Stress and difficulty are inevitable in life. Our natural reaction is often to avoid challenging situations, but embracing such struggles is key for growth. As controversial influencer Andrew Tate puts it, "You are either a disciplined individual or you are not a disciplined individual." Developing robust self-discipline and thriving under stress may be the best way to reach our full potential.
The Discipline Mindset
Andrew Tate built a career as a four-time kickboxing world champion through relentless self-discipline. He shares:
"I used to train 5-6 hours per day, 6 times per week, for 12 years to become a champion. Without discipline, you will achieve absolutely nothing…I need something difficult constantly to stop me from getting bored. Fighting provides that for me…I can‘t imagine myself living without it."
The key takeaway – consistency and self-discipline are essential for extreme success. Tate sees boredom as his biggest enemy, kept at bay by constructive goals that challenge him.
This sentiment around discipline has been echoed by achievers across fields:
"Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly." – Will Durant, American Historian
We could view difficulty as an ‘enemy‘ to avoid. But embracing hardship shapes excellence and unlocks potential. As leaders across sports, business and arts have shown, having an ironclad self-discipline accelerates growth.
Struggle for Growth
Tate highlights that we often avoid facing stress and struggle in life. We may even see them as ‘bugs‘ to be fixed.
However, Tate proposes that stress and struggle are not bugs, but features:
"Self-improvement is repetitive, self-improvement is boring, self-improvement is agonizingly slow. So you need to learn how to appreciate and even love that process."
It‘s human nature to avoid discomfort. But by leaning into difficulties with self-discipline, we grow exponentially. This applies widely beyond physical training too:
- In business – Paying dues through grunt work before rising up hierarchies
- In relationships – Communicating through rough patches to strengthen bonds
- In creative arts – Leveling up skills through drills before soaring freely
If we avoid challenges in these areas, we stunt our growth. Learning to embrace constructive stress helps us level up vastly in all spheres of life.
The science backs this up too. High performers structure deliberate practice – focused repetition just beyond comfort zones. This primes neural pathways to handle complexity.
As researcher Anders Ericsson notes:
"Deliberate practice is often the opposite of enjoyable activities."
Pushing past what‘s easy is how excellence happens. Discipline combined with progressive stressors makes us antifragile.
Directing Your State of Mind
Tate highlights that while we don‘t control external situations, we can control our state of mind:
“If you can’t control your emotions, if you can’t control your mood, if you can’t control your state, then you’re just a feather in the wind my friends and life is just gonna whip you around.”
He uses mood as an example. We can choose to dwell on negative emotions, or intentionally shift into resourceful states like motivation, curiosity or gratitude.
This ability to direct our state of mind is key. Without it, life happens to us rather than through us. Tate sums it up poignantly:
"You’ve got to understand something. Life deals you a set of cards. It’s up to you to play them, it’s up to you to utilize them. You build your own worth.”
Top performers are disciplined in controlling their inner world. They generate empowering emotions despite circumstances.
Olympic gold medalist Gabby Douglas shares how she prepared for high-stakes competition:
“Each night, I would visualize my goals and winning my events. I was programming my brain for success.”
Self-discipline involves mastering both outer effort and inner experience. The most direct path to shaping our potential.
Building Your Self-Discipline
We explored why self-discipline accelerates growth. Now let’s look at proven ways to build it:
| Tactic | Example |
|---|---|
| Start ridiculously small | Going from 0 pushups to 1 pushup daily. Progress over perfection. |
| Structure triggers and rewards | Check email for 5 mins only after finishing an assignment. Celebrate progress. |
| Focus on progress | Rather than fixating on losing 20kg, track losing 500gm per week. |
| Add accountability | Share your goals publicly on social media, hire a coach, join a mastermind group |
| Cut out temptation | Block distraction websites when you need deep work. |
| “Eat frogs” – Tackle toughest tasks first | Complete unpleasant tasks in morning when willpower is high so you aren’t drained rest of day |
Table 1 – Actionable tactics to build self-discipline
Another key practice is capturing metrics – if you can measure it, you can improve it. Tracking leading indicators of progress helps motivation long-term.
For example, athletes quantify factors like training intensity, heart rate variability, sleep quality since these correlate strongly with performance. Similar metrics apply in business – measure sales calls made, lines of code shipped, new articles written based on goals.
Progress tracking both provides structure and makes tangible your improvements over time. The compound effect can be immense.
What Makes Discipline Work: The Science
Why does self-imposed structure of habits drive results while we resist external enforcement?
Mark Muraven, psychologist researching self-control, notes willpower operates like a muscle. Expending effortful control depletes limited reserves, hence discipline gets exhausting.
This explains why building habits reduces cognitive strain. Encode a behavior like working out into automatic neural pathways through repetition. Habits entrench motivation intrinsically rather than requiring constant willpower.
Stanford health psychologist Kelly McGonigal adds:
“When you have a bigger why for your goals, it strengthens your self-control muscle rather than just depleting it.”
So habits combined with purpose prime us for discipline long-term.
Lastly, the incremental progress mindset fuels motivation via ripple effects in neurochemistry:
- Dopamine release from achieving small wins keeps us wanting more
- Serotonin boosts positivity from moving forward
- Cortisol reduces as tasks feel more achievable
Thus, systems beat goals for sustained discipline. Compounding tiny gains in the short-term unlocks huge rewards in the long run. That taste of progress gets addictive!
Success Stories: Applying Discipline In Real Lives
We covered disciplines‘scientific underpinning. Now let‘s showcase real-world stories that inspire:
James Clear – Transformed fitness despite genetic obstacles
James was born with a spine condition making movement painful. Doctors doubted he could exercise consistently. Yet he started with basic mobility exercises for just 5 minutes daily. Through disciplined incremental progress, he became an ultramarathoner and bestselling author.
Lionel Messi – All-time football legend due to 1% improvements
Messi credits his meteoric rise from a short teenager with growth hormone deficiency to becoming a 6-time FIFA Player of the Year to marginal gains principles. His coach, mindfulness and team target enhancing aspects like nutrition, rest by just 1% at a time. These tiny gains ultimately compound to greatness.
Stephen King – From school janitor to billionaire author
Growing up poor, King worked as a janitor, living in a trailer with little hope of success as a writer. Yet he persisted writing 2000 words daily without fail after his shifts. Now he has sold over 350 million copies of books – discipline adding up over decades.
The lesson is this – regardless of constraints life throws at you, small consistent actions stacked daily ultimately transforms destinies. The power of self-discipline makes you antifragile in the face of external chaos. Control the controllables.
Does Height Limit Your Potential?
An interesting argument Tate raises responds to doubters regarding attributes limiting success potential:
“Yeah, it’s easy for you to have confidence when you’re over 6 foot tall.”
He counters effectively – while uncontrollable attributes like height or intelligence set a baseline aptitude, they do not define potential:
“Forget your height. Just focus on being the best version of yourself every single day.”
Tate points out how lucky most of us are to have full physical capabilities. Beyond that, a lot comes down to mindset and making the most of what we have:
“Your mindset is going to be the determining factor, not your height.”
We don‘t get to choose our starting hands in life. However, the choice of playing them optimally comes down to self-discipline.
Show up consistently to overcome inherent limitations. Incrementally improve weaknesses rather than excuses. Optimize strengths rather than complaints. Own the process, not just craving the prize. That‘s the mindset for peak performance.
Conclusion
Hopefully this article provided convincing arguments plus science-backed techniques around self-discipline as the master key for growth.
While developing robust discipline is challenging, the rewards can be immense. As Andrew Tate exemplified through his combat sports career, embracing consistent hardship breeds resilience and mental toughness over time.
The key lies in directing our internal mindset. Discipline gives us the power to shape ourselves rather than being defined by external events not in our control.
Combined with leveraging the progress loop of habits, we transform stressors from enemies into friends on the journey of realizing our full human potential. It won‘t be easy, but ease should not be the goal if excellence is the destination.
"Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives – choice, not chance, determines your destiny." – Aristotle
The choice is ours. Let‘s get to work.