Happy Sunday everyone!
One of my goals this year is to read at least 10 books. There was a time in my life when I would read 20-30 books in a year, but lately with all my projects and all the distractions available, I’m lucky if I read 5.
With that in mind, I recently picked up and quickly read through this book by Jocko Willink, “Discipline Equals Freedom: Field Manual”.
I think the measure of a book is to leave you with at least one thing that helps you move forward, and this book certainly did that with one thought: “The count is zero”.
In his SEAL training, if he was assigned something to do like 100 push-ups, and the instructor felt like the 95th one wasn’t good enough, they would shout “the count is zero”. It didn’t matter that he did 95 and only had 5 to go — he was back at 0 and had 100 to do.
Brutal training method, for sure, but the lesson he teaches here is that every day is a new day. Every day the count is zero.
That particular realization struck me in my late 30s, but was never summed up so beautifully in a sentence. I remember I had a day that was full of good food, good sleep, and great workouts. I went to bed that night feeling so accomplished and healthy. That was immediately followed by: “omg, I have to do this literally every day for the rest of my life if I want to feel this way”.
You can’t brush your teeth for an hour, and then skip it for the rest of the month. You can’t lift weights once a year, and maintain or grow your muscles. You can’t run all 1000 miles of training for a marathon in a week, and be ready to run one (for so many reasons).
No, the trick is the consistency of doing it over. And over. And over.
Celebrate your work and celebrate the (brief) moment when the work is done and behind you -- but be ready to let that go, and meet all the same challenges the next day.
That’s the secret. To realize that every morning, no matter what happened the day before -- whether you had a good day or a bad day...
The count is zero.
If this resonated, please consider sharing The Forward Theory with someone who’s building consistency too. It really helps this community grow.
