Do You Have the Necessary Discipline?

I believe 100% in the importance of "mindset" in successfully accomplishing goals. If you believe in your heart of hearts that you either don't deserve success or lack confidence, you simply will not. All of your efforts will be in vain because you are programmed to fail.

How can you tell if your mindset is productive or not? Listen … REALLY LISTEN … to your internal conversation. If you blame others, create excuses or talk about yourself, TO YOURSELF, in a negative way, success will be elusive. If you have time, click on this link and watch this video (High Performance Mindset). In it Michael Gervais, the performance psychologist for the Seattle Seahawks, discusses the importance of this concept. Coach Pete Carroll chimes in as well.

My objective here is to discuss what you need to do once your belief in yourself is unshakable. My friend John Assaraf calls it the Law of GOYA (Get Off Your Ass). I just call it "discipline." My definition of that word: "Doing WHAT needs to be done … WHEN it needs to be done … THE WAY it needs to be done … EVERY TIME!

Start here: Decide what you want to do, what you want to have, and who you want to be and find someone who already has those things. Go to great lengths to meet that person. Copy what they do. Sounds simple; it is! Simple … but not easy! Without discipline … as the saying goes … the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. Here's an example from the best at what he does:

Do You Have the Necessary Discipline?Tom Brady is arguably the best quarterback in the history of the National Football League. Success, as they say, speaks for itself. What you see on the football field, however, is the result of what he does OFF of the field.

• Every morning Tom speaks to his neuropsychologist. He believes that his mind, his body, and his spirit have to be aligned in order to be his best.

• Tom's business partner, and Godfather to one of his children, is Alex Guerrero. Although officially he is Tom's "body coach," he is arguably the most important person in his life, save his supermodel wife, Gisele Bundchen, and his head coach, Bill Belichik. His teammates refer to Guerrero as Mr. Miyagi (the character in The Karate Kid). He is largely responsible for Brady playing at an MVP level in his late 30s and for Brady's aspiration to play until his late 40s or even 50.

• Brady's schedule is planned three years in advance. Every day of it is micro-managed. Treatment, food, workouts, rest, recreation. Per Guerrero: "The whole idea is to program his body to do what we want it to do. We don't let the body dictate. WE dictate."

• Here's a typical Brady vacation day in the off-season: Wake up; work out; have breakfast with Gisele and his children; hang at the beach; nap on schedule; surf; work out again.
He goes to bed early; eats well (more shortly) and avoids alcohol.

• Rather than lifting (metal) weights, Brady uses bands. If you think that one can't get a grueling weight workout with bands, I use them as well. In my arsenal, my exercise bands give me up to 330 pounds of resistance. Guerrero wanted Brady to have more muscle pliability. He noticed that Brady's muscles had become short and brittle using typical weight training.

• Brady's diet is geared, among other things, to give him a balance of acid and alkaline. He consumes food accordingly: 80% alkaline and 20% acidic. Trust me; that isn't easy. His diet is seasonal. In the summer, when it's time for "hot property" foods, he'll consume (for example) red meat. In the winter, he consumes mostly "cold property foods." His diet then is mostly raw. The goal is to maintain balance and harmony through his metabolic system.

• Brady struggles with sleep patterns, so to unwind after games and practices, he does cognitive exercises to destimulate his brain. That allows him to get to sleep by 9 p.m. and wake up without an alarm.

• Brady completes a brain resilience program. After a thorough analysis, he had a program created to workout his brain the way he works out his body. It enables him to process information more quickly than would otherwise be the case. That, in turn, enables him to read defenses between plays and make adjustments on the fly. He believes that his edge is in his mental resiliency and quick processing capability.

I could continue with the long list of things he does to be his best. The point is this: If YOU want to be YOUR best, you have to do the work. Doing the work means both doing the right things, and doing those things right. Otherwise, what's the point?!