S2 E17: A Conversation About Discipline With John Joseph

What’s up Hardcore Humans! This week on The Hardcore Humanism Podcast, we are talking with John Joseph. Many of you know John as the lead singer of the legendary New York Hardcore band Cro-Mags — including their seminal hardcore album Age of Quarrel — and more recently as the lead singer of Bloodclot! John is also an Ironman competitor and an author. In his book, Evolution of a Cro Magnon, he describes how he overcame abuse, incarceration, homelessness and addiction to build the life he wanted. John has written several other books, including The PMA Effect and his new books Unf*ck Your Health and Hardcore Kitchen. 

 And John has recently started his own coaching business where he focuses on the concept of discipline. In our conversation, John explains how with everything he has been through, he never stops grinding. One of the biggest risks we face when we experience mental or physical illness or extreme stressors like John has faced is that we stop moving forward because it is so difficult to just keep going. Many of us naturally take an all-or-none mentality that if we can’t do things fully to the best of our abilities, it’s a waste of time to do anything. And sometimes when we are at our lowest, we can try to think through even basic routines to connect to ourselves and to develop and maintain our discipline. And we have to give ourselves credit for just doing what we need to survive, before we can think of thriving. Later, when we are not undergoing so much stress, we can build on that discipline to work further towards our purpose. The other point that John made was that he always sought out mentors – people to whom he looked for guidance to build his life. And even if we don’t have direct access to mentors, we can look to others that we see in the world as inspirations to help us work towards our goals.