Pod Insights Change Wired Stop Chasing Discipline and Start Copying Better People: how I wrote 801 blogs in a row. About this episode Discipline gets all the credit, but your environment does most of the work. I’m Angela Shurina, and I’m unpacking a simple idea that can change your health, habits, and results fast WITHOUT more discipline. When you choose the right “everybody,” you stop relying on willpower to do hard things. If you’ve ever told yourself you just aren’t disciplined enough to work out, eat well, wake up early, or stay consistent with your craft, this conversation is your permission slip to redesign the inputs...
Transcript 0:09 Speaker 00 Hey guys and welcome back to another episode of Change Wired Podcast. My name is Angela Shurina, I'm your host, I'm your partner in change, personal and collective transformation, your master health, executive sleep, stress management, self-actualization coach, and just someone who's really passionate and obsessed with human potential and doing the best we can every day to grow, to improve, to live into that best version of ourselves that maybe we never reach, but striving to get closer to it, growing into it.
0:51 Speaker 00 For me, I find this process incredibly gratifying and something that I'm driven by every single day with this question like, what am I capable of in this life and how can I tap into that every single day? And today, guys, we're talking about a very important subject for if you try to do your best to grow, to improve, to contribute, to create positive impact, to defy the status quo, to become, create, build the best things you're capable of in this world.
1:31 Speaker 00 Today, we are talking about discipline, or actually, we're talking about how a lack of discipline, or maybe not having a lot of it, it isn't really an obstacle when you design your, what I call, people diet the right way. Here is what I'm talking about. So I just finished reading a book by Angela Duckworth. She is great researcher. I think she's so much more, actually, she is a bestselling author and she wrote this book, Great, I think like 10 years ago, and now she's coming back with another book, Situated, which is, I believe, well, maybe not completely different, actually.
2:15 Speaker 00 Back to the subject, though, of today's podcast. Discipline and great and doing hard things for many days in a row. We often think that doing hard things continuously, like waking up four or five a.m. every morning, like going to bed, like eating healthy, like exercising, like dedicating your work to, I don't know, building business or great leadership or helping to improve the world in some way. We often think that it requires so much discipline and of having a lot of willpower.
2:57 Speaker 00 And yes, this grid for getting hard things done, hard things consistently. And what research by people like Angela Duckworth, and there is a lot more research from other people and labs around the world, shows that actually it has a lot less to do, at least for for most humans that are in the that we research, that it discipline has a lot, a lot less to do with your personal ability to do hard things by yourself. And it has a lot more to do with your environment.
3:40 Speaker 00 And to explain this further and better, I want to read to you a quote from from this book, Greed, that I just finished. It took me just 10 years, but what an amazing book. And I, I think it's so, so timely to read this book. I highly recommend the book, but the quote. "I don't have that much self-discipline. But if I'm surrounded by people who are writing articles and giving lectures and working hard, I tend to fall in line. If I'm in a crowd of people doing things a certain way, I follow along." Angela Duckworth. A client shared with me recently.
4:23 Speaker 00 Well, I overdid it on vacation. Everybody was eating and drinking, so I allowed myself to indulge too, to relax.
4:34 Speaker 00 To in reply to what I ask him to look at health and fitness of people of that everybody around him on vacation. Their health, their fitness, their well being.
4:49 Speaker 00 And look at that everybody and what it gets them for having the lifestyle that they have for over indulging more than more often than not. Right. Look around around yourself into the world. Rising obesity, chronic disease, anxiety, all kinds of mental and metabolic conditions that we even now need drugs to keep us from getting too fat. Which it's not, I'm not here to say, you know, what is right or what is wrong, but getting yourself eating yourself to being sick. It's I don't believe it's something that we should be inspired by or motivated or think that it's normal.
5:33 Speaker 00 Right. So look around you. Is that the kind of health and fitness you want?
5:40 Speaker 00 Not exactly a picture worth copying, don't you think? That's what I asked my client. And he thought to himself like, yeah, maybe what everybody does, not exactly a good guideline. If I don't want the results everybody else is getting. My best bet is to do the opposite, to get comfortable being the odd one out, the weird one in the crowd. That's how I raise my odds of getting what I actually want. You know, when when I see people in a restaurant and I see what everybody eats and orders and does. And what they get in terms of their health and fitness. I'm like, I don't think I I want to fit in here.
6:24 Speaker 00 I'm a lot more comfortable of be of fitting out. And it works beautifully for fitness. And also it works just as well for career, business, money. Everybody does it is a great guideline for a tribe. If you want what everybody gets in that tribe, right? And the beauty of our world today, you can choose your tribe not by your proximity, like physical proximity, where you live, but psychological proximity. Are those the people that you wanna be like? Do you wanna get what they get? Here's how I learned to approach the things that ask more discipline of me,
7:10 Speaker 00 like not missing a workout in twenty six years. Even with injuries, the only time that I really missed a week of my work workouts was when I was able to walk, literally. And as soon as I could, I did. And that was my workout. Right? Or writing my blog for the past eight hundred one days. Woo hoo, time to celebrate. The things most people don't do, the things that most people these days don't do and consider difficult, like eating well every day, holiday or not, like going to bed on time, weekend or not, like waking up before five AM on the weekend and not numbing my stress with a glass of wine.
7:54 Speaker 00 I designed my life on purpose so that who I follow, my tribe on social media, what I read, which podcasts I listen to, who I interact with daily, who I compare myself to are the people who've already chosen the path that leads where I wanna go, to the person I want to become. Take my writing at five AM, which by the way, right now it's six thirty and I already did my writing, talked to my sister back in Russia and podcasting right now, right? And I would probably do it early if I didn't talk to my sister, but anyhow. So five AM every single day, writing. Sounds like a lot of discipline.
8:36 Speaker 00 Until I tell you, I'm just following my tribe. Seth Godin, a man I associate with so much. I had luck to work with him once even. He, last year I celebrated ten thousand, around that same time, ten thousand daily blog posts. So that is about twenty seven point three years of writing every single day. He kept writing long after he needed to. And this is what people like us do around here. Write blogs for twenty seven years every day. Seth usually finishes his blog by five AM, by the way. Room for improvement for myself, huh? One might say. So I follow along.
9:22 Speaker 00 Because I like where it takes people, the makers, the doers, the ones who stick with that for the long haul.
9:31 Speaker 00 I like where Seth ended up in terms of his intellectual property, his intellectual capacity, the projects that he gets to work on. But I don't so much admire Seth for his fitness. He's in great health. He's like takes care of himself because he probably understood some time ago that his brain is a part of his body. And if he wants to think well, he needs to, you know, eat well as well and move and all of those things. But he's not like, you know, super fitness inspiration kind of guy. That's why I follow four different women on Instagram, women whose training, whose habits, whose mindset, whose choices, whose life.
10:14 Speaker 00 I wouldn't mind modeling, like they are badass ass physically, mentally and what they get results wise. So back to that opening quote. And the idea of following everybody, I'm gonna read to you the quote again. I don't have that much self-discipline. But if I'm surrounded by people who are writing articles and giving lectures and working hard, I tend to fall in line. If I'm in a crowd of people doing things a certain way, I follow along. That was by Angela Dackworth. If I'm, again, if I'm in a crowd of people doing things a certain way, I follow along.
10:55 Speaker 00 So have you chosen your crowd well, right?
11:03 Speaker 00 Following everybody. Guys, I have actually, I feel like I have very little discipline. I just chose my everybody well, based on where they're, they've ended up. Not how close they live to me or what algorithm wants to feed an average person.
11:22 Speaker 00 So the question that I want you to sit with is who is your everybody? Listen to your voice. Who do you compare yourself to when you give yourself an excuse, a permission to be less than what you know you can be? Who is your everybody? And do you want their outcomes in health, in fitness, in work, in business, in relationships? Like three sixty, look at the person. And what I invite you to do is to not take everything from one person. Like I don't do myself set coding for everything. And I don't know everything about him. But I can see, you know, his fitness is not exactly the fitness that I wanna end up having. So I'm like, okay, I'm gonna model his intellectual capacity, but fitness, not so much.
12:07 Speaker 00 So compile your everybody. Follow some people for their ability to do the work. Follow some people for their, their ability to take care of themselves. Follow some people for their relationships and marriage advice. Follow some people for, I don't know, cooking. The idea is we don't need that much discipline. When we choose people, we surround ourselves with wisely. And the beauty of our world today is that you can choose from a lot more people. Your tribe just got so much bigger. You have the whole world around you.
12:51 Speaker 00 So choose people, your tribe, for every area of your life and follow along. Like one other person that I truly admire is Tim Ferriss, who's been kind of like my north star for the past, I don't know, at least ten years. I'd say even maybe fifteen years, one five. He's done so many projects and just developed himself in so many ways. And yeah, he allowed me to discover this whole universe of people. When I actually had my accident and I couldn't walk, a friend brought to me Tim Ferriss, his four hour work book, and that's how I discovered his podcast and discovered like the whole other world of people that I can admire.
13:37 Speaker 00 And that changed my life because now when I see a person I admire for something that they creating, something that they got, something that they develop. I'm like, huh, in this, I want to be like that person. And whenever I struggle with my discipline, that's what I do. I go and look at what that person does. I ask myself this simple question, this hack question to not give yourself excuses, but instead choose to grow. I ask myself, what would Tim Ferriss do in this situation? Or what would this woman do in this situation? Or Liz Gilbert? Or Mel Robbins? Or Tony Robbins, who I grew up listening to?
14:19 Speaker 00 What would they do in this situation? Uh, what would they say to themselves? How would they approach the situation? Would I be proud standing next to them doing that thing that I'm about to do? I'm not specifically very much like, I didn't have that much discipline. I never thought of myself a disciplined person, but I so thought of myself as a person who chooses their tribe, their comparisons wisely. So then I just follow along and I get the right kind of results and I get to grow into the kind of person who I'm inspired by.
15:04 Speaker 00 That's it for today, guys. So the question I want you to sit with for the next day or maybe the whole week, who is your everybody? The people you measure your normal against?
15:18 Speaker 00 Do you want their future? And if not, choose your comparisons, your tribe, your everybody wisely. So you get to, I don't know, write your blogs for the next 10 years or do whatever that crazy thing requiring a lot of discipline needs you to do so you could do it without much discipline. Who is your everybody? Maybe it's time to choose a different tribe. Thank you, guys, for tuning in. Thank you for listening. Don't forget to share this podcast episode with at least one other person. That's how we help each other, help me to change the world. One person at a time,
16:03 Speaker 00 share this podcast, spread the love, spread the growth. And till next time, who is your everybody? Choose your tribe. Until next time, keep growing.
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