GINO'S RIFF - THE 10 DISCIPLINES
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[00:00:00] Gino Wickman: Welcome to the Shed and Shine Podcast. I am Gino Wickman. This is where Rob Dube and I help driven entrepreneurs shed their shit, free their True Selves, unlock true entrepreneurial freedom and shine. We truly appreciate you taking the time to spend with us, and we hope to make a huge impact on you.
Hello and welcome to my next riff. This riff I'm very excited about. Well, I'm excited about all of them, but this one I'm giddy because this one we are talking about the 10 disciplines. We have finally gotten there. And in the 10 disciplines, this is the how. Everything we've talked about in these podcast episodes up until now has been the what, we're finally getting into the how to do everything that we've talked about.
Now in future episodes, Rob and I are going to go very deep into the 10 disciplines. My goal for you today is I want to paint a vivid picture for you of the 10 disciplines. And so what I would urge and ask is for you to just simply be a good student for this episode, from the standpoint of, I just want you to empty your cup, open your minds, sit back.
I kind of hope you're able to take notes, but you may be driving. If it's possible to pull over or listen to this at a different time where you can take some notes, I'd really love for this one to sink in. I’d love for you to really feel this one and engage in this one. Without further ado, here we go.
The 10 Disciplines. As I drill down, I want to start with why they're so important and what I'm hoping to accomplish with this episode, because what I hope to do in this episode is convince you to implement them in your life. And if you have already implemented them in your life, I hope to motivate you to go even deeper, because there's no end to how deep you can go with each discipline. The 10 disciplines, when we talk about the how, what they do for you, is they create the time and the space, the foundation, the framework, the system, the structure, to help you do the wonderful work on the journey of maximizing your outer world and your inner world, and they have a compounding effect, meaning that you can certainly implement one discipline in your life and realize benefit, but the more you implement, the more you will have a synergistic, magnifying effect and you will realize a much bigger impact.
So we do urge you to implement them all, but you can certainly start one at a time. And ultimately what will happen for you is you will live what I love to call your optimal life with all the words that we've said in all the previous episodes where you've maximized your energy, your impact, your inner peace, you freed your True Self, you're letting your freak flag fly, all those wonderful words.
And so with that, as I now dive in and get very specific, I am going to do my best in this riff to help you see both the outer world benefit and maximization and the inner world benefit and maximization of each one of the disciplines when implemented in your life. I want to show you how they will maximize those things.
And so what will happen is I'm going to start by simply sharing the discipline. I will then share what we call the bold statement. And the bold statement is the statement that if we could just convince you to do this one thing, this statement, you will realize all of the benefits of the discipline. Now, we're human beings, and sometimes that's easier said than done, and you need to be convinced or sold, and then I'll do my best to convince you, but the bold statement is intended that if you just did this, you'll realize all the benefits.
After I share the discipline and the bold statement, I'm just going to do a quick little riff. I'm going to share whatever comes to my mind in the way of the outer world benefit and the inner world benefit. And so here we go. The 10 disciplines.
Discipline #1 is 10-Year Thinking. And so the bold statement here is if you just did this starting today, gave us blind faith, if you would shift your mind from short-term thinking to thinking in 10-year time frames. That's it. That's the bold statement. And so with that from an outer world standpoint, in terms of maximizing your outer world, giving you everything externally, shifting to 10-year thinking, is going to help you get there faster.
I know it's hard to believe, but when you shift to long-term timeframes, you make better decisions. Time literally slows down, you see things clearer, you make better decisions, and ironically, you get to where you want to go faster. The inner world benefit is when you shift to thinking in longer timeframes, there is a peace and a calm that comes over you.
That anxiety, that urgency, that intensity that we, the driven, suffer from because of our short-term thinking literally dissolves, disappears, goes away because you shifted to this.
On to Discipline #2. Take Time Off. Bold statement here, if you would just take 130 days off per year and don't think about work the entire day, from an outer world standpoint, what that will do for you is it will increase your energy, your creativity, again, your clarity, so that when you come back into the business, after turning it off and recharging your batteries, you will be better, smarter, faster.
You will literally make better decisions, see things clearer, and be much more creative. From an inner world standpoint, it lets you take a break. It lets you recharge your batteries. You will not burn out. It actually will increase your energy.
Discipline #3, Know Thyself. Bold statement here is to be your True Self 100% of the time, 24/7/365.
And so the outer world benefit of this is that you can fully be yourself in the world. But, you can't fully be yourself, i. e. True Self, in the world until you truly know thyself. And so as we've been talking about in all of these episodes, it's a matter of shedding your stuff and really knowing who you are at your core and letting your True Self, i. e. your soul, your essence, shine through. And with that, as a driven entrepreneur, with the soul of a driven entrepreneur, you will make a bigger impact. You will be more creative. You will solve bigger and better problems. You will attract more people to you. The inner world benefit is that you are no longer having to be all things to all people.
You will no longer have to bend yourself to try and be somebody different in all of the different aspects of your life. And so imagine the energy that creates that you get to just freely be you peacefully.
Discipline #4, Be Still. Bold statement here, sit in silence for 30 minutes every day.
And so again, be still, sitting in silence. We recommend four forms of stillness. Either meditation, journaling, prayer, or contemplation. Or a mix of some or all of them. But the idea is to take 30 minutes every day in silence, in stillness. The outer world benefit of this, again, you're going to see this common thread and this compounding effect, is that you will have more ideas.
You will become more creative. Again, you will see things clearly, which will lead to this. But when you take that time to be still and let time slow down and let yourself catch up, all of a sudden you see things exactly the way they are and ideas come to you. They will come to you during the stillness or they will come to you immediately following.
The inner world benefit, is that there is peace, there is calm, as I always describe it, under your chin, below the surface, your central nervous system, which for us driven entrepreneurs is almost always anxious and amped up and revved up. It completely calms down, it completely relaxes you, and in that relaxed state, your energy shoots through the roof, and you bring more energy to the world, to your work, and to your being.
Discipline #5, Know Your 100%. Bold statement here, if you would just decide on and commit to the perfect number of hours per week, and weeks per year that you will deliver your impact to the world. Now, that was a mouthful. I'm going to say it in a little shorter fashion. The idea here, bold statement, is to just figure out how many hours per week and how many weeks per year you should be working.
So we all as driven entrepreneurs have a perfect hundred percent and - we are all different - is your maximum output that one more hour will burn you out, one less hour you will start to get bored. And so it's about figuring out your perfect formula. For me, it's always been 55 hours a week for the last 25 years.
That's changing. I think that's going down to 40 hours as I go into the future, and then 40 weeks a year. That's my magic number. For some, it's 30 hours a week. For some, it's 80 hours a week. For some, it's 50 weeks a year. For some, it's 20 weeks a year. You decide your perfect formula. So know your 100 percent means what is your work capacity. This is when we're doing our work, providing our value, being creative in the world. And so this is your maximum output. You will accomplish much more knowing exactly what your perfect formula is.
The inner world benefit is that you'll end the burnout. You'll stop the burnout. You'll know the perfect number so that you always remain at maximum energy and the best version of you for all of the people in your life.
Discipline #6, Say No…Often. Bold statement here, say no to everything that doesn't fit into the first five disciplines.
Now, this one's pretty straightforward. The outer world benefit is that you've got to get good at saying no. Once the first five disciplines are implemented in your life, your boundaries will be very clear. They are all boundaries. And so as a driven entrepreneur, who's here to make an impact on the world, to say yes to something that does not fit in your hundred percent. That does not fit with who you are. That does not fit with the value you want to bring to the world. You must say no, because if you only have this much time and you're about to say yes to something that is going to require two hours next week that has nothing to do with that value, you're going backwards.
There's the outer world. The inner world benefit is that the tectonic plates, what's going on below the surface, the discomfort in saying no to people, you start to build a muscle and you get comfortable saying no. So you no longer feel the anxiety and the obligation to say yes to people.
You know when to say no, you know how to say no, and you walk away from that feeling good.
Discipline #7, Don't Do $25-an-Hour Work. Bold statement here, never do anything you could pay someone $25-an-hour to do. This one is so straightforward. The outer world benefit is why on earth would you do something that you could pay somebody else $25-an-hour to do?
You are worth $100-an-hour, $500-an-hour, $1,000-an-hour. Some of you are worth $10,000-an-hour out there. Why on earth would you spend a minute doing $25-a- hour work? Again, you're going backwards. You're not achieving maximum output and impact. So make sure you continue to focus on the high gain, high dollar work.
The inner world, so clear and simple. For most driven entrepreneurs, $25- an-hour work is energy draining. Why would you do administrative tasks, follow through, and book your travel? These things drain our energy, and it's all about maximizing your energy.
Discipline #8, Prepare Every Night. Bold statement here, before your head hits the pillow every night, document the next day's plan.
Outer world benefit, you wake up, you hit the ground running and you are considerably more productive. Again, because you hit the ground running, you will accomplish more the next day as a result of it. Inner world benefits, you will sleep better, you will relax, you will rest, you will not toss and turn at night, and ironically, when you prepare every night, your mind is literally working on tomorrow's problems, so you wake up with solutions, so you're just feeling a lot less anxiety.
Discipline #9, Put Everything in One Place. Bold statement here, pick the one place where you will capture every idea, commitment, thought, action item, and promise. Outer world benefit, you will get more done. You will follow through on more commitments. You will stop breaking promises and your ideas will become reality because you're capturing those ideas now and not forgetting half of them.
The inner world benefit is peace and peace of mind. When you are forgetting commitments that you make to people, you are letting them down. You are feeling anxious. You're apologizing constantly, or at least making up excuses, which takes a tremendous amount of energy. And by putting these things, ideas, commitments, thoughts, action items, and promises in all the different places we normally do as driven entrepreneurs, you've got sticky notes, you're writing it on your hand, you're putting in your phone, you're trying to remember, that is draining your energy and it is so exhausting. This will free up all that energy.
And discipline # 10, Be Humble. Bold statement here, view yourself as an equal to every person on the planet. Outer world benefit is humble people attract more humble people, if that's what you want. And so you attract more of what you are. And do you see yourself building what you're building with a team of humble people or a team of arrogant people? And I choose humble. It's for you to decide.
The inner world benefit is that if you think of a spectrum, humble and arrogant, the definition of humble and arrogant are almost exactly the same. And it is your view of yourself in the eyes of others, and humble people just seem to believe they're just as important as anyone else.
Where arrogant people seem to think that they're better than everyone else. The inner world benefit is simply this: the journey is better surrounded by a bunch of people that are humble, than a bunch of people that are arrogant.
So those are the 10 disciplines. I hope I have compelled you and motivated you to implement these in your life.
And if you have, I hope I've motivated and compelled you to go a little deeper. Rob and I will be going much deeper in future episodes, but this was kind of the kicking off and setting the stage for the 10 disciplines.
Thank you for listening in today. We truly appreciate you taking the time to spend with us and please tune in for the next episode.
Until then, if you'd like to see where you are on your True Self journey, go to shedandshinepodcast.com to take the True Self Assessment and receive personalized guidance. If you're all ready to begin your inner world journey with Rob and myself, please join us for the next round of the 10 Disciplines Group Coaching Program.
