Develop self discipline through epic physical challenges

Jamin and Jen
Sep 2, 2018 · 8 min read

By: Jamin Heppell

One year ago, I could only dream of writing something about life, leadership and epic physical challenges with legitimacy. I had taken on some big physical challenges before stepping into Mountains and Marathons, yet, none of it comes close to what has happened in the last 12 months.

Last year in August, my partner Jen and I committed to running a marathon and climbing a mountain on every continent, transform our lives and relationship, and enable others to do the same. As a business owner and someone who is fascinated about the pursuit of personal excellence, our journey so far has taught me some invaluable lessons. Now, as we edge towards our third marathon on the third continent, I want to share some of our insights. They are coming to you from our small hotel room in Puerto Natales, Chile, where are preparing for the Patagonian International Marathon.


Before we dive in, it is important for me to give you some understanding of where things were at one year ago.

The feelings of being worn-out, burnt-out and anxious were my daily companions. For too long, I had repressed the little voice in my head and my heart that shouted “Take a damn break! Slow down a bit. Sit. Listen. Reflect. Relax”. I didn’t.

At that stage, I was the founder and director of two non-profit organisations dedicated to empowering young people to lead a life of connection, purpose and positive impact. In other words: To learn how to lead themselves first, and then lead others. The fatigue I experienced was tough, but the lack of integrity was tougher. Each week, I was up there speaking and facilitating in front of hundreds of students. While my content, theory and principles were solid, my words lacked power and conviction. It was not because because I didn’t believe in what I was saying, but because I was not living what I was saying. I have always taken pride in being a positive role model, but I could not stand in front of these future leaders and model leadership anymore. In fact, I didn’t want them to be like me at all. I knew a dramatic change was necessary.

After stopping and really listening, I distinguished that my greatest lack of integrity was not having taken action towards realising my unfulfilled dreams. At the age of 28, there were too many unturned stones. In the last eight years, I had the privilege of working with over 15,000 people in Australia and North America, co-founded three social enterprises and was acknowledged as a finalist for Victorian Young Achiever of the Year, twice. Yet, I had never really given myself the chance to achieve personal excellence, explore the world and be an athlete. I yearned about discovering what my body, mind and spirit were truly capable of and becoming the man my future kids would be proud to call their dad.

In July 2017, we committed to something big. Something that would require a transformation of who I was and what I was capable of, far out of my comfort zone. Something that was designed to shake up the jail bars of my mental funk and break the shackles of my emotional restraint. Together, Jen and I would run a marathon and climb a mountain on every continent.

It has been 12 months since we made this commitment and got to work on making it real. So far, we have run two marathons and visited eight countries. During the 40-hour transit to Chile, South America, we got to reflect on how far we have come and what we have learnt about life and leadership since this journey began.


A lot of people think that one must be really self disciplined to do what we do — daily runs, strength and mobility training, healthy nutrition, seven to eight hours of sleep each night, and running a business. The truth is, we are self disciplined. However, we are not gifted with an outstandingly strong will or enviable character trait, but have developed the right structures and practices that support our self discipline.

Let’s start with the premise that success in any area of life — business, fitness, relationships, etc. — is dependent on consistently doing the things that are aligned with who we want to become and what we want to achieve. This requires self discipline. In fact, I am convinced that it is one of the most valuable character strengths to consciously develop. (If you want to watch the one video that had the greatest impact on our relationship to self-discipline, check out this video of Will Smith.)

“Self discipline is self love” (Will Smith)

The first thing we recommend you to do is to commit to a physical challenge that is on the edges of your comfort zone.

Here is the surprising fact that we noticed very early on in our marathon training: The increased levels of self discipline in one area of our life — physical fitness — quickly transpired into other areas, including our business.

One aspect we attribute this to is the power of anchors. They are daily habits that create groundedness and stability in your life. Before our commitment to Mountains and Marathons, there were few strong anchors in our day. The result was that we got up at a different time each day, our daily performance was inconsistent, and I experienced anxiety. Once we started training for our first marathon, we tried to integrate our daily runs at a similar time each day, which provided more structure and accountability. The commitment to something personally meaningful and challenging has served as a great catalyst to develop stronger anchors in our lives.

More than just bringing more structure and consistency to your days, anchors also lend themselves to integrating new habits effortlessly through habit triggers. Have you ever struggled to adopt a new habits that you knew would make a big difference? Of course you have. We all have.

Now, any time we want to integrate a new habit, it is easier to connect the new habit to one of the anchors in our day. For instance, we know that it is important to brush our teeth at least twice per day, and most people do. Most people also know that it would be beneficial to floss at least once per day, but more than two thirds of people don’t. Let’s explore how you can leverage this anchor to establish the new habit of flossing: Brushing teeth in the morning is your daily anchor. As soon as you put away the toothbrush, this is your trigger to floss your teeth. Your mindset shifts from ‘brushing my teeth is done when I put the toothbrush away’ to ‘brushing my teeth is done when the flossing is complete’. Your context of what ‘brushing teeth’ means alters. After a few weeks, brushing your teeth without flossing will feel strange and the new habit is established.

What I have just described through a rather mundane example can be leveraged for many areas of your life and leadership. For instance, our running coach Michael has prescribed us daily strength and mobility training from the day we started working together. And for several weeks, we didn’t do it. We forgot about it. We weren’t sure how important it really was. We ‘didn’t have the time’. After our first marathon, the Great Ocean Road Marathon, we reflected on our journey and wondered how much better we could have performed if we had followed the coaching completely — including strength and mobility training. Given that we had the Mont Blanc Marathon with over 2,800 meters of incline coming up only six weeks later, we finally committed to every aspect of our training. It was time to give some fire to our glutes and core!

We needed a simple, fool-proof way to make sure we would do our strength and mobility exercises each day. Otherwise, it wouldn’t happen. We applied the same principle of leveraging triggers: When we finish our daily runs, we immediately begin our strength and mobility exercises. Our context shifted from ‘our run is complete when we stop running’ to ‘our run is complete when we have finished running and our strength and mobility’. Given running was already a consistent part of our daily routine, integrating the new habit of doing our exercises became much easier. Within two weeks, a running session felt incomplete without it.

Since then, I have also added 100 push-ups to the regime and I am feeling stronger than I have in over a decade. This was only possible because I am committed to a big vision, and because I have strong anchors to manifest new habits. We apply the same principle to our business as well. For instance, we make a cup of matcha tea (or now, in Chile, hot mate tea) each morning after we finish breakfast. This is the trigger for us to start our Business Open Ritual. It’s as simple as it is powerful.


The reason we keep coming back to physical challenges is that they have a special power that comes from the black-and-white nature of the goal. When you commit to a race or event, there is a date. There is a time to show up and get the job done. No matter whether you want to ‘just complete’ a marathon or run your first race in sub 4 hours, you either get there, or you don’t. It does not have to be a marathon — from a 5k run to a Tough Mudder event, to an endurance bike ride, there are plenty of options to choose from.

Self discipline and new habits are cultivated in the preparation for the event. They manifest in all the hours you are out there training, whether you feel like it or not. The training does not care whether your day was long, the meetings exhausting, or the temperature lower than 3 degrees. When you return from an early morning or late night run that demanded every ounce of willpower just to get out of the door, you get to know yourself as someone different. Someone inspiring. Someone resilient. Someone who you didn’t think you could be. The simple intent of ‘keeping fit’ or ‘losing some weight’ can’t give you that. It’s not a strong enough driving force to pull you in to action when things get tough. Commitment to an epic Hadi cal challenge is.

One of our Members recently said in a coaching call:

“Since I am more physically fit and healthy, I am more brave, more courageous.”

Running or any other physical challenge that is big and bold for you doesn’t change your fitness alone. It changes who you are. Suddenly, you are the person who has the tough conversation with a colleague, quits the job that’s been draining you for months, or simply chooses tea over coffee.

Through epic physical challenges, anchors that are aligned with your deeper commitment, healthy habits a truly life transforming journey is possible. You won’t know what you are missing out on before you try it for yourself. So what are you waiting for? Step to the edge and discover what happens when you give yourself permission to fly.

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