Ep. 4 How making Habits Stupid Easy can Change your Whole Life!

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it all began in the deserts of Cairo, Egypt. Then a year later, everything culminated in that same desert, and those two desert experiences help Lisa get out of the dry desert of her life. A that point. Quit smoking and drinking, get out from under $10,000 of credit card debt, lose £60 maintain a steady job at a graphic design firm. Buy a house, get her master's and get engaged. So how could one person accomplished so much when so many of us struggled to accomplish? Is one of the things on that list. While she unknowingly leverage the power of a keystone habit, How does our definition of success shape how we live for daily life? Join me your host, Michael Bellman, as we create a life of success by exploring the cutting edge research and happy motivation. Psychology, Philosophy. Welcome to thrive, culture, success engine. This story is how Charles died. He begins his book, The Power of Habit, which is all about how the cumulative effect of how our habits dictate the majority of her day, and even how a change in our habits can change our entire life. So back to the story about Lisa. It was dark. She was jet legged, and all she wanted was a cigarette. She had come to Cairo to escape her crumbling life and the fact that she was getting a divorce because her husband had left her for another woman. She had spent the last four months crying, binge eating, unable to see stuck in depression and anger as she let her cigarette. She began to smell burning plastic and realized in your confusion. She was trying to let a pen, not a cigarette. This finally just broker, and the wave of sadness just consumed her. She couldn't even smoke right. She was so desperate as she gazed out at the vast, endless desert around her on the way to the pyramids. Later that morning, Ah, thought came to her head. She needed a goal. She needed something that she could hold on to and work towards. So she decided she would come back to Egypt a year later and trek through the desert. She realized if she was to do this, she had to quit smoking. Her goal changed to a conviction, and his conviction changed a necessity. This conviction began to radiate out into all the other areas of her life of the next six months. As she replaced cigarette smoking with jogging, which changed how she ate and worked and slept and save money and scheduled her work days, she began running half marathons and even full marathons. She goes back to school, gets her master's, pays off all her debt, buys a house and gets engaged. This story shows the power of a decision, but also the power and the cumulative effect of habits. Charles Duhigg mentions a paper that was actually published by a Duke University professor in 2006 which found that more than 40% of the actions that people performed each day weren't actual decisions but habits. That's a very high percentage. So if we learn how to change our habits, we learn how to change our days, which in turn cumulatively change our life. In his book Atomic Habits. James Clear actually is a very similar process, and I would highly, highly highly recommend this book to anyone that's looking to change their habits. It is so full of powerful exercises, powerful strategies that you can use to totally transform your life. I would highly highly recommend it. I'll put a link down in the show notes so that you can get a hold of this book and read what it has to say, he says. Success is the product of our daily habits, not a once in lifetime transformation. And the outcomes that we want to achieve in our life are actually a lagging measure of the habits that we have. So our net worth is a lagging measure of our financial habits. Our weight is are lagging measure of our eating habits. Our knowledge is a lagging measure of our learning habits. The letter that we have in our house is a lagging measure of our cleaning habits, so we get what we repeat. He makes a very important point about how goals of the results that we want to achieve while systems are about the processes that lead to those results. So we're actually looking. How can we create a success system? How can we create systems that automatically lead to our success in those different areas of our life? And as mentioned in the title of his book, It's called Atomic Habits. And so he defines this as a little habit that's part of a larger system. Justice have Adams of the building blocks of molecules. Atomic habits are the building blocks of remarkable results. So even in if we take it back to the first episode where we talked about that Adam, you know the center again you have the nucleus, which is success in the life that we're looking at orbiting around. You have the six different areas of life. You have those values that tie those areas to success, and that is a whole. Onley works to build molecules and to build the rest of our life as the foundation of a habit so that Adam on Lee works together to build the molecules as habits. So he breaks down behavioral change into three different areas, which he describes as three consent to concentric circles. And in the outside circle on the outside ring, you have a change in your outcomes. Then the middle ring is a change in your processes, and the inner ring is a change in our identity. And interestingly enough, this is a direct parallel to the golden circle that Simon cynic talks about in his book, Start with Why he describes the outer ring as the what or the outcome the middle ring as the how or the processes and the inner ring as the why or your identity. And this is the key that he emphasizes where all high performing individuals or very successful companies they start from the inside out. They work from your identity out to the how out to the what? Where a lot of other companies and individuals work the other way around to start from your what, then maybe think about your how and rarely think about your Why. So in relationship to goals, James Clear talks all the most effective way to actually change your habits is the focus not on what you want to achieve, but on who you wish to become. So a very important part of this, you know, success engineering process is you have thio, I think about what person would I have to be in order to do these habits consistently that create the life that I want 1/2 their agenda? The emergence out of those habits, every action is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. James talks about how there's four laws of behavioral change. This is essentially the filter through which we can run. All of the goals of the habits were wanting to start. The first law is how can you make it obvious or visible? The 2nd 1 is How can you make it attractive? Something that you want to dio. The 3rd 1 is How can you make it easy? And the 4th 1 is How can you make it satisfy? James says the ultimate purpose of habits is to solve the problems of life with us little energy and effort as possible. That's actually just such a good definition, because if we think about habits like that were actually looking at him and going, how can I spend the least amount of energy, the least amount of effort to accomplish what I want? The just the aspect of asking that question reframes how we think and how we approach everything. Typically, when we think about making these behavioral changes, they're very overwhelming, and they almost seem impossible, especially when we're started. So the purpose of habits is to break that impossibility quote unquote down into the smallest little steps that we feel very confident that we can take which allows us to regress towards those goals so any habit can actually be broken down into a feedback loop with four different steps in it. So the 1st 1 is the cue, So this is also known as the trigger. It's something in your environment or your emotions that trigger you know, you to do a certain action, and then you have the craving. So you have this cue that triggers some sort of creating inside of you. You have a response to that creating and the reward that you get from that response. This is very, very important. And we'll go into a lot of depth on how our environment shapes our entire life and how we can actually shift our environment to take out Ah, lot of temptation around these things that were wanting to make a change in. And that is all about that. Q. How can we shift the environment to make a change? That's what we talked about in the next episode, you know, because that produces that craving, which is again kind of those emotions, and we'll talk about that couple episodes down the road. What we can do with those emotions that actually fuel. Ah, the actions that we take our response to him and then the rewards and took Any of our actions are reinforced by getting a pleasure response from what we d'oh. So how can we replace those habits that may be detrimental, or maybe negative to our towards our health with ones that contribute positively but still produce that pleasure or that reward? And so one of the ways that we can make you know these habits obvious or for that first law is a tool called habit stacking. And this is an incredibly powerful way that we can tie habits that were wanting into implement into habits that we already have and habits can be anything that we do just consistently. So it could be something like brushing your teeth would be something like eating breakfast, eating lunch or any transitions that we have from home to the car, from the car to work. There's also great ways to, you know, tag these habits on so that we have it's stacking works is after I do a current habit. So again that could be anything from getting into the car to go to the work. I will do this new habit. So in that situation might be set my intention for the work day, or view the things that I need to get done that day in the two most common cues that we have for habit stacking or time and location. So in our day, we have very specific times, typically where things happen, whether that's again lunch, you know, dinner things we do in the afternoon transitions from work, you know, and that's the location aspect of it. You know, when we transition from one location to another, you know are also these things that we can use to stack these other habits on. You can use what's called an implementation intention, which, if you remember, is actually one of the parts of the woop technique we talked about in the last episode. And this is a strategy that you compare a new habit with a specific time and location. So there's an implementation intention is I will, you know, do this certain behavior at this time in this location again, it's removing that decision making process, which is the foundation of what a habit ISS and then the second law of behavioral change is making it attractive habits are a dopamine driven feedback loop. So when the dopamine rises, so does our motivation to act. And dopamine is correspond with the pleasure that we feel. So we have to associate the habits that we're doing with a pleasurable, you know, a pleasurable feeling. And this is where we can leverage the power of temptation bundling. So temptation Bond bundling is a way that we can actually make these habits attractive. So you pair the action that you actually want to dio with an action that you need to D'oh. So this is, for instance, let's say you are not a big fan of exercising or going to the gym, but you love, you know, watching TV or listening to audio books. You can actually pair that action that you enjoy doing with the exercise. So, you know, you could say something like, I'm not gonna watch, you know, TV unless I'm on an exercise bike, you know, or I'm at the gym. Watching it on the TV is that they have there, or you could do the same thing with your audio books. The things that you're listening to, this gives your brain something to look forward to it. Actually, being he begins to associate that action with something pleasurable, it's something you look forward to it, something that you enjoy, something that you want to dio and that takes out that negative association or that pain that's typically associated with that action. The third Behavioral Change Law is all about how we can make it easy as easy as possible on this one's really, really important. Steven Guys, in his book called Mini Habits, talks about the five biggest factors that actually deplete our willpower or a self control. Our effort, when we're putting Ford a lot of effort into something, the perceived difficulty that we have around it. So if we see it as something very difficult or less likely to do it, the negative emotions or negative affect that we have around it, subjective fatigue, if we just are tired in general and our blood glucose levels, so actually even on aspect of nutrition is incorporated into that as well. So when we're looking at habits, you have to factor in, how can we create something that's so easy that doesn't take a lot of effort, doesn't have a lot of perceived difficulty around it. We don't have a lot of negative emotions surrounding it were not overall tired and ideally trying to make regulator blood glucose levels. And this is, you know, some of that has to do with the temptation bundling. We just talked about that effects that negative affect, you know, the perceived difficulty. This is where we need to make it as easy as possible. And he talks about his many habits, which is very similar to the atomic habits, is force yourself to take one, 24 stupid small strategic actions every day. This is, in contrast, toe how we typically approach our goal. So let's say, for instance, it's the start of the year, you know, and you want to go. Hey, I'm gonna lose £30. So how you gonna do that? I want to go to the gym five times a week. You don't really analyze how much time investment that will cost you. Maybe it's 15 minutes to get into your car, you know, to change, to drive. There is maybe another 20 minutes. You know, you work out for an hour, you have a similar amount of time on the end So you're looking at a on hour and 1/2 2 maybe even two hours of your day. Thio consistently get to the gym. You have to analyze. Do you actually have that time? And that can also feel very daunting. You have this goal of going to the gym five times a week. Maybe you make it three times a week. But you still beat yourself up because you know I didn't make it five times a week. So this making these goals as easy and as small as possible is the reverse of that. That actually leverages off of success, and it leverages off a building momentum. So, for instance, in the book Atomic Habits, James Clear talks about the two minute roll. And what this rule is is when you start a new habit, it should take less than two minutes to dio what this looks like. So let's say you're wanting to go to the gym. You break that habit down to something where the habit that you're actually looking at might be. When you need to go to the gym, you just go and get your car keys and go and sit in your car. and you start with building that as your habit again. You think that's almost too easy. And that's where you know when you have that sweet spot. If having your building is not going to the gym five times in the week, if the habit your building is, you know when I need to go to the gym, I'm just gonna get my car keys and go and turn my car on. That is a totally different story. That's where you actually feel confident. The question that you need to ask yourself is on a scale of 1 to 10. How confident am I that I can achieve this goal on the busiest, most stressful week that I have? If you're not a nine or a 10 on the confidence scale, the chances are you will probably not do that gold consistently. So you want to break that gold down into the smallest possible component where you feel like you are a nine or 10 year, almost 100% confident that regardless of what's going on in your life, you could do that, Habit says, like putting out your exercise clothes. You know the night before takes about two minutes to d'oh! It's something that you're not even looking at the work out. At that point, you're just going. This helps me set me up for success. James talks about. The more you ritual lies the beginning of a process, the more likely it becomes that you can slip into the state of deep focus that is required to do those great things. So it's all about how can I develop a ritual or a habit around the beginning of the process? That's the two minute rule. James goes on to talk about the cardinal rule of behavioral change, and this is so important. The cardinal rule is what is immediately rewarded is repeated, and what is immediately punished is avoided. And we'll go into a lot more depth on this a couple episodes later because this is so important. We think that our rational, logical part of our brain actually dictates, you know, making you know decisions and taking action. But farm or often it's actually our emotional part of our brain that actually dick states our actions and our habitual response is so we're gonna go into this a lot more depth later on. So the 1st 3 laws of the behavioral change. You're making it obvious you make it visible, make it attractive and make it easy. Those increase the odds that the behavior will be performed the first time the fourth law of behavior make it satisfying actually increases the odds that behavior will be repeated the next time. And this is all about developing a system of accountability or tracking around that goal. And we'll go into this again in a lot of depth in a later episode, all about our social accountability or just how we can track toe hold ourselves accountable to this goal. You know, it could be a simple as just putting X's on the calendar. If you accomplish the habit or there's tons of havoc tracker APS that you can, you know, use for this again, I cannot recommend highly enough the atomic habits by James Clear and THE Power of Habit by Charles Dominique. They are incredible books with incredible tools that we can implement. Thio engineer our success. To sum it up, we talked about how we can actually create a system for success by leveraging these atomic habits or the habits that are so easy for us to d'oh. We also talked about how one of the most effective ways to change our habits is to focus not on what we want to achieve, but on who we wish to become, which is mirrored exactly by Simon Cynics Golden Circle The what the how and the why. We also talked about the four laws of behavioral change making. It is obvious or, as visible as possible, the power of habit stacking or pairing the habit. You're wanting to start with a pre existing one that you already have the second law making it attractive. And this is that temptation bundling or pairing the habit with something you really enjoy than the third Behavioral Law of making it easy, making it as easy as possible and the two minute rule that goes along with that, which is creating the habit around something that takes less than two minutes. So is the very, very start of the routine and creating a habit around that and then that last rule is making it satisfying, which is about tracking and accountability to create that sense of accomplishment. So in the next four episodes, we're gonna break down exactly how you can engineer your environment to create your success, how you can leverage the power of tribes, accountability that people around you to achieve your goals howto optimally Use your time to maintain your success. And finally, how to overcome the emotions of fear and resistance Toe. Actually build your momentum. I hope to see you back for another episode of Thrive Culture Success Engineering with your host, Michael Baumann. If you enjoy this show, it would mean a lot if you left a rating and review wherever you get your podcasts. It really does help people find the show until next time. Thank you for listening.