Discipline Equals Freedom: Field Manual

by Jocko Willink

When you make a decision to do more, to BE more. Self-discipline comes when you decide to make a mark on the world.

Become the discipline—embrace its cold and relentless power. And it will make you better and stronger and smarter and faster and healthier than anything else. And most important: It will make you free.

And you have to do it now. So stop thinking about it. Stop dreaming about it. Stop researching every aspect of it and reading all about it and debating the pros and cons of it … Start doing it. Take that first step and Make It Happen. GET AFTER IT. HERE and NOW.

Now all that being said, I have a saying: A person’s strength is often their biggest weakness. But, their weaknesses can become strengths. Me? I am weak, in all those ways, I am weak. BUT I don’t accept that.

I’m always fighting. I’m struggling and I’m scraping and kicking and clawing at those weaknesses—to change them. To stop them. Some days I win. But some days I don’t. But each and every day: I get back up and I move forward.

Whatever problems or stress you are experiencing, detach from them. Stress is generally caused by what you can’t control. The worst thing about incoming artillery fire is you can’t control it. It is happening and you just have to accept it. Don’t stress about things you can’t control. If the stress is something that you can control and you are not, that is a lack of discipline and a lack of ownership.

And it actually takes two opposing forces to bring it to life. It takes both emotion and logic to reach your maximum potential, to really give everything you have, to go beyond your limits. Because emotion and logic will both reach their limitations. And when one fails, you need to rely on the other.

Fight weak emotions with the power of logic; fight the weakness of logic with the power of emotion.

Something I saw in combat that I later tried to train out of people was the tendency to relax once the primary objective of a mission was complete. I tried to train that out of them because you can’t relax until the entire mission is complete.

Discipline starts with waking up early. It really does. But that is just the beginning; you absolutely have to apply it to things beyond waking up early. It is working out, every day, making yourself stronger and faster and more flexible and healthier. It is eating the right foods, to fuel your system correctly. It is disciplining your emotions, so you can make good decisions. It is about having the discipline to control your ego, so it doesn’t get out of hand and control you. It is about treating people the way you would want to be treated. It is about doing the tasks you don’t want to do, but you know will help you.

Who am I? What have I learned? What have I created? What forward progress have I made? Who have I helped? What am I doing to improve myself—today? To get better, faster, stronger, healthier, smarter? Is this what I want to be? This? Is this all I’ve got—is this everything I can give? Is this going to be my life? Do I accept that?

Finding the common ground between teams. Merging different approaches to the same problem. Bridging personalities with people who might not get along. Reaching agreements in courses of action. All of these require compromise. And in many cases, a failure to compromise is a failure to succeed. But those are external compromises, with other people, other humans that have their own personalities and ethos and issues. And compromise is needed to unify. So to work with them, compromise is a must.

That is what I want you to be afraid of: Waking up in six days or six weeks or six years or SIXTY YEARS and being no closer to your goal … You have made NO PROGRESS. That is the horror. That is the nightmare. That is what you really need to be afraid of: Being stagnant.

You don’t even know what hungry is. Humans can go thirty days without food. You can make it. So. When those foods are tempting you, calling your name, and enticing you with their SUGARCOATED LIES—get angry. Get aggressive. Stand your ground in the battle and fight by saying NO. HOLD THE LINE. Hold the line for your health, your mental toughness, and to exercise your WILL— which, I promise, is stronger than the will of a donut— if you want it to be. HOLD THE LINE.

There is one instinct to be wary of—one that you must fight. This one is a liar. This one is a saboteur—a backbiter. And—like the devil himself—he’s a shape-shifter … He will disguise himself … make you think that he has got your best interests in mind. But he doesn’t. This is the instinct that says: YOU’VE HAD ENOUGH. You’ve given it your best shot. You can stand down. You can back off. You can take a knee. This is the instinct that says: You can rest now. Do not listen to that instinct. DO NOT LISTEN.

Don’t really want to work out? I work out. Don’t really want to hammer on a project? I hammer on the project. Don’t really want to get up and get out of bed? I GET UP AND GET OUT OF BED. Now—these could be signals that you need some time off—and those signals might be right. BUT—don’t take today off. Wait until tomorrow. Don’t give in to the immediate gratification that is whispering in your ear. SHUT THAT DOWN. DO NOT LISTEN. Instead: Go through the motions. Lift the weights. Sprint the hill. Work on the project. GET OUT OF BED.

I don’t like procrastination. But if you feel like you need a break—that is one thing you should procrastinate. Taking a break is the one thing I put off until tomorrow. And if—when tomorrow comes—you still feel like you need rest or you need a break—then go ahead: Take it. Chances are you won’t—you won’t need that rest. Chances are you will realize that the desire to rest was just weakness—it was the desire to take the path of least resistance—the downhill path—the downward path. And by going through the motions, you overcame that weakness. And you stayed on the righteous path—the disciplined path— You stayed on The Warpath. Right where you know you belong.

The knowledge you gained. But walking around filled with regret gets you nothing. So. Learn and move on. Don’t let regret beat you down. Don’t be a slave to regret. NO. Let it teach you. Let it make you better. Let the fear of regret fuel you—to take action— today—now. Take action now to become a person not filled with regret, but a person filled with knowledge and strength and power and life.

You lost sight of the long-term goal. And it faded. It faded from memory and the passion dried up and you began to rationalize: Maybe I can’t. Maybe I don’t really want to. Maybe this goal isn’t for me. And so you give up. You let it go. And you settle. You settle for the status quo. You settle for the easy road. You settle for “oh well.” No. Don’t do that. Embed that long-term goal in your mind. Burn it into your soul. Think about it, write about it, talk about it. Hang it up on your wall. But most important: Do something about it. Every day. Every day: Do something that moves you toward that goal—that keeps that goal alive and in sight and in focus. However small or insignificant that step might seem—take it. Do it. Make it happen. Because that goal isn’t going to achieve itself. It is All. On. You.

“Between the acting of a dreadful thing…” Between the moment when you are waiting to do something that you don’t want to do … “And the first motion…” and the moment when you initiate the action … “All the interim…” The whole time you are waiting to take that action … “Is like a phantasma or a hideous dream…” is like an evil spectre, an apparition—a nightmare.

HESITATION IS THE ENEMY. Hesitation allows the moment to pass, the opportunity to be lost, the enemy to get the upper hand. Hesitation turns into cowardice. It stops us from moving forward, from taking initiative, from executing what we know we must. Hesitation defeats us. So we must defeat it.

Don’t expect to be motivated every day to get out there and make things happen. You won’t be. Don’t count on motivation. Count on Discipline. You know what you have to do. So: MAKE YOURSELF DO IT. You do that with Discipline. Everyone wants some magic pill—some life hack—that eliminates the need to do the work. But that does not exist. No. You have to do the work. You’ve got to hold the line. You’ve got to MAKE IT HAPPEN.

We are defeated one tiny, seemingly insignificant surrender at a time that chips away at who we should really be. It isn’t that you wake up one day and decide that’s it: I am going to be weak. No. It is a slow incremental process. It chips away at our will—it chips away at our discipline. We sleep in a little later. We miss a workout, then another. We start to eat what we shouldn’t eat and drink what we shouldn’t drink. And, without realizing it—one day, you wake up and you have become something that you never would have allowed. Instead of strong—you are weak. Instead of disciplined—you are disorganized and lost.

The old classic. What do you do about the negative person talking behind your back and trying to bring you down? Sure you can confront them and join them in their little game. You can give them the satisfaction of knowing that they got in your head. You can turn your life into a grade school gossip hall. Of course, there are times, unfortunately, that you have to engage with people like this. You may have to set the record straight on a serious allegation. You may have to challenge statements that might be damaging to the team or the mission. And when you do have to engage, do it professionally. Say something like:

But let me tell you what my preferred methodology is for this situation: It is simple: Ignore and outperform. Yes. While you are over there watching me and talking about me—I’m working. I’m working hard. I’m taking things to the next level. You keep gossiping—I’ll keep working. You keep talking smack—I’ll keep working. You keep chattering about things—I’ll keep working. You keep focusing on what everyone else is doing wrong—I’ll keep focusing on what I can do RIGHT. And when you finally look around at where you are and where I am —you will realize that you have nothing to talk smack about. Because you will lose. And I. Will. Win.

This is where it begins. In the darkness. Before the sun and the birds and the world. Every day. When the alarm sounds. IT IS TIME. Rise. Despite fatigue and soreness. Curse the warmth of the bed. Curse the comfort of the pillow. Fight the temptation of weakness. Get up and go. Do it quickly, without thought. Do not reason with weakness. You cannot. You must only take action.

But, stress can also be bad. If we are under too much stress, and cortisol is released into the body too often, it begins to have negative effects, like a car running “in the red” for extended periods of time. When cortisol levels remain consistently high, the immune system can become repressed, increasing blood pressure and causing hypertension—a sustained high blood pressure that causes damage to the heart and blood vessels.

There are a slew of psychological advantages that come from early morning physical training. First, there is a psychological win over the enemy. Knowing that you are working harder than your adversaries gives you an advantage. It gives you confidence that you can overcome them in battle. Another advantage to waking up early and working out hard is that it demands discipline to do both. Now, some scientists have claimed that discipline dissipates the more it is used—that willpower is a finite resource that is reduced every time it is used during the day. This is wrong. That does not happen.

Unfortunately, the opposite is also true. Once you step off the path, you tend to stray far. When you don’t prepare what you need to do the next day, when you sleep in and then skip your workout and you don’t start attacking the tasks you have—because you didn’t write them down the night before—that is when you make bad decisions. That is when your will and discipline fail. You figure you might as well have that donut for breakfast and once you have done that, might as well put down four or five pieces of pizza for lunch. It doesn’t matter anymore—you’re off the path and that is a disaster. Your will didn’t break—it never showed up in the first place.

People constantly ask me for the secret of getting up early. I tell them it is simple: SET YOUR ALARM CLOCK AND GET OUT OF BED WHEN IT GOES OFF. That’s it. Is it easy? No. Everyone likes that warm bed. Everyone needs just five more minutes of slumber in the morning. So they hit snooze. They roll over. They go back to sleep. No. Get up and get going. And one thing that will help you do that is going to bed earlier, which can be at least as hard, if not harder, than waking up.

If shooting starts, get down. Call the police at the first opportunity. If the shooting is single shots being fired at a slower pace, run immediately and keep running. If the shooting is rapid-fire, find some solid cover to get behind. Wait for a lull. When the lull comes, run—that may be your only chance.

So, the solution seems obvious: Stop eating carbohydrates—or at least minimize carbohydrate intake. Why is that so hard? The answer is simple: Carbohydrates are addictive. Yes, sugar is like a drug in your brain and causes neurochemical responses similar to drugs like heroin.