Freedom Through Discipline
Why the life you dream about requires the routine you’re avoiding
It was a colder day today. The wind sent shivers through my hands.
The rumble of my motorbike was masked by the slow music in my headphones. Something melancholic by Bon Iver that made the grey suburban streets feel like a movie scene.
I was riding home from the same gym I visit every Tuesday and Thursday.
Recently every day has felt the same.
I see the same clients in the morning.
I eat the same food for lunch.
I train the same machines at the gym.
Through the daily routine I dream of a life full of novelty.
A life where I can leave on a whim.
Explore the globe, learn languages, experience new cultures.
It’s a vivid dream compared to my black and white day to day.
It, however, remains just a dream.
Every day is the same - until it isn’t.
Here’s the paradox that took me years to understand: A life of spontaneity requires a routine full of structure. The freedom you’re chasing is built inside the boring repetition you’re trying to escape.
This isn’t some motivational poster wisdom. It’s the gap between who we think we are and who we actually are.
We Aren’t Who We Say We Are
We think we reflect our mental realities. Our desires, thoughts, and dreams.
I’ve lived years of my life in a state of cognitive dissonance where my thoughts never matched up with my reality.
It is one thing to say you want to train and perform like an athlete. It is another to run when the rain is pouring and the heater is maxed out inside.
You can’t believe you are healthy when every time you are stressed you turn to fast food.
We are what we do. Not what we think about doing.
This is why our routines require structure.
We are naturally wired for preservation.
We avoid the difficult tasks because they take us out of a state of comfort.
Despite knowing that they are needed to grow.
The mind will invent elaborate reasons why today isn’t the right day to start, why this particular task is uniquely impossible, why we should wait until conditions are perfect.
The Thing About Hard Things
The funny thing about hard things is that they get easier.
Not the content itself. The act of showing up.
As students the first time we have to study is incredibly difficult.
We experience feelings of resistance, a desire to quit, and an urge to return to previous activities that are familiar and rewarding.
The second time isn’t easier. We’re reminded of how much more we need to study, what is left to do, and how hard it was to get here.
The third, fourth, fifth... more of the same.
However it is only from looking back that you realize each time you pulled up the bootstraps and chose to focus became easier and easier.
The material remained brutal. The calculus didn’t simplify itself. But the ability to sit down and do the work required less mental willpower each time.
This is the secret hiding in plain sight: Discipline isn’t a personality trait. It’s a muscle you build by using it.
We Are The Sum Of Our Habits
When I am with my clients as a PT it is practically in the job description to talk about discipline.
Because, of course, as trainers we are oh so disciplined.
This has always misaligned with me because a large majority of my health hasn’t required any discipline whatsoever.
Yes at the start it was difficult. However, now it is simply a part of my life.
I don’t need discipline to go to the gym the same way I don’t need discipline to brush my teeth.
Let me tell you about a client - let’s call her Sue.
Sue came to me six months ago wanting to lose 15 kilos. She had the same dream everyone has - the beach body, the confidence, the life where she doesn’t think about her weight every morning.
Week one she showed up on time. Week two she was ten minutes late with a coffee in hand. By week three she was texting me excuses about work stress and family commitments.
“I know I need to cut the carbs,” she told me during our fourth session, slightly out of breath from a warm-up she used to breeze through. “But when I’m stressed, I just... I need the comfort food, you know?”
I did know. I knew because I’d heard the same story from dozens of clients. I knew because I’d lived it myself with different vices.
Here’s what I told her: “Sue, forget the carbs for now. Just show up. Even if you show up and do half the workout. Even if you show up and we just stretch. Just show up.”
She looked at me like I was crazy.
But she did it. She showed up the next week. And the week after that. Some days she crushed it. Most days she didn’t. But somewhere around week eight, something shifted.
She stopped texting excuses. She started arriving early. The workout that left her breathless in week four became her warm-up by week twelve.
And the carbs? She cut them naturally. Not through discipline. Through habit.
By month six Sue had lost the weight. But more importantly, she’d built a version of herself that didn’t need me anymore. The woman who couldn’t get through a warm-up without excuses had become the woman who showed up even when everything in her life was on fire.
That’s the transformation no one talks about. The weight loss was just proof that a deeper change had occurred.
Now ask your trainer to run a marathon when they have been bodybuilding for the last 5 years and you’ll hear the same excuses Sue gave me in week three.
We all have our blindspots. The tasks we’ve built walls around. The things we’ve labeled as “impossible for people like me.”
Your Resistance Is The Roadmap
The task you’re avoiding right now - the one that makes your stomach turn when you think about it - that’s not a sign you’re not ready.
It’s a sign you’ve found the exact thing you need to do.
Let’s throw away the to do list that hasn’t been completed.
Wipe off the whiteboard that hasn’t been checked in weeks.
Pick the one task that you have the most mental resistance towards.
There is always one. It is usually surrounded by so many excuses that it has already been deemed impossible.
Then do it.
Not tomorrow.
Not next week.
Don’t put it in your calendar.
Complete it. Now preferably.
Here’s your protocol:
Do it today. Then do it again tomorrow.
Keep doing it until you realize that it takes zero effort to complete.
Then complete it again - this time with more effort, difficulty, or thought.
Add weight to the bar once the movement becomes automatic.
If you can consistently break down the limiting walls that the mind puts up to protect yourself you will realize that your purpose is far greater than you imagined.
The life you’re waiting for doesn’t exist somewhere else. The novelty, the freedom, the version of you that travels the globe - that person is built here, today, in the repetition you’re currently avoiding.
Sue didn’t transform because she finally “got disciplined.” She transformed because she showed up enough times that showing up stopped requiring discipline.
That’s what I understood on that cold ride home, Bon Iver in my ears, the same suburban street I’ve ridden down a hundred times before.
The routine doesn’t trap you. It sets you free.
In the same breath you will realize that the life of novelty, the one that’s waiting for you across the globe, can exist here and today.
That is something truly beautiful.