Why Discipline Isn’t Enough (And How Devotion Changes Everything)

Discipline alone can lead to burnout while devotion transforms exhaustion into fulfillment and sustainable success. The journey from living in the back of a supplement store to building a purpose-driven coaching business reveals the critical difference between pushing through tasks and being pulled forward by passion.

• Discipline comes from the mind—structured, rigid, obligatory—and stems from "I have to" thinking
• Devotion comes from the heart—energizing, fulfilling—and stems from "I get to" thinking
• Burnout happens when energy-draining activities consistently outweigh energy-giving ones
• Create two columns (should vs. want to) to audit your daily tasks and identify imbalances
• Start with small changes to improve your energy ratio rather than attempting dramatic overhauls
• Give yourself permission to prioritize joy and fulfillment alongside achievement

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Send me a message sharing your biggest takeaway from this episode and how you're shifting from discipline to devotion.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome to Circumstantially Successful
• 0:34 My Burnout Story
• 3:13 Discipline vs. Devotion Explained
• 5:21 The Should-Do vs. Want-To Exercise
• 8:38 Starting Small and Building Momentum
• 10:15 Episode Closing and Call to Action

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:09

Welcome to Circumstantially Successful. I'm your host, brennan Hillary, and my mission as a lifestyle entrepreneur is to help others become the creators of their lives. Every week, I'm committed to helping you build your power from the inside out. Thank you for tuning in, for believing in yourself and for refusing to be a victim of your circumstances. Hope you enjoy the show. Let's get started.

Speaker 2: 0:34

In 2023, I was living in the back of a supplement store, completely broke, exhausted and forcing myself to do work that I used to love. I thought discipline was supposed to save me. Instead, it was slowly draining the life out of me. If you've ever felt like discipline is keeping you alive, but barely, this episode is for you. Welcome back. Today, we're talking about why discipline alone can burn you out and how devotion can transform everything. If you're a high achiever, feeling like work is consuming your entire life, and if you're exhausted and you feel like you're just existing rather than truly living, then stay with me, because by the end of this episode, you're going to understand the essential difference between discipline and devotion, and you're going to leave feeling relieved and empowered to actually start prioritizing the things in your life that give you fulfillment and joy, instead of just consistently forcing yourself to do things that you hate to do. So let's rewind to 2022. This was after I had burned out completely from my corporate career. I was financially buried, barely making ends meet, and ended up moving in with a friend in Missouri just to survive. This friend his name is Trey Frisbee Trey, I'll always be grateful for you. He let me stay with him when I couldn't even afford to pay rent, shout out to his wife Haley, because she also obviously allowed me to stay there. So, thank you guys, I love you guys. She also obviously allowed me to stay there. So thank you guys, I love you guys.

Speaker 2: 2:06

Anyway, one day I got a call from an old friend asking if I'd move out to Virginia to help him grow a supplement store that he'd purchased. At this point in my life I was desperate to get out of the situation that I was in. So I said yes, packed my shit and moved in literally moved in to the back of his store. I couldn't afford an apartment, and on paper this should have been easy for me, because I'd spent six successful years managing Supplement Source. I knew the business inside and out, but every single day when I was working for my friend felt like I was trudging through mud Tasks. I used to love to do like engaging with customers, building partnerships, handing out samples at gyms. All that stuff just felt draining, heavy and forced. I relied purely on discipline to push through because I had no other choice. Then, as life does sometimes, it forced me to pivot when my friend's store couldn't afford to pay me anymore. So what that caused me to do is it forced me to innovate. I started working full time at a gym to pay my basic living expenses and alongside that, I began exploring something that I had previously just like kind of dabbled in, which was coaching and speaking.

Speaker 2: 3:19

I started an LLC in Illinois back in 2023. I called it Build your Power and, yeah, all I knew is I wanted to help life coach people. I wanted to help people not have to experience what I experienced, to enjoy their life, and that eventually narrowed down to helping specifically high achievers prevent burnout. And as I started to work on this business, something incredible started to happen. So I felt energized. Every single activity that I would do when building this business. I felt alive. It wasn't hard for me to do these tasks. If anything, I looked forward to doing these tasks. It was exhilarating. Hours flew by where I was fully present, and it was a very different kind of experience than I was used to. The only time I'd experienced this really in my past was when I was fully present, and it was a very different kind of experience than I was used to. The only time I'd experienced this really in my past was when I was on Adderall or Vyvanse, and even then there was still something uneasy about that. You can kind of tell it's artificialized, but yeah, it was a different kind of motivation.

Speaker 2: 4:19

Discipline is what requires us to have. Discipline is pushing towards things, but devotion it's more of when you feel a pull to do something. So here's the powerful lesson I discovered is discipline comes from the mind. It's structured, it's rigid, it's more obligatory. Devotion comes from the heart. It's more energizing, it feels alive and it feels fulfilling. Discipline stems from a place of I have to. Devotion stems from a place of I have to. Devotion stems from a place of I get to. Discipline is the car, but devotion is the gas. And I want to make sure I say that discipline itself isn't bad. It's really useful, but by itself discipline is incomplete.

Speaker 2: 5:13

Relying solely on discipline, which is the ability to do things that we don't want to do, creates internal resistance over time which drains our energy and leads to burnout. It's almost like depositing money into your bank account without getting paid right. Eventually you're not going to have enough money to deposit. You're not getting a return of investment on that. So having too much discipline without any devotion means doing things that we don't want to do, so we're not getting enjoyment from it and then so there's no actual reward, right? Besides, maybe, the thing we're trying to accomplish, which lasts for like a day. So yeah, without genuine passion and alignment, or without devotion, success feels empty. Without genuine passion and alignment, or without devotion, success feels empty, it feels exhausting and it feels unsustainable.

Speaker 2: 5:58

So one thing that is really helpful that I want you to do right now to really start prioritizing more devotion in your life, is I want you to grab a piece of paper or open your notes app whatever feels better for you, and I want you to grab a piece of paper or open your notes app whatever feels better for you. And I want you to draw two columns. I want you to label one column should do and the other column want to. Now I want you to list your daily tasks and responsibilities under these columns. If you need to just go ahead and pause this episode and, yeah, maybe do that Maybe think about the most recent busy day that you've had, and I want you to write down what tasks you felt like you had to do the should-do tasks and then what tasks you actually wanted to do.

Speaker 2: 6:42

Now I want you to look at it how many tasks do you have that are shoulds compared to how many tasks that you have that are want-tos? I guarantee you that if your list of should-dos or yeah should-dos is higher than want-tos, then you probably felt pretty drained and exhausted and dissatisfied that day. And, yeah, I want you to circle one task from your want-to column and I want you to commit to doing more of that this week. And I want you to really start seeing how you can change your schedule and how you can change your schedule in a way that helps you prioritize the things that you want to do rather than just the things that you should do. And I know that it's not realistic for us to completely eliminate the should-do task. We're all going to have it.

Speaker 2: 7:31

Nobody, I don't think, likes to do laundry, right? However, the point is, I want you to look at this as a ratio problem, right? So burnout happens when the ratio of things that energize us is lower than the ratio of things that drain us, meaning that if we can start prioritizing the tasks that bring us joy, then, all of a sudden, our overall satisfaction and fulfillment in our life is going to go up and our overall dissatisfaction is going to go down. So the key is to slowly start engineering your life in a way that feels good and feels energizing and feels aligned, instead of having this limiting belief that's driving our life that says I have to suffer in order to be successful. So, yeah, so just to summarize this again, create a list of shoulds and want tos, pick a day that's the busiest that you've had in the past week and write down what tasks did you do that were should do's and what tasks did you do that were want to's.

Speaker 2: 8:34

And then I want you to count how many tasks you have that are should do's compared to how many tasks that you had that are want to's. And then look at it. If you have more should do's than want to's, ask yourself how you felt that day. It's pretty likely that you had that are want-tos. And then look at it If you have more should-dos than want-tos, ask yourself how you felt that day. It's pretty likely that you felt like crap. And then I want you to ask yourself how can I prioritize more of my want-tos in my life and how can I let go of maybe some of the things that I should do? Maybe that's delegation, maybe that's asking for help. I know the people pleasers that are listening to this. That may be really uncomfortable, but it's important. And, yeah, doing that slowly over time imagine you did that exercise every week doing that slowly over time is going to help with upping the ratio of things that energize you and fulfill you, right. So, overall, your life's going to get better, and I want you to start as small as humanly possible. It doesn't have to be a huge overhaul, right, it just needs to be small, incremental changes over time.

Speaker 2: 9:29

One thing that I also see with high achievers a lot and that I used to fall into, is this extremist mentality. So we think that whenever we start something, we have to go from zero to a hundred. So if I want to go on a run, if I want to start running, then I need to sign up for a marathon, right? Or if I want to go start working out, then I need to go to the gym five days a week, when, in reality, you can start literally as small as maybe I'm just going to drive to the gym and not even walk in, right, or I'm going to run 100 meters, you know. So give yourself permission to start slow, to start small and to build momentum so you can build the belief that you need to build to prove to your body, your nervous system and your mind that it is safe to prioritize some joy and fulfillment in your life.

Speaker 2: 10:07

So remember, discipline alone is designed to help you start something, but devotion is the fuel that actually keeps you going. You deserve more than just surviving your own life. You deserve to feel alive, energized, fulfilled and excited. That shift from should to want to is everything. Discipline got me to the store, but devotion built the life and business I truly love, and I know it can do the same for you. So if this resonated with you today, I'd love to connect with you and hear your thoughts. Just follow me on Instagram at BrennanHillary. So that's at B-R-E-N-N-A-N-H-I-L-L-E-A-R-Y. Send me a message, let me know your biggest takeaway from this episode and let me know how you're shifting from discipline to devotion. With that being said, until next time, keep living from your heart and I'll talk to.