff, it is easy to be complacent, but then you
00:31:01.280
have to actually have to flip the script and say, okay, I've got everything I want, but have all the
00:31:06.920
people around me gotten what they want? And have I given everything that I can give to all the other
00:31:13.020
people out there? No, you'll never ever give everything you can to all the other people out there,
00:31:18.260
but that's where you have to then put your efforts because as someone who struggled with anxiety a
00:31:23.260
long time ago, it's because I got, you know, I got caught up in my own head and, and, um, you know,
00:31:27.000
really thinking about myself. And one of the things when I was going through my anxiety attacks was I
00:31:31.440
found that whenever I helped somebody else, the anxiety completely disappeared. And so I use that
00:31:37.580
all the time. It's like, whatever bad feeling ever comes into me, I'm, I know I can get rid of it just
00:31:43.960
by going out and helping somebody, whether that means answering a question on social media to a
00:31:48.020
complete stranger for like 10 seconds or a minute or two, or writing a post for a website or making
00:31:53.360
a video and sharing it. I'll just get rid of the bad feelings because I'm going out there and helping
00:31:57.580
somebody. And that's what drives me. And that's what should drive us all because there's always
00:32:03.000
the ability for us to, to reach another level of our potential with that. Yeah. Where does the,
00:32:08.180
the term doom loop come into play? Cause that's one thing you talked about in the book too,
00:32:12.240
is yeah, there's the suffering, but then specifically there's this loop that we get into.
00:32:16.200
So what does that mean? Yeah. So doom loop is a cycle of bad behavior and I had a lot of bad
00:32:22.360
cycles of bad behavior. Like for me, binge drinking was my biggest bad behavior that I ever had in my
00:32:27.280
life that held me back that I never got out of for, um, you know, I should have got out of it way
00:32:31.960
long, uh, earlier than I did, but it was just this thing that, you know, I'm in the loop. I'm in this,
00:32:37.160
here's my social circle. And what do they do? They get together on Saturdays and they binge drink,
00:32:41.720
you know, all my friends are here. My environment that I put myself in on weekends is conducive to
00:32:47.260
it. And so I just, I can't get out of this loop. How am I going to get out of this loop? I have to
00:32:51.520
make big changes in my behavior. I need a circuit breaker to get out of the loop for other men.
00:32:56.840
It might be, they go home and they just watch TV, you know, from 7 PM till 11 PM, they just watch TV
00:33:03.700
and they eat bad food. Okay. That's a doom loop. Oh man. And then they're so tired from that the night
00:33:08.620
before that they just go home and they get back in that loop. And we all find ourselves in various
00:33:14.440
bad loops. You know, some guys are into pornography. Some guys are into binge drinking or regular night
00:33:19.880
drinking. There's all types of these doom loops that we get in. And how do you break out of that?
00:33:25.300
You break out of it through what we call the effortless discipline systems. We need to, first of
00:33:29.560
all, eliminate the triggers and temptations and the toxic people that just drag us down into those bad
00:33:35.920
behaviors. And we need to eliminate the distractions. We need to eliminate the cues on our phone that
00:33:40.900
might make us go from, you know, watching some girl's CrossFit video to pornography like that.
00:33:45.620
I know guys who just like, that's their doom loop. That's how they get into that stuff.
00:33:50.020
And so we need to eliminate. And then after elimination comes preparation, we want to make
00:33:55.580
the path to the bad habit as hard as possible. And we want to make the path to the good habit as easy
00:34:01.640
as possible. We want to grease the groove. And how do we do that? It's better planning and preparation
00:34:05.780
than ever before. Anybody who's ever lost weight successfully knows how important better planning
00:34:11.900
is. Because, you know, maybe you tried 10 times to lose 30 pounds and then finally you did it.
00:34:16.420
What was the difference? Well, that was the time that you finally planned all your workouts and got a
00:34:20.280
coach. That was the time that you finally, you know, did all your meal prep or got a meal prep service.
00:34:25.160
That was the time that you actually prepared your meals for the week and got everything in place.
00:34:29.380
And then it finally clicked. And so whatever it is, whatever good habit you want to put into your life,
00:34:34.600
you have to put better planning and preparation to get into it as easy as possible. And then finally,
00:34:40.380
the last one, the effortless discipline systems are EPC, elimination, preparation, and connection.
00:34:46.260
And this is what is missing from most men's lives. This is what you provide through your communities,
00:34:51.020
which is so important because through connection, we get accountability. So many people wake up on
00:34:57.080
January 1st, set a goal and keep it to themselves. But you're the easiest person to let down.
00:35:02.340
If you have a community of like-minded people and you stand up in front of that community,
00:35:07.900
whether it's virtual or whether it's in person, you say, this is the, you know, in the next 30 days,
00:35:12.520
I'm going to do this, or this is the year I'm going to accomplish this, or in the next 90 days,
00:35:16.340
I'm going to lose 30 pounds, or I'm going to start my business this year, or I'm going to fix my
00:35:20.760
marriage. When you stand up in front of that group, you've burned the boats because you're a person
00:35:26.140
of integrity, and a person of integrity follows through on their word. And that is the missing link
00:35:31.540
because, again, most men, we just go through and we suffer in silence and we keep everything to
00:35:36.800
ourselves. But that's probably why we're not achieving all that we can. And for me, you know,
00:35:42.840
I mentioned Bedros a couple of times on here. There's the community aspect of the connection,
00:35:46.640
and then there's the individual aspect. And I always say that you want to have accountability
00:35:50.400
to somebody you deeply do not want to disappoint. Accountability to somebody you deeply do not want
00:35:56.440
to disappoint will help you move mountains in life. And for me, years ago, I was that introverted
00:36:02.460
guy. I wanted to be successful. And I had a bunch of coaches, and they helped me a bit, but I felt like
00:36:07.940
I was only doing 80% of what they suggested. And then I hired Bedros as a coach. And when he said
00:36:14.000
something, I didn't do just 100%. I did 110% because I looked up to him as like a big brother.
00:36:19.820
And if you ever disappoint him, you're going to get this Armenian desk there. And you don't want
00:36:23.860
to get the Armenian desk there. Totally. But if you find somebody that you look up to,
00:36:30.600
mentor, big brother, and not literal big brother, but like somebody or somebody in the community,
00:36:36.260
and you tell them something that you want to achieve something, your mind will just go into this mode
00:36:42.420
where it will make you follow through. And the follow through is what's missing from most people's
00:36:48.020
lives these days. But the follow through is, you know, it's everything.
00:36:52.120
Yeah. I really like that component. I mean, a lot of what you're talking about, I've seen in
00:37:00.600
Atomic Habits. Yeah. And I think what you're alluding to is the idea of, and you actually talk
00:37:07.680
about this in the book, is the idea of systems. Do you say systems over discipline? That once you have
00:37:13.620
systems, discipline is not required. Help me flesh that out a little bit.
00:37:17.020
Yeah, sure. So everybody, you know, if you close your eyes and you think the word discipline,
00:37:22.120
what do you think? You think of somebody who looks like Ryan, you know, getting out of an ice bath
00:37:26.080
with an ax in his hand and, you know, tattoos all over his chest. Like everybody thinks that somebody
00:37:31.760
who does physically hard tasks, that's what you think of as discipline. You know, like white knuckling
00:37:36.380
your way through life, like put a piece of chocolate cake in front of me. I've just done a 72 hour fast
00:37:40.580
and I'm just going to stare it down. I'm like, okay. You know, you can only go through life
00:37:45.120
using so much discipline. You know, there's research that shows-
00:37:50.200
Yeah. Willpower and discipline are depletable resources. Like when you go and do a workout,
00:37:55.300
you can't work out forever because your muscle energy depletes. You can't, you know, ride through
00:38:00.540
life on like, I'm just going to mentally beat this. It's not going to work forever. What you need
00:38:07.280
are systems. Systems make things relatively easy, simpler at least, and require less mental effort
00:38:15.960
because the day-to-day, our day-to-day of like, hey, you know, getting in traffic and, you know,
00:38:20.260
having the discipline not to give the finger to somebody who cut you off, like that depletes
00:38:23.960
your discipline. And so, you know, you don't have this inexhaustible supply of it. But if you have the
00:38:29.200
systems of accountability, like, you know, one of the things, Ryan, that I've found over the years of
00:38:34.620
coaching people is that one of the most important keystone habits is people getting to bed on time
00:38:40.260
because if you don't get to bed on time, you don't sleep well and you have a greater chance of
00:38:44.260
hitting snooze. You hit snooze, then you are rushing around and you're late. You over-caffeinate. You
00:38:48.940
have some crappy food at a drive-through. You get caught in traffic because if you would have left
00:38:54.520
10 after 7, no traffic, but you left at 20 after 7 and now there's traffic. And now you're using this
00:38:59.860
up and you get to work and, you know, you're snapping at Sally because she did something in
00:39:04.040
the office and, you know, it's just negative domino after negative domino. But if you get to
00:39:08.740
bed on time, you get up on time. You're refreshed. You actually are making the right decisions all day
00:39:15.060
long and you're knocking down the good dominoes. So if that's the keystone habit and some people
00:39:20.800
might be going, ah, that can't be that simple. It is that simple. Whenever I see somebody who's in
00:39:25.300
disarray, I'm like, have you, have you been out late? And it's like, oh, I was at a seminar and I
00:39:29.920
stayed up late and I got home and I can't sleep. It's all, it almost comes down to that. So you need
00:39:36.080
a system to get to bed on time. And we teach a system in one of our books called the perfect week
00:39:40.540
formula. It's called the reverse alarm. An hour before bed, your system is that if you want to get
00:39:46.000
to bed at 10 o'clock at nine o'clock, an alarm goes off on your phone. That's part of the system.
00:39:51.580
And when the alarm goes off, you turn off all your electronics. You shut down your iPhone.
00:39:55.300
You know, on social media, you shut down your laptop, you turn off the TV, whatever else,
00:39:59.840
everything's turned off. And now you can only do what I call old school activities. You can read,
00:40:04.200
you can talk to your wife, you can make your lunch, hang out with your kids, take a bath,
00:40:08.160
take a shower, whatever. You can meditate, you can pray, you can read the Bible. But eventually,
00:40:13.200
like after about 40 minutes, you're like, ah, I'm ready to go to bed. You know, I'm tired now.
00:40:17.340
And so you get to bed on time from a system and you can put systems into place. Like I'm sure a lot
00:40:23.340
of people have used the system of a workout buddy before because, you know, you have a greater chance
00:40:28.420
of skipping your workout if it's just you. But if somebody's waiting there and it's going to bust
00:40:32.380
your balls for not showing up to the workout, you're going to go. That's part of a system.
00:40:37.160
And these things, you know, having a workout buddy is a whole lot more effective as a system than relying
00:40:43.940
on discipline alone or making a commitment to the community of, hey, guys, I'm going to take 60
00:40:50.420
days off alcohol. If you say that, you're much more likely to use that system to avoid that beer
00:40:57.720
when you're on a work trip and the flight's delayed and you're in the airport bar and you're
00:41:02.240
like, oh, man, you know, like if you didn't tell that group and use that system of accountability,
00:41:07.880
you'd probably have the beer. And so everything there in the system world is to make things easier
00:41:15.280
for you. You can set these up for your nutrition, your Bible study, whatever it is. Everything can be
00:41:20.940
made easier through systems. And those don't deplete your discipline and willpower for sometimes when
00:41:28.080
you need to use that stuff in cases of emergency. Yeah, definitely. Well, I remember years ago I did
00:41:34.560
an endurance event. It was called the Spartan Goge. And it was brutal. 50-hour endurance event
00:41:41.120
on Joe DeSena's property in Vermont. And it was wild. And some incredible athletes there too that
00:41:46.400
we were all performing with. But I had Joe DeSena on the podcast and he had said, oh, you should come
00:41:52.560
do this. And I'm like, cool, yeah, I'll do it. And before I knew what it was, I said, yeah, I'll do
00:41:57.140
the Spartan Goge because I had done some other Spartan races. And he's like, cool, here's this person's
00:42:01.200
contact. Give him a call and let him know you can come on me. I'm like, great, I'll do that.
00:42:05.520
And so I looked at it after the podcast. I'm like, oh no, what did I sign up for?
00:42:12.200
Right, but you've already made the commitment. I already made, I said I would do it. And I try
00:42:16.060
to be a man of my word. And so I went and did it. And I told, at the time we had a 10,000
00:42:20.720
man Facebook group. So this was years and years ago. And went and did the Spartan Goge. And there
00:42:26.240
were plenty of times where I was like, I'm going to, I'm done. I can't do this. I'm going to throw
00:42:30.180
in the towel. But I remember, I'm like, no, I told 10,000 men that I would do it. And if
00:42:37.680
I don't do it, then I have to go back to 10,000 people that I care about and want to win that
00:42:45.260
I didn't have what it takes. And there were some other motivating factors too. But that
00:42:52.900
was, to me, that was no longer discipline. That was part of a system where I told those
00:42:58.140
guys that I would do it. And I'm not going to face down not doing it. And it helped me
00:43:02.400
in a lot of those moments really get through some difficult times in that event.
00:43:06.500
Man, accountability is such a life hack. It truly is. And it is, you know, it's got some
00:43:12.380
components of it. It's got to be a community of like-minded people. And you have to, you
00:43:18.160
know, have your integrity. But when you do that, it is a burn the boats moment. So, you
00:43:23.780
know, a little word of caution, a word of warning is make sure you read the fine print, you know,
00:43:28.160
when you are committing to something. Before you start signing up for things. But, you know,
00:43:31.800
I think there's something to be said for that too. If it, you know, if you're trying to be
00:43:35.460
a man of your word, if you sign up for something, it's pretty acceptable in modern times, relatively
00:43:42.940
acceptable for you to back out of it. You can come up with all sorts of excuses or reasons
00:43:46.500
or whatever as to why you can't do those things. And most people will be pretty understanding.
00:43:52.100
But my philosophy is that even if you want to get out of it, you actually have to do it
00:43:57.480
because you have to feel the weight of your words. And if you're miserable for three hours
00:44:02.200
doing something you don't want to do, but you committed to doing it, maybe next time
00:44:05.740
you won't be as loose lipped with your commitments.
00:44:11.120
Absolutely. Absolutely. You got to learn a lesson one way or another, for sure.
00:44:15.760
For sure. Yeah. When you talk, you also talk about the last section of the book is really
00:44:20.380
on achieving more in your life. And I think obviously every man who's listening to this
00:44:24.620
podcast wants to achieve more in their life. But you talk about the fastest path. And sometimes
00:44:29.820
I'm, I'm, I'm not skeptical of what you're saying, but sometimes when we hear things like
00:44:34.780
that, it's, it's, we naturally gravitate towards the get risk quick schemes and the programs
00:44:41.400
and the hacks. And it's like, you know, I think there are more effective ways of doing things,
00:44:46.800
but the fastest to me anyways, isn't always the most effective. Help me understand that.
00:44:52.000
Yeah. So what we believe is that when you change your identity and have higher standards for yourself,
00:45:01.120
that this is going to help you make the right decisions automatically. And that's, what's going
00:45:07.640
to be the killer tool, the killer way for you to be able to achieve what you want. And some of these
00:45:15.160
things are going to happen quite quickly because when you, like, for example, some people would be
00:45:21.660
really shocked to say that you can quit pornography overnight. Right. And, and we have this story in
00:45:27.100
the book of some guy who does it because he simply raises his standards because we reframe things in
00:45:32.540
their brain and reframing things in somebody's brain is a super powerful way to get somebody to make
00:45:38.060
really big quantum leaps. And so we simply, you know, it was a coaching client of mine. I said,
00:45:43.200
because he, he knew that I don't watch pornography and I've talked about it before. And he was like,
00:45:47.880
man, you know, I really struggle with this. And I'm like, Hey, no, it's all right. Don't beat
00:45:50.800
yourself up. But just understand that you are an honorable man. You're a family man. And you're
00:45:55.560
just simply the type of man who doesn't do this. And those were the magic words he needed in order to
00:46:02.380
finally flip the switch in his mind and raise his standards. Now, listen, for me, it took me 10 years to
00:46:10.200
stop binge drinking. So I am not an overnight success story and everything. And I was probably
00:46:15.860
too immature to look at the whole standards thing as the quick fix, but it was a quick fix for my
00:46:23.280
friend. And so you need that level of maturity and that level of commitment and that level of
00:46:28.120
understanding your core values. But in that, in certain cases, you can really quit things as long
00:46:34.920
as they're not physical addictions. Obviously if they're a physical addiction, you know, you may need
00:46:39.020
medical help and it's a little bit outside the scope of expertise on that. But if it is simply a bad
00:46:44.040
habit, you can kick bad habits to the curb. It doesn't require 21 day fix or, you know, 60 days
00:46:49.900
or whatever it is. In some cases, you can just simply quit that. Once you say this is out of alignment
00:46:56.200
with who I am as a man, won't work for everything, but there's a lot of things that it can work for
00:47:03.300
and you can quit it really, really fast. So for people that are like, well, what do you mean by
00:47:09.760
the standards and identity? The standards are really the rules for your life. And we use this,
00:47:14.820
you know, my coauthor is a big fan of NFL football and Mike Tomlin, the coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers.
00:47:21.580
And they're really big on the Steelers organization of standards. Like they have certain rules for
00:47:27.060
performance and, and how you act as a Pittsburgh Steeler. And if you don't ingrain them, you're
00:47:32.880
gone. And it's like, this is the filter through which the organization operates. And for our own
00:47:38.940
lives, we need standards through which we use as the filter for how we operate. Because in this day
00:47:45.480
and age, there's so many decisions to make, right? There's so many things we see on social media.
00:47:49.400
There's so many advertisements you see driving down the road in America and watching on TV or listening
00:47:54.680
to the radio. And there's a lot of things that sound interesting, but you have to run everything
00:48:00.280
through a quick filter so that you can then decide whether to give it any of your attention or to just
00:48:06.120
say, sounds interesting, but I cannot do it. And if you're, if you're going to think about every
00:48:12.560
decision, you will be eventually emotionally and mentally fatigued trying to consume and process all
00:48:19.520
that information. But if you have like simple, like, no, we just don't do that.
00:48:23.540
Great. Like for example, like, um, my mom always has always gone to church every Sunday morning.
00:48:31.140
So if somebody said to her, Hey, why don't you come out and go to a, you know, we're going to go to the
00:48:35.660
play at, it starts at 12 o'clock. We're going to have to leave here at 10 o'clock in the morning.
00:48:39.440
My mom would say, I'd love to, but I can't. I always go to church. It starts at 11 o'clock on Sunday
00:48:45.780
morning. I can't go. So I don't even have to waste any mental energy thinking about whether or not I
00:48:51.780
accept that invitation because here are my standards and it doesn't fit in my standards.
00:48:56.560
I have a personal standard now that I don't consume alcohol at all anymore. So when I go out to a
00:49:01.500
business event and people like, Hey, you want to drink? If I'm with somebody who's trying not to
00:49:06.560
drink, they're going to do this, you know, mental gymnastics. Oh, I want to have a drink, but I
00:49:10.800
shouldn't have a drink. I got an early flight, but I, you know, I don't want the peer pressure. Like
00:49:14.820
it's emotionally exhausting to, you know, have that conversation in your head, but I'm like,
00:49:19.820
Oh, I'm, I just, I'm, I'm not the type of person who drinks alcohol. So thank you.
00:49:23.700
Let's talk about something else. You know, like it just, it's that immediate thing.
00:49:28.600
Well, and it's so, and it's such a firm line stance that people begin to,
00:49:32.540
they begin to expect it from you quite honestly, where it's like, Oh yeah, I don't even ask Craig
00:49:37.920
anymore. Cause I just, I know. And it's not a, it's not a deal. I think where people begin to get into
00:49:42.540
trouble is like you said, the mental gymnastics. And when they start compromising, I mean, it would
00:49:46.820
be easy for example, to compromise, to see your mom when you have other things, but if you break
00:49:52.120
down in that area, it becomes easier to break down the next time and the next time, the next time,
00:49:56.720
for different reasons that are really unimportant. Yeah. Is there, do you ever differentiate between
00:50:02.340
standards and expectations? Because I found in my own life that I might have an expectation to
00:50:08.700
produce a desired result, for example, but sometimes things are beyond my control and it doesn't work
00:50:15.060
out the way that you want it to. Or I know that I've had a lot of frustration in the past around
00:50:23.260
having standard, or excuse me, expectations of other people. And so is there room for a
00:50:30.520
differentiation between what a standard and an expectation of yourself would be?
00:50:34.480
Yeah, totally. And, and so again, the expectation, if it's an, if it's an outcome based thing outside
00:50:40.660
of your control, we, we need to be careful with like incorporating that as a standard, but standard
00:50:46.440
is simply a behavior in which you control. So I fully control whether or not I'm going to consume
00:50:51.060
alcohol. Now I don't fully control like, Hey, I'm going to wake up feeling every morning. I'm going to
00:50:55.860
wake up feeling amazing. You know, there's some days I'm not going to wake up feeling amazing that,
00:51:01.020
you know, that expectation is unrealistic, but it is, it's similar to something, um, that I learned
00:51:08.160
through my study of stoic philosophy that we only control our thoughts, words, and our deeds. So our
00:51:13.660
standards really need to be around our thoughts, our words, our deeds, because nothing else is within
00:51:19.380
our control, the results or somebody else's behavior, or definitely someone else's performance,
00:51:25.240
not within our control. So we do have to separate those, but the effort that if we're inside an
00:51:32.580
organization, we can have organizational standards that someone has to play up to those. And if they
00:51:38.240
don't, there's going to have to be some correction or there's going to be, have to be some, you know,
00:51:43.880
some, um, some leaving of the organization so we can set them, but it all have to be around the
00:51:49.580
behaviors and then the outcomes come because of that. Right. Yeah. I like that. I mean, the outcomes
00:51:56.900
as a result of the standards that you have, not necessarily the other way around. And I like your
00:52:02.040
reframing because you actually reframe something else when I was going through the book and you had
00:52:05.880
said, um, when it comes to your identity, we had talked about that a little bit ago. You had said
00:52:10.240
who you are is what you do. And I think most people have that backwards where it's what you do is
00:52:15.000
then becomes who you are. But if you let those things that you do lead, I think what ends up
00:52:21.720
happening is we could run the risk of, well, here's a great example. You see how many law enforcement
00:52:27.020
guys or military members who wrap up their identity so strongly in their line of work that once they're
00:52:34.260
retired or medically disqualified, you know, we see suicide, we see depression, we see anxiety,
00:52:39.780
we see frustration all because their identity was wrapped up in what they do.
00:52:44.120
They didn't identify their, their identity first and allow that to dictate everything else around
00:52:49.040
them. Yeah, absolutely. And so, you know, what we're looking for here is, is again, it's the right
00:52:55.000
orientation and the orientation needs to come from more of our core values than that. Listen,
00:53:02.120
the core values that go into the law enforcement and core values that go into, you know, the special
00:53:07.080
forces is, you know, one of justice and one of, you know, effort and honor. And those things,
00:53:15.060
once you leave the position, those things don't leave you, you have left a position, which is,
00:53:21.320
you know, different than the core values that are associated with it. And so again, it's all a matter
00:53:26.660
of orientation and the reframing in your mind of what makes you the man that you are.
00:53:31.840
When you're doing the, well, when you're talking about orientation and vision, because we talked
00:53:37.980
about that too, what do you feel is the most compelling factors? Because we tell a lot of
00:53:46.000
guys, Hey, create a vision, cast a vision. I had a question even today where he didn't feel like his
00:53:50.720
vision was good enough. And I gave the recommendation that it doesn't need to be perfect. It doesn't need
00:53:56.240
to be amazing. Start with what you have, do what you can start moving towards it and then let the
00:54:01.560
vision be dynamic. Let it grow and change and morph and evolve over time as you do.
00:54:08.380
Here's the thing is that most people, um, their, their minds are just not wired for it.
00:54:14.520
So have you ever done the Clifton strength finders test?
00:54:20.200
Okay. So the Clifton strength finders test is interesting to us. It ranks you on 32 categories of like
00:54:25.880
mental competence stuff. And it gives you your top five and your, and your worst five. I can't
00:54:30.720
remember what my worst five, five are, but three of my top five are vision, strategic and futuristic.
00:54:37.880
And so my brain is wired to think in the future all the time. So you and I are doing this podcast
00:54:43.440
in the first half of the year. I know what I'm doing on December 13th at three o'clock in the
00:54:47.320
afternoon, which is insane to most people, especially my wife. She is the exact opposite of me in this.
00:54:53.160
And, and so most people are not wired to see the future, see their own future, let alone somebody
00:55:00.340
else's future, but to think in the future, it's just not, honestly, it's not normal. And so it is
00:55:06.140
very difficult for most men. So any man who's has a hard time with this, don't beat yourself up because
00:55:12.100
it's just not a natural thing to you. Some people do think this way, but most people don't. And so
00:55:18.000
what I recommend that you do is you find somebody, somebody's YouTube videos. Um, you know, there's
00:55:25.300
lots of people who put out really great planning stuff. Patrick Bat-David has stuff on this. Um,
00:55:30.820
he's one that comes to mind. There's a guy named Cameron Harreld who has really great books called
00:55:34.640
Double Double, which is about creating a vision for your, for your life and for your business.
00:55:39.180
I've put out a lot of YouTube videos on this. And so, so there's people like me who kind of train
00:55:44.640
you. Like, you know, some people are not naturally good in the gym. So they go to a personal trainer.
00:55:48.600
Some people are not naturally good at creating a vision or futuristic thinking. So go to somebody
00:55:53.520
who is. And what we do is we have kind of fill in the blank templates that will help you. Or we have
00:55:59.940
a list of questions that you've never thought about because they're not natural for you so that you can
00:56:04.760
start to paint a clear picture of where you want to get to. Um, I use the analogy of like when we were
00:56:10.440
kids, you know, whenever you're a kid, you know, somewhere or another, whether it's a TV show or a
00:56:14.540
comic book, you saw somebody with a treasure map. And that's what the vision is for your future.
00:56:19.340
You need to find out where X is on your treasure map. And then when you've done that, when you've
00:56:24.400
identified the vision, then you can start putting the little dotted lines, you know, that get you to
00:56:29.260
the treasure map, which is your, uh, straight line for success. So you need to have that and you need
00:56:34.760
some, some cues and some coaching on how to do it. But like you said, get the first thing out of your
00:56:40.560
mind and then review it regularly every couple of months and, and seek out resources that will
00:56:47.060
make you better at creating it. Yeah. Yeah. That's powerful. Well, Craig, I really appreciate
00:56:52.380
this, uh, this conversation. You've got the new book, the dark side of discipline, and I haven't
00:56:57.160
read the entire book, but I've gone through a lot of it over the weekend. Uh, you sent it over to me
00:57:01.280
and I've been really looking forward to this conversation. Um, will you let the guys know where
00:57:04.860
to connect with you, learn more about the book, pick up a copy of course, and find out more.
00:57:09.000
Yeah. We'd love to just, uh, for everybody grab the book on Amazon. So we have the hard copy with
00:57:13.840
the audio book, um, you know, audio books, hard work. So if you get the audio book, I really
00:57:17.740
appreciate it. Um, it is hard work. I can attest to that. Like imagine having to say every sentence
00:57:23.220
perfectly and yes. And then your editors come back and they're like, redo this, you messed up this
00:57:29.800
word or mispronounced this word or that word. I wrote my book, uh, and I read it out loud so that
00:57:36.840
when I go to the studio, I'm not going to have these tongue twisters. So anyways, I appreciate
00:57:40.540
all the book sales. Um, and then anybody can follow up with me on Instagram. I answer all my DMs. I
00:57:46.180
love chatting about fatherhood. I love chatting about, you know, systems. I love chatting about
00:57:50.820
time management. I'm, I'm, you know, super fanatical about that. And also, you know, the videos about
00:57:56.020
creating your vision. I'd love to share those with anybody. Excellent. We're going to sync everything
00:58:00.220
up guys. Go check it out. Some great work. I've been a longtime friend and fan of what you do. So
00:58:05.000
thanks for joining me today, brother. Thank you. All right, man, there you go. Mr. Craig
00:58:10.460
Ballantyne. He is sharp. Like I said, I've, I've known him for probably eight years and, uh, I've
00:58:17.940
always been impressed by his ability to deliver a very clear message that is transformative, that
00:58:23.440
actually helps people, that is time tested, has been proven. And he's a man who's obviously
00:58:27.920
implementing this stuff in his life, which makes the advice and insight that he gives very
00:58:32.180
credible, which is what we want. Credible insight. So make sure to connect with Craig on Instagram or
00:58:37.960
Twitter or wherever you're doing your social media thing. Uh, also check out his newest book, which
00:58:43.180
is called the dark side of discipline. If you would, if you enjoyed this episode, um, just pay it
00:58:48.540
forward. Somebody needs to hear this. Somebody needs to really understand what discipline is and what
00:58:53.440
to do about it in their lives and how to make their lives more successful. So just send them a text
00:58:58.820
and give them the link or, uh, take a screenshot, tag me, tag Craig and drop it on Facebook or X or
00:59:05.920
Instagram. And if you drop it on Instagram, I will reshare it in my stories as well. That's
00:59:11.440
something I always do because it's important to me that, you know, that I appreciate, uh, you guys
00:59:16.420
sharing. So please do that. And then outside of that, check out the order of man bookshelf at
00:59:21.200
order of man.com slash bookshelf. All right, guys, you've got your marching orders. We will be
00:59:26.920
back tomorrow for our ask me anything until then go out there, take action and become the man you
00:59:31.980
are meant to be. Thank you for listening to the order of man podcast. You're ready to take charge
00:59:40.140
of your life and be more of the man you were meant to be. We invite you to join the order at order of