Mini Episode- Small Changes

about the idea of habits. I want to talk about breaking these habits down into really small steps, and I want to talk about the idea of a keystone habit. So for most of us, there's something that we want to accomplish in life. We maybe want to get in better shape, we want to write a book, we want to learn to play guitar, we want to start our

own business, whatever those things are. We want to take up a meditation practice, and usually there is a big space between where we are and where we would like to be. And part of the problem that I see a lot of us run into is we try and get from A all the way to Z without going through b. C. You know that you know you're alphabet. What I work on a lot with. You know, a lot of the people that I've been working with and frankly in my own life, is breaking things down into

really small habits. So we've talked in the past about find something, take whatever the piece of work you have in front of you, and break it down to the

smallest possible increment you can and work on it. And so a lot of times I've been working with some people who are like who we talked about exercising for two minutes or five minutes a day, And what happens is they they get started, and then their brain tells them that there's no point, that two minutes a day or five minutes a day doesn't matter, and then they

get stopped. They don't do it. And the thing that's important to understand there is that, in the grand scheme of things, no, two minutes of exercises not going to make you an incredibly healthy person. But that's not the

important thing right now. The important thing is to build the muscle of doing something on a consistent and regular basis, and build the muscle of doing the things that we say we're going to do, because for a lot of us, we are very much in the habit of making promises to ourselves, talking about what we're going to do and then starting it and quitting very quickly or never getting started. Um, and so we I think over time we tend to

build up a we don't really trust ourselves. We it's pretty easy for us just go oh I started that, it's something else. I I quit a lot of I hear a lot of people like, oh, I'm just not the kind of person that finishes things, or I'm not I'm not a motivated person. And I think that those things are not in built. So, you know, being a motivated person or a person that doesn't finish things is

not a personality trait. I think it's something that's been learned if we if we think about the idea we've talked about on the show before between the fixed mindset and the growth mindset, you know, the fixed minds it says, I'm just not a motivated person. The growth mindset says, well, I could be motivated if I work at it. And I think that for most of us, if we look, we can find some time in our life where we were motivated or we finished something, and so we want

to build from those things. The idea of a keystone habit is that if you can make a change in a habit, a small habit, and make it stick, it becomes sort of the keystone that lets you know that

you can do that with bigger things. And our interview with Tony Stubble behind he talked about a guy who quit smoking using the lift application or the coach dot me application, and when he was talking to Tony later, he was like, well, he learned to do it with smoking, and so now I'm traveling the world and I'm learning other languages, and the smoking was just the first step. He learned that he was able to make a decision,

take action on it, and see it through. Once he was able to do that in one area of his life, he was able to expand it out to the other areas of his life. So that's why often I will encourage us to do things that seem stupid small, but to get in the habit of doing it every day. Begin to build that muscle, and we start to have trust in ourselves and we can build from there. So, if there's something that you're wanting to change and you're finding it hard, if you've been saying you're gonna take

up a meditation practice, and you don't do it. You keep finding that you start, you're gonna meditate every day for twenty minutes, and you do it one day, then you do it, you forget for a few days, and then you do it another day. I would really encourage you to look at meditating for three minutes a day or five minutes a day, but become really committed to

getting it done every single day. The thing that you will also find though, as you work on this, is that you may not do it every single day at first. And so the other inclination we have to watch out for is the all or nothing or the screw it syndrome, which is I didn't meditate today, so forget it and you just quit entirely, versus going all right, I missed yesterday, I'm back on today, as James clear said, never missed twice.

So to sum up, if you're having trouble making some of these behavioral changes or working with your habits, the first thing to remember is that's not who you are. You are not a person who is inherently bad at those things. You may just not have much success with it so far. You may not have the proper tools, the proper resources, or the proper approach. So that's the thing. One you can change. Secondly is break it down again

as small as you can. It is far better to start really, really small than it is to start larger and fail, so you're much better off with doing it consistently in very small doses. You can build from that and that idea of a keystone habit or momentum that allows you to take those small changes and turn them

into bigger changes over time. If you need any additional accountability or support or help with these things, send an email to Eric at one you feed dot net and we can talk about some of the one on one work that I'm doing. Thanks for listening. New episod sew it out Tuesday. We'll talk again soon. Alright, bye,