Most men rely on willpower way too much when achieving any type of goal. The problem with willpower is that it’s fleeting - it leaves just as quick as it came on. And if you’re only taking action on the important things when your willpower is high, you’re missing out on maximizing your potential in your days, weeks, and years. Listen up today to learn how to replace willpower with discipline to be more productive and efficient with your work and your life.
Need a specific template to help you out with your daily mindset? Grab our Free Daily ‘Made For More’ Planner at https://www.menmadeformore.com/made-for-more-planner - Gain clarity and take action towards your goals by downloading the step by step daily planner we use with our clients to get organized, clear, and focused on taking action to make massive progress towards your goals.
I love hearing from you guys and what you’re learning from the show. Shoot me a DM on Instagram at @DrDavePac or text me at (760) 477-4361 and let me know your biggest takeaway from today’s listen.
Most men rely on willpower way too much when achieving any type of goal. The problem with willpower is that it’s fleeting - it leaves just as quick as it came on. And if you’re only taking action on the important things when your willpower is high, you’re missing out on maximizing your potential in your days, weeks, and years. Listen up today to learn how to replace willpower with discipline to be more productive and efficient with your work and your life.
Need a specific template to help you out with your daily mindset? Grab our Free Daily ‘Made For More’ Planner at https://www.menmadeformore.com/made-for-more-planner - Gain clarity and take action towards your goals by downloading the step by step daily planner we use with our clients to get organized, clear, and focused on taking action to make massive progress towards your goals.
I love hearing from you guys and what you’re learning from the show. Shoot me a DM on Instagram at @DrDavePac or text me at (760) 477-4361 and let me know your biggest takeaway from today’s listen.
Most men rely on willpower way too much when achieving any type of goal. The problem with willpower is that it’s fleeting - it leaves just as quick as it came on. And if you’re only taking action on the important things when your willpower is high, you’re missing out on maximizing your potential in your days, weeks, and years. Listen up today to learn how to replace willpower with discipline to be more productive and efficient with your work and your life.
Need a specific template to help you out with your daily mindset? Grab our Free Daily ‘Made For More’ Planner at https://www.menmadeformore.com/made-for-more-planner - Gain clarity and take action towards your goals by downloading the step by step daily planner we use with our clients to get organized, clear, and focused on taking action to make massive progress towards your goals.
I love hearing from you guys and what you’re learning from the show. Shoot me a DM on Instagram at @DrDavePac or text me at (760) 477-4361 and let me know your biggest takeaway from today’s listen.
Why Willpower Doesn't Work
[00:00:00] Dave: Hey there mighty man. I'm your host, Dr. Dave Paczkowski founder of Men Made For More Coaching, our business helps husbands level up their life. Their leadership and their legacy in marriage and in business. The purpose of this podcast is to bring together like-minded men that feel destined for big things in their life to provide you the resources and community that you need to lead yourself, your family and your business.
[00:00:26] If you've ever felt overwhelmed, frustrated, lost, or alone on your journey to a better and more purposeful life, you're in the right spot. You weren't designed to be average. So it's time to quit living that way today. I'm giving you permission to unlock your true potential and step into all that you were made for.
[00:00:45]What's up champions. Welcome to the men made from our podcast. I am stoked to have you guys with me here today. I'm stoked to be here. I'm stoked to be talking about this to be recording this podcast. I'm grateful for the ability to do it. The ability to just [00:01:00] share this information, this. Uh, this knowledge that I've picked up over the years that can pass on to you guys.
[00:01:06] And I learned a lot from you guys, as you reach out to me and we continue conversations as well. So I, I love having you guys and, uh, I'm excited to dive into today's topic of willpower and said, bluntly willpower does not work. Most men rely on willpower way too much when they're trying to achieve any type of goal.
[00:01:26] We try and will things into existence. We try to just make things happen, hustle, grind, and just, just to be relentless in pursuing those goals. And there's definitely a time and a place to do that. There's definitely a season to do that. I would argue a lot of guys, maybe some of you guys listening need a little more of that need a little more of that spark.
[00:01:46] But that alone is going to create burnout. It's going to create stress. It's going to create inconsistent results. If you rely on willpower alone and just this motivation. If you rely on adrenaline to push you through your days, your weeks and your [00:02:00] years, it's going to come back and there's a better way to do it.
[00:02:03] And it's through. Discipline. And that's what I want to talk about today because willpower alone is not enough. You need discipline to achieve anything meaningful in your life. This can be a family goal, a fitness goal, financial goal, a business goal. When in your relationships and your friendships, you need discipline and not just willpower.
[00:02:23] I know you say with my friendships, with like, But what do you mean with my friendships? How do I need to be disciplined with that? If you wait until you're feeling like sending someone a nice text message or feel like when you wait to, you want to wait till you feel like your wife deserves a good, a good text message or a note or flowers, you're going to regret not doing it this way.
[00:02:41] This is something that can apply to any area of our life. And I use that example because that's one, people, people get it with business, they get it with fitness. Like, yeah, I need to be disciplined, but I want to show you guys that this can be any area of your life. You can inject some more discipline into.
[00:02:55] And see better results in whatever that is important to you. And that's, [00:03:00] uh, that's the biggest thing is deciding what's important to you. What area of my life do I, am I not seeing the results that I want right now? I guarantee you that's, uh, an area where you need to add a little more discipline and not just rely on willpower, not rely on your feelings or your motivation because when your discipline, you don't act according to your emotions, you don't act according to your feelings, you act according to your commitment.
[00:03:24] I want to say that again, because when you're disciplined, you don't act according to your feelings or your emotions, you act according to your commitment. What does that mean? What is your commitment? That's a good question because that's something you guys need to know. If you're let's use fitness. If your commitment is I want to be someone who's healthy, I want to be someone who goes to the gym who makes healthy food choices.
[00:03:45] That's your commitment. That means when your feelings come in of you get home from a long day of work and you're like, Oh, it'd be so easy to skip the gym today. And it'd be so easy to just skip the diet today because I'm stressed. I had a hard day. That's acting according to your feelings or your [00:04:00] emotions, natural commitment.
[00:04:02] If you know, you need to make those, those business phone calls or do that marketing or get out and, and, uh, network with people. And you say you wake up today and you're like, ah, you know, I'm not really feeling it. I, I'm not in the, I'm not in the right mood. I'm not in the right state. We'll go change your state and find a way to change your state so that you can act according to your commitments of this is how many people I'm going to reach out to this week.
[00:04:23] This is how much money we're going to save. This is, this is how many times I'm going to go to the gym. This is, this is what it's going to look like. That's a commitment and that's not letting feelings or emotions get in the way of that because successful people do consistently. What other people only do occasionally at successful people do consistently.
[00:04:43] What other people only do occasionally. So if you want to be successful, you have to be showing up with discipline every single day. When I talk about this rollercoaster of results, these inconsistent results, this might sound like you have, you use willpower and use motivation. You see a lot of success in an area, [00:05:00] push it hard, but then you don't have the discipline to sustain that your willpower fades.
[00:05:04] So it starts to drop. And then you realize you're like, Hey, I'm not doing as well as I want. So you ramp it up again, and this can be in business. This can be in your health. And this is why so many people experienced these, these yo-yo results, these rollercoaster results that aren't consistent as we want this straight line going up.
[00:05:21] And I know it's not going to ever be a nice straight line. We wish life was like that, but we want the trend to be moving in that direction. Not these big Hills and valleys of, okay. I'm feeling motivated to do it. I'm going to. I'm going to go do this, this whole 30 diet and create all this change and get super strict on my clean eating and do a workout challenge.
[00:05:40] But then I lose motivation. I slipped back into it and now, well, I'm not looking as good. So I'm going to ramp it up. This is happens in our fitness. This happens in our relationships. It happens in our business and our finances. Oh my bank accounts looking a little lower than what I'm comfortable with. So I'm going to start saving now.
[00:05:57] Or I'm going to, I'm going to start spending less now [00:06:00] because I really like where that's at. And then we get above, we start doing really well. And then it's like, Hey, I got all this, I got all this money I'm going to, I'm going to get out of those things that I've been putting off because I've been doing so good.
[00:06:09] That's, that's examples of us acting on our feelings and that are commitments.
[00:06:15] That's the difference though, between training and train too many people just try to achieve goals. They try and wait for their feelings or their emotions to be just right to do it, choose to train. Instead, we don't just, we can't just try our way to, to a better body or to be in a better husband.
[00:06:33] Let's train to do that. We don't want to just try to have a better business. Start training your leadership, training your business skills. Don't try for more energy in your life, train it, get the, get the sleep in, get the eat in a way that supports your body. There's things that you guys know you can be doing probably that you might be maybe be putting off and you have to do these things consistently to be able to see the results that you want, because that's what successful people do.
[00:06:59] That's what [00:07:00] champions do. And you can't just show up. Monday through Friday and then, you know, completely let it all slip on Saturday and Sunday and expect to get back into the same groove. Guys. We want to think more consistency over time with this, and that's the difference between discipline and willpower.
[00:07:14] And let me ask you this, and this is, this is going to be a straight forward question that I know the answer for me. Have you ever found yourself putting something off that you know, needs to get done? But you either let your day get away or you're too tired at the end of the day to do that. And sure. I'd say we, we all have done that.
[00:07:30] I definitely do it more times than I can count. And that's that example of letting emotions control us, but even a more telling question would be what are you consistently putting off that you know, needs to get done, but you keep finding an excuse for, again, this is acting on your feelings, match your commitments.
[00:07:50] Is it doing something for your wife or your significant other that would, that would speak her love language. It would make her feel better getting those flowers ready, that [00:08:00] writing that note, spending some, spending some quality time. Is this in your business, things that you keep putting off that you know, are probably going to take you to the next level, but they require work.
[00:08:09] They require you getting uncomfortable. Is this with your body? Is there, you know, maybe you need to have a little less of those, those carbs or those sweets, because you know, they're not really helping you with your confidence and your fitness goals, but you haven't really been able to, to commit on it.
[00:08:25] And I would challenge you guys to find out what that one thing is that you're consistently doing. And I don't have to tell you what that is. A lot of people can, even my clients, I don't have to, I'm not telling them something new that they, that they need to be doing. It's just having a process in place to be able to address that you guys probably know what that is.
[00:08:42] That's that makes you a little uncomfortable. When you think about doing it, that takes time. It takes a little harder work. So you tend to choose that thing that makes you more comfortable. There's less resistance around it. You don't have to have that tough conversation. You don't have to be intentional times with your, with your kids or with your family or with your friends.
[00:08:59] And [00:09:00] for me, this was my time with God for a long time. And my time working on myself, my personal growth, I was pouring a lot of personal growth and other people, but mine kept getting pushed to the side and it wasn't as important. So a simple thing I did is I decided that instead of waiting until the end of the day, when I was tired, when I was exhausted, when I'd been working all day and then trying to, trying to retrain, to trying to learn, trying to grow.
[00:09:25] I moved it to first thing in my day, when I'm the most fresh, I took something like working out where I didn't need to be as fresh for, I find time to get my workouts in, but I moved this, this personal growth time, this time with God, to the beginning of the day, instead of getting the leftovers at the end of my day.
[00:09:40] And this has. No, this has been one of the biggest shifts I've made because of something I kept putting off. And those things, the question I asked earlier about what was that consistently putting off, those were two things. God was getting leftovers and I was getting leftovers. I wasn't, I was important into myself, the way that I need to, to show up the best I could for those around me, for [00:10:00] Lindsey, for family, for friends, for our business.
[00:10:03] So I moved that to the front of my day. I had to confront it and say, Hey, I'm going to, I'm going to commit to doing this every single day. I'm not gonna wait for when I have an extra 30 minutes laying around. Or when I, when I feel motivated to do it, because those 30 minutes were getting filled with other things with more work.
[00:10:17] So I had to move it. I had to protect that time. And for another client of mine, this was time with his daughter of having trouble finding meaningful time to spend, spend with his daughter. So we did talk about restructuring the Workday, restructuring the schedule to make sure that that happens because guys, I can tell you, you will regret if you let something like that slip for months, for years, and you focus on maybe building a business or working for your family, which is, you know, comes from a good place, but you're not going to get those.
[00:10:46] You don't have to get those times back. And your, your family is gonna realize that your relationships are going to get strained. So those are the things that you can't wait for your feelings to do it. You can't wait to say things like, well, when we have the money to do this, then I can spend more time with [00:11:00] them.
[00:11:00] Or then we can, you know, they'll, they'll be really happy because we'll be able to take these trips and do this and that don't wait guys, because that's, uh, that's waiting for feelings that might never get there. Cause you're going to keep telling again, these limiting beliefs we talked about last episode last week, and the solo episode, those self-limiting beliefs will continue to spiral and continue to circle around your head for another client of mine.
[00:11:22] This was doing marketing for his business. It was something he knew he needed to be doing. And it just kept putting off because he was busy. He was making money, but. It requires a commitment to actually take a step back, maybe doing a little less in the business, work a little less direct revenue, generating things to take a step back and eventually.
[00:11:42] You'll build something that will create 10 X or more return on your time. And that takes discipline. That takes, it takes more than willpower to just say, just say like, Hey, I'm going to do the easy thing of working in my business and making money. No, I'm going to do the uncomfortable thing of stepping back and building up [00:12:00] these systems and these marketing efforts that will allow us to hire more people and have even a more successful business.
[00:12:07] So there's a couple examples for you guys, and instead of relying on willpower, How are we going to go about implementing more of this discipline? So I have four things for you guys. First thing, identify the one thing that you need, right. Be more consistent with that question I asked earlier, that's your, uh, that's your question that you need to, you reflect on what are you consistently putting off that, you know, you need to be doing more of identify the one thing, just one that you need to be more consistent with second piece, identify where and how that will get done.
[00:12:38] Physically, write this out in your schedule. This is that no fail item that we talked about. Several items back, no matter what you're going to get this thing done for me, that was my morning time with God. And my morning time with myself, it's gotten done every single day because I've committed. I've acted on my commitments.
[00:12:54] Not do I want to do this today? Yes or no, commit to it and make sure that [00:13:00] it's on your schedule somewhere. Where are you going to do it? When are you going to do it? And how does that look? Guys don't, don't put too much pressure on this. Just get it on the schedule and get started with doing it. You'll be amazed at the, what consistency will do for building that discipline habit.
[00:13:15] Third thing. Start small, whatever you do do not miss. We talked about this before, too, with the, with the no fail item, start smaller than you think don't take on a, an overwhelming thing that you know, you're not going to be a stick to you. Don't say, Hey, I'm, I'm going to go from working out once a week to two workouts every single day.
[00:13:31] No, that's going to end up in, in you crashing again, start small, pick something you commit to, and that, you know, you can stick to, but whatever you do do not miss stay with it. Throw away. Perfect. Throw away, trying to have this well thought out plan or anything. Just get in the habit of taking action.
[00:13:47] Train yourself to take action. No matter what, when the energy is high and when the energy is low. I can tell you another example and I can think of a hundred of them. So if you want to ask me a text me, or shoot me a message, I'll, I'll give you more examples if you need [00:14:00] them, but this podcast, guys, this podcast, there are weeks.
[00:14:03] I do not want to record this podcast because I do a lot of these on the weekend. This is something that, you know, I have Saturday morning set aside to block some content. Because I don't, I don't have other time set aside during the week right now, between, uh, between running the coaching business, actually coaching clients are physical therapy business, uh, hiring for that building our local presence, their marketing sales.
[00:14:28] I'm doing a lot right now. And there are plenty of weeks where I do not want to record this podcast. And I am no more important than you. I don't have any more on my plate than you guys do. There's times where I'd rather spend time hanging with Lindsay or going to the beach, or just not maybe working that day.
[00:14:43] But my commitment to you guys, and to myself is that there are going to be podcasts, episodes released every single week, because I know some of you guys look forward to these. Some of you guys, a lot of you guys are listening to every single one of these. And I appreciate that so [00:15:00] much. And my commitment to you is that you're going to get an episode out.
[00:15:03] And unless there's a incredible reason of why I don't, even when I'm not feeling like it, you guys are getting an episode recorded. And I'm going to put one together because that's one of my many commitments. So this brings us to our fourth item though, is once you have this one habit mastered, then you can stack another one on top of it.
[00:15:21] In the example of business, uh, some people, you know, people that are just getting started in business there, they'll, they'll say, wow, you're doing a lot. You're doing all these things. And you're putting out regular Instagram posts and podcasts, and you have a YouTube channel and you send out weekly emails and you create these, you know, these giveaways, these, uh, handouts for people to take our master.
[00:15:42] Your morning one are, are made from our planner. We have all these different things going on and recording the podcast and doing those things. And it didn't start by doing all those things at once I picked one, I was going to commit to mastered it and then stacked another one on top of it, the same thing happened with my health of add and just start [00:16:00] working out surmount times you picked, okay, I'm going to focus on my weight training.
[00:16:02] I'm going to focus on my nutrition and I coach my clients do the same things. Cause this can feel overwhelming. It can feel daunting to try and take on too much. And that's why, again, that's why I'm going to review our points in the first one was identified. The one thing you need to be more consistent with.
[00:16:18] Then identify where and how that will get done. Write it on your schedule. Third thing start small, but just don't miss build that action happen. And the fourth thing, this is when you have that habit mastery. When you have those steps, one through three mastered. When you're on a roll with that, then you can stack another one on top of it.
[00:16:35] Many people fail by trying to do too much at once. So the take action takeaway for you guys today. Go through these steps, that first thing identify the one thing that, you know, you've been putting off that, you know, you need to be more consistent with that maybe even relying on willpower, motivation to do.
[00:16:51] And it just hasn't been working, replace that with discipline commit to doing it. Guys, I appreciate you. I, uh, I'm thankful that you guys are investing [00:17:00] yourself, that you guys are, are listening into this and, uh, just leaning into it and growing, I've heard in the side conversations we've had, uh, through you guys that have every shout about the different episodes and.
[00:17:11] Uh, it's, it's fun to hear your growth. And some of you guys have listened from the beginning and some of you guys that are much newer, newer listening, but I love to see where you guys are growing. And I'd love to hear from you guys. So if you guys took something away from this episode, if there was something that stood out, if you guys have a question for me, I'm not afraid to, to open up to you guys.
[00:17:29] If, uh, if you have something that talks about and you want me to. You know, explain a little more on it, reach out. You can DM me on Instagram on that. Dr. Dave pack, uh, Dr. Dave PAC that's in the show notes there. And then also you guys can shoot me a text (760) 477-4361. Let me know what you guys thought of it, of the episode.
[00:17:49] And, uh, we'd love to keep the conversation going. That's one of my, uh, one of my favorite parts about doing this show is being able to have the conversation with you guys that are listening after the fact. So let me know what you guys [00:18:00] thought. Let me know what you guys took away from it and enjoy your week.
[00:18:03] Guys. Enjoy your day. You're at shift from willpower shift and when you feel like it to discipline, don't act on your feelings, act on your commitments. I appreciate you guys love you guys. And I will talk to you soon.
[00:18:15]
[00:18:15] Thanks for listening today, guys, unbelieving that even if you apply one thing from today's show, you're taking one step closer to living as the man you were made to be meaningful change doesn't happen overnight. So keep showing up and keep consistent every single day until good things start to happen.
[00:18:32] If you haven't already taken 60 seconds to write a review on whatever platform you're listening on, goes a long way in growing this podcast and reaching other men, just like you, that are hungry for more in their life. Do you have any questions on today's show feedback or content you want to see more of shoot me a text.
[00:18:49] Yeah, text me (760) 477-4361 at (760) 477-4361. Let me know [00:19:00] that you're listening to it. And so I can personally thank you for your support of myself and the show. That's it for today, guys, it's time to raise your standard for yourself. Stop settling for just getting by, go all in on your passions in the Lightroom made for a lot of you guys and talk to you soon.