New Year, Same BS: How to Build Habits That Actually Stick

New Year, New You. This is frankly the BS you hear right around this time of year every year. And it comes from mostly a good place. We want to start the year as a momentum, so that twelve months from now, we can have moved ourselves a little closer to where we want to be. The only problem is this almost never works. About a quarter of people who start New Year's resolutions quit after the first week.

About half by February, and only nine percent make it all twelve months till the end of the year. So something is not working here, a lot of things are not working here. And since we at Excellence actually pride ourselves on trying to locate the signal amidst the noise. Today we are going to try to sort through all of the noise around New Year's resolutions, around behavior change, around habit formation, and help you figure out how to think about building healthier habits actually.

This is Excellence Actually. I'm Clay Skipper, joined by Steve Magnus and Brad Stahlberg. I want you to think of today's episode as a cheat sheet. We're gonna start high level by going into what's wrong with the New Year's Resolution Industrial Complex, and then we're gonna get into some of the big buckets that most people actually wanna work toward. Things like exercise, attentional health, goal setting, and how to break bad habits.

We'll break down what you're likely to hear on the conventional wisdom front. And then we're also going to go into things that are actually helpful, actually practical, and actually doable without overwhelming you.

So let's start with resolutions in general. A little bit of the history as to how they became such a thing to begin with. I thought this would be interesting because I didn't know much about the history of resolutions. So I thought it would be interesting just to take like a sixty thousand foot view for a second. Do you guys have any idea of this history? Nope.

Teach us putting on my professor skipper hat. Resolutions began largely as like religious offerings to the gods, which is probably not that surprising. And then later became more like spiritual reflection, which is somewhat similar to what is now, or like a reaffirmation of vows or communal values. So like communities would say we're we're recommitting to these values or knights would would recommit to their vows.

And like a lot of things in the self improvement world, it's really only in the last century and really only since like World War Two that it's become about self-transformation, self-improvement. So it's like a pretty big switch, right? In terms of the notion of being about Let's try to better our community by making sacrifices or offer offerings to the God, or let's try to recommit communally to values to being like,

How can I will myself into more rigorous self discipline such that I can become better? And I also think it's useful to have the history because it's it gets us to our first takeaways. to go back to the historical use of resolutions a little bit. It I think it helps if your resolutions are about values and are values driven instead of outcome driven. And that doesn't mean you can't have big goals or want certain outcomes to be the result of your resolutions or your new habits.

you should have big goals, you should want to achieve stuff, you should chase big things, but it should really be as we talk about a lot, about designing your character and changing who you are. So that's that's the big takeaway number one. And I think is gonna be an overarching theme here is like instead of being outcome based.

Your goals, your resolutions should be values driven. I also think that we tend to shoot way too way too aggressively. when we use those outcome goals instead of values goals and we often flame out. So I'll I'll give a really concrete example from my own life. A value that I hold dearly is my health.

And I define health as being around and able to function for the people and activities I care about for a very long time. And I realized that in my training, I was completely leaving behind what I'll just call aerobic fitness. So doing a lot of power lifting, a lot of strength training, um, a lot of long walks, which is great, but I wasn't really getting my heart rate into that seventy to ninety percent range for any kind of sustained time.

So my value is health, being around for the people and activities for a long time. My resolution, if you want to use that term, is to work on my aerobic fitness and how am I going to do it on three of the four days I strength train? I'm just going to do a 10 to 12 minute workout on one of the ergs. Today, one minute on, one minute off for twelve minutes. Next time I might do two by five minutes with a one minute break.

And the point isn't that I'm gonna be a a high rocks champion, certainly not with that training, but the point is that I take a lot of long walks and I'm generally active, but I don't spend much time in that middle zone. So I don't need to worry about periodizing my training. I'm not trying to be great. I'm not trying to have any outcome. I'm just literally trying to get my heart to taste what it's like to be in that range for some sustained time.

And anyone can tack on ten to twelve minutes at the end of a workout where they're already at the gym. So let's start there. And if I like it and I start to get fitter, then sure, maybe I'll do some more formal conditioning sessions. But that's really small. And I'm like six foot, two oh five, twelve percent body fat. Like I'm pretty fit.

You know, you'd think that I would shoot for the moon and say, I'm gonna do two big condition no, no, no, I'm not gonna stick to that. Like, what's the value? It's health, what's the minimum effective dose for health? It's gonna start there. I I think what you're getting at here is like Start where you're at and then go to the next logical step. And too often we start at where we want to be or like this huge big goal. And when we set the comparison point there.

Then of course our brain goes like, Oh Brad, you didn't get your 45 minutes of like high intense work today. Like, you can't handle it. And eventually you just like check out. And you know, the scientific term for this is the what the hell effect of like you miss a day, you don't complete the goal. And then your brain essentially defaults towards like, what's the point? Why try? It's like if I went down and said, you know what, I'm gonna go run a four minute mile

Today and I get through the first lap in sixty seconds and say, Oh dear God, that was really hard for me. I'm just gonna stop. Well, I set the bar too high. And we when we set the bar too high, our brain goes like, Hey, the juice isn't worth the squeeze and you're not gonna make this anyways. So just check out. This is why you get the depressing stats that Clay outlined at the beginning of people stopping in January or February or whenever because it's just too much. So start where you're at.

Go gradual. It might not be the sexy thing to post on Instagram or TikTok or Twitter.

But it's the way to accomplish your goals. I'm glad you said start where you're at, Steve, because one thing I wanted to bring up today that I heard from someone that I think is is a good idea is don't even necessarily do something new. Try to look back on the past year and identify something that you did that made you feel good and could you have some momentum on that you can just keep building off of in the new year?

Because I think if we have this idea that okay, I'm I'm a person who who walks occasionally and in the new year I'm gonna be a person who gets a results gym membership and starts going all the time. That's great. And I love that ambition.

But it's very hard to just assume that at the beginning of the year you're gonna snap your fingers and you become a different type of person who goes to the gym. And maybe you will in March or April or May, but if you just start with, okay, right now I'm walking for however many thirty minutes a day, four days a week.

Can you just stick with that and maybe up it? So once a week I'm gonna go for forty minutes. I'm gonna keep the other three sessions of thirty minutes a week or like whatever. Fill in the numbers however you want. But the idea is like to just have some momentum. coming into the year, so you're not trying to go from zero to a hundred, which is I think the giant cliff that everyone ends up falling off. I I'm gonna call this the podcast bro effect.

Because I think what you're getting at is people listen to a podcast, your hearer influencer, and they say, Oh. The best workout is if you go run four by four minute intervals or if you go on the bike and you do Tabata sprints. And then these people hear this and say, Oh, I need to go on the bike or the ski or the uh go run and do this And it's like look if you hate running, you're gonna quit.

If you hate being on the treadmill, you're gonna quit even if you're doing the most optimal workout ever defined by podcast science. Like you're not going to do it. So I think this is such an important point, right? No matter how hard I try, I might never get Brad out to go run. So he should go on the ski org and do his one minute on and off. You need to start with something you kind of enjoy. Something that you kind of already know or at least liked at some point in the past.

So the point is bridge that gap with something you enjoy because enjoyment is gonna keep that motivation going. It's gonna make you be consistent and eventually it's gonna allow you to do big things.

I also want to pick up on on something Brad you said because I I like the idea of you know, you you said one of your values is health. And to build on something else you said about starting small. I think a a useful tactic for someone who again is maybe struggling with with resolutions or changing habits. is to just pick one value or one word and have that be the filter through which they they try to change their behavior. So if you pick something like health,

All of a sudden your your resolution doesn't have to be some big thing of like walk every day for thirty minutes. It could just be today, I'm gonna think about health one time and allow it to help me like use it as a lens to make a better decision. Does that make sense? It makes a lot of sense, but I just think it's way too soft.

And what I mean by that is if you're just gonna think about health every day, that's like the person that like reads the self help book and thinks that because they read the book their life's gonna change, even though reading the book did nothing to change your life. Like you can think

You know, you can think the miracle morning every day, but if you're not actually changing what you do every morning and you're not tracking it in any way to hold yourself accountable, your life's not gonna change. Um, so I I think that yes, having one value, having one word. putting it in the front of your mind, reflecting on it every day is really helpful, but I can think about my health every day without actually getting on the skier because I don't love the skier.

So for me, what I need to say is I'm going to do ten minutes on the skierc at the end of every session. So I actually think that Especially if you have the right size kind of small step, it it's very helpful to be relatively concrete. Now there's some research that shows that you don't have to be perfect. You don't have to say I'm gonna do this ski erg six days. You could say I'm gonna do a ski erg somewhere between three and five days.

And then give yourself some flexibility. Um, that's the sweet spot. So it's uh hard and fairly, I don't want to use the word rigid, but a fairly concrete. measurable thing that's gonna hold you accountable with enough flexibility built in.

So that if you do trip up, the whole thing doesn't go by the wayside. But I really think all this comes down to is people just get hype. Like Katie Milkman calls it the fresh start effect. It's like a fresh start. So we get hype and we just try to do way too much. And I think

for the vast, vast, vast majority of people, especially if your life is already somewhat together, um, adding ten minutes on the skier to the end of your workout and maybe having like, I'm I'm not gonna have my phone with me at dinner. Like you don't really need to do much else. That's pretty good. Those are arbitrary examples. I'm not saying you have to pick those two, but like that that level of change. is much more likely to have an impact than the whole like Reinvent yourself.

'Cause the truth is it's not a new year, new you. You're you're actually the same you that you were the day before in in many ways. It takes a lot more than the the turning of uh eleven fifty nine to twelve oh one to recreate yourself.

I I think the best way to think about it for me is like the brain speaks in terms of actions and progress. So that little bit of concrete, like is the action you need to be because everything else, like new you, nebulous as hell, what does that mean? Even things like winning, what is what does that mean? Like our brain can't define winning really well. So like we need the actions. This is why every sports coach known to man says process over outcomes. Because processes are what? Actions.

And the other part of it is I think, you know, the what Brad's talking about is the too big is is progress. Like if you can't see progress, you're gonna quit. Like if you don't have those things. I I mean the way I like to think about this whole dynamic is like think of a video game, mm a one done well. Right, what do they have? They have all these little progress bars or check marks or like checkpoints or save points to keep you playing the game.

In most of the games are like in that sweet spot for most people where it's like not so easy that you don't have to try. But it's not impossible where you're gonna die fifty-five times and just give up. Or they have different level settings so that you can make progress. So I think when it comes to goals, you kinda gotta think of it like a video game, maybe an old school one that was fun and

not addicting, but you get the point. The caveat I'd add there, and I think this will be an interesting discussion'cause I don't know if you guys will agree. But is I I feel like you have to sort of treat it as a video game that

you're never gonna stop playing. And what I mean by that is I think when people start these resolutions or goals, they have this idea, like like something you often hear, right? Is this thing of like it takes sixty days to start a new habit. And what's implicit in that idea is like that you're hoping you get to the end of the work. And real habit formation or behavior change is about realizing that like you're changing your identity. And so doing this work. the process over and over again.

is is part of like a new lifestyle that you're trying to live. And so if you have this idea of like, I'm gonna get to the end of the video game, I'm gonna eventually reach a point where I don't have to keep doing this work, that's a mentality that can submarine

these efforts because it allows you to perpetuate this myth of like there is going to be a point at which I can stop doing the work. And really this is about like committing yourself to doing the work because that work is going to transform who you are because it's the value you have. I agree wholeheartedly.

I think that sometimes we think that like a habit means something's gonna become automatic, but it's never gonna become automatic, but it does become something that is a part of our lifestyle and a part of who we are, and therefore we do it with uh with more consistency and more integrity. It yeah, I th the way I like to think of it is I think you're spot on, it's not automatic, but like that pull towards doing the thing becomes stronger.

Like getting out the door and running isn't automatic, but the pull is strong because like every day I get out the door and run. Or at night, the pull to read versus like scroll on Instagram is strong because like Pretty much every day before I go to sleep, like I read a book. You know, that pull is there. So I think often we have to think of, pull gets stronger over time

I think you're right where we can't say, Hey, once it's sixty days or ninety days, it's gonna be complete. No, it never works like that. You still have those days where you wanna just lay in bed and not get out the door. I think the other part of it is like we can help that pull. by designing our environment to make it easier to get going. You're sitting here talking about a pull. And I love that. And I think that the metaphor here is gravity.

So we we all have these forces around us, pushing and pulling, right? These gravitational forces. And when you are new to something, the the gravitational force is is pulling you away from it. So I do not want to stay at the gym and do the skier. I'm being pulled away from it, right? But when you fight through that gravitational force, little by little, you just chip away at it. Eventually you start doing the skier.

And you do it for long enough and then what happens is the entire gravitational force it changes. And now if I don't do the skierg, I'm gonna feel weird and off. And the gravitational force is pulling me towards doing the ski erg. in you can design your solar system in a way to make that gravitational force pull you more towards the things that you want to do. But it takes time for that force to shift because anyone who starts training knows

That for the first couple months, the gravitational force is probably still pulling you away from training. It's it's it's hard to get going, it's easier to stay in bed, it might feel a little bit uncomfortable. But then once you're somebody that trains, If you miss more than two workouts in a day, you start to feel terrible. And that's gravity pulling you towards the training.

So I actually think what we're talking about is just shifting the the way the gravity is is pulling you. If you pay attention, you actually like you feel the gravitational force shift. And I think like that, that's what you're after: is like instead of feeling off because you are going to work out, you feel off because you didn't work out. And that's the gravity shifting.

And then again, to complete the metaphor, well gravity doesn't happen in a vacuum, it happens in a solar system. And if you can design your solar system in a way that is conducive

To gravity pulling you the way you want to go, it it helps make that transition easier. I think that is the second huge takeaway from today's episode. So the first takeaway is. Instead of being outcome based, think about being values driven. I think the second one is instead of thinking about using your own willpower to make things happen.

think about designing an environment that facilitates the behavior you want to have happen. So let's take a concrete example then a and and and try to unpack a little bit. I I think everyone wants to spend a little less time on their phone. But like use my phone less is not really a good resolution'cause it's not it's one that's very hard to s stick to. So let's talk to like how

Someone wouldn't would think about that. I think step one is recognizing that the pull of gravity of phones is so freaking strong. because they're designed to like, you know, attract us essentially. That relying on willpower just isn't gonna work. Like, it's delusional if you think that. So you have to in

Put more friction in your environment. They could be our unofficial sponsor by how much we mention them, but the brick device is great because it makes it really freaking hard to use your phone. It just does. Other things I've seen people work is like timed lockboxes, literally, where it only opens, you know, after a set amount of time. Great.

Brad's favorite, not charging your phone in your room. Put it somewhere else. The more friction you can put in between you and your phone, the better off you are. And again, if you notice, you'll start to feel those urges to be like, oh. I really should go down and walk down the stairs and go grab the phone. They're gonna start dissipating a little bit. They're still gonna be there.

Just like that urge to stay inside and not go out for the run is still gonna be there. But what you're trying to do is shift that gravity just enough so that urge isn't so strong or compelling that you always have to give into it. Listen, if you were to design your kitchen with Bojangles, McDonald's, Burger King, Arby's, Cheesecake Factory.

It would be really, really hard to eat well. Okay. Even if you're an expert on eating well, and even if you know intellectually all the reasons why you should eat well. So you don't design your kitchen like that, right? Well, your phone is essentially like a fast food restaurant that's in your pocket at all times, just serving you up junk, serving you up crap that is really freaking tasty.

And even though if you use it all the time, you start to feel like that guy that did the documentary where he only ate McDonald's for thirty days, you start to feel pretty gross. Um, you don't want to get to that point. And that's why all of these tools, whether it's a brick, whether it's a digital Sabbath, whether it's charging your phone uh in the basement.

Um, they're all about shifting your environment. I mean, I've yet to meet anyone that can carry a smartphone on them and not use it all the time. So it's one of these things. It's like it's it's actually very simple. There is no hack.

But you could turn your screen to grayscale. People talk about how much that works. You know what? It works until you adapt to the grayscale. And I'll tell you what, getting a thousand likes on an Instagram post on grayscale is every bit as exciting as on color. So you gotta just remove the thing. I heard a great metaphor recently on uh it was from James Queer, author of Atomic Habits. And not really a metaphor, but he just is talking about how

a lot of people look at professional athletes and are like, wow, they're so disciplined and obviously they are in many ways. But the point he was making was their entire lives and days Like structured. for them. Like they sh they g they have a time they have to be at the facility. Then they have meetings, they have walkthroughs, then they have lifting with the program, then they go to the

They go to the cafeteria where they eat a meal that's created by a nutritionist. And his point was that, you know, we often look at somebody like I think Kobe's probably the one that people talk about the most, right? It's like, look and he was obviously relentlessly

disciplined in some ways. But people look at someone like that and they're like, I can't you know, they have a type of discipline that I don't have. And I his point that I thought was salient was like we underestimate how much of their lives is is Because of the the container uh or environment that is created to facilitate the act of discipline and the act of doing these routines and these processes over and over again. And I think that's we don't always see that sort of

structure or we all think about it when we compare ourselves to these people and think, wow, they have such discipline and I don't. It's like they do, but they've also have it because of the environment they've created, which I thought was an interesting point. A and I think one thing that you're missing there is you're you're often part of a team that is like incentivized to have that environment. So in in college, like for example, like I'd go to bed at whatever, ten o'clock.

And guess what? My roommates would too. So it was like way easier for us to be like, Oh, it's ten o'clock, go to bed like because we gotta get up at six AM and run nine miles or what have you. Because everybody else is is doing that. Like it's a lot harder when all of your roommates are a bit like, oh, we're going to rage at this party or whatever fun thing or play video games, whatever it is, until 1 a.m. when everyone else is making the decision

It's a lot easier. And that's how those environments often are. They're not perfect. But they have that gravity where it's like not just you making these hard decisions. It's a lot of the team, especially on good teams, that are doing the same thing, which makes it easier for you to just go along as well.

Yeah, your environment isn't just your physical environment, it's also the relational environment and the people around you. I think that point that James made is great. I think that also is why it breaks down when you take people out of that rigorous environment and that system.

Um, look at where so many pro athletes tend to get themselves into trouble. It's at night when they're not a part of that system and they they go ham because they don't have those constraints. It is during the off season, it is upon retirement. Um, I think perhaps an even better example than a pro sports athlete is someone in a monastery. And for every story of incredible transformation, when someone enters a monastery, there is someone that leaves a monastery and totally blows up their life.

Because they actually weren't very disciplined. They just had a structure around them that prevented them from blowing up their life. Um so I think that yes, like you need to have agency and autonomy. And you need to try to create structures and gravitational force fields that that push you and pull you towards the the habits and the behaviors that you want and the person um that you want to be. And you're constantly tweaking that over time. Like there there's no there's no end game.

And I I think it's worth reiterating this is why sometimes resolutions are so difficult because the onus of doing the work of creating that structure, as you're saying, falls on us. It's like you don't have, you know, Kurt Signetti to to structure your day every day. You have to put in the work to go get the brick and use it.

All right, let's move to some other ones. I think the the phone one, the big lesson there is you gotta d figure out a way to design your environment to make using the phone less appealing, to try to shift the gravity to use Brad's metaphor.

Another one I think people often have is like to go back to discipline, be more disciplined or be more be more productive, stop procrastinating. And I actually am going to put on my Steve Magnus hat here and say that you should this is something you should take a physical fitness approach to. Let me explain about what I mean by that. Is you should think about it in terms of stress and adaptation. So I I think and I'm gonna speak personally, one of the reasons that it when I had a hard time like

being more productive where I was procrastinating. It was just because I would basically avoid the big thing that I had to do, the big scary task for the day. Because I didn't like the the feeling of having to sit down and actually do the work. And for a long time I beat myself up as being like, oh, you you just need to be more disciplined. You just need to like do the that task and was really sort of vague about it.

And once I change it to like, I'm gonna set a timer for twenty five to thirty minutes and do that thing first thing when I wake up in the morning for, you know, three or four days a week. That really changed it for me. And why I think it changed it is because it it was about training myself to be with that feeling of like, I don't like this feeling, but if I just set a timer and do it.

I can give myself that sort of stress and my body creates this adaptation that makes me more used to it. It's the exact same as like, Going to a track and running. intervals at a at a mile time that your body's not used to to adapt your body to that stress of running that mile time. And I think you can take something like work if you if you work creatively and use the exact same

framework here. You expose yourself to this uh specific stressor and then you get better at handling it. And so I think if you want to be more productive, procrastinate less, you you can approach it in that physical fitness framing. I'm trying to think of a way to connect it to the gravity metaphor too. And I think um the the physicists that listen to this podcast are probably gonna call me out, but it's almost like for for those types of behaviors, there's this resistance.

That you have to break through. And then once you break through the resistance, like you get like in the warp. I'm thinking on like Star Trek when they like shoot for those black holes. Like you gotta like really like buckle up and fasten and like it's gonna be like really hard and uncomfortable to break through the black hole.

But then once you face that resistance, and that resistance can be the warm-up at the track, it can be your first fifteen minutes writing, it can be pulling up the PowerPoint deck that you've been putting off working on or the difficult conversation you don't want to have. But once you buckle up and you go through the shake.

Then once you're in the black hole, you actually get propelled forward. Um, but that doesn't happen unless you face the initial resistance. And um again, like that doesn't get easier. You just learn to expect it and you get better at facing. Warp nine engage, folks. Let's go. The other way to bring it from Star Trek to, you know, athletics, the way I often look at this is like if I'm going down to the track and I'm running four hundred meter repeats.

Even if I'm warmed up, the first repeat often kind of sucks. And then you get into the second one and you're like, Oh, this isn't it's still hard, but it's not as bad. Same with other stuff. I love the stopwatch stuff, you know, often with my own writing or like something that's I'm procrastinating on me. I'll just treat it like intervals, like you said, and I'll be like literally, all right, first interval, let's hit the split.

And sometimes that interval could only be ten minutes, and then I'll take a little bit of break, but I'll define it and be like, Okay, I made it ten minutes, whoo, got through that one, ninety second break, and then we'll go back and do another ten minutes or fifteen or what have you. And just that mindset again gets you in the groove of of going for it. And then the other part I put on here is like.

Often when it comes to procrastination, we make the same mistake we do with goals, which is like thinking we need to eliminate all of it. And if we're not super optimized productivity, bro, then like we're a failure. Instead of accepting that. We're all gonna procrastinate. We just wanna keep it at a level that's like manageable. And then sometimes like you know, maybe good procrastination. Like going for a walk outside or walking the dog.

is better than scrolling on TikTok or whatever have you. So maybe one of the goals is like, hey, I'm gonna procrastinate, but I'm I'm gonna procrastinate well. Let's make let's make it not god awful procrastination. Yeah, and then don't and then along with that, Steve, I think like don't let a bad day turn into a bad week and don't let a bad week turn into a bad month.

Um, and I think that that is something that elite performers are really good at. It's not that they don't have bad days, but then they don't spiral and catastrophize and let that bad day bleed over into the next couple of days. And then when they have a shitty week, they don't let that shitty week spiral and bleed over and affect the rest of the month. So it's like, you know, when when to t to keep the running metaphor begrudgingly, when you have a bad workout

That's the end of the workout. Like you don't have to ruminate about it. You don't have to take it into tomorrow's workout. It's just done. And and this is this is the coaching hat I'm gonna put on is one of the tricks of the trade of coaching is like when you see that bad workout or bad couple workouts. What do you do?

You say, you know what? I know little Johnny and Susie, they love this other type of workout and they always show up for it. So I'm gonna give'em their favorite workout. And what have you done? Most likely set them up for feeling pretty good about something. They get out of that rut, they keep going. So similar if you're in that rut when you're writing or working, like whatever makes you feel good that you look forward to, like do that thing. And often that will kind of get you out of that rut.

All right, let's finish off by talking about the biggest one. I I people who listen to this podcast uh probably don't have as much problem with this, but people are like, I want to move more, I wanna go to the gym, I wanna lose weight, I wanna walk ten thousand steps a day. That is the one that I think people Fall off the most. What are some more effective strategies here? There, why are those ineffective? Why do they usually not work? What do you think?

So we're talking about health health health and fitness. Exercise, yeah. Exercise. Yeah. Yeah. I think that um it's because people pick things that they they don't enjoy doing and they do them in environments that they don't enjoy doing them in. And I really think it's that simple. So um let's say that you don't enjoy running at all and you get chin splints and compartment syndrome like me and it hurts, well then picking a running goal for your aerobic health is really stupid.

You should have a cycling goal. Or a hiking goal, or a skier goal, or a rowing goal. Okay, that's problem one. Problem two is it's all just really hard. And we can sit here and say you should like it and yeah, you like it, but you know what? If you're not doing it, it's gonna be really hard. So you know what makes it easier? Don't do it alone.

It's a lot easier to sit on a treadmill uh next to two people than it is alone. And it's even easier to go meet the girls for the running group on Sunday at the cafe and in run as a unit. Um, so I really think it's like Find something that you're gonna enjoy and realize that it's still gonna be hard, especially if you're new to it and you know what makes a hard thing easier, is doing it in a good community.

And if you don't have access to community because um of where you live or because your schedule is just impossible, then do the next closest thing, which is some sort of virtual community. So get on a text thread with people that do it. Uh find an online group that can be supportive of this. Um, but I really think again, for listeners of our podcast, I don't wanna get ourselves in trouble. I'm sure that we have a diverse group of listeners, but I suspect that the majority of our listeners

can afford to train somewhere with other people. And afford that, I mean, financially and also from a time and energy standpoint. So if it's important if you truly can't, then that's really hard. And then you have to look for these more uh downstream kind of virtual connections. But if you're not in that boat, then just make it a priority and you'll do it.

Yeah, the only thing I'd add is I think there's a lot of terrible advice on movement, exercise and health out there that makes it where people don't want to do it. We often get sold these like get quick rich schemes with exercise. If someone told me, hey, Steve, you should go do interval training five days a week. Look, I've done a hell of a lot of interval training in my life, but if you told me five days a week, I'd be like, nope, not gonna do it. Because it would suck.

Because every day if I worked out and be like, Man, I'm gonna have to go pretty hard today. It's gonna suck again today and I didn't have those nice, enjoyable runs where g I could have a full conversation or jam out to my Elsa music with my girls. I wouldn't do it. So the point is like

Some of that exercise and movement should feel easy. And as you get going, a good amount or almost all of it should feel relatively easy or moderately uncomfortable at best, right? You don't have to go ham to get results. Over time, as you get fitter, guess what? That affords more opportunities to challenge yourself in different ways. Right.

And you can look forward to that challenge. So build the foundation where you can enjoy some of those challenges and B, get more adaptations out of it. So I think when it comes to exercise and fitness. A lot of where we go wrong is because we listen to really bad advice instead of just like starting where we're at.

That is a a good message to end on. I think sixty thousand foot view here, big summary. And if you think you've behaved changed, healthier habits, resolutions, think values driven and process focused over outcome oriented. Think about designing your environment to facilitate the behavior you want rather than just using your willpower. Start small or give yourself slip ups.

So that a bad morning doesn't become a bad day, doesn't become a bad week, doesn't become a bad month. You're allowed to mess up, it's not become a pattern. I think that sums it up. Happy New Year. Thank you for listening to this episode today. Thank you for being in our community. week. If you enjoyed something in here, if you found something useful, you think someone else will find it useful, as we are all

rounding the corner into this new year, please send it to two or three people you think will enjoy hearing this podcast. We'll be back next week with another episode. Until then, as always, take care of yourselves and be excellent to one another.