Can Discipline Be Freedom?

I have often battled with the concept of discipline being freedom, but time after time when I fall out of my daily routine I pay the price… always. Today we are going to dive into how this week for me fell apart and what I am doing to fix it so that this does not happen again (hopefully), and how you too can find freedom by identifying what you need each day to thrive.
Episode Resources


Welcome back to The Nick Broadhurst Show. I’m your host, Nick Broadhurst. You can catch all of my wok at www.iamnickbroadhurst.com including all of my podcast episodes, my music, music videos, blog posts, everything I do at iamnickbroadhurst.com.

If you head to iamnickbroadhurst/spotify, that will redirect you to my Spotify profile if you listen to music on Spotify. If you listen to music somewhere else, just simply search for my name which is NICK Nick Broadhurst, and you can check out all of my tunes.

That song you were listening to today is called Take Me Down. Please do head to iamnickbroadhurst.com/takemedown because on that page you can click on the little play button and watch the music video. This music video is so epic, seriously. At the end it features what looks like me jumping off a cliff, and it’s actually real but it wasn’t me. It was a body double and his name was Lee.

Lee very sadly passed away a few weeks after we shot that video. He was such a sweet kid. He was so beautiful. In those two days of shooting he taught me what it means to embrace life, to be adventurous. Today we’re going to talk about how to get the most out of life.

This week was kind of crappy for me. Looking back it’s easy for me to see why. I didn’t stick to my code. This is why I’m doing this episode on a Saturday and why I missed it yesterday because I felt crap, really crap. To be honest, I just didn’t want to share myself yesterday. I didn’t feel inspired and I had a lack of discipline which basically is knocking to all areas of my life this week.

But I want to start by saying something. Discipline can be a bit of a scary word. I find that for men, the masculine kind of embraces discipline, but for women sometimes the feminine can look at discipline as just being something that’s too rigid.

For me, discipline is not rigid, it is not restrictive. Discipline creates space in your life because you know that you are taking care of things each day that make you thrive and that will support your growth. Discipline removes unnecessary thoughts and decisions that stop you from focusing on what really matters most, those things that move you forward that support your growth and your evolution.

Now, if you haven’t heard my Episode No. 1, Living By The Code, definitely either go back and listen to that now or listen to it after this episode. Because the code is something which has changed my life and a lot of the listeners of The Nick Broadhurst Show have written to me about how supportive the code has been for them.

When I break the code, I tell you what, I always pay a price. Damn it! The code has four columns in it and these are things which I write down and have specified very clearly. The columns are never, always, conditional, and unrestricted.

This week, my first mistake was that I avoided the reminder that pops up in my Things App. If you want to learn more about Things and how I get lots and lots done each day, check out Episode No. 2, Productivity Without The Push at iamnickbroadhurst.com/2. You can listen to Living By The Code at iamnickbroadhurst.com/1.

This reminder pops up every morning and it tells me to start the day with the code. My code is stored in Evernote and there’s an example of that in the show notes at iamnickbroadhurst.com/1. This reminder just makes me read my own code. It’s a quick reminder of the things that make me thrive before I start the day.

The trajectory of our day is so often decided by the intentions that we set before we start the day. I’ll say that again. The trajectory of our day is so often decided by the intentions we set before we start the day, and the code is how I set my intentions.

What were the big things that made me come unstocked this week and feel so freakin crap? Man, where do I start? Seriously. I basically broke them all, but let’s look at the big ones which tend to determine how my day is going to pan out.

We’ll start at the very beginning and my code says that I always wake up at 5am, unless I’m touring and I need the extra rest. Nope, didn’t do that. And then, the next thing or the first thing I do every single morning is I get up and I hit my yoga mat. Nope, didn’t do that.

Then I go from yoga and I meditate. Kind of bit, yeah a little bit, I did a bit of that this week. But the thing is I know what medication makes me thrive and that is Vedic or transcendental meditation. I do it twice a day for 20 minutes, morning and afternoon. This week I made excuses; I was too busy, I had Leo, I had to play with him, I had to do this, I had to do that.

And so I tried other types of meditation that were shorter, like lying on the beach, getting some sun and doing some breathing. It’s just not the same. It doesn’t have the same impact. It’s great but it should be an add-on, it shouldn’t be a replacement for my main meditation.

And if you want to watch my meditation journey on Instagram Stories, I use the hashtag #THEDAILYMED. My goal this year is to hit 730 meditations which is two meditations a day, and I have a few to catch up on. I would love it if you’d join me in THE DAILY MED challenge. It’s very, very simple. Just, if you like, meditate once a day for the entire year and see how that makes you feel.

The next thing in the code was that my plate, the food that I eat, is always as per the code. I figured out what foods make me feel best. But this week I decided to experiment. I decided that I wanted to start putting a bit more weight on because I lost a lot of weight last year from the year of fear. My body just couldn’t keep up with the increase in calories, it put strain in my digestion, my little sensitive vatta, digestion, and it created toxins or as they call it in Ayurveda, arma.

And arma is the root of all disease, this is undigested food. We’re not just talking about physical food that we eat but thoughts as well. Undigested thoughts and emotions also create arma. Seriously, it’s no wonder I felt crap. I had all these crappy thoughts floating around my head and it was getting perpetuated by this cycle that I was stuck in by not sticking to my code. I was basically armering myself all over the place. It was kind of self-sabotage. Pretty stupid but very human as well. But I believe the code is one of our best opportunities to take a hold of this, to grab resistance by the balls and defeat it.

Now, another big one for me was to stick to my ideal Day Plan, and I map this out in my calendar and I usually stick to it. This week, I let other people’s schedules dictate my day. Seriously, when will I learn? I have to dictate my own day, otherwise nothing gets done. I got none of my most important tasks, my MITs done this week.

My list of things to do in Things has now become out of control and that is where the resistance started to set in because I just didn’t know where to start. And honestly, this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the code and how I broke it this week.

But the point I want to make today is that discipline really can be freedom. When you determine your boundaries, you dictate what you will manifest and create that day, that week, this year, in fact in your lifetime. Does this mean that you’re breaking the potential of flow and spontaneity? Absolutely not. Removing unnecessary decisions creates the space for spontaneity and flow, in my humble opinion. It creates wide space in your life. Without space there can be no flow. You miss the gold.

In my song, Bones, I sing, “It’s easy to miss the gold we find, so dizzy with the daily grind.” The dizziness for me is caused by lack of discipline. I believe the most productive and creative people have naturally built discipline into their days. It’s this discipline that defeats resistance to doing what is most important to you.

Many writers, very famous writers, have been quoted as saying something like this, “I only write when inspiration strikes.” And fortunately, it strikes for me at 9 every morning. That is discipline. That is defeating resistance. For me, this podcast is part of my daily inspiration along with my music. This podcast just happens to spring up each day out of nowhere in a state of inspiration at 8am. Why? Because I sit my butt down and I do the work. Except for yesterday, didn’t do it yesterday. Whoops.

So my question for you today is, how will you show up for yourself today? What areas of your life are lacking discipline? What indecision is blocking you from being in a state of flow? Is it time to create your own code and start to master this game of life?

I thank you for joining me again in another episode of The Nick Broadhurst Show. You can get all the show notes, everything I mentioned today at iamnickbroadhurst.com/39 where you can also get a full transcript of the show if you prefer to read it.

Please do head into iTunes and leave me a 5-star review as well as a comment because I love hearing from you so much. I love your comments. I love your reviews. Please share with me on social media. Send me a direct message. Tag me @IAmNickBroadhurst. Tell me what you love. Tell me what you want more of. I’m here at your service.

Remember today to look up. See the beauty around you. See the beauty within you. Show up for yourself. Create space today for your truth to flow through and be expressed out into the world. Be gentle with yourself. Be loved. Listen to your intuition. And as always, have a beautiful day. I love you heaps. Ciao.

I would love to hear from you, so please tag me @IAmNickBroadhurst on social media, and use the hashtag #TheNickBroadhurstShow, or leave me a comment below (I read every single one!). And if you could take a minute to leave me a 5 star review on iTunes I would be very grateful.

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