I’m so fired up to bring you this episode of The Amberly Lago Show featuring the one and only Craig Ballantyne, also known as the “world’s most disciplined man.” Craig joined me to share life-changing insights from his latest book, The Dark Side of Discipline, and this conversation is packed with powerful tools to help you unlock your full potential.
Craig doesn’t just talk about discipline, he lives it. But what stood out the most was how he redefines discipline in a way that is sustainable, empowering, and surprisingly freeing. Here are my top three takeaways from our eye-opening conversation:
Discipline Without the Struggle
Craig flips the script on what it means to be disciplined. Instead of relying on willpower, he breaks down how to create systems that remove friction and make good decisions automatic. When you build structure into your day, you don’t have to fight for focus. This approach is especially empowering for high performers and entrepreneurs who are juggling multiple demands.
Own Your Mornings, Win Your Days
Craig is a huge believer in the power of morning routines. He starts his day at 4 AM and tackles his biggest priorities before the rest of the world wakes up. This allows him to work from a place of clarity, energy, and intention. It’s a powerful reminder that how you start your day shapes everything that follows.
Identity Is Everything
One of the most impactful moments in our conversation was Craig’s take on identity and accountability. When you decide who you are and align your actions with that identity, everything changes. Whether it’s saying “I’m someone who doesn’t drink” or “I’m someone who values health,” your decisions begin to reflect that belief. Pair that with a strong accountability system, and your goals become non-negotiable.
This episode is filled with strategies that will challenge the way you think about discipline and push you toward real transformation. If you’re ready to level up in your life, health, business, and mindset, this conversation is exactly what you need.
About Craig Ballantyne
Craig is a productivity and success coach, best-selling author, and a leader in high-performance habits. With a background in fitness, entrepreneurship, and mindset mastery, Craig helps ambitious individuals take control of their time and build the life they’ve always wanted—one intentional step at a time.
Tune in now to learn how to make discipline work for you, not against you.
Follow Craig
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/realcraigballantyne/
- Website: http://craigballantyne.com/
- Get your copy of Craig’s latest book, The Dark Side of Discipline: https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Side-Discipline-Chasing-Achieve-ebook/dp/B0DX41KMRB
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Transcript:
Amberly Lago:
Welcome to the Amberly Lago Show, Stories of True Grit and Grace. Thank you all so much for being here. I have such a treat for you today. You are going to want to grab a pen and a piece of paper or a notebook even. I have Craig Ballantyne here. And he’s got a new book. I can’t wait to share it with you. I’ve read it and it’s amazing. He’s known as the world’s most disciplined man. I first met Craig when I went to one of his events. I have his perfect day formula book. Um, he’s got the perfect week formula and his wall street journal bestseller unstoppable, which is right on theme with what all I’ll talk about. Um, he was also the creator of the turbulence training fitness system and owns early to rise.com. And Craig, thank you so much for being here. And thank you for your book. Look, so excited about your book. It’s so good.
Craig Ballantyne: Thank you. Thank you very much. I really appreciate it. I’m so excited to be here, and this is going to be so much fun.
Amberly Lago: Yeah, it’s been a while. We were talking before we started recording, and it’s been since I went to one of your events in San Diego.
Craig Ballantyne: That was 2019, I think. Was it 2019?
Amberly Lago: Yeah, it was awesome. But your books, and I was saying, I think of you often because I have your Perfect Day Formula book, which is so incredible. And I would love, if you don’t mind, if we get right into some of the questions I have about your book. And like I was saying before, I’m going to make sure that all of my Mastermind members get a copy of The Dark Side of Discipline because there’s so many amazing nuggets, especially for entrepreneurs who are feeling stuck, who are feeling like they are in the rat race and they’re like, how do I get ahead? And so I just love you that you talk about the truth about discipline because a lot of people think discipline is like a bad word. They don’t like that word. They don’t want to be disciplined. They want to be rebellious. Give me like the truth about discipline. What, how you’re just, what, what do you think about it?
Craig Ballantyne: Yeah, man, I could unpack that one. So, you know, most people do think that discipline is this thing that’s just suffering and it’s horrible. And it’s like, you know, starving at seven o’clock at night and someone puts chocolate cake in front of you and oh, I gotta, you know, muster up this discipline. But I don’t actually think it is that. I think discipline is something that is really should be replaced with systems. And what we do is we put effortless discipline systems into our lives. And we can break that down later. because it’s the same little core set of systems that I’ve used to overcome binge drinking, overcome being anxious and introverted, and overcome a lot of bad habits, like everything from binge video gaming to binge watching television, getting that stuff out of my life and adding the new good habits that I wanted to add to get to where I wanted to be. But also at the same time, I was the type of person who, you know, had, I was like most humans who like to take the path of least resistance, but I wanted more. And so I knew that, man, I can either like, try and white knuckle my way through life with willpower and discipline, or I could set up systems that make the right actions automatic. So that’s what I ended up doing. And then, you know, we have different definition of discipline in the book than what you’re going to see in the dictionary. And one that I think serves people better than what they find in the dictionary too.
Amberly Lago: Yeah. Well, I love that you, you, thank you for sharing about the binge drinking and all that. And I think sometimes I know for me, There are times that that’s kind of an escape where you want to binge Netflix or, you know, I used to like binge on Doritos and I’m a recovering alcoholic. I got sober in 2016. And so I appreciate you sharing that because I feel like discipline. is what allows me to have the life that I have today and be sober and get to do all the things that I do. And it’s with discipline. In fact, I just had a client ask me this morning, she goes, I see all these things that you’re doing and how do you do all those things? And I’m like, well, What’s important to me, I make sure I get that done first thing in the morning. Do you have like a morning ritual or anything that you do, any kind of routine in the morning? And I know everybody’s is different, but what is your morning? What do you do? I want to know what Craig Valentine does when he wakes up in the morning.
Craig Ballantyne: Oh, this is good. This is going to be real short. So I grew up on a farm in Canada, a cattle farm, beef cattle farm. And so my father was my inspiration for my morning routine. Because even though he was an alcoholic as well, he actually drank himself to death, unfortunately. but on the bright side, he taught me the value of hard work. No matter how hungover he was, at 5.30 in the morning, he got up and he fed the cows right away. Later on, I discovered this Mark Twain quote that many people may have heard, but if your job is to eat a frog, best thing to do is eat that frog first thing in the morning. If your job is to eat two frogs, best thing to do is eat the biggest frog first. And so my morning routine, you know, since I’ve met, since, you know, 2019, I’ve gotten married and I have three kids under the age of three now. So my life is a lot different. Wow, I didn’t know that. Yeah, yeah. Successful of speed as my t-shirt says. And so my routine, but my morning routine hasn’t changed and it’s still get up before everybody. And so I sneak out of bed about four o’clock in the morning. put on track pants and a t-shirt and I start work in about seven minutes. I will actually drink some water and I’ll make a tiny little espresso and I’ll go to work. That’s it because for me, again, this is one of my systems that like you, I believe that the hardest work is best done early in the morning because otherwise, as the day goes on, your discipline and willpower are a depleting resource. And, you know, if you have to use your discipline in traffic to not yell at somebody, you know, your discipline goes from 100 units to 90 units. And then you get to the office and, you know, somebody messed up some technology or you got to learn some new technology and it’s like you want to yell at your computer, oh man, or Zoom updated and, you know, you have to use another 10 units, you know, to not get mad at that. By the time you, you know, noon comes around and you’ve used some discipline at breakfast and at Dunkin Donuts and you’ve used some discipline at lunch to, you know, not eat the cookie in the meeting room, well now you’re down to like 40 units or 30 units by two o’clock in the afternoon and you’re not going to get anything done at that time because, you know, Sally’s bringing you a fire and, you know, John’s bringing you an emergency. So in the morning is the time to get it done and I know the longer that I wait You know, just like you, I get a lot of messages and I use all these systems to keep me out of my email and Instagram as long as I can. But eventually I have to go in there for one of my team members and there’s a lot of messages. So if I don’t get the big work done early in the morning, if I don’t eat that frog, it’s not going to happen. And that’s how the books get written. That’s how the courses get created. That’s how the video sales letter scripts get written and the YouTube scripts that get written is in that morning time when I’ve built a fence around myself. And that’s the way that I look at it. Coming from the farm, you want to keep the chickens safe, you build a fence. Keep things out and keep the chickens in. And it’s the same with my attention. I got to keep my attention in and not let predators come in and take my attention. So my morning routine is so simple. That’s it. When I wake up, I pray to God and I thank God for my wife and my kids and the opportunity to go and help people. That’s relatively quick, and then I get downstairs, and while I work, I listen to Joe Dispenza. I listen to the same Joe Dispenza 30-minute … It’s actually on my computer right now, so it’s Joe Dispenza 35-minute pure morning affirmations for self-love, health, abundance, and gratitude. But I listen to it all day long while I work. So some people listen to music and some people listen to nothing. I listen to Joe Dispenza all day long and it’s like just his soft calming voices in my mind. I used to listen to classical music but I find this is better because once in a while I’ll just hear like this phrase come in and be like, you know, one that caught me this week is I’m gratitude for all the abundance in my life and the more grateful I am, the more blessings I receive. And I’m like, oh man, that sounds really great. And it just hit me like, you know, out of the blue during my work session. And it’s like, okay, great. And it’s like got me going and working more. But that, but the short, you know, long, long answer to your question is I just get up and I go to work.
Amberly Lago: Oh, I love that though. And you know what? My assistant just messaged me last night and she listens. She’s like, I listen to some nasty music while I’m working and I get the work done. And I’m like, okay, whatever. Turn on the nasty music right now. I don’t listen to anything, but I just wrote that down and I am going to try Joe Dispenza, that recording to listen to that and see. And I do the same thing in the morning. I have to get up before everybody else and I actually can’t look at my phone. I put stuff on do not disturb and I put my head down and get to work and people, you know, I remember when I was writing my new book and I don’t know when you had time to write yours and I’m going to, I want to ask you that next. But I got up at four o’clock in the morning to write my book. I mean I had deadlines and I was like, well, that’s the only time I have. And so I’ve got to make time to do it and get up a little, get up a little early. And that’s when I’m the most clear and I’m easily distracted. So that’s why I have to put my phone away, put things on, do not disturb because that just the vibrating, if I hear it on the phone, I’m like, what is that? Who needs me? What’s going on? You know? And so how long did it take you to write the dark side of discipline?
Craig Ballantyne: Yeah, that’s a great question. I’m very much like you. And, you know, so I protect myself. And one of the things, just before I answer the writing question, one of the things that we actually talk about in the book is this thing called the Opal app. O-P-A-L. I don’t get any money for this. I don’t even use it myself because I have my own systems. But the Opal app is for iPhones and I think there’s one for Android called OneSec or something like that. But what these things do is you can set it up and my co-author does this. He sets it up from 5 a.m. till 8 a.m. He blocks access to everything. So he can’t access YouTube to watch any videos. He can’t access Instagram. He can’t access any of his distractions.
Amberly Lago: So good.
Craig Ballantyne: Yeah. Yeah, and then from 5 p.m. To 8 p.m He he puts it on again so that he can’t access it during family time because he also has three young kids And again, that’s like that’s just the building of the fence around you to keep foxes out So for me, I started writing on January 1st of 2024 It had been you know over six years since I had written a book with my last one was perfect week formula that came out around the time you came to that event. And a bunch of things had come to my mind, and I was like, okay, I’m ready to write this book. And so I started writing in that morning time, you know, same time as you did. For everybody listening, it was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute, four o’clock in the morning, you know, I don’t get going in the morning till 10. It’s not about the hour you get up, it’s about what you do with the hours that you are up.
Amberly Lago: Oh, that’s powerful.
Craig Ballantyne: Yeah. If you’re a night owl, then you have to do this. You’re following the same foundation as Amberly and I, in that you’re protecting yourself from all distractions. It’s just, I find it’s easier in the morning because in the evening you have Netflix, you have friends wanting to do something, you have your family wanting to do something. You know, some people do have alcohol, some people eat too much food, some people play video games. It’s just really hard to beat a night owl. It’s very romantic and it’s like, oh, I’m the night owl, you know, writing my book under the midnight, you know, burning the midnight oil, but it’s very difficult to actually do that in practicality. So you’re much better off getting up at 6, 6.30, 7, whatever is early for you and going right to it. And so what I did was, on January 1st, not only did I start writing, I told everybody, all my clients and my email newsletter, I was going to have the first draft done by March 16th of 2024. So now I have accountability. And on days when I wake up and I’m like, I want to do anything else other than go down to my computer and write a thousand words. I’ll clean the house. I’d rather clean the house. And I’m not very good at cleaning the house. Like I don’t even know how to turn on a broom.
Amberly Lago: Same thing though. Do a load of laundry rather than do that thing I’m supposed to be doing. It’s great, yeah.
Craig Ballantyne: But what got my butt glued to the chair was, oh yeah, I promise these people. And so this is something we do talk about in the book and I think it’s a missing link for somebody to be successful at any change in their life whether they’re trying to get rid of body fat or trying to get rid of alcohol or trying to get rid of bad habits or they’re trying to add a new good habit to their life such as writing. or exercise. When you make a promise to either a group of people, well if you do it to a group of people, they hold you accountable and if you’re a person of integrity, You will follow through. Your brain will just force you because you don’t want to be seen as a hypocrite. If you get accountability to an individual, which a lot of your coaching clients and mastermind members are accountable to you. You and I have this mutual friend, Bedros Koulian, and he was the first guy who taught me this. He didn’t teach it to me. I learned it from the interactions that we had. Because I had hired a lot of coaches before, and then I hired Bedros as a coach, even though we were business partners and stuff like that. I hired him, and I noticed with all my other coaches, I did about 80% of what they told me to do. And I was like, ah, you know, if I don’t do the rest, you know, it doesn’t matter to me what they think of me. Then I hired Bedros and I looked up to Bedros like a big brother. He’s very influential in my life and I realized if he told me to jump two feet high, I would jump two and a half feet high. That’s a metaphor. If he told me to do XYZ for the business, I would do XYZ ABC because I found that I now had accountability to somebody I deeply did not want to disappoint. And I find that’s a missing link in life. A lot of people can set goals on January 1st, but a lot of people fall off of that. And why is that? Because they don’t tell like-minded, positive people. And therefore, they’re like, well, I’m the easiest person to let down, and it doesn’t matter if I let myself down. I didn’t tell anybody, so nobody else knows, so I’m not going to feel like a hypocrite. And therefore, the goals fall off. But that I knew that I needed to get the book done. I knew that I needed that accountability and support for those tough days, just like everybody needs accountability and support for the tough days in any change in their life. And so I harnessed that power of accountability. And it was an ugly first draft that I got done. But I look at it like this, because in my fitness industry days, I used to be able to write little 500 word articles in about 15 minutes.
Amberly Lago: Me too. I was writing because I was in the fitness industry for 26 years. and I contributed to Shape and Health Magazine. It was so easy. It was like, do a 500 or sometimes 1,000 word little article, and it was super easy.
Craig Ballantyne: Right. And so if you plan and prepare the day before, so you have a little outline. So I learned this the hard way, right? Because I had a few times when I woke up to a blank screen. I’m like, I’m trying to write chapter two. I don’t know what to write. And the next thing you know, you’d be off procrastinating. So I learned, oh, I know what I’m going to do. The day before, so about 3 o’clock in the afternoon for me, I would write out three to five bullet points for what I want to write about the next day. Then, this is a little woo-woo, but I truly believe it works. It works for solving all your problems in life, including book writing. Your brain has now been told what to think about at night and to solve the problem. In the morning, all of the thoughts and the dots had been connected by my brain, so I woke up. Then, I like to joke about this, but the most valuable class or course that I’ve ever taken in my schoolistic career was grade 10 keyboarding. Grade 10 keyboarding has made me so much money because I’m a writer, and it taught me how to write fast. So I get up in the morning, my brain’s done the work, and I go to those little prompts on the page, and I can write 1,000 words in 30 minutes, 2,000 words in an hour. And that’s not every day, but on the days that it happens, it’s just magic, and it pours out. So I had a lot of good days like that, but I also had those other days that were struggling. and I relied on the accountability to get it through.
Amberly Lago: Oh, that’s so good though. That is so good. I can’t wait to share that tip though with someone I know who is writing their book right now. So thank you for that.
Craig Ballantyne: It really, really helps.
Amberly Lago: She’s like, I don’t know where to start. I don’t know what to do. So thank you for that. And go ahead. I’m sorry. I just was excited about that.
Craig Ballantyne: Yeah. I get really excited on the book stuff too. So I learned this from a guy named Adam Witte in Charleston, South Carolina. He runs like, It’s kind of like a hybrid self-publishing business of books. I used his company for one of my first fitness books. The way that they did this, so if anybody listening is thinking about writing a book but just dreads the idea of sitting down at a computer, a lot of these ghostwriting companies will do it like this. Come up with about 10 chapter ideas. You want to have your big core idea. And you want to make sure you get that right and you want to make sure you have the outline where the story is told properly and the lessons are told properly. So that’s a little bit of work outside the scope of this advice. You might want to go and read some stuff from Ryan Holiday on how to properly outline a book. But once you have the core idea and the title idea and and the outline, and now you just come up with 10 chapter titles, and then in each of the 10 chapters, you come up with five subsections. So let’s say it’s like, you know, how to overcome imposter syndrome, and then there’s going to be, you know, first of all, what is imposter syndrome? Who gets it? You know, what are the three tips to overcome it? Here’s a story about overcoming imposter syndrome, and then wrapping it all up. Let’s just say that those are the five subtopics of the chapter. And then for each one of those five subtopics, you come up with three different questions. So now, you have 10 chapters, and you have 15 questions per chapter. And so you have 150 questions, and you can do it all by audio. So you can have a friend interview you, or you could just do it yourself and say, okay, chapter one, imposter syndrome. What is imposter syndrome? And then just speak for, let’s see, I think it’s about two or three minutes would get you a couple hundred words. And you just answer all those 150 questions. Now, here’s where the trick comes in is what’s talked does not look well. When it’s transcribed, it doesn’t read well as a book. So you have to go and find somebody but in this day and age there’s a lot of services and there’s a lot of even AI services out there that will take your Transcription and turn it into a book. So provided you get the orientation, right? And that’s so important and the orientation means the outline in the big idea the you know that there is something Contrarian here or that it’s new, you know, because a lot of books unfortunately, it’s like, you know, it’s somebody who watched a whole bunch of other people’s content and then just summarized their lessons. Well, that’s not going to make a great book. But if you have something new inside of your book, you follow that system and you’ll get done a lot faster. Because my book, even though I was done my first draft by March 16th, I basically took the summer off because the ending was non-existent, like the third part of the book. And then fortunately, one of the people, this guy Daniel Wooder, my co-author, he’s the head coach in our coaching company. He did this presentation at one of our events about raising your standards in your life. And I was like, oh, that’s it. That’s the solution. So then I recruited him as my co-author and we worked on it. And then the business got really busy. So we put the book off to the side because we were really busy with something that was more important. And then finally, we didn’t get the book done. I think I signed off on it February 28th of this year, which is just a few weeks ago. And then the Amazon self-publishing machine is unbelievable. I can’t believe how fast it was once we had the book manuscript done to getting it in people’s hands was just a couple of weeks.
Amberly Lago: It’s crazy what Amazon can do. I’ve done hybrid publishing, I’ve done self-publishing, and I’ve done traditional publishing. But I, and, and how fast it is when you do self publishing and go through Amazon, I was like, what? This book took a year to get published. And this took me two weeks to get the book out there. So it is crazy, but I love how you broke that down. And actually one of my clients did write her book that way. She got on Zoom and she just talked and then she took the transcript and she hired an editor and had the editor. do it. And that’s how she got through her book. So I love that you broke it down that way. I want to go back to the accountability though, because whether you are staying sober or following a fitness plan or you’re doing something in your business or you’re writing a book, and I mean, I know, I love what you said about, you didn’t want to disappoint Bedros. And it was like, I really feel like one of the reasons I get to stay sober is that I have a sponsor that I love and admire and look up to, and it would break my heart if I don’t want her out of my life. I don’t ever want to disappoint her. And in fact, I had my assistant. email her, she saw her in my calendar because we meet every week to go over big book stuff and she emailed her about an appointment and I emailed back and I said, no this is a non-negotiable, this meeting has got to be locked into my calendar because it’s important. So I want to go back to accountability and identity a little bit, because I do believe accountability is so important with whatever you want to do. But what is the difference between accountability that empowers you versus accountability that feels like punishment?
Craig Ballantyne: Well, the accountability that feels like punishment is probably where you’ve just chosen the wrong thing to go after. And so accountability will feel like punishment if you’re being held accountable to something that isn’t in alignment with your core values. And that’s where we find, you know, whether it’s the discipline, people are chasing things that don’t really matter to them and ends up being this distraction and can destroy things. Or whether you say to somebody, I wanna do this. And well, you know, you kind of burned the boats and you told somebody that you’re gonna go ahead with it and they hold you accountable to it. But deep inside, you know, like this doesn’t feel right. And so anytime that something doesn’t feel right, Most people don’t stop it when they have that feeling, and they keep going through, and it becomes worse and worse and worse, and eventually, maybe it does end, and it’s a waste of time at best, but it can actually be very detrimental at worst.
Amberly Lago: When you feel that way, do you go by your gut feeling? Let’s say it’s somebody in one of your companies, or it’s somebody that wants to collaborate or do business with you. Do you like listen to your gut or how do you kind of go about being discerning about those situations?
Craig Ballantyne: Yeah. So I learned, I learned about 15 years ago that when I yell at my dog, that I’m, that something is really bothering me. So there was 15 years ago, I entered into this partnership to franchise one of my fitness concepts. And I remember walking my dog and getting like angry at my dog. And I’m like, dog’s just doing dog things. Why am I so angry? And I realized it was this partnership. And so through self reflection, introspection, I have, I know, like if I am acting out of character, then there’s something deeper. My wife catches this before I even catch this, and she’s very helpful in helping me break it down and realize what’s really bothering me. But you can also do this through journaling, through prayer, through any type of self-reflection, introspection, which most people unfortunately skip over, but this is where you’re going to find Like, you know, there’s something not feeling right. What is it? And when you identify it, the other thing that I’ve learned over the years is that you have to act fast and end it. Because when I was younger, I was either avoiding difficult conversations or I was like, well, maybe it’ll get better. Held out a lot of hope. That’s me.
Amberly Lago: I’m like, well, maybe it’ll get better. I’m just hoping for the best. Yeah.
Craig Ballantyne: Yeah. Unfortunately, past performance often does predict future behavior. And it’s wild what bad actors will get away with. It’s a totally random story. We have a client who works in the HR field, and one of her clients in corporate just had to fire a CFO because the CFO was embezzling from them. Then they found out that the CFO was in three other trials. I’m like, How on earth did somebody not find this out in the hiring process? And it was because the trials didn’t become public until after the person got hired. But it’s unbelievable how bad actors will go from one person to one person to another person. And so if somebody leaves you with a bad taste, chances are that you need to act right away and that this behavior will not change. There are some people that will change in life. you can actually kind of go with the default that very few people will change in life. And so if you’re in that situation, um, best to, you know, we like to say part ways as friends and then kind of like just a little clap our hands there.
Amberly Lago: Yeah. It’s so true though. And I find that it’s interesting. You told me about your dog. I just walked out of my office right before this call and we have a new puppy and nugget completely like TP like toilet paper at all. Our whole entire living room was shredded toilet paper everywhere.
Craig Ballantyne: Dogs got to do that at least once in their lifetime.
Amberly Lago: Oh my goodness. And I looked and I was like, nugget, did you do this? But you know, I wasn’t mad, but it’s, I was just, I thought, oh my goodness. But, and, and that’s a good point that you said, because there was a time when I had some different people that were working with me that I was like, why do I feel this way? Why do I not even want to look at my computer? I felt that need to escape, which is very dangerous, because that’s when you’re going to pick up a vice or do something. You’re not a bad habit or whatever. I think it’s so interesting to do that. It’s important to not skip over the self-reflection and pay attention to those signs. I love that you said that you’re like, when you’re yelling at the dog, something’s not right. That is awesome.
Craig Ballantyne: Have you ever read Dr. Peter Attia’s book, Outlive?
Amberly Lago: No.
Craig Ballantyne: He’s a pretty famous doctor on Instagram. He’s got a million followers. It’s a wonderful book. It’s all about health and preventative health testing. I thought it was going to be about biohacking, and it’s not. It’s actually pretty sensible. It’s a little science heavy, but it’s pretty sensible. Like, hey, here’s how you avoid cancer as much as possible, and how to stop drinking, all this stuff. But he has this one chapter in there where he talks about his anger problems, his own anger problems. And he uses this really great graphic and visual about how we all have a stress tolerance window. when we act out, when we get upset, it’s because the stress tolerance window has been closed. And whether it’s, you know, like you were stuck in traffic for an hour and a half, and you had too much caffeine, and you know, the day, you know, somebody disappointed you in a meeting. Okay, that’s going to all those things are going to close your stress tolerance window. And when Nugget teepees the room, Today, your stress tolerance window was open, but on a day like that, your stress tolerance window is shut, and then that’s when you kind of yell at the dog. And that’s what happened to me. The relationship with those people who were charging me a lot of money for something that didn’t feel right, and I hadn’t gotten out of the relationship, had just totally shut my stress tolerance window. And so when the dog did what dogs do, I got angrier than a normal person or a rational person should have. And so that was the sign that my stress tolerance window is shut. I need to go and open it by getting out of this relationship.
Amberly Lago: I love how you explain things. And by the way, y’all, if you haven’t gone to one of his events, you are such an incredible speaker. Your events are amazing. I know you’ve got one coming up. I’m not sure this might be out right after your event in Miami. It’s in Miami, right?
Craig Ballantyne: Yeah, it is. We have about three a year all over the place.
Amberly Lago: Okay, I’ll make sure to put the links to where they can find your events because it was really a great event. One thing that I love that I won’t forget about your event is when you did the pre-registration, you gave out books. Do you do that at every event or was that just a special thing?
Craig Ballantyne: No, totally. I wrote my books to be read. Man, I ship out a lot of books because I’m also slightly, not slightly, I’ve introverted tendencies and so for me going to a conference and leaving with a hundred new friends doesn’t really happen. But with a book, You know, I message people on Instagram and I’m like, hey, I’d love to send you my book. And that’s how I get started on a relationship with somebody. So I don’t have to leave my house. But all of a sudden then it’s like, okay, yeah, I’ve read your book, come on my podcast. And then I have an hour conversation with them, which is actually more beneficial and more in depth than what you generally get at a conference with somebody. And the next thing you know, I’m growing my network and growing my network and meeting new people and learning from them. all through these conversations because you learn in the little chit chat before and the chit chat after and then the follow up and all that sort of thing. And so my books, man, you know how hard that you work to write that book behind you. I know how hard I work to write my books. I’m getting every, I’m working 10 times harder just to get people to read them because not only, you know, was it hard work, but I put, I really believe that there’s some very, very important information in these books that people need to read. So we work very hard and any excuse I can find, I don’t know if you have these in your neighborhood, but you know, in the neighborhoods I live in here in Vancouver, everybody has, not everybody, but there’s every block or little community has those little libraries. I’m like stuffing my books in those libraries all the time.
Amberly Lago: Dang!
Craig Ballantyne: I’m doing the circuit.
Amberly Lago: the same thing. I’m like, Oh, maybe I should leave a book over there. Maybe somebody will pick it up. And I was just, I was really excited. I had people messaging me because with my first book, a lot of people, I didn’t see it in a lot of bookstores and stuff. So every city that I went to, and if I found a bookstore, I would go in that bookstore and I would say, do you have true grit and grace here? And they would be like, Oh no. I’m like, Oh, you know what? Can we order that? That’s great. They would order the book. So then I would have my book in that bookstore. But this time with Joy Through the Journey, I had a lot of people sending me pictures of, Oh my gosh, I just saw your book. And I’m like, Oh my gosh, really take a picture and send it to me because it’s exciting.
Craig Ballantyne: It really is. It means a lot. And you know, for everybody out there who’s written a book, you will appreciate this. And for everybody who hasn’t, you know, here’s your little instruction and to do is go leave some reviews. because reviews really, really help the authors and it makes us feel good. It’s like finally, you know, somebody finished the book because most people, like even I have, I have probably have 200 books in my house that I haven’t even opened because I buy so many, but every time I read one, especially on the Kindle, because it’s so easy, I always leave a review because I know how important that is to the author.
Amberly Lago: Yes. And also I want to say thank you for bringing that up, but anytime, like you were so kind to send me a couple of books, which I will give, away because I buy every author’s book because I want the review to be from a real Amazon purchase, you know what I mean? It shows that. And those reviews really do make a difference. So you guys want to go grab this book. I’m telling you the dark side of discipline is like, it really is a roadmap for you to have success, but also to take out some of the stress. Or if you’re really stressed, take a look at that stress in your life and know how to eliminate it. Um, And not just for entrepreneurs, but I honestly think too, something like this for people in their recovery journey.
Craig Ballantyne: Yeah, you know, it’s funny, I’ve been on a couple of big recovery podcasts recently, the Reframe one, the Sunnyside one, you know, these are big apps for people that are, you know, going sober and big, big, big communities. And, you know, we had great conversations about it because I used what I talked about in the Dark Side of Discipline to go from binge drinker to social drinker to once a month drinker to now I’m just not, you know, my identity is I’m not the type of person who drinks alcohol. And I use that identity every time I go into, you know, when I go into drinking environments, you know, we don’t have drinkers in our, at our events too much, but when I go to other people’s events and people are always drinking, I, it’s easy for me to just go, I’m not the type of person who drinks alcohol. So there’s no, you know, lost energy. You know, like when I was a social drinker, I had to go, Oh, you know, I know I shouldn’t have one, but I kind of want one. Oh my gosh, this person’s pressuring me. And, but you know, I, I’m going to wake up tomorrow being tired. So I don’t know. It’s just decision fatigue, but with your identity and your standards, when I can say, I’m just not the type of person who drinks alcohol, it’s not for me, but thank you. I don’t have to lose any energy on it and now I can focus on the conversation, I can focus on bringing my energy and best self and listening, active listening and all that sort of stuff. It really just is so freeing to be able to do that. It was a huge part of my, my journey was the effortless discipline systems in there, the elimination, the preparation and the connection, which helped me go from, you know, having the bad habit to getting rid of it.
Amberly Lago: Oh, that’s so awesome. And yeah, you know, at my events, I, I don’t mind if people drink, I don’t, I could care one way or another, but it’s interesting for some reason at my events and I had somebody actually bring this to my attention because I didn’t even look, I wasn’t looking to see what people were drinking. But I had my friend, Craig Siegel, actually, he goes… Oh, I was just on his show. What a great guy. Oh, Craig. Yes, Craig. I’m sorry. It wasn’t Craig. It was Kelly Siegel. He’s our other friend. Craig knows him as well. He’s got a show too. And if you don’t know him, I need to introduce you to him.
Craig Ballantyne: Oh, I’d love it.
Amberly Lago: But he goes, Amberly, I noticed, he goes, did you know not one, cause he’s sober. He goes, I didn’t see no, not one person with a drink in their hand at your event. And I didn’t notice that. Um, I’m sure my credit card, uh, my hotel bill did notice that, but, um, I just, the people that can come to the event, they are so passionate about learning and growing and self-development that that’s not like even anything that they desire to do. It’s,
Craig Ballantyne: Yeah, and you know what, one of the things that, that, you know, so, so I, when I, where I grew up, it was a drinking culture, you know, small town and that sort of stuff. And it wasn’t until I met Lewis Howes in 2009. And he said to me, I’ve never had a drop of alcohol in my life. Like my mind was blown that anybody could possibly go through life without drinking alcohol. And then it was just all of a sudden, it was like, oh, here’s another person who doesn’t drink, and another person, another person. All of a sudden, I built this social circle of people who just don’t drink. And so restaurants don’t like it when we show up, a big group of eight of us with no alcohol on the bill. But it’s the conversation. We can have just as much fun, and the conversation is great. And those people are out there. So if anybody’s listening, it’s like, oh, man, I’d love to find people that don’t drink. You just got to go to the right events and be around the right people and eventually you’ll collect those people and that will be your circle. And just like Jim Rohn once said, you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with, so those habits will rub off on you.
Amberly Lago: It’s so true. It sure will. And I think that the more that you know who you are, like you talked about, like having that identity of, I’m just not a person that really finds myself as a, you know, a drinker, somebody that wants to grab a drink. I think once you know who you are, you’re very like grounded in who you are and you have integrity that, and you put that energy out there that you start to attract the same kind of people. Absolutely. There’s a lot of people that self-sabotage out there. First of all, why do you think that is? Why do you think that people self-sabotage? I’m guilty of it. I’ve done it. It could be anything from your eating to your work, what you’re doing to a relationship, but why do you think it is that people self-sabotage?
Craig Ballantyne: Well, it is the path of least resistance and we are human. Unless you have systems in place, then what are you going to do? You’re going to default to your old habits. And so I use this story about how powerful habits are in that a lot of people that I grew up with, in the 90s, you know, when we went to high school, a lot of kids just went home from high school, grabbed a bag of chips and sat in front of the TV all day for the next few hours because their parents were at work, you know, the latchkey kids or whatever they called us. And so if, you know, they did that for five years of high school, then they did that for another three or four years of college. And when they got out of college, I lived with two of my best buddies after college and they were exactly like that. So they would come home from work, soda and chips. And the next thing you know, they gained like 20 or 30 pounds because they weren’t as active as they were before. And that was just what their brain, their nervous system was ingrained to do. Come home from work, grab something, sit in front of TV. And so that’s the path of least resistance. It takes a lot of energy to overcome the inertia of making a habit change. And that’s where the systems come in. So if we find ourselves self-sabotaging, we need to eliminate. That’s the first step. So elimination, preparation, and connection are the three simple components of the effortless discipline systems in the book. And if you eliminate, so if you’d like to eat potato chips and you end up eating a bag every time you open one, You can’t have them in the house. You got to eliminate that. You need to eliminate the triggers. What is it that triggers you in to having a bag of chips? Well, is it coming home from work right away and then sitting in front of the TV and all of a sudden you feel like you have to have chips? Well, we need a circuit breaker in that so that you don’t do that routine. because you’re going to be tempted by it. So maybe you go and do a 15 minute walk as soon as you get home. Anything else other than sitting on the couch and watching TV because that’s what tempts you into the bad habit. And then we need to eliminate the societal and connection parts of You know, people that tempt us. This is exactly what I did when I eliminated binge drinking. I eliminated all the alcohol from the house. I eliminated myself from boozy environments, so I wasn’t going to a Blue Jays game on a Saturday afternoon with my drinking buddies. I just couldn’t go to those events anymore. Eventually, once I adopted a new identity, I could go back to those and not be tempted. To get rid of it and stop the self-sabotage, I had to eliminate myself from the environment, the toxic environment. And then there are certain toxic people I had to eliminate from my life whose only purpose in my life was to drag me down to drinking. Now, on the flip side, there were good people who I would drink with that I didn’t want to eliminate from my life. And so I had to move to the next phase, which was better planning and preparation to spend time with those people in non-drinking environments. So it took hard work, but you know, I planned and prepared. I would find something like, hey, we’re going to go on this hike from like 9 until noon on Saturday. Then you can go off to the drinking environment, but I’m going to plan for something else with a non-drinking friend for the rest of the day. And it took work, but planning and preparation. You want to make the path to success as smooth as possible. So if we look at this from the self-sabotage point of view, we identify what it is that we self-sabotage with the most and we set up barriers. We want to put as much friction as possible in the way of going down that self-sabotage path. So it’s getting the thing out of the house, it’s getting rid of the triggers, and it’s getting rid of the people, even if we have to unfollow them on social media so we don’t see their content.
Amberly Lago: I say that all the time. I’m like, bless them and block them.
Craig Ballantyne: Yeah, that’s so great. But you have to curate. You have to curate your following and your followers and your inputs into your mind. Otherwise, the phone is built by the smartest minds in our country. They all go out west to Silicon Valley to work there, and their entire job is to make you addicted to your phone and influence you through your phone. You’re not going to win that through willpower. You’ve got to beat that with systems. And so you eliminate and then you prepare and you make the path to success as smooth as possible. And a classic example of this is, you know, anybody who’s ever tried to take up an exercise program that’s not naturally like excited about exercise. You know, if you’re listening, you’ve probably heard the tip, put your exercise clothes beside the bed and your shoes and your workout program so that when you get up, you put the clothes on. And as Mary Poppins says, half begun is half done, right? It’s a whole lot easier to keep going down that path. compared to if the clothes are in the closet and it’s cold outside, the cover is on, I’ll just stay here a little bit longer. Now you got to do the planning and preparation to make the path smooth. And then the final part is that connection, is who are you going to be accountable to in this self-sabotage journey? You know, you raise your hand in the community. Do you have an online community like school or a Facebook group or something like that?
Amberly Lago: Yeah, yeah. I think that that’s so important. So that’s why I do have like, a Facebook group for the Unstoppable Summit so everybody that connects at the summit can be, you know, there connected and stay connected throughout the year. I’ve got my mastermind group and we have a private Facebook group. I can barely work Facebook. Okay. But I love it that you can actually have a community, but then we also have a WhatsApp chat and we’re constantly in there, but it’s that connection. And then also Craig, I have a group of ladies. They’re my sober sisters and we call ourselves the God squad and we text each other. We have a gratitude. We’re accountable to each other for gratitude practice. So every morning, there’s six of us and we text each other what we’re grateful for every morning. So whether it’s like something like gratitude or your entrepreneurial journey, you know, your sober journey, I think community and that connection and accountability is so important.
Craig Ballantyne: Right, exactly. And so on that self-sabotage journey, this is where you would say to that community, whether it’s on Facebook or WhatsApp or whatever, you say, hey, everyone, and the more vulnerable you are, the more it’s actually going to work. I’m struggling with this, you know, I’m going through a bit of a stressful period right now. And, you know, I’m struggling with this and I want and I promise you guys, I’m gonna do my best and I don’t want to, you know, relapse into this. And I would love it for everybody to hold me accountable. I, when I, before my, I started business coaching, I ran a fitness business and we ran these transformation contests for 10 years, you know, these before and afters that everybody’s seen. And after a couple of years, I was like, Oh man, it’s so interesting. Like why does, you know, 80% of people quit and it was a free contest and you know, they could win my money and they could lose weight. But still, 80% of people quit. And I was like, what are the common factors around the people that quit and win the contest? And eventually, I figured out that it was this, because we had a forum, one of those old school forums for it back in the day. And I realized it was the person who took their before photo on day one and posted it in the group. Wow. Even though everyone else in the group was a stranger to them, because they were all over the world, The person who did that, essentially they burned the boats. There’s no going back. I’ve posted my belly out in my swimsuit, bad lighting, hair a mess photo. If I’ve done that, I’m going all the way. It really came down to that. It didn’t matter if it was a single mom of four or a guy who was single and had all the time in the world. Unless you posted that photo, I couldn’t bet on you to finish the thing. And but that was them saying, I’m doing this, and you guys are gonna hold me accountable. And then here’s the magic is that when you’re in a group of like minded positive people, And you tell someone that you want to achieve a goal. Good people, it’s almost like there’s all of a sudden a good people goes into this autopilot thing where the good person is like, they can’t stop themselves. Like even they would have to physically try and stop themselves from doing this. But they just try and they just start thinking, Oh, I know who could help or I’ve got a tip for you. And good people just naturally want to help. I learned this. When you came to my event in 2019, I was still single, but I didn’t want to be single. What I did was I told a bunch of women who had very large connection groups, like, hey, can you guys introduce me to some nice ladies? You guys know me, you know what I’m looking for. All of a sudden I had like six women who I thought it was their job to introduce, you know, they had full-time jobs, but it felt like it was their job. They had taken on a second job of trying to help me find somebody. And, you know, I would get like a message every day. What about this girl? What about this girl? You know, can I introduce you to this friend? And it was so great because it just showed me that when you’re around good people, they will go out of their way to help you. And so the big message here, all the way back to the self-sabotage thing, is yes, we do the elimination and preparation on our own. But the magic doesn’t happen until we find the like-minded people and recruit them to hold us accountable because that is the secret ingredient.
Amberly Lago: It sure is. And you know what I share a lot about is, you know, I used to think that it was all about, I just got to grit it out. I got to just, it’s all grit. And when you’ve got grit, there is no quit. And what I realized, I learned the hard way is Resilience and success isn’t from grit alone. I mean, I know Angela Duckworth says that grit is the key predictor of success, but what I’ve learned is grit without connection feels like resistance and grit with connection, that’s where you really find resilience and success. Absolutely.
Craig Ballantyne: Yeah. Because if you think about like a weight loss journey, you know, weight loss journey that a, that a person tries to do on their own with through grit, men, it’s suffering, it’s not enjoyable. But if you work out with a group of men and women who are all like-minded, like you go to a fit body boot camp and all of a sudden the workouts are fun and you’re excited to high-five the same people at the start of the workout, yeah, there’s obviously going to be sacrifice in the workout and there’s going to be sacrifice around certain foods that you kind of have to set aside for a while. But it’s the difference between sacrifice and suffering. They’re not the same thing. And you can have discipline in a way where it’s a short-term sacrifice or you can set your life up to be miserable and suffer and think that that’s the way to be successful in life. But it doesn’t require that. Because I’ve talked to so many people and And you can be happy and you can be successful through a little bit of sacrifice and you don’t have to suffer.
Amberly Lago: Oh, I love that. And speaking of Fit Body Boot Camp, I have to say that when I spoke at their event, it was one of my absolute most favorite events I’ve ever spoken at. They are unbelievable. Yeah, their working out is definitely not suffering. They are on fire. It was so much fun. Well, I tell you, I could talk to you all day. I always learn so much from you every time I hear you speak. I’ve been over here taking notes, by the way. I mean, you are just amazing. And I really hope to get to one of your events soon. But you guys, you got to go out and get the dark side of discipline. Here it is. If you’re watching on YouTube, go grab it. Like I said, I’m gonna make sure that my mastermind members have a copy of this. It is incredible. You offer so much value. I feel like it’s like, here’s the secret. The secret to success and fulfillment right here. Just grab this book. And it’s short too. And that’s one of the things that I really love about it is that I can actually read it because it’s short and how it’s formatted is great. And you, Yeah. I noticed that kind of, I love it. Yeah. So tell us where people can find you the best place to grab the book and you guys that are listening and maybe you’re out for a run or you’re driving, don’t worry. I will have this, uh, these links in the show notes for you to check out, but tell everybody where they can find you.
Craig Ballantyne: Yeah, absolutely. I’m on Instagram at real Craig Ballantyne and I love hearing from people on Instagram. I, uh, that’s my one social media that I use. And then also you can grab the book at dark side of discipline.com. or on Amazon, the ebook, audio book, you know, paperback and hard copy are all there too.
Amberly Lago: And write a review y’all for him. Um, also you guys, like he said, he would love to hear from you. Take a screenshot of this and let’s shout his name and his book off the rooftops. Take a screenshot. And when you share that, when I see it, it just makes, it melts my heart. So I always share it. when you post the podcast or the YouTube in your, in your stories on Instagram at real Craig Ballantyne, and then Amberly Lago Motivation. Craig, you’re amazing. Thank you so much with your really eventful life for stopping in to share your wisdom with us. I really, really appreciate you and thank y’all for tuning in. I appreciate y’all tuning in. It’s because of you that this show is a top 1% podcast, so thank you for tuning in each week and I will see you next week.
