One Decision Can Change Your Life | Discipline Over Comfort with Bob Theriot

Every result has a price. Every goal requires a choice. Comfort keeps you where you are. Discipline takes you where you want to go. Welcome to Discipline Over Comfort with Bob Theriault, real world conversations on leadership, business, marketing, and execution And welcome back to the Discipline Over Comfort podcast, podcast. My name is Bob Theriault. Thank you so much for joining me here today. Today I wanna talk about something that I've been thinking about a lot lately, and it's something that quietly destroys more dreams than failure ever could, believe it or not.

And it's comfort. It's being too comfortable where you are right now. Too many people accept where they are right now. It's not failure. It's not competition. It's not bad luck. It's actually comfort, like I said, comfort. And what it is, it, it... Comfort feels harmless. It doesn't announce itself. It doesn't look dangerous. In fact, it usually feels like you earned it, right? But comfort slowly convinces us to stop growing. It whispers things like, "You've worked hard enough. You need to skip the gym today.

You worked hard enough. You know what? Let's go out drinking tonight. You worked hard enough. Let's sit here and chill and watch Netflix for the whole episode of Friends and Neighbors," or whatever on Apple. Whatever it is. It could be whatever. And people are constantly doing this to themselves. They actually, they self-sabotage. And the reason I could talk about this is because I have been there. I have done this to myself. I put a lot of people first back when it was appropriate, especially my son.

You know, he came first in a lot in my life, especially when he was very, very small. And you know, that's normal. That's what we're supposed to do. And we think that, but actually what happened is my health started suffering. I started gaining a ton of weight. I probably was, you know, staying up super late, getting up super early. And one thing I was not doing was I was not exercising or watching what I was eating, watching what I was drinking. "Yeah, give me another beer. The Saints are playing.

I'll have another beer." It didn't matter, right? It was just like... And one thing, you know, one thing leads to the next. One thing, one bad decision leads to the next. One pizza becomes the whole pizza. And you look up and I was like almost two hundred and eighty pounds. And again, as my son got older and I started feeling like crap, I was like, "I can't do this anymore." And you know, and then I started having health issues. And here you go. Your blood pressure's going up. Your cholesterol's going up.

You start feeling sluggish. You know, again, this is my story. And I'm sure a lot of you can relate in some form or fashion, whatever it is. But again, none of this happened overnight. It was a slow kind of halting of motivation and caring about certain things. You know, I, I was focused on work, how I was performing, my son, and of course family and friends. But you know, you prioritize. We get into these little bubbles in life, and you start just doing the same thing over and over and over again.

And so what happened? I became very, very comfortable. And we do this. We do this to ourselves at different stages of our life. And maybe it's not health. Maybe it could be anything. It could be you, uh, do something that, that... You know, maybe you gamble too much, or maybe you, uh, you spend too much time playing video games. I, I don't know what your, what your default is to making yourself feel good and getting that dopamine hit. I have no idea, right? But, so I'm gonna go ahead and start connecting this to business 'cause the same thing happens inside of companies.

Companies usually don't fall overnight. They get comfortable. Leadership gets comfortable. Maybe you've gotten comfortable in the role, whatever you're doing. You know, people say, "Our customers already know us. We've done it that way before." I can't tell you how many times I walked into a business and I ask them, "Why do you do this one thing?" It's like, "Well, that's how we've always done it." Well, okay, great. But is it working? And you know, if you, if you start looking at some of the problems, they're real core.

And a lot of the similarities I see between a lot of businesses is that communication is lacking from leadership all the way down and all the way up to the top. It goes back and forth. And just like anything, the decisions that we make or do not make, right? Because we've all heard this, or maybe you haven't, you haven't heard this. But not making a decision about something is making a decision. You are choosing not to move forward in whatever it is you're trying to do. And so the little decisions that you're making become real- or not making become really big problems.

And then the comfort that you're in, it starts compounding, and just like discipline compounds. The more I went to the gym, the more it became a habit, and I liked it, and I started liking it. If you would have asked me in my thirties to go and lift weights, I'd be like, "There's no way. I'm not gonna do that. There's no way." Uh, 'cause it would hurt. You're sore the next day. You don't feel good. And as I started doing this, I started feeling way better, right? Again, this is my, my... how I saw it, how I felt it.

And so as leaders, people don't follow what we say. They follow repeatedly what we do and what we choose to ignore. So if you're a business leader, your team notices things, right? They notice how prepared you are. They notice whether you show up prepared, whether you're keeping your commitments, or whether you're just making excuses. They know. And they also see what you choose to ignore. They're watching every single thing that you do as a leader. So leadership basically is consistency. It's not intensity.

Don't get the two confused. I've seen some very intense leaders and people, they don't connect to that. A lot of people don't. There's some people, you know, you can instill fear in people, but from my experience, it doesn't work. So where have I, where have I become comfortable is something that you need to be asking yourself. What conversations are you avoiding right now? And you know, what opportunities have you delayed? Because there's a lot of opportunities. And what promises have you made to yourself that you keep breaking?

"I'm gonna start that diet on Monday." Uh You know, I'm gonna clean out my office. I'm going to clean up my desktop, you know, whatever it is. So again, one of my goals for this podcast is to have you take away something every week. So here's just something that I want you to challenge, right? I'm gonna give you a challenge this week. I want you to choose one uncomfortable thing, just one. You know, if you're in sales, make that sales call, that extra s- sales call. To start... If you wanna start exercising, don't go to the gym, don't lift weights, start walking.

Walk around the block. Launch the business that you've always wanted to launch. Apply for the position you've always wanted to apply for. Call the customer that you are always afraid to call, and have that difficult conversation. Because I'm gonna tell you, momentum starts with one decision. You are one decision away from changing the whole trajectory of your life, personal, uh, business, career, whatever it is, but you have to make that decision. So, you know, in closing, I'll leave you with this one thing, right?

Again, comfort feels good today, but discipline builds a better tomorrow. So the future belongs to the people that are willing to stay uncomfortable, and you just wanna become that person that just becomes extraordinary. And you can do that. You can definitely do it. So I'm here to encourage you, and I'm gonna give you just a little bit more information. So I will be doing interviews with local leaders, national leaders, but I also want to go ahead and connect my thoughts for the newsletter into the podcast, 'cause maybe you like to consume your content while you're driving.

You know, we're now on Spotify, Apple, YouTube. So I want you to be able to kind of, like, get... And if you wanted the newsletter, go ahead and if you're watching YouTube, go ahead and click the link below. I'm gonna make sure to add. Make sure you subscribe to the Discipline Over Comfort newsletter. Again, we're gonna be talking about business. Uh, we're gonna be talking about discipline, how to instill things into your business, how to get better personally, professionally. Again, this is not motivational.

I wanna give you some practical tips. So this week, again, challenge yourself. I wanna go on a journey with you. I want you to actually, you know, send me a message. Find me on Instagram, find me on Facebook, find me on Twitter, X, and let me know what, what are you doing this week that you're gonna challenge yourself with? Again, one, make the decision, challenge yourself, and, you know, let's see what happens. And I'm sure that there's gonna be some really cool things that happen. So I hope you enjoyed this episode.

Until the next one, I can't wait to see you. Stay disciplined.

One Decision Can Change Your Life | Discipline Over Comfort with Bob Theriot | Episode 2

In this episode