From the time I get up each and every morning, I’m inundated with choices.

The most important choice happens to be my very first choice:

Do I get up thirty minutes early to make lunch and coffee at home? Or sleep for a few more wonderful minutes and eat out for lunch?

What’s the difficult decision here?

Forcing myself out of bed at 4:30 AM to make lunch is the harder choice for me. Will $15 bucks for lunch and coffee destroy me or derail my FIRE goal? No way. Not even close.

But what will destroy me is my lack of self discipline.

That will destroy my goals and dreams, and in turn, myself.

For me, I must keep the personal finance program tight. One open door leads to another, and I’ll soon be talking myself into new habits. But that’s me.

I think about this quite often. This choice we make to be tough on ourselves in the name of financial independence. It’s quite easy to get excited about the prospect of FIRE, then quite another to grind it out day after day. This realization, after the novelty of FIRE has worn off, that the goal is years away can be daunting.

Years of grinding lay ahead like some desert that we must wander through. This is the part where discipline is needed. Not faith. Not hope. Not want. But the testing of ourselves daily against the strong current of consumerism and ‘fear of missing out’ culture that today’s social media nurtures. The test has gotten even tougher with the bear market.

The good part about discipline and habit forming, is that once the habit has set in, it’s much easier to trudge forward through the desert of FIRE accumulation than when first starting out.

If I’ve gotten anything out of FIRE, other than a fat brokerage account, it’s that I have seen the magic that strong will power directed in a positive direction can have over one’s life.

I ask myself: If I can day in and day out make the choice of not spending more so I can have a 50% savings rate, what else can my discipline do for me other than financial well being?

There’s a lot. And this makes the journey through the desert much more palatable. For me, the journey is turning out to be the best part.

the bleed over

My discipline has led me to a stint of sobriety. I was five months sober when my wife and I decided to officially pursue FIRE. What was supposed to be a 6 month break from drinking has lasted quite a bit longer than expected.

I haven’t drank in nearly three years. Not only has this saved me quite a bit of money, but it’s helped me stay on the path of taking the hard road. I enjoy testing myself. Walking into a football stadium surrounded by beers is much like walking into an REI (or any store) and window shopping about all the new shiny things you can easily afford.

At the moment it’s tough to go to a ball game and not drink with friends and the people around me. But afterwards when everyone is drunk and passing out. It feels fantastic that I can go home and read a book and then wake up bright an early the next morning to be productive after going to a football game the night before. In the past, I would have never been able to day drink a ton of beer then go home and read a book. I would have just went bed, wake up with a pounding headache, then lay around most of the next day trying to recover.

This sobriety self discipline is just as intoxicating as discovering FIRE. I sort of get a pleasurable reward after leaving an alcohol fueled event knowing I held up and didn’t break.

health

Recently, I’ve taken my self discipline a step further with my diet.

I was diagnosed with fatty liver a few months ago. A discomfort in my abdomen that just wasn’t going away led me to seek out some medical attention. I’m not overweight, I’m 5′-8″ and about 160, so this diagnosis is surprising. Initially, the doctor thought my abdominal pain might be kidney stones or enflamed liver. I went through an array of blood tests, then x-rays, and then finally a cat-scan over the course of a month.

Honestly, I was pretty scared, thinking I might have cancer or some other bad news while I was going through all this.

It made me rethink this whole FIRE thing. Was FIRE the right choice for me? What am I saving for if I don’t have many years left? Why would I want to FIRE if I’m going to need employer healthcare for some condition I might have?

When this diagnosis came back, I was at first relieved. My doctor seemed pretty nonchalant about it. Just eat more vegetables she said. And that seemed to be that. No more testing. Nothing else. Just eat right. It left me feeling grateful and good. It was just a scare.

This thing is, after some research, I found fatty liver is pretty serious. Like deadly serious. It can lead to liver damage and chronic liver disease. Talking with a friend, I found out her uncle was getting a liver transplant due to fatty liver.

But either way my eating habits were not the healthiest. I was under the false assumption that because I was not overweight and very active, that I could eat whatever I wanted. And I did. I’m 100% certain my diet played a big role in my diagnosis.

Facing the seriousness of this fatty liver diagnosis, also known as hepatic steatosis, I’ve decided that FIRE is an even more important goal for me. The month when I was waiting for my results made me even more grateful for my life, family, health, and my brokerage account cushion. This health issue has made me see that being healthy after I quit work is going to be more important than spending habits and market returns will ever be. I don’t want to wait till I feel sick and unhealthy to take action.

So I’ve directed my self discipline super power to eating right.

I recently read How Not To Die by Dr. Michael Greger and this book has completely changed the way I see eating. Just like Mr. Money Mustache, the Madfientist, and JL Collins changed the way I see personal finance. I now am applying my tried and true FIRE discipline to eating a whole food plant based diet.

So far the results are great. I have more energy than I know what to do with. I get home from work and instead of feeling like plopping down on the couch, I get chores done. I’m also spending a bunch of time in the kitchen cooking my meals. I’m finding a zen to prepping my vegetables. Mindfully chopping each piece of green to its proper size is relaxing.

Luckily, my wife is already on the health bend and super willing to eat in the direction I want to go. I couldn’t imagine being successful going with a plant based diet without my wife’s support. Same for our finance goals. I’m grateful that my wife and I are on the same page when it comes to money…and now health.

Lately my grocery bill has been reduced significantly due to my diet changes. Not buying any meat has led to some of the cheapest grocery bills I’ve seen since I started tracking my expenses.

My ability to make this giant change in diet for a healthier life, is thanks to my FIRE journey. The discipline required to have a high savings rate has bled over to my ability to make the hard choice when it comes to eating, for compounding returns in the future. My self discipline is like focusing a laser beam of good energy on different things in my life, and I’m getting fantastic results. First was my money, then alcohol, now health and diet.

What can I not do with my self discipline?

It makes me excited to think that I can use this super power of mine to make my life better. And with FIRE, it’s really about living your best life, not a life of deprivation. These days I gain more out of my life with less in my life.

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I use Personal Capital to track my spending and calculate my net worth. I highly recommend checking Personal Capital out, especially if you are on a FIRE journey. This is an affiliate link.