The Dark Side of Discipline: Why You’re Focused on the Wrong Thing w/ Craig Ballantyne

Most of us have been told that success comes down to grinding harder, waking up at 5 AM, and pushing through with sheer willpower. But what if I told you that might actually be holding you back?

Today, I’ve got Craig Ballantyne on the show. If you don’t know Craig, he’s the guy who’s helped over 250 entrepreneurs become millionaires—not by doing more, but by focusing on the right things. He’s the author of The Perfect Day Formula, Unstoppable, and his brand-new book The Dark Side of Discipline, where he completely flips the script on what it really takes to succeed. His work’s been featured in Forbes, Inc., Men’s Health, and he’s coached high performers across business, fitness, and personal development. We’re gonna dive into why most people are wasting their discipline, how extreme self-control can actually backfire, and what you should be focusing on instead.

But before we get into all that, Craig’s got a powerful story when it comes to alcohol. He was a binge drinker. He had crippling anxiety. He even landed in the ER—twice. And he’s going to break down exactly how he made the shift, what finally clicked, and how he changed his entire environment without ditching his friends. So if you’ve ever struggled with discipline, willpower, or figuring out how to actually make real changes stick—this episode is gonna hit home.
 

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Creators & Guests

Host

Mike Hardenbrook

#1 best-selling author of "No Willpower Required," neuroscience enthusiast, and habit change expert.

What is Journey to the Sunnyside?

"Journey to the Sunnyside" is your guide to exploring mindful living with alcohol, whether you're cutting back, moderating, or thinking about quitting. While Sunnyside helps you reduce your drinking, this podcast goes further, covering everything from mindful drinking and moderation to sober curiosity and full sobriety. Through real stories, expert advice, and practical strategies, we’re here to help you find what works best for your journey.

Mike Hardenbrook is a #1 best-selling author and neuroscience enthusiast, dedicated to helping people transform their relationship with alcohol.

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Disclaimer: The views expressed in our podcast episodes do not necessarily represent those of Sunnyside. We're determined to bring diverse views of health and wellness to our audience. If you are concerned with your drinking, please seek the advice of a medical professional. Sunnyside, this podcast, and its guests are not necessarily medical professionals and the content shouldn't be viewed as medical advice. In addition, we never endorse drinking in any amount.

mike: 00:00

Welcome to Journey to the Sunny Side, the podcast where we have thoughtful conversations to explore the science of habits, uncover the secrets to mindful living, and, of course, inspire your own mindful drinking journey. Most of us have been told that success comes down to grinding harder, waking up at 5AM, and pushing through with sheer willpower. But what if I told you that might actually be holding you back? Today, I've got Craig Ballantine on the show. If you don't know Craig, he's the guy who's helped over 250 entrepreneurs become millionaires, not by doing more, but by focusing on the right things.

mike: 00:36

He's the author of best selling books like The Perfect Day Formula and Unstoppable, and his brand new upcoming book, The Dark Side of Discipline, completely flips the script on what it really takes to succeed. His work's been featured in Forbes and men's health, and he's coached high performers across business, fitness, and personal development. And today, we're gonna dive into why most people are wasting their discipline, how extreme self control can actually backfire, and what you should be focusing on instead. But before we get into all that, Craig's got a powerful story when it comes to alcohol. He's gonna break down exactly how he made the shift, what finally clicked, and how he changed his entire environment without needing to ditch all his friends.

mike: 01:21

So if you've ever struggled with discipline, willpower, or figuring out how to actually make real changes stick, this episode is gonna hit home. Greg, thanks for coming on today.

Craig: 01:41

Hey. This is gonna be a lot of fun.

mike: 01:42

Yeah. This is awesome. I mean, I'm a big fan of your books. I love your books, your principles. In fact, your principles have helped over 200 I think it's 250 or 260 entrepreneurs become millionaires.

mike: 01:54

So this is gonna be an amazing conversation, and we're gonna get into what you call the dark side of discipline and how people approach discipline in the wrong way. But before we do that, very relevant to the show here, you have a little bit of background around alcohol and some opinions around it. And so I wanna get into that. So you shared that you struggled a little bit with anxiety. You had some history with binge drinking.

mike: 02:19

Take us back to that time. What was your life like back then?

Craig: 02:22

Yeah. So I grew up in Canada and this, you know, a smaller city where you drink beer and play hockey or, play hockey and then drink beer. It doesn't really matter which which order. I've done them both. And so you start binge drinking in high school and, you know, went right through college and everything.

Craig: 02:38

And I didn't drink because I had anxiety or, that I was maybe, maybe it was a little bit because I was shy and introverted, I guess I had introverted tendencies. And so I continued that through college and then went in and out, you know, I stopped and started. And then I was a personal trainer after college and I was a hypocritical personal trainer because Monday through Friday, I was super disciplined. And then on Saturday afternoon, I would drink until Sunday morning, you know, like, well into Sunday morning. And eventually I had anxiety attacks so bad on on a new year's day after a major hangover and went to the emergency room.

Craig: 03:13

And then again, three months later, same thing after, I I stopped drinking and then I got suckered back into it and drank and had a, you know, horrible hangover. And then then not the next day, but the day after that, I went back to the emergency room, and it was, you know, lowest point in my life. And then the doctor said they you know, they gave me a heart rate monitor and all this stuff, and and they said there's nothing wrong with you. And as soon as I heard those words, it actually flipped the script in my head where I was like, okay. There's nothing wrong with me physically.

Craig: 03:42

I just gotta sort myself out. And I I I dialed it down and went from, you know, binge drinker to social drinker. And then I muddled around in that world for a while. And then I finally quit completely in 2021. And I really loved this phrase that I stumbled across a little bit later, which is it's better to be a % out than 99% out.

Craig: 04:05

Because the last time I drank, I was with this, you know, young superstar Internet marketer named Jason Capital. And I had one drink. And I had one drink and we were in Newport Beach, and I I wore an aura ring for a short time. And the next day, the stats, they were the worst stats I'd I'd probably ever recorded from one drink. And I was like, this is stupid.

Craig: 04:26

I feel so horrible today. And there's no point. So I shut it down then. And my wife had shut it down about eighteen months before that. So, you know, there's no there's no point.

Craig: 04:35

And, I'm really glad I did. I wish, you know, if I go back in time and just shake myself at age, you know, 20 or 18, just stop drinking, you know, get control and become more social on your own and you can do it. And so I don't, you know, if somebody wants to go out for dinner with me and have a drink, I'm not gonna like, look down on you, but by any means, I'm not gonna, Hey, I've got my own problems, but I just think that it really is a curse on people. And my father died of alcoholism. You know, he, he drank probably 10 or 12 beers a day for thirty years, I think, and never went to the doctor.

Craig: 05:10

And my mom kind of rescued him in 02/2007, in his truck. He was like on the verge of death and they got eight you know, we got eighteen more months out of him, but he had probably had colon cancer for doctor said, like, a decade. And it had, spread to his his liver by the by that time. And so we had some time together, but I just watched it destroy him, and then I almost let it destroy me.

mike: 05:35

Yeah. I mean, you've got a real you went through some stuff around it, so you definitely have some reasons behind that. And you're a guy that's all about structure. You have systems. Take me back.

mike: 05:47

Was there some sort of system that you approached this as well, or was it just this was an emotionally tied thing that just really drove you forward? How did that look?

Craig: 05:56

Yeah. It's a great question. And I think one of the biggest systems that anybody can apply is the system of elimination. And we act out often when we're surrounded by other people who are, you know, acting in a way that we don't want to, but everybody else is doing it. And there's Harvard research on all types of association.

Craig: 06:16

Like, if your friends smoke cigarettes, you're gonna smoke cigarettes. If your spouse is overweight, eventually, you'll become overweight. And, obviously, if you hang around people that drink and you're okay with drinking, you're gonna end up drinking more until it becomes a problem. So what I did was I did not I think, you know, some people are out there saying you gotta eliminate all your friends, and that's garbage. You know, more you were humans.

Craig: 06:38

We're meant to be social. So I simply built the system that I wanna hang out with these guys who like to drink, But I know that they don't drink all the time, and therefore, their activities that they they and I share a common interest in that are non drinking activities. So I'm gonna do those activities with them. And, you know, whether it was hiking or golf, you know, before they start drinking and and all types of stuff, sports, I just moved all my activities with my drinking friends to non drinking activities. So I didn't have to give up the friendships.

Craig: 07:10

I gave up some friendships where it was only around drinking and, you know, the people just sat in a bar. So I got rid of those toxic things. But the system is of success for almost anything, including being productive, is elimination of temptation or distraction. Even, you know, we talk a lot about overcoming pornography in the book, and it's you know, if you eliminate if you block access to those websites, that's one form of elimination. You block access to the triggers.

Craig: 07:37

Like, if somebody sends you stuff or if you, you know, if you're scrolling on Instagram and you're watching some girl do hip thrusters and that's, you know, it kind of triggers you, you know, you gotta eliminate those things from, from your internet page or your Instagram page. And so it's just the system of elimination has helped me change a lot in my life. And it was that. And then obviously eliminating myself from the environments where alcohol was had. I just stopped going to bars.

Craig: 08:00

I did stop going out, for a short term. I stopped, you know, doing a lot of social stuff because I, you know, had to take a bit of an extreme measure for ninety days to flip the switch. And so I did. And then now, you know, I can go, I can go out and stay. I w it'd be difficult for me to stay up late because I go to bed so early, but I could, I have gone out in the past couple of years at business events till midnight with friends who who were drinking, but I'm not drinking, had a great time, everybody wins.

Craig: 08:29

And now with, Heineken Zero, I can even have a beer in my hand, and it tastes actually pretty good when it's cold, and nobody notices.

mike: 08:39

Yeah. They do taste pretty good these days. Well, you know what? You said something that was, like, very unique that I haven't actually had anybody talk about, which is to not change your friendships, but change the interactions that you had. How did you approach that?

mike: 08:52

Like, what was the reception like?

Craig: 08:54

Well, I just I just I didn't tell anybody. I was just, hey. You wanna go hiking Saturday morning? Yeah. Sure.

Craig: 09:01

Let's go hiking. It's not like we hadn't done it before. So it wasn't like all of a sudden I was asking, you know, my Jewish friend to come to Catholic mass. You know? It was Yeah.

Craig: 09:09

It was like, we do this stuff. Let's go do this stuff. Oh, you wanna go out and have a beer after? Can't do it. Got this other thing.

Craig: 09:17

Like, that's that's normal human interaction. You're just you're planning and preparing more because one of the other systems that you have for any part of success is better planning and preparation than ever before. If you wanna lose weight, you have to do better meal prep than ever before. You have to plan your workouts better than ever before. If you try to lose weight in the past and failed, it's because you didn't have meal prep and you didn't have workouts planned in most cases.

Craig: 09:40

And it's the same with getting up on time. If you don't go to bed on time and you don't have a good nighttime routine and you don't have a routine for not hitting snooze in the morning, you don't plan and prepare for it, you're gonna fall back on old bad behaviors. You know, you've got I use this story in the book about how I used to work at a factory when I was in college to pay for tuition. And, you know, the the brake whistle would go off and everyone go to the smoking section. Now if you do that enough, it becomes ingrained in your nervous system.

Craig: 10:08

Like, it is when they hear that, they don't even think. You know, It's like when you get up in the morning, you go to the bathroom, you go pee. You don't even think to do that. It's just automatic. And so many behaviors we have are automatic, and it's ingrained in our nervous system.

Craig: 10:21

This happens, then this happens. So I get home as for after a stressful day, I walk over to the liquor cabinet and pour myself a Manhattan. You know, you do that 200 times next year. There's, you know, there is a phrase that I'm sure a lot of guys listening have said, I just need to get it out of my system. You don't get things out of your system by doing it.

Craig: 10:43

You actually ingrain it deeper into your system by doing it. James Clear in atomic habit says, every action you take is a vote for the person you wanna become. So if you go like, I just gotta get out of my system one one more boozy weekend in Vegas, that's a vote for you doing another boozy weekend in Vegas in the future. It's not a it's not like, oh, once I've done it, I won't do it again. No.

Craig: 11:06

You're like, oh, that was fun. I'm gonna do it again. So all of those things, the elimination and the modification and the preparation and just the systematization of it, it can be done covertly where you don't have to like walk around and say I'm sober and, you know, drinkers suck and my way or the highway. Like, no. It doesn't have to be that way.

Craig: 11:29

It can be it can be done in a way where it'll be, like, six months later and people be like, I feel like there's something different. And they they'll they'll finally notice you're drinking a Heineken zero, not a regular.

mike: 11:41

Yeah. Absolutely. You don't have to take a totally polarized view on every single thing that you do. You can just take action. So one thing that I actually wanna ask you because you also have another unique take is that you were able to go from drinking way too much to moderation to then decide later that you want wanted to give it up completely.

mike: 12:03

Can you talk about, like, the the benefits of each stage of that? Like, when you moderated, what did you notice? And then when you just decided to give it up, what was the difference between the moderation and when you just went fully you know, I'm done with that?

Craig: 12:17

Yeah. I think I think I just noticed different negatives at each stage with the exception of one thing that I noticed when I got down to one drink. So when I got down from, like, 12 beers a night to six beers a night, it was just like, I'm doing fewer stupid things, but I'm still forgetting where my phone is and that type of stuff. And then when I got down to three drinks, it was still enough lowering of the inhibitions. Most of my drinking at that time was like business dinners that that I would just like go and binge eat some cake or chocolate covered almonds after.

Craig: 12:50

And, and I realized like I went from three to two and, and when I went from three to two, I noticed, oh, I do it less, but I still do it. And when I went from two to one, I still do it. And so it was just a matter of me pinpointing all of these other silly behaviors that I have really stem from the root cause of drinking, which leads me to lower my inhibitions around, you know, cracking an inappropriate joke or, you know, binge eating or stuff like that. So I just kept on noticing that, you know, there's really not much benefit to this. And then the one good thing I noticed when I got down to one drink was that, and I used, I used to, so I used to drink beer for a long time.

Craig: 13:32

It wasn't really much of a hard liquor drinker. And then I got to this point where it's like, oh, you know, I'm like 30. I should be drinking cocktails. And so I started drinking black Russians of all things, just because I really liked Kahlua's sweetness.

mike: 13:45

I don't even know what that is. What's a black A

Craig: 13:47

black Russian is just is just, vodka and Kahlua.

mike: 13:51

Okay.

Craig: 13:52

So depending on who pours it, if they pour it with a lot of Kahlua in it, it tastes like a really sticky, sweet coffee. And I like sweet stuff. So I was drinking that, but I often got, people, I would say black Russian, and I would say about 20% of the time someone would bring me a white Russian, which is, like, with cream in it. I don't know if you ever saw that big little mouse coming

mike: 14:13

in. Yeah. Yeah. I know what that is.

Craig: 14:14

Why would anybody drink this thing? Yeah.

mike: 14:17

I know. It sounds really gross.

Craig: 14:18

To me when I clearly said black Russian. They must be must have been a racist bartender. They they because they're bringing me white Russians. But but the but the probably the the eye opening thing that I noticed, in addition to, like, obviously you don't feel as bad the next morning when you have two drinks compared to six. But I also noticed, like, if you have two drinks, you still feel pretty crappy.

Craig: 14:39

But when I got to one drink, I noticed that I can just have, like, half a drink. And even if it's not the world's strongest drink, this is all I actually need in terms of that taking the edge off. And, you know, today, I don't need the I don't even have an edge, so I don't need to take it off. Yeah. But back then, I thought I did, and it was such a small amount of alcohol.

Craig: 15:04

And I mean, I still hadn't, decent tolerance, but I realized that if I just could stop there, I would actually get all the benefits of alcohol with zero problems. And so for a while, I kind of muddled around in that world of, like, the half drink and see, like, you know, there's nothing really wrong with it. And, you know, there it was, like, once every couple of weeks, so there really isn't anything wrong with it. But aside from the sleep aspect and so one day, I didn't have the half drink. I had the full drink, and the sleep was horrible.

Craig: 15:37

And I was just like, man, my wife doesn't drink. What's the point? So those were the lessons I learned, and I wish there was, you know, maybe something more amazing other than every time you drink, like, something stupid happens. You know, whether it's misplacing your phone for a couple hours or your keys or or something. They just they just became less and less benefit to it.

mike: 15:58

Yeah. I mean, I totally relate to the sleep part of it. I mean, whenever I consider, like, just having one tall boy or something like that, I'm like, what's the point? The benefit to that versus sleeping tonight. You know, when I was on the fence on whether or not I was gonna have something, I'm gonna just be like Yeah.

mike: 16:13

I'd much rather get up early tomorrow and not potentially be tossing and turning tonight. It just wasn't even worth it. So, I mean, like, I totally can relate to that.

Craig: 16:23

You know, one other thing I'll say is that you go back to what I talked about before with the, you know, my my friends and, you know, eliminating the bad behavior and just doing the good stuff. So many of my friends don't drink now. And I mean, I'm talking guys that I had binge drink with high in high school, and some of them are, like, healthier than I am. And a lot of them moved in that direction because of what I was doing. You know?

Craig: 16:47

So me not drinking, they're like, you know what? Maybe I'll drink a little bit less, a little less frequently. And today, you know, they many of them have surpassed me in terms of their even their health and fitness. And so another thing to think about for all the guys out there who are, like, new to this and new to the journey is when you see somebody who is curious in a positive way because a lot of people are curious in a negative way. They just wanna, like, hammer you with peer pressure to, like, oh, you're not drinking, you pussy.

Craig: 17:16

A lot of pea a lot of guys also on the inside are slightly curious about, man, you know, I wouldn't mind not drinking as much either. How do you do this? And if you get those conversations, you know, share with them what you're doing. And then the next time you see them, you know, check-in with them and see, like, you doing anything? Like, you got any hacks here?

Craig: 17:38

And you guys don't have to again, you don't have to run around and say, hey. We're the silver ones here. You guys are being fooled. We're only drinking Heineken zeros. You know, you just kinda, like maybe it's a secret club at first, and then it expands.

Craig: 17:49

And the next thing you know, in five years from now, it's, it's not a secret club anymore, and everybody's, like, hardly drinking, and everybody's life is better.

mike: 17:58

Yeah. Totally. You know, there's one point in my journey that you might appreciate this since you work with a lot of high performers and, you know, as an entrepreneur and working in tech and, you know, I was always I would subscribe to a lot of your tactics. I would look at other people in industries and just really try to model myself in business and in fitness around, like, the highest level that I could find. But then yet, here I was trying to look for excuses and reasons when I would pass by a bar when people were having happy hour and say, oh, well, so and so.

mike: 18:28

So, like, for whatever reason, I would rationalize the most average of behaviors, yet I would model myself, you know, in other ways around the highest, there was such a mismatch.

Craig: 18:38

Yeah. That's a it's a really good point is in a lot of areas in my life, whether it's writing books or fitness or whatever, or being a dad is I look at I look to the people who are like, man, they got that guy's doing a really good job at this. What can I do like him? I never thought of thinking when I was drinking, I was probably, like, going, yeah. Yeah.

Craig: 18:59

Well, you know, Joey and those guys probably drank three times last week. So if I drink once, it's not that big of a deal. You know? And so it it probably was the same sort of thing going on in my head.

mike: 19:10

Yeah. Yeah. It's it's just so funny how it just sits in its own category with some really odd, like, thoughts.

Craig: 19:16

Humans are humans are fascinating creatures. Like, we have all these stupid human tricks, and and that's gonna be one that I've got a list of them. Like like, procrastination is one, you know, guilting yourself into doing things. This is another one I'm gonna put on the list because it is really a fascinating psychological mind trick that we plan ourselves.

mike: 19:33

Totally. So let's get into this new book that you have coming out and the core ideas around the dark side of discipline. So it challenges the traditional idea that more discipline always leads to more success. So before we get into the specifics of that, can you kinda set the stage? Like, what inspired you to write this book, and what was the problem that you really wanna try and solve?

Craig: 19:55

Yeah. I have a couple friends who have done all the challenges and the cold plunging and all that stuff, and then had their lives kind of been destroyed in part because of it. Because, you know, all these things take time and energy and, you know, they're married with kids and they're running around doing all these things, and then they gotta run a business or they have a high, stress career and being more disciplined, you know, doing a a cold plunging and doing, you know, working out twice a day. It was a you know, basically, like, a level one problem in their life. Like, you know, you weren't overweight.

Craig: 20:29

You know? You're not a professional athlete. You don't need to work out twice a day. You're putting a level 10 effort into a level one problem. And then their level 10 problem, which is their marriage, it was getting a level one effort.

Craig: 20:40

And so you can picture this on a graph. We have we could be putting a level 10 effort into level one and level one into level 10. Total mismatch. But the ultimate definition of discipline is putting a level 10 effort into your level 10 problem, and it's all about your problem, your effort. It's not about what somebody on the Internet says, whether it's a CrossFit workout, like, you gotta do this CrossFit workout of random exercises.

Craig: 21:05

Like, it's totally random made up by some other human who decided that this was their version of success. And if you're out there chasing somebody else's version of success, it's the least disciplined thing you could do. So I saw discipline destroy people's lives. Like, the it you know, it's like two two, two wrongs don't make a right, but 42 rights can actually make a wrong because you can do 42 different things and actually ruin your life, and it drove me nuts. And I also when I was super disciplined, you know, I had this reputation of, you know, going to bed super early, getting up really early, which I still do because it's helpful to me.

Craig: 21:46

But I also was you know, I worked out a thousand days in a row at one point, but for what purpose? Like, there's no gold medals for this. And I was using it as a perverse form of procrastination, putting effort into things that didn't matter, but were disciplined that we're getting, you know, dopamine hits and virtual claps on the back from Internet strangers to avoid the real things in life. So the challenge is to everybody going through the book is to do the simple test of their own discipline. List your top two or three problems in life, your level 10 problems, whether it's your marriage, you you know, alcohol, your body composition, your blood lipids, your, finances, you know, your use of pornography, cigarettes, whatever it is, drugs.

Craig: 22:30

Those things are your level 10 problems. Now on the other side of the paper, list what level of effort are you putting into this. Do you wake up and attack that level 10 problem every single day with research or, you know, with doing something around your finances or or if you wanna write a book? Like, it also your level 10 problems could be opportunities, could be real estate deal, could be writing a book. Are you waking up and putting a level 10 effort into it?

Craig: 22:54

If you are not, you are not as disciplined as you can be, and that's it. It's that simple. The ultimate definition of discipline is putting a level 10 effort into your level 10 problem and for getting everybody else because all this other stuff is just entertainment at the end of the day, and it's really distracting us from what really matters. And so I've I've seen this happen too many times. Too many times.

Craig: 23:19

People putting all this effort into these things and letting their business go or letting their marriage go. And, man, I'm just sick of it. So, you can do too many good things and end up with a bad result, and I don't want that to happen to to people.

mike: 23:34

Can you break down the the concept of the level one and the level 10? Because I think it's implied, but I think it would be helpful if you broke down the significance of that and what you mean.

Craig: 23:44

So a level 10 problem is very, very important in your life. And and, obviously, it's, you know, your marriage. If your marriage is not great, you have a very serious problem because, you know, who you choose as your partner is one of the most important things that you'll ever choose in your life. And family, you know, should be keeping your family together should be, like, the most important thing in your life. And staying alive and having good health should be ranked as a level 10 issue, but finishing a challenge and getting somebody who you've never met and you never will meet on the internet to pat you on the back and say, Hey, you're really awesome.

Craig: 24:24

Like that should be like, a level one problem. Like, you should not care about strangers on the Internet. What you should focus on is your family first and your own health and making sure that you're around for your family. So it's almost like Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Right?

Craig: 24:37

Like, people are at the top trying to impress strangers on the Internet, but they don't have the foundation down at the bottom, which is, hey. Have you taken care of your family? Have you taken care of your own health? Are you doing things that are right for your right life? And in most cases, they're not.

Craig: 24:52

And the reason why we do that is because it's easier for our brains to get a reward if we put, like, a level five effort into a level two problem. So I know I'm I'm now giving different levels and stuff, but think about this. Like, okay. You see somebody cold plunging, every day, and you're like, yeah. Yeah.

Craig: 25:11

That'd be pretty cool. You know, maybe I should do that. It's I mean, it's kind of fun. And, you know, some people think that it helps them. And so you're like, oh, yeah.

Craig: 25:19

You know, there's a cold plunge at my gym, so maybe I'll just go to the gym early and, you know, so instead of me doing my morning routine, I'll go to the gym early, and I'll start cold plunging. But you don't you don't really need cold plunging in your life. Like, it's not it's not guarantee it's not necessary nor sufficient for success. You can get rich without cold plunging. You can lose weight without cold plunging.

Craig: 25:39

You can accomplish everything in your life without cold plunging. It's not necessary nor sufficient. And but people will go and start doing this new habit, or they'll start some other new thing, or they'll start a book, or they'll start a new diet because it's easy to start something and feel like you're getting somewhere. But it's a lot harder to go and work on your fifteen year old marriage that's suffering because it's hard to get a real quick reward on that. It's a it's really hard to get a real quick reward on almost any level 10 problem, and that's why we avoid working on it.

Craig: 26:13

And we seek out these, you know, novel things, and we put our effort there. And unfortunately, that's the wrong place to put it because the level 10 problem gets worse when we don't put the effort into it.

mike: 26:26

I mean, I I feel that in my background. So I remember, like, I was you know, there's a point when I was drinking wine every single night, but I get up, go work out to try and counteract that. I would work hard so that I could say that I was getting everything done. Even though what I wasn't optimal in my relationship, I still put effort there. But it wasn't until, like, I literally addressed that one issue, everything else start started to fall in line.

mike: 26:51

The relationship got better. My health got better. I started making more money, and it wasn't because I was saving money. It was because I was I was actually present and abundance was flowing and, like, just so many different fact like, literally, I witnessed what you're talking about to an extent on my own when I address the one thing that really needed to be addressed.

Craig: 27:12

The do you know Joe Polish?

mike: 27:14

Yeah.

Craig: 27:15

Yeah. So Joe has this great phrase. It's called an elegant solution. And, you know, most people are running around in life. They think they have a hundred different things they have to fix with a hundred different solutions.

Craig: 27:28

But the elegant solution is what you just described. It's where you fix one thing that fixes many things. It's like throwing a giant rock into a lake and seeing the ripple effects go out. And so for if somebody's listening to this and alcohol is a big problem, you fix alcohol. That's an elegant solution.

Craig: 27:46

Right? You're just gonna fix so many areas of life. Your health is gonna get better. Your your wealth is likely to get better. Your marriage, your relationships, everything is likely to get better if you are no longer an alcoholic.

Craig: 27:58

There's there's almost nothing that won't get better, and that's the elegant solution. And being present for your family or or, you know, maybe there is a business problem that if you solve this business problem, a lot of things in your life will get better. Okay. Great. This is a season of life around the business problem.

Craig: 28:14

But I love that idea of of going deep into the root cause. What is really causing my problems in life and figuring that out because then you've identified the level 10 problem and you focus on it. But it is very hard in this digital world to get people to be focused, because we see other people's definitions of success and discipline being in our face all the time, and we start chasing them. But if you do that, you're you're giving your discipline away, and I don't want that to happen to guys.

mike: 28:48

Yeah. I love that. So how do you approach look like, looking at your life where it is? How do you give, like, a couple first steps to really start to evaluate? Is there, like, a simple formula that you have to find out where you put your focus?

Craig: 29:03

There's a there's a couple of relatively simple, steps to take. You know, they might take you might take half an hour to do this, but it's really figuring out, like, what's your big why in life? For me, it's family. And if you think about most people who get married and and wanna have kids, by default, your big why should be your family. And or, you know, maybe you're like, okay.

Craig: 29:27

But I'm single. Okay. But alright. You wanna go and change the world in some way like Elon Musk. Let's say he didn't have any kids.

Craig: 29:32

You know, he's got this big why of, you know, taking people and and getting them to live on Mars and and whatever else. And so there's this big why that you have that drives you, and everybody needs to have it. And if you haven't found yours, that's why you're you might kind of be sort of getting into some acting out and misbehaving because you don't really feel like you have a purpose. And so you dig deep and you find your purpose, and then you create what we call a vision for your life. So a vision for your life is simply you telling me in three years, you're writing you're writing from three years from now.

Craig: 30:03

Write me a little movie script of your life in three years from now. Now. Tell me what you've accomplished. Tell me where you're living. Tell me who you're with.

Craig: 30:10

Tell me what you do, how you act, what your routine is, what you don't do, where you travel to, what you do with your partner, your spouse, your kids. Tell me what your life is going to look like in three years from now, but write it as if you've already accomplished it. It's very important that I've done this exercise multiple times in my life, and it's come true almost to the day. Super crazy. And then after that, let's talk about your specific definition of success for the short term.

Craig: 30:37

Because a lot of people come to me to say, I wanna be more disciplined. Or even somebody who says, I wanna cut back on drinking, or I wanna get rich, or I wanna lose weight. Well, those are general terms. Tell me specifically what you wanna achieve. Be very specific.

Craig: 30:53

When you wanna be more disciplined, what exactly does that mean? Because if you tell me that, it could be a million things, and I can't create a plan for you. So when we get the answers to the big why, your vision for your life, and your specific definition of success for the short term, now we can build you a blueprint step by step to achieve that. Because whatever you wanna achieve, somebody else has already achieved it. And we just have to reverse engineer, like, oh, okay.

Craig: 31:16

You wanna make an extra hundred thousand dollars in your sales job in the next ninety days. Great. Let's reverse engineer that based on what you're doing right now, what your opportunities are, etcetera. It's very simple. It's all mathematics.

Craig: 31:26

And so we can do that, and it becomes very, very clear to somebody on what to do, but also very clear on what not to do. Here are the things that must be eliminated. And in order to eliminate things and stop doing a bad habit, when you have a bad habit, you, first of all, you know, you gotta get accountability around it. You gotta tell people that you're you're going to change it, but then you need to make the bad habit harder to do. So you need to increase the friction on the bad side, and you need to grease the groove on the good side.

Craig: 31:56

Because whenever this is what most people miss about, stopping a bad habit is when you, when you stop doing a bad habit, there's a void. And nature absorbs a vacuum. Right? And so if we go back to, like, when I was in the factory and the guys were smoking cigarettes, if the guy quit smoking cigarettes, the the alarm still goes off for break. And now what's he gonna do?

Craig: 32:17

Because his nervous system says go have a cigarette. So he's gotta replace it with a good habit. You gotta put a good habit into the void. So you get rid of your bad habit. You pick a new good habit.

Craig: 32:27

You make it harder, more friction to do the bad habit, and you grease the groove, make it easier to do the good habit. And that's through environment, that's through people change, that's through planning and preparation, and that's through elimination. And when you put those systems into place, you can make some pretty radical transformations a lot faster than you think you can. But that's really what it comes down to is getting that purpose behind it, and then you can go and really move mountains in your life.

mike: 32:55

Oh, I love that so much. I mean, to a to an extent and more of a granular level with the alcohol, you have to have a why why you're actually giving up. And I actually have done a few exercises around people envisioning the future itself of what they would look like if they actually did what they wanted. And, actually, I do the the polar opposite also. Like, imagine yourself if you did absolutely nothing where things

Craig: 33:17

Charlie Munger in verse. Yeah. How how how you know, what could, what would happen if you didn't? That's a that's a great thing. Talk talk

mike: 33:24

about Charlie Munger because I think not everybody knows the story, but I heard you talk about him before, and I think it's a great example here.

Craig: 33:32

Yeah. So Charlie Munger is the world's most disciplined man was the world's most disciplined man. So he lived at, like, 99.99 years old. You know? He's he was a hundred days short of his hundredth birthday.

Craig: 33:43

And Charlie Munger is a complete and polar opposite of what people would consider discipline today. You know, this guy, he didn't exercise once he got out of the army. Obviously, years and years ago, he liked to eat a box of peanut brittle, sitting in one sitting. He would never cold plunge. He'd never do any of these things.

Craig: 34:00

Right? But he had everything that a man would want, money, power, and respect. All because what Charlie Munger did was he figured out what really mattered to him and he lived life his own way. He ran his own race. And that's kind of like a sub theme of my book.

Craig: 34:16

You know, the dark side of discipline is people chasing other people's definitions of discipline. But the real path to success is running your own race, charting your own course, knowing your finish line, which is the vision for your life. And Charlie knew his. And so Charlie went on to, you know, mentor Warren Buffett. He went on to make tens of thousands, if not more people into millionaires through Berkshire Hathaway and everything that they did.

Craig: 34:44

And the guy just lived life, like, every day, it was a great day for him because he got to do what he wanted to do, and he got to increase the value and he had good family. And he overcame a lot of stuff. Like, his when in way back in the forties, he had a nine year old son die of leukemia. Charlie had a cataract surgery go wrong, and so he lost sight in his one eye, but he just set up systems so he could read all day with his one good eye. And the reason why I bring Charlie up in the book is because it's such a contrast to what people think discipline is today.

Craig: 35:15

Charlie did pretty much very, very little in terms of a list of activities. He really read and studied and talked to people about financial stuff. And you see everybody else kinda running around like a chicken with their head cut off trying to do 42 things before lunch because they've pulled that together from a list of influencers and or challenges and stuff, and you know, they never get anything done on what matters.

mike: 35:39

I mean, one of the things you said there that I really identify with is is charting your own course to what discipline looks for you, like, not being prescriptive as a coach. And you you gives people the tools to be able to to define what that looks like, which is a big part of what we talk about here with mindful drinking. People get to choose what success looks like for them around alcohol. We're not gonna tell you this is the right way. That's the wrong way.

mike: 36:05

What do you think that people get wrong when it comes to discipline? Like, the biggest thing that they get wrong.

Craig: 36:13

The biggest thing they get wrong is that chasing of other people's definitions. And so what you talked about there just briefly and what I do for people is there's a name for it. It's called Socratic, Socratic questioning, like, Socrates of philosophers. Like, I don't really give people advice because everybody knows what to do. I just need to extract it from their head.

Craig: 36:33

And so I ask the right questions. You know, it's almost like a little bit of psychology coaching, but it's like k. So you you as you mentioned before, you ask people like, okay. Tell me what it would look like if you didn't change, and they get that all down. Okay.

Craig: 36:48

How would you feel if if this happened? Oh, I mean, horrible. How how would it affect the people around you? Oh, it'd be horrible. And then you can start to, like, get them to see, okay.

Craig: 36:56

So so what do you think is the first step that we can take so that we don't end up in that position? And that's one question that I think is one of the most important questions to ask once we start getting down to, like, the brass tacks and the step by step. So, you know, we go through the vision and stuff and, you know, somebody says, you know, in three years from now, I wanna be married. I'm not married now. I go, okay.

Craig: 37:16

Let's stop right there. Let's break that down. Let's unpack that. What's the first thing that you can do right now in the next thirty seconds to move you ahead to getting married in three you know, being married in three years? And I know that sounds kinda sounds ridiculous to people, but I actually use this on myself.

Craig: 37:32

So I use these ninety day planners. I created a ninety day plan to meet my wife in 2019. And the very first action step on it was to message three women that I knew who had very large social circles and asked for introductions. And I actually only messaged one of them. And from this one lady, she introduced me to a few people, which I then did not contact any of her introductions.

Craig: 37:54

I was like, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. But what I did was I went through her Instagram and I scrolled through who she followed and I said, I wanna meet this woman. And then so she introduced me to her. And but that first step, like a lot of people know where they wanna get to. A lot of people know they wanna quit alcohol, but they get kinda stuck on what's the first step to take because it's very it seems like an enormous journey.

Craig: 38:17

Right? Oh, man. Like, right now, I drink four drinks a day. How am I gonna get down to zero? That seems impossible.

Craig: 38:22

Therefore, today, I'll have four more drinks.

mike: 38:24

Yeah.

Craig: 38:24

And that life continues forever. And so if we say, well, what's the first step that we can take to get you to three and a half drinks today or to three drinks? Oh, well, yeah. I'll just, you know, use a smaller glass. Great, great.

Craig: 38:39

Now we're okay. We got a win. We got a quick win. We got momentum, motivation. We got dopamine hit a positive dopamine hit, not, you know, the negative.

Craig: 38:47

And now we can come back and go, what's the next step? What's the next step? What's the next step. And so everybody knows what to do. Everybody has the solutions inside, and people tend to respond better when it's their idea and not, you know, somebody barking orders at them.

mike: 39:02

Yeah. I mean, that was one of the things that really kept me in this cycle for so long is that the the barrier to change felt so high. Because at that time, there really wasn't a lot of talk other than you're either a normal drinker or you've got a major problem or an alcoholic or whatever label you wanna put on it. And so it was like, alright. Either either I just continue as I am or I stop completely, and I just felt like it was so difficult.

mike: 39:28

But if there was at that time, this concept that I had been I'm sure it was around. I just wasn't familiar with it, where I could take smaller steps to move towards a place that even though now it seems very difficult to get to, if I get somewhere halfway in between, it might seem more manageable after that.

Craig: 39:48

Yeah. I mean, like, when you and I were drinking, it was you either drink or you gotta go to the 12 step. You gotta go to Alcoholics Anonymous. It's, like, you know, so extreme. And it's, like, you know, the stigma of going there is, you know, there shouldn't be a stigma of going there.

Craig: 40:01

And there hopefully, there is less these days, but back then, it's just it, I'm not, I don't need to be in a 12 step program. That's, you know, that's crazy. But, but yeah, it's like, how do you get out of the, we call it in the, in the book, we call it a doom loop. And it's like, once you get in a doom loop of bad behavior, it's really hard to get out. And we, I, I say that you need a circuit breaker and a circuit breaker is often better planning and preparation.

Craig: 40:27

Even if you have a doom loop around watching Netflix at night, it's like you go home and it's like fun. The next thing you know, you end up on the couch with your partner or spouse. And it's like, okay, one Netflix. And the next thing you know, every single night it's four shows. You're in a doom loop and you need something to circuit break that.

Craig: 40:41

You know, we even got that right now with our, with our three year old, you know, it's Peppa pig and, you know, everything's crazy. It's like, oh, we just need, like, ten or fifteen minutes. And and it's like, I don't like this every single night. So, you know, now we're doing we we changed the routine up. We did better planning and preparation so that we're not sitting there for fifteen turns into thirty minutes of Peppa Pig every night.

mike: 41:00

Oh, man. I gotta do something like that because my, yeah, my little one is like, I wanna watch something before he goes you know, he wants to go to bed. Like,

Craig: 41:07

he Sure.

mike: 41:08

It's like he has to watch something at it sounds like that's what we're in right now.

Craig: 41:14

Yeah. And and it so it's it's a the more you do it, like I said, that you don't get something out of your system. You actually put it deeper into the system because the more they do it, the more it becomes, well, that's the thing that I do before I go. And so, you know, we we played around with different bath times and stuff and that and walks, you know, we live in Vancouver, so there was a spell there where you couldn't do a walk. It was so dark.

Craig: 41:38

But now we can we can do a little bit of a walk in that time that normally would be spent on that. And we're just looking to change it up. And it's very much like what we talked about before. It's like subtle and covert. You don't make a big deal.

Craig: 41:51

Like, oh, instead of watching TV, we're going to do this. Like, Hey, let's go and do this right now. And provided that it's something that they like to do. They'll they'll kinda forget about hopefully, you know, he'll forget about wanting to watch something before he goes to bed, and then, you know, you just gotta keep on trying.

mike: 42:09

Yeah. It's definitely not always easy, but that makes total sense. So before we go today, I actually wanna see if you'd be down to try something. So, you know, some people might have done challenges or taken a break in January. We're just into February around alcohol.

mike: 42:24

Let's say maybe they tried it, and they it didn't work out, you know, or maybe, like, they just never even started. But you talked about doing ninety day sprints. What if, like, somebody's listening and it passed them by, but they're like, they don't want 2025 to go by without at least taking another stab at it. How could how could they get started with some of your principles to start mapping out to make better changes around alcohol?

Craig: 42:49

It's a great question. So so let's get specific. So the very first thing that we have to do is specifically what do you want to achieve. And if it's no alcohol for a certain number of days, that's a really great outcome goal. Right?

Craig: 43:03

So we can say, hey, whether it's a two week sprint or whether it's a ninety day sprint or thirty days, you know, I'm gonna do my own thirty day of of dry, whatever. Great. So now we know specifically. That's the outcome goal. Thing is we don't fully control that.

Craig: 43:15

There may be certain circumstances that come into our lives, that put us off track. So when we have an outcome goal, whether it's losing 20 pounds or whether it's being dry for thirty days, what we do control are the three major action steps that will support that. So when I was trying to meet my wife, I had my outcome goal was 12 dates. Now I didn't control that. I wanted twelve days with one girl, one date with 12 girls, didn't matter.

Craig: 43:39

So it was 12 dates. And then underneath that, what did I fully control? Well, I can message those three girls who I knew and ask for introductions. I could, do one additional social group event every week because I wasn't doing much because I had introverted tendencies. And then I also was gonna do some personal development to work on myself to, you know, make myself more attractive.

Craig: 44:03

So those were three things that I fully controlled, and that's what will get you as close as possible to your outcome goal. So if we look at I wanna go the next thirty days and well, now we need to go back and say, if I've already tried it this year, what what went wrong? Well, you know, I hung up with Jerry on Friday, and every Friday, you know, and we know where Jerry's going, and he dragged me out. So avoid Jerry for the next thirty days or, you know, avoid those environments or those people for the next thirty days. It's just thirty days.

Craig: 44:33

Yeah. You know, most people have probably broken their arm, broken their leg. You look back on it. It's a blink of the eye in the course of your lifetime. It's just, you know, thirty days or six weeks.

Craig: 44:42

So avoid all of that. That's probably, like, the most poor thing. Get all the alcohol out of the house and get all the alcohol drinkers out of your life for the next thirty days. Okay? But Craig, I work and everybody goes up for happy hour.

Craig: 44:54

I can't not go to work or, you know, I you know, I do have, you know, in my business, there's business dinners and all this sort of stuff. Great. You eat you plan to prepare better. So for every event, I'm gonna plan and prepare either what I'm gonna say or what I'm gonna drink in place of alcohol at these events. So I'm gonna sit down on my calendar and look at the next thirty days and come up with two solutions for every obstacle.

Craig: 45:18

Because that's the genius in almost anything in life, whether it's winning the Super Bowl or whether it's, you know, writing a great book or it's all preparation. Like, even an HBO comedy special, like, nocom no no comedian gets up and goes, you know what? I'm gonna just gonna do six minutes off top of my head here for HBO. No. Nobody does that.

Craig: 45:37

You know, they spend a year preparing for it. And so it's alright. My next thirty days, I'm gonna cancel and and, you know, shift as many things as I possibly can to make it as easy on me as I can. But there's gonna be things you know, I got my brother's wedding. Okay?

Craig: 45:52

I gotta really mentally prepare for this. And, I'm but I'm gonna stick to it. And then the third thing is get accountability to somebody you deeply do not wanna disappoint. Very important line. Every single word in that is super important.

Craig: 46:05

Accountability to someone you deeply do not wanna disappoint. And that could be your spouse, that could be your parents, that could be a friend, that could be a coach, that could be a mentor. You tell them, here's what I'm going to do in the next thirty days. I would love to check-in with you by text every single day and just let you know how I did and, you know, if I was struggling or whatever. But I'm just gonna check-in because this is really important to me.

Craig: 46:33

So those three things you control, you know, the planning and preparation, the accountability, and the elimination. And just by doing those three things alone, you're so far ahead compared to like waking up on January 1 and going, you know what? I'm going to do dry January without thinking. Right. And planning and preparing.

Craig: 46:52

And then the last thing is just simply, okay. What can I do right now that'll get me closer to this? What can I do in the next twenty four hours, forty eight hours, seventy two hours, seven days, fourteen days, twenty one days, twenty eight days? These are all benchmarks milestones along the way. Each one of these should have something down such as, you know, after seven days, review what worked and what didn't.

Craig: 47:12

You know, within forty eight hours, book all my Saturdays with people who don't drink. You know, book all my dinners with people who don't you know, do that as much as you possibly can and plan out the month. And now you've got a game plan. You've got you you've got, like, a treasure map. You know, you know, x marks the spot.

Craig: 47:31

You know exactly where you wanna get to, and you've got the little dotted lines to get you there and keep you out of trouble. And if you do that, you're gonna make some big breakthroughs.

mike: 47:41

Wow. How powerful. Also, especially that was really a strong way to how to choose your accountability partner. And I am so glad that off the cuff, I thought of that question because we're leaving this with, like, so much action points. So I love it.

mike: 47:59

Before we go, talk about your book. Where can people find more information? When's it coming out? All of that stuff.

Craig: 48:05

Yeah. So it's coming out in April. And if you wanna get on the wait list, we'd love to have you on there. It's darksideofdiscipline.com. And then it's gonna be on Amazon and everywhere else.

Craig: 48:15

I've I've got an amazing publisher for this one, and they're gonna have it everywhere. Just finished the audiobook on Friday and, you know, the audiobook is usually the most popular option, so that'll be out there too. And it's it's short. So it's about a ninety minute read, because I've written other books that are also short about a 50 pages. But I also know that most people, including myself, buy a lot of books and don't read them.

Craig: 48:40

Yeah. And so I wanted to make it as easy as possible to get through, and I wanted to make it as punchy and powerful and impactful. And I think that I think we did a great job with it. And, it'll really help people with breaking all bad habits and setting themselves up to to live with higher standards.

mike: 48:58

I love it. I mean, I can attest your books are easy to read, easy to digest, easy to take action on. So, Craig, thank you so much for coming on today.

Craig: 49:08

Absolutely awesome. Thank you.

mike: 49:09

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