Do you ever wish you had greater achievement in life? In this episode, Jimmy shares seven of his favorite motivational and inspirational quotes that help him achieve a higher level of self-discipline and success.
Episode Keys:
- Why it is most important to conquer and control yourself to reach your full potential in life!
- How to become a person of great character and consistency.
- Why you must conquer fear to achieve your purpose in life.
- The brain is so powerful yet it is not challenged on a daily basis to achieve your greatest goals. You can reverse this process.
- Habits contribute to your personal excellence. Good habits push you to greater heights in life!
Podcast Transcript:
One of the most challenging parts of life for any of us as human is to be self disciplined. And what that word really means to me this particular morning is that I know what is best for my mind, spirit, body, and I need to adhere to the habits that help energize and strengthen those areas of life. Hey, good morning. This is Jimmy Williams, your host for the most here on Live a Life By Design, your Monday morning moments of motivation that I hope today will give you the opportunity to be a bigger, better and bolder you today. I’m flying solo. It seems a little strange. I don’t have my partner here with me. She is oh gosh. You know, some people take these things called vacations, right? And she had the audacity to take time away from this important podcast to be with her family.
No, I’m just teasing. I hope and wish Lori a wonderful week this week as she and her family are out taking her son who is on his way to being a very serious paleontologist. And I understand they’re digging for dinosaur fossils or doing something of that nature somewhere in the Western United States. So I do wish them a wonderful, wonderful time, but let’s talk just a few minutes today. What’s keeping you up at night. Are you happy with where you are in your life, your career, your family relationships, your friendships, you have the capability between your own ears to set your destiny and achieve it today. I would like to share just a few minutes with you of what I call the no excuses to life. This is the power of self discipline and the outcomes you can generate for yourself, your family, your company, your team, your community.
These are just a few of the philosophies that I use to help keep me disciplined. Now, here, what you’re saying, you’ve seen the audio of, excuse me, seen the website video and so forth. And I have gained just a few pounds through the pandemic. Recently. I’ve lost about another 12. I’m doing the things I need to do to hone that mindset of my body. Being the engine that I need to help me carry forth on my big, hairy, audacious goals. Now I’m not here today to tell you each of you need to lose weight. That’s not up to me. I’m not even here to tell you that each of you need to be rising at five or five 30 in the morning. Again, that’s a personal decision, but I am here today to tell each of you that if you’re not achieving your highest goals, those big, hairy, audacious goals that move the needle in life, they give you a higher quality of living.
And I don’t necessarily mean through money. I’m talking about that quality of living within your own mind, your spirit, that you can be happy. No. What, no matter where you find yourself, that is the no excuses, self discipline approach I wanna visit with you about today. So, you know, self discipline to me is the cornerstone for true success. Now, whether you are a, multi-millionaire a billionaire or just starting in your career, you obtain certain levels of success. To me, it’s like a ladder, right? Each rung has certain rewards and challenges, but to achieve those certain rewards, to overcome those certain challenges, you must have self discipline in your life. You know, it’s easy to say, I wanna live and be happy, but it takes the work. It takes the dedication, the consistency of life to make that a reality for you. The first and best victory in life is to control self.
I plagiarized a little bit of Playto there one of the greatest philosophers in medieval times, but he basically is telling us that we must control ourself first. And that is our best victory. The problem is the mind is a powerful thing. You see, the mind has only really two jobs. Now it does a lot of other things, keeping the human body going by the heart, beating the lungs, working those autonomous things that just, you know, seem to work. Whether you think about ’em or not, right? That’s part of the brain’s job. But what I’m talking about now is the jobs that the brain really has boils down to two things. It has the ability to preserve the body and life. And the other is to run the heart lungs and so forth. Now your brain though kicks into that preservation mode. At any time, we have a challenge that takes us out of our comfort zone and into areas of life.
That if you will, your brain seems to think you have fear. Now you understand the acronym, fear F E a R is truly something that can be easily defined as this false evidence appearing real. You see, there are great amounts of achievements in life from people you would look at and think they didn’t have the capability to perform in the manner they ultimately did. I’m talking about those moms that can lift cars off of their children that have been involved in accidents. I mean, just super human strength of things that help them achieve and that’s their body and mind working together. So, you know, your ability to ask and answer questions to yourself in a manner that you answer them correctly and then follow that answer. It leads you to that. You can achieve your own happiness. So I want you to focus on today’s first quote, the first and best victory is to conquer self.
To me, that is the first and premise of any type of self discipline, this, this success story. But the next feature, if success is the basis of that, we must have self discipline and character. Now I gotta be honest with you. There are a lot of people I admire in life, and some of them are just simply of the highest character. You know, the one that if they shake your hand, they mean it. If they tell you a promise, they deliver. And at the end of the day, these are people that as my dad would always say, you could take what they say to the bank. It is going to be an answer that is going to be truthful. Henry Ward Becher was a 19th century clergyman. His quote that I’m giving you today on character is an excellent one. Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anyone else expects of.
You never excuse yourself, never pity yourself. Be a hard master to yourself and be lenient to everyone else. Whew, man, we can uncover a lot of meaning in this one. The point I’m making is this Jim RO my mentor said it best when he said, be harder on yourself than your job will be harder on you. So what he’s saying is, if you are harder on yourself, then everything else in life will be easier. It’s the problem we have today. As we all want the easy road, we want the, the paved four lane highway, not the dirt road or wagon trail that some of us must follow to get to that next level of accomplishment. And each time you, you choose, for example a choice of certain type decision to be made and you choose that choice. You know, you have to think about is that choice leading to another choice and to another choice.
And you’ll soon find out there are many forks in the road. And some of the choices you make may take a longer trail to get to that next letter level of success, but you eventually will get there your, your situation of never to allow yourself to have an excuse, always deliver what you say. I love the fact that a lot of times we used to shake hands on business deals. I know my dad talked a lot about the, the bigger business deals he would do back in the day of selling property to someone or, or buying something from someone. They didn’t write it down on paper and have it notarized in front of some people as witnesses. They shook hands and followed through man that is lacking today, in my opinion, in the character of most people. So you’re different. You are a live life by design subscriber or listener.
You take the higher road because you can look in that mirror each morning. If you’re a man or look in the mirror as a lady, putting your makeup on in morning, be proud of what you see, not for Pride’s sake, but for the fact you have self discipline in your life and your character shines through J Paul Getty. One of the wealthiest men of his time in that era had a statement. I really love. It says the individual who wants to reach the top in business must appreciate the might enforce of habit. He must be quick to break those habits that can break him and Hasan to adopt those practices that will become the habits that help him achieve the success. He desires self discipline and being responsible. Walk hand in hand, J Paul Getty. One of the most unique people of his time had a little bit of eccentricity for example, but at the end of the day, he had discipline in his life.
One of the things I love about you know, some of the martial artists, they have such discipline practice so much per day, every day, rain or shine, whether they’re sore or they’re not whether they hurt, whether they don’t, whatever it takes. It’s like Bruce Lee said, I must take responsibility for my mind or someone else will. In other words, don’t allow your opponent to live rent free in your mind. If you’re getting ready to do battle, he says, I love this as well. He said, I never fear the man that knows a 10,000 kicks. I do fear the man that knows one kick and has practiced it 10,000 times.
So being responsible is a big part of self discipline in your life. So think about habits you have today. Are there any habits in your life that you’d like to break, perhaps anything from eating or maybe ingesting certain things such as tobacco or alcohol or chemicals that you shouldn’t, if there’s anything in your life, that’s a habit that’s causing you to get further behind on your goals, getting up late being tardy, getting to work or to school or wherever you need to be at certain time. You know, one of the things I always took pride in is when I told someone I would be there. I was there. If I had something unusual happen, I would let them know I was going to be late. People need to understand that you appreciate and respect their time as valuable as your own. You know, there was a, a story about president Clinton that he had an uncanny ability to be late for every appointment.
His secretary would set. He never could be on time. And I don’t know what happened that it caused that, but he got to be known for this and was really disrespecting others times now. But you’re saying, Hey, he was the president of the United States. He’s still a human being. His character will show in how he conducts himself toward and with others. The key for you here is being responsible. And at the end of the day, you must have a willingness to discipline yourself. If you’re wishing to achieve total personal responsibility, the next discipline will be the self discipline and goals in your life. Now, you know, I’ve talked to you many, many episodes about having goals about writing down your goals, saw a survey the other day, 92% of the people who write down their goals achieve far more than those who don’t write down their goals.
Now it doesn’t say just because you write it down, it’s gonna happen. Right? What it does though, is triggers in your mind, that thought process that you see a deadline, you see a goal it’s worth something to you because when you set that goal, you had a reward and now you’re going to achieve the goal. And it means something special to you. My mentor, again, Jim, Ron, I know you guys get tired of hearing me say it, but Jim had such great statements and such great philosophy about life. His quote, I’m losing today on discipline and goals is this discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment. Think about that. This is just setting the goal. Doesn’t get the accomplishment. It takes the self discipline each day to work toward that. You know, and it was funny too. Wayne Gretsky, one of the greatest NHL players in recent history set many records and then broke his own records during his time as a professional hockey player.
But at the end of the day, Wayne Gretsky was asked if you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there. And he said, yes. And you miss every shot that you don’t take. At the end of the day, he was ha the kind of person that could experience and get to where the puck was going, not where the puck has been. And so he had good control and discipline in himself to see the forward motion of the puck on the ice. You know, many people have hopes and wishes in life. I would recommend to you. That hope is a wonderful thing to have, but the discipline and setting of goals will bring the hope to a reality instead of just a thought. The next one I’ll talk to you about is excellence. I am a big fan. As I know, many of you that listen to personal excellence being achieved in life Aristotle, another great philosopher said we are, what we repeatedly do excellence then is not an act, but a habit.
Now, some of us are probably not practicing excellence in the level that they would desire. You know, your ability to learn, grow and fulfill your potential is unlimited. People are graduating from high school and college today in their seventies. Matter of fact, I read where a lady finished finally, her doctorate at the age of 84, man, that’s exciting to get a PhD at the age of 84. You know, most of us aren’t thinking about getting a more educated in our eighties, at least not formal education, but she had a personal excellence goal to achieve that education. And now she had met many challenges and some maybe had set her back a little bit during her lifetime during her actual career, but she always had this burning desire down in her stomach. You know, just, just churning wanting her to go. There’s one box. I didn’t check the one about getting my PhD.
So just start working on your habits, form those good habits that move you forward in life. And those that can help propel you with great exponential power toward the next big goal. You see these rungs on the gold ladder are simply that they’re rungs. You can climb them. You can achieve more. If you just simply create the habits and help make some of the performance you tender to be just automatic. You don’t have to think about it, but you know, self discipline and reaching goals takes something that’s big in our lives. And some of it may be missing in yours today. It is called courage. Mark Twain had a wor a great quote. Courage is not absence of fear. It is control of fear and mastery of fear. You know, I love talking and, and, and to people and reading stories and biographies about astronauts, these men and women have gone into the unknown faced.
Terrific odds. Some have been horrific if you remember the challenger disaster in the eighties, but if you think about what they’ve accomplished for mankind, they have left a bigger step for us to step on, to pull ourselves up greater in life. This courage that they exhibited and continue to exhibit by going deeper and deeper into space is just one that you wonder, how do they do it? They learned to master those fears that would hold anyone else back. It’s only when we spread our wings to fly into the darkness of space. Do we realize how small our world truly is on which we live? And lastly, if you’re going to solve goal problems and achievement, you gotta be one of the best problem solvers around. And so self discipline and problem solving go hand in hand today. I’ve shared a lot about self discipline with you.
This last one on problem solving may be one of the biggest, all this Huxley has a quote that I love. It says experience is not what happens to a man. It is what a man does with what happens to him. You see the distinction. So it’s not just what happens to you. That creates experience. It’s what the man does with what happens. You can control with your brain, your attitude, what you’re going to respond to in life. You know, don’t give negative feedback for negative feedback. You know, I’ll be Frank with you. I’m not the kind of person that likes to reign on others parade, but I certainly don’t appreciate others doing a downpour on mine. I like to have fun in life. I like to enjoy life. Work hard, play hard. That’s been one of my mottos for many, many years. I love to be in challenging areas of sports.
I love to play against people that are much better than me in golf. It makes me perform better. It goes to that personal excellence. I need to be better by playing those that are going to push me beyond my current limits, to set a new height in my mindset and my goal and my disciplines today. This has been an opportunity. I hope that you will take to heart. It’s one of those things in life that you can simply listen to this podcast, or you can take some of what we’re saying to you in mentioning here, in terms of actions and put ’em to work in your life. You see you are in control of yourself. I often tell people, you know, it’s not the fact that you are an arc. You are a mighty ship and arc has rudder, and must go whichever way the waves and wind takes it.
But you are a mighty ship with a rudder that can help you point in the direction you wish to go. Even against the wind and reach the destinations that you wish to reach. Thank you for joining me today. This has been a wonderful, wonderful morning to come into your house, to your automobile, wherever you’re listening to this podcast and share just a few minutes of positivity with you. If you think this podcast has helped you even a little bit, please share the podcast with your friends and family. One goal that we have is to help reach just one person and help change their life for the better. And if we’ve done anything to help make your life better, we hope you’ll spread the good news. The challenge this week is simple. Look at the habits you currently have in your life. Look at the discipline. You currently exert. Try to find a way to improve on one or two disciplines in your life. Whether that’s eating, exercising, sleeping, whatever it might be showing up on time saying, please, and thank you. Get some discipline in your life and work on it this week, because you can only reach your pinnacle in life with what you contribute. No one else can take you to the Heights of the atmosphere that you’re entitled to be. Go out, live your life by design.
