Tony Stubblebine

We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf m Thanks for joining us. Our guest today is Tony stubble Bind CEO and co founder of lift or as it's now called Coach Got Me Coach dot me as an app that helps you achieve any goal,

change any habit, or build any expertise. Here's the interview. Hi Tony, Welcome to the show. Eric, Thanks for having me. Yeah, I'm really glad to get you on and talk through some of the concepts that are behind your app, which you're now calling coach dot me that I know is Lift and I'm a longtime Lift user, so maybe we'll get into that a little bit. So I'd like to start off, like we always do, with the parable. There's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson and he says,

in life, there are two wolves inside of us. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second. He looks up with his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you how that parable applies to yourself in your life and in

the work that you do. Well. I just I definitely know professionally, nobody starts a company like mine unless they've seen both sides, unless they've had both wolves. And I think of just my entire career has been has been a search for work that felt more gratifying, and at first I thought, well, I should take the job that gives me the most money. And then I had that job,

but it was it wasn't intellectually satisfying. So I went to find a job that I thought was the most interesting, but then I found that it wasn't like a particularly well run company. I didn't feel like my contributions were having any impact. So then I started to work for startups, and I mean that just't even got worse because most startups fail in spectacular fashion. And I thought, well, okay,

what if I to it myself? And so I started accompany for myself, and my entire thought process for the first three years of running that company was like, I have to prove that I can make this company a success. And then I got into year four and it was profitable and I had a team that was running it on my behalf and I had maybe only a day a week of work to really keep it running. And so I got to examine, well, is this what I want to do with the rest of my life? Do

I want a life of leisure? Didn't really feel like that was great work out for me. Do I want to recommit to this first company? No? And so I really like I had to then say, well, what is my life's mission? Because I just achieved what I wanted to do it do and it wasn't as gratisfying as I hoped. And so for me, the answer was obvious. I've just always been interested in, you know, what is

the difference between um, mediocrity and excellence? And I think all of us have a mediocre version of ourselves and all of us have an excellent version of ourselves. And you know it's kind of uh like good news bad news, the the excellent version of yourself doesn't happen accidentally. Yeah,

and so tell us a little. So you went on to found UM, you went on to found Lift, which is a which now you call Coached at Me, which is really about how do people build good habits and how do they how do they transform their life via the habits that they have. Would that be a an

accurate summation. Yeah. We changed our name just recently for the new year to coach dot me because we wanted to take a really active role in helping people achieve their goals, any goals, and so, uh, you know, probably the best way to describe that, or the way and to think of it is that it's the community of people coaching each other and people in the community are trying to achieve practically every goal that you've ever heard of.

So something really popular like the paleo diet or training for a triathlon, those goals are matched by people who are learning to meditate who or who are who are exploring gratitude practices. So really the poll gamot, Yeah, there's there's a lot out there. Let's talk about some of the some of the underlying principles that you used when you originally built the application, and let's talk about, you know, for lack of a better word, the science of behavior

changer of habits. You use something that you refer to a lot called the fog behavior model b M A T. Can we talk through what that is and then how that ties into what you've done at lift? Yeah right, I'm sorry, I keep calling it the old name. You gotta give me some time year. It's only like January twenty and I've got years of calling it the old thing. It's fair. We have a jar and people in the company's here up all the time like eight dollars. We'll let you slide. But uh, you know, a name change

is tricky that way. Uh, when we started the company, we were doing a lot of research into behavior design is what we'd call it, sort of the science of behavior design. And one of the people that I liked the most as a professor at Stanford B J. Fogg, who runs um a behavior design lab down at Stanford. And what I liked about him is that he created frameworks for thinking about behavior design that we're really simple. And in fact I took a course from him. We're

part of the courses. They teach you how to teach his B. Matt model in two minutes or less, and so like I actually was able to like walk around and teach other people what he had taught me. And

I think that's the mar of a good teacher. And his you know, his realization is that probably one of his biggest or most influential is that when you think, well why am I not succeeding or why especially when you judge someone else and you say, well, why are they not succeeding, the first thing you think is, well, they're not motivated. They're lazy and not motivated. But actually there's almost always three factors and at play, and a

lot of times were over focused on motivation. So the three factors would be motivation, Yes, ability, you know, it's sort of like you can't bloss if you don't own floss, right, that's an ability thing, not a motivation thing. Uh. And then the third trigger, so if it doesn't occur to you, then you're not going to do it and um. And so as you design for an intervention with yourself or with someone else, you kind of evaluate where they are, you know, on that on that curve, do they have

enough motivation? If they do, then it's an ability issue. And a great example. Like great examples I would say are like smoking. Most people know that smoking is unhealthy, and in fact, most people who are smokers, many people who are smokers, would want to give it up. It's not a motivation issue. It's that smoking is addictive, and so it's actually really hard to give up. On the flip side, your dentist tells you to floss every time

you see you go in for a visit. Uh. Flossing is trivial, it's super easy, but it's not super fun, it's not super exciting. You might not be really that motivated to be a floss er. And so what your dentist is always trying to do is like actually make a coherent sales pitch for why you should should floss because your dentist is identified that well, he's handed you free floss every single time you've ever gone in for

a visit. So it's not an ability issue. Like you know, my high genis actually has made floss in front of her and um uh. And so it's clearly a motivational issue. Is that this is going to be an embarrassing admission. But that regular floss caused me all kinds of trouble. But when they've got that new kind, it's like you you know, the little floss er things. I turned into a flossher overnight. So I think that points to at

least in my case, I need to with the ability. Yes, I'm I imagine most of our listeners and the rest of the world will be like you, which is yes, anybody can floss, but in my case there might be might be more to it, you know, but it's a great example. Then even I am a little bit over focused on motivation when it comes to flossom, and like we all do that, and you know, whatever a person's motivation is, you can do more. You can often make the habit or the goal easy enough that it will

work with that level of motivation. And you know, the thing is, we're not trying to rehabilitate criminals here, right, We're almost always working with people that have some level level of motivation, right, even if that motivation seems seems intermittent. So to take this this model is to say that we need to make sure that we have enough of the motivation, the ability, and then we are reminded to do it or not do it often enough that we that that stays front of mind uns up at the

right times. It is. You know, when we designed the app, we we were looking at all three and so, Like, motivation could be coming from the community. They're cheering you on, or you're seeing your progress and you're attached to that progress. Right. Ability can come really from again the community, who are there to answer your questions like what is the best way to do this? What is the easiest way to do this? How do I get started? I'm having this trouble?

What do I do about it? Right? Like, all of those are questions that trip you up. And uh, then now with the switch to coach to me, we actually have personal coaches who you can hire for fifteen dollars a week who are like dedicated to giving you that information and helping you make your goal as easy to achieve as possible. And that's an ability tactic. And then

we have reminders. So you set a reminder and it pops up on your phone and you think, oh, right, I had decided that I was going to go to the gym, or I had decided that I was going to go somewhere different for launch. That's healthier, right, Like a lot of times you make this decision the day before and then you forget about it, and it's just you know, the issue is don't let yourself forget right. So the trigger is that reminder. Um, I think there's others.

So as far as the app, it's the reminder. I think in other aspects of life, I've heard of triggers being things like, um, leave your shoes by the front door, or do these things that make you almost you know, run in to what is you set out to do. Right, that's a good way of kind of physically designing your space in order to trigger the behavior. Um. And at one I do like I try and drink a fair

amount of water during the day. So my actual habit is refill my water bottle when I get to my desk, right, Like, that's the actual thing I need to do. Once I've done that, I'm triggered to drink water all day. Um now I have a question for you, if that's okay here as a long time user. Uh, we've built the app initially in this very really direct kind of operating conditioning way. Is that how a psychologists would say there's

a positive reinforcement with all this other stuff. But as we've talked to people, we see the other side of positive psychology, which is about belief and mindset change. So there's a different Stanford professor Carol Dweck who wrote really influential work on UH on how your mind set effects your performance. So a lot of sort of two two common mindsets, one a growth mindset and another fixed mindset. Some people believe they were born as smart as they are,

and other people believed that they worked for it. People who believe that they worked for it, I like also see sort of the corollary that they want to be smarter, if they want to be more successful, all they have to do is put in more work and uh and they do and uh. So that's an interesting observation. But my favorite thing about her research was that she found

that people were flexible in this mindset. So the most famous of the studies was in taking high school kids and taking like a group of them and giving a module a lesson like twelve hours total on how people achieve goals through work and practice. And the kids who happen to have had that module tested higher for the like remaining four years of high school. So we're like, amazing, right, yeah,

can you learn that mindset? And uh? And That's what I've run into with a lot of my peers and coaching is that they come into it thinking, well, I might be really direct, but then what they find is that their biggest success stories were almost epiphany like or um, you know, we're definitely mindset related. And the one, the one story I think about a lot from my from our community, sky Robin he writes in and he said,

you know your app is so great. He you know, it helped me pick up a low carb lunch habit and now I lost ten ten pounds, So thank you for that. And now that I've lost this weight, I'm using you guys to learn Italian and Vietnamese and um, because I want to travel the world. And I was like, well, first of all, thing few, Second of all, what did losing ten pounds have to do with traveling the world? Right?

If so, it's just he had he was stuck because he thought he was stuck, and then he had some small success or may I wouldn't consider ten pounds a small success, but in the overall like scheme of his life, the ten pounds isn't going to be nearly as important to him as this year of travel. And so it does. He had this little success and then became a block thought of himself as a completely different person as traveling the world, and like, what did we have to do

with that? Or what did be J Fox B Matt model have to do with that? I see how it helped the the low carb lunch habit, but I think that there's something much more magical that's going on around belief change, in surrounding yourself by people who are succeeding. Yeah,

I think that's true. And I think that if we have a habit of letting ourselves down and building habits, right, which I certainly have a you know it points in my life, a long history of that, I'm going to do this, and I do it for a day, a week, to whatever, and then I quit. And then a period later I go, I'm going to do this, and then I start and then I quit. Um. That takes a toll on It really does put It tends to put us more into that fixed mindset like, well, look, I've

tried this and it didn't work. Oh I tried this and it didn't work. So I must just be the kind of person that can't do it, or that I don't have the willpower. And I think that the power of successfully building a habit, at least for me at different points, has been the belief that, oh, all right, now I can take what I learned, and so not only a do I now have a little bit more

belief in myself and confidence. Now I actually also have some um experience to draw on, some skill to draw and of like, okay, well remember when I was trying to lose ten pounds and I ran into that problem. Okay, now I know what to do with that a little bit more. And a lot of times I think the failures feel more visible to us. It's almost like all we do is fail, So my bother even though it's you know, the the flip side. The other way to

frame that should be incredibly obvious. Right, we're not children anymore. What happened? Right? How did we go from naive, ignorant like you know, not that smarter educated children to adults? Right? We learned something along the way. So clearly we're capable of change and um, but I think we get caught up in seeing all the ways that you know that

we have have failed. Well, what I love about both you know Carol's work and we're actually we have Carol coming on the show in the neture, which I'm excited about. Can I can I be like in the background, sure, yeah, she's wonderful. UM. So I think the combination of so that mindset. The other piece then is the recognition that there is that there is a way, there are ways

to change your behavior that um, that work. And and so I think in a lot of cases it's that recognition like oh, I don't have instead of I'm a failure, I didn't do this, it's an I don't I don't have, um that I don't have that ability yet, you know, I don't have that skill, I don't have that knowledge

of how to do it. And I think that's the other big pieces what I love about that that model or and there's you know, there's other similar ones out there, but that general idea that in order to the stuff is hard first, there's a reason why everybody struggles with it, and that there are ways to approach it that are much more effective than others. You know, when we actually get to coach people, we really see how people trip

over where they want to be. That it's they have this idea that they want to be perfect tomorrow, and so they try and be perfect tomorrow, and then they trip up over that. That's another good B. J. Fog concept idea of a tiny habit. Yeah, I actually I sort of feel the way he explains that makes such sense. But I'll preface this by saying I find it almost un American in that it's so patronizing. Right, But his canonical example is that don't start with a blossom habit.

Start with a loss one tooth habit. And if you can floss one two, then tomorrow you can ploss two teeth and eventually your floss your whole mouth. But if on day one you floss all your teeth and you hate it, then you're not gonna come back for day two, And of course it's un American, because I mean, this is a more is better country and uh and why would we want to do a tiny habit when we want to do you know, when our goal is to do a massive habit. But it's what it is is

about building momentum. And I am more likely to use the word momentum there because everyone wants momentum. And so the big thing is can you do this five days in a row? Can you do this eleven days in a row. That's actually when we see the failure rate start to go down, usually around day eleven, and almost all the goals that we've looked at hard or easy, that's when it starts to get um a lot easier for people apparently interesting And uh yeah, I do have

an example of someone that I worked with. He was right, you know, trying to write his dissertation. He just felt like he was never going to finish his dissertation. Of course, everyone has ever written a dissertation felt like that way at some point, and um uh, I said, well, you know, what are you trying to do? He's like, well, you know, I'm trying all I want to be able to do is write for eight hours a day. But I keep procrastinating. I can see you laughing there, right, because that all

you want to do is write for eight hours. I'll tell you, actually, um, Stephen King doesn't write for eight hours a day. His productivity system is to write a set number of pages. And the thing that blew my mind is that he finishes his work generally between one pm and four pm. You never never seven pm, right, And so here's like one of the most prolific authors of all time. His thing is just to write consistently.

So anyways, go back to my friend who's trying to write the dissertation, and uh, I say to him, Okay, let me just do a little bit, a little exercise. We'll we'll get to eight hours. I'm like, I'm not trying to contradict him or start an argument. Like we'll work our way up there. But let me start with something. How about tomorrow, you time yourself, how long does it take you to go from sitting at your desk to writing your first sentence? And just tell me how fast

that is, and we'll start with that. So it comes back later that next day and he says, hey, hey, you know that was actually really good advice rather than procrastinating, I chat like, I challenged myself, how quickly can I do that? It took him too minutes, And once I got the first sentence on paper, I wrote for two hours. And then I thought, well, this is more than I've written in weeks, So good job, and maybe all I need to do is write for two hours every day.

And so like, to me, that's the power of momentum, is that he had this giant idea in his head that had completely paralyzed him, and when he reframed it in terms of, well, let me get a small wind tomorrow and build on that, it just transformed him overnight

into a productive dissertation writer. I mean to the point where, you know, weeks later he was telling me, you know, he was writing his dissertation from his cell phone, right, like, no, no one who procrastinates is capable of writing on their cellphone. We talked about some of those things on this show so much. I mean, I you know, I call some of that stuff. One is the all or nothing mentality, right like I'm gonna write eight hours a day or I just don't do it at all. And it's so

easy to fall into that um. And then the other is, you know, my my saying to myself always is that a little bit of something is better than a lot of nothing. Like, you know, ten minutes of exercise is far better. You know, ten minutes of exercise every day is far better than three hours every two weeks. It's

just And that's the way I work. That's just, and I think a lot of us are that way, and that that breaking these things down into these small steps is so obvious when you think about it, and yet so rarely do most of us do it. It's hard to give ourselves permission to do it. And that's That's a lot of what I see when I see a coach work with someone is a lot of the big part of the role of the coaches just to give that person permission to start small. Yeah, and that ends

up being really powerful. UM. Also, I was thinking, uh the other day about something I heard Tony Robbins say. He says it in a bunch of different ways, but um. One of his things is that UM an experience is ten times more powerful than UM an opinion, sort of like, if you experience success, that's ten times more powerful than

me telling you you could be successful. And I mean that goes back to the belief change, right, Like, theoretically, you know that if you work hard, you can achieve every a lot of things, a lot more than you currently are, but until you actually have a victory under your belt, you don't really believe it. That is so true. So let's change gears just a little bit and talk about a favorite subject of mind, which I think is

also a favorite subject of yours, which is meditation. And you guys are actually working on a book, but first let's maybe just for fun, we can talk about how I build a meditation habit partially using lift that you know, sort of incorporated a lot of these these different ideas um so, and I'd be I'd be curious if because it sort of ties to so much of what you said. I mean, I've been trying to meditate on and off

for a long time. I don't really want to talk about how old I am, but it's been a long time. I got interested in meditation very young, and I was very intermittent. You know, I'd meditate and it part of the problem was just that whole like like you said, I would say, you know, I'm gonna sit down and meditate for forty five minutes, which like, if you've got a brain like mine, that's like going to the horror show.

I mean, it's just it's awful. And so I would do it for two days and be like, all right, you know, I give this up. But the thing in Lift that I loved, the thing that helped me the most was the streak, the number of days in a row, Because once I got to a certain number of days

in a row, it became a thing. And I can't tell you how many times that I was like, oh, Christ, and have I'd be laying in bed and realized I hadn't done it and be like, Nope, I'm not giving up my you know, I'm not giving up my hundred and fifty days. I'm not giving up my and that for me, that work, some pride in that some game, you know, making the game out of it. But boy,

it saved me so many times. I think I'm somewhere around four hundred and sixty days or something at this point, and I know I would be nowhere near that if it wasn't just for that that streak. And I have to say that at one point I forgot to check in long enough on Lift that my streak ran out and I had to email your customer service and plead with them to go in and update it so that I could have my little uh my, my three d

day flame or whatever it was. Yeah, well I'm glad we did it, um, because that that streak is really important, and I'm glad to hear that you have a four hundred days streak when you talk about just first of all, um, a life worth living, right, And I said, like this company, starting this company was part of it was a statement

for how I want to live my life. Just to have you tell me that story that we played any role, and I mean honestly with but that we played any role, and you having a four day meditation street, it's very gratifying. The thing though, is that we have met We've watched eight thousand different people try to meditate right in within that and we were able to survey them and find out their stories. And basically there's two types of stories.

There's the the person who says, all I tried to do was meditate for forty minutes, but I couldn't keep a clear head, So maybe maybe maybe I'm not cut out for meditation doesn't work. Meditation doesn't work for me, yeah, right, and they take it very personal, is like this is my my bad, right and uh. And in fact, nobody can meditate for forty minutes with a completely clear head. People can meditate, uh, but nobody keeps a clear head

even for two minutes. Or as a meditation teacher I work with sometimes said is, well, if you could keep a clear head for forty minutes, we take you to the hospital. Like this is not it's not natural or normal. And so then the other story that we heard is, oh, yeah, you know, I just start for two to five minutes whatever felt, you know, fit into my day, build up a streak, and I got better over time. But it

can still be a struggle. But that's okay, And um, you kind of dig into that and you realize that the struggle, the supposed struggle, is um just a person

judging themselves. That what's actually going on is your mind wanders and then you bring it back to your point of focus, usually breath, So you're breathing, you're focusing on some point in your breath and uh, and then you realize you're thinking about where where you're gonna get lunch that day, and so then you catch yourself and you bring it back, and we call that like that the two phases. They're sort of awareness followed by focus. You become aware that your mind is wandered, and then you

refocus on your on your breath. Uh, that's a mental push up. Every single time you do that, you become better at becoming aware of what your mind is doing, and you become better at controlling where you focus it. And so in fact, if your mind never wandered, you wouldn't get to do any pushups. And so I think of it as a good thing. Every single time my mind wanders, it's a good thing. But the people that are struggling, I think they got told that meditation is

about calm. And actually, in fact, I'm an advisor at a meditation startup called calm dot com. So it's not like it's not a mystery why that idea I got put in people's heads. But the thing is, it's not all calm. It's at the end of the meditation many people feel more calm than they did at the beginning. But the between A and B, it's not about having a completely clear head. And if you start judging yourself every time your mind waters it's going to feel like

a struggle. Yeah, that's my story exactly. I mean that was I think the combination that the three things for me that that finally clicked were one we talked about, I think tracking it and just making a game out of it. Um second was just doing a shorter amount. All right, three minutes. I'm gonna do three minutes for a few days. And then that that last one was

such a big one because I really did. I look at it now, I'm like, I read so many books about it, and I know they all said this, but it just never sunk in that it wasn't about the experience itself. I thought I should peaceful while I meditated, and I was not anywhere near peaceful when I meditated, right, I mean, And so I finally realized it's not about that three minutes, fifteen minutes, hour, whatever it is, It's

about the rest of the time around that. Um that that's and and that I you know that I don't know where I heard it from, but somebody referred to it as like mental hygiene, and I was like, that makes sense, like brushing your teeth, because I'm not brushing my teeth, going like this is awesome or you know, like man I was, I was really killed it on the you know, with a toothbrushing tonight, right, I just do it and and that was And once I did that,

then I actually started to have more of meditation that was enjoyable because I stopped fighting it. But boy, it took me. I mean, like I said, I tried this on and off for a long time before I figured those things out and it it all changed. I think the other thing that's important in that is that this idea like every time we come back to our breath or would come back to whatever our anchor as we get better, is absolutely true, except that some days you're

you feel far worse than you ever did before. Like it's just it's not a linear thing. It's not like each day I'm getting my focus grows every day. It's some days you just all over the place and some days and just that's fine. Yeah. You know, I've never seen this be taught successfully except through having a guided meditation teacher, and that guide can be recorded. Um, you know, we have guides on coached to me. Certainly I learned originally through the Headspace app advisor Calm. I've seen it

in person. It's basically when you start to judge yourself and a human voice voice. It has to be a voice that can't just be an article or something you read, has to be an actual voice who feels present with you, says you know what, that's okay? Right. It's like actually a lot of times when you listen to a guided meditation, like the teacher is just every like thirty Games is saying,

did your mind just wandered? Totally normal, Let's bring it back to your breath, and you just need to be reassured because it's so because you don't know what to expect and you're kind of projecting onto it. Um. I find it is an amazing practice that basically affects every part of your life. Is calming and reduces stress. Um. Everyone Uh would rather be more productive, more present um. And you know that's trained by being aware of what's distracting in your head and being able to point your

focus where it needs to go. I think what really um changed my mindset about meditation was when I started meeting who was meditating. Right. So, my parents were married by their tai Chi teacher. You know, it's like born and Kyle Inlifornia and like it could not be a

more hippie situation. And so I always thought meditation was well, you know, from their generation, as just like, well, yeah, something my parents would have done, you know when they you know, in the seventies, and you know, it just kind of has this little bit of a spiritual, uh connotation for me that I didn't. I didn't think that's what I was looking for. But then I started meeting

really successful entrepreneurs and who were not particularly spiritual. They just felt like they had a job to do and it was better if their mind was more under their control. And then I started researching it, and I realized that professional athletes were meditating. And then I did more research and I realized that hedge fund managers were meditating. And you actually, I came to think about it in a completely different way that met meditation is something that you

can do for purely practical benefit. Right. I was in a hospital last year, not for myself, but visiting someone, and I walked by this room and in some meditation room, like, oh, so this is part of the pain management strategy for this hospital is to teach people how to meditate. And that's not about spirituality. It's a that's a very pragmatic concern. And you know, so as telling this story to a

meditation teacher. Actually, his name is Will cabots In, and if you recognize the last name, it should it's John Cabotsen's son. And John Cabotzen is the you know, sort of the you know, one of the founders of American mindfulness. And so Will kevitz In, great meditation teacher, and you know, been in this his whole life. I was telling him about about that we wanted to write a book and we wanted to call it the Strongest Mind in the Room, just because I wanted to get as far away from

the spiritual aspects as possible. And he pauses for a second and he goes, well, that sounds like the dark side. And then but this is what I love, and this is how you know that he's a meditator. Rather than immediately trying to argue with me, he goes, why do I think that? And he just started like he caught himself, and he goes, why do I think that? And he just started kind of saying, well, let me share with you.

And they starts, you know, talking out loud, and I thought, well, here's a guy that recognized he had a reaction that's awareness, and then he was able to point his control to something UM, something constructive. He actually he told us a really interesting story about UM. A parallel debate in the mindfulness community is it okay to teach mindfulness to the military.

I think it's a great way to frame it. It's like half of the you know, on one side of the debate, you have people in mindfulness community that's just like, why would we want to train more efficient killers? And then you have the other half of the debate, it's like, well,

there are already efficient killers. What we want them to be is to be mindful and to be aware and to think, well maybe there's another way that I can do this, And you know, so of course it is actually going on UM and a sort I feel that if you train someone for practical reasons, they'll often come to some some higher good along the way, and the practical reasons are just for entry point to teaching meditation. Yeah,

that's such an interesting debate on so many levels. UM. You know, because mindfulness certainly at least originated within a broader philosophical teaching, you know, Buddhism, and so is is that. You know, that debate is if you strip it out from that, does it still what meaning does it have? And and is it our people using you know, this

wonderful thing for for bad purposes? And but I think it's the way I tend to think about it ultimately, is it's like any other technology, right, the genies kind of out of the bottle. You you can't you can't put technology back in the bottle. It's a question of, all right, how can we talk about it, discuss it and frame it in positive ways because there's no there's no going back with it now, right, Buddhism can't take

it back. It's gone. I mean, it's out there. It's a it's kind of a it's the debate now is okay, what do we you know, what do we do with that? And what individuals want to do with that? You know, what is it that you want to teach or carry on? But from a cultural perspective, I think the horses horses left the barn. Well, but this goes right to the heart of the you know the title of this podcast,

and this is so uh. You know, once you become once you have awareness, you become aware of both wolves and you realize that you know that one of them is more fulfilling. And I think people with awareness tend

to habitate towards being better versions of themselves. It's actually, I mean, I know Will have it in share is that view because he told me a story about you know, I know him because he teaches meditation, uh twice a week, I think at a startup in the same building as me, startup called medium dot com, which is a blogging a platform, and he and so he was invited in because the CEO meditates and wanted to teach it to everyone else

because he thought they would be better workers. And Will It's like, yeah, I could see how this would be good for productivity, but I feel like I should warn you. You know, people might become more aware and then realize that working in tech isn't there calling like you might have people quit because of this and uh And I was like, oh, that's an interesting point, but you know, I'll risk it, like, you know, I'll just make sure that we have a mission driven company. Anyways, I think

that's it. You know, It's like, certainly someone could work at a startup for selfish reason's exciting. You can make money, you know, there's prestige if you live in the Bay Area. Uh. But but you know it just like meditation doesn't make you more of that, it makes me less of that. Yeah, And I think it's like anything else, it's it's rare that at least at least I know, it's rare that I approach anything with purely good or purely bad motive.

There's almost always some blend in there of like, yeah, I want to meditate because of this, but at all, you know, I mean, it's it's it's just hard to I don't I don't know that I believe in completely pure motivation from anybody. So tell me what is it about meditation that you think are the biggest benefits? I mean, the one you just named Um, you know, when you were talking with Um, what was it? Will? Yeah, when

we were talking with Will is probably the one. When people ask me what I think the biggest benefit is, it's exactly that thing is that there seems to be just a little bit more space from when I have some stimulus that I have a response and it's not even that response isn't even necessarily outward right, because it's but it's like I have a stimulus there's either either there's a little bit more space or there's a quick thought and then I go, wait, do I really believe that?

Do I? Like? You know, which is just great because it helps to disrupt these habitual thought patterns that certainly in my case, have been very destructive at points exactly. I mean, if you've ever been to a therapist or a relationship therapist, one of the great things they can

do is they can point out patterns in your life. Right, But that's not sufficient because when those patterns come up, you're you don't notice them, none of your therapist office at that time, right, Like someone has to point you out. I mean that goes back to b J fog and triggering, right and sort of like that, a little bit of space where you have trained yourself how to be aware of your thoughts and then how to shift them somewhere is what allows you too. Then after knowing a pattern,

then you can do something about it. Um. I just I think about that those two things. I mean, there's basically three legs to meditation as I experience it, and you know, I probably there's meditation curus to experience something completely different. There's talk of the ultimate bliss all sorts of stuff way beyond where what I got is a beginner. But as a beginner, there's three things that happened really quickly. You train awareness, you train control of focus, and you

train more calm. But I mean overall, I'm calmer when I'm meditating, But everyone, everyone, I think, focuses on the calm without focusing on what it would mean if you had, uh, you know, complete awareness of what's going on in your head, because I think you know, we don't. We don't face that often. How how out of control we are. Right. There's another book that I like, thinking Fast and Slow, that sort of that talks about two different modes of thought.

One is very instinctual, it's what is actually happening most of the time. And then the other is um and that in that mode is very fast. That's that you're maybe make rapid fast decisions there. The other is very slow and effortful. But it's what we think of it thought. It's the rational part of your brain, and if you try, you can turn it on, but mostly it's off. Um and uh like being able to have awareness of like, oh right, my like irrational lizard brain is taking me

this direction. That's not actually what I want to do. Let me turn on my rational brain for a second and switch gears right. That comes up in parenting, It comes up in work, comes up in relationships, friendships, It comes up. Um, I got yelled at, rightfully so on the street, Like you know, I bike home sometimes and I like trying to weave through a cross walk that had a bunch of people. It's like it's either I'm weaving through cars to make this turn or weaving through people.

And this woman yelled at me, and I was like, like, part of me was like, don't you dare yell at me? And then then part of me was like, oh, you know what I should actually say is thank you for saying something. You're right And she yelled and walked away

before I had a chance. But I was like this close to being able to say that because I have enough awareness now I mean not the will kinds in level right enough that I was like, well, I was having a defensive reaction, but I'm actually capable of a really generous reaction there even there, and uh, you know that second person is who I want to be, and that that is exactly you know what triggers you um too, behave in a way that you don't want to behave

it For me, you know, it's like eating things that I don't want to eat, or you know, staying in bed too long or getting angry for no good reason. I just I have a lot more control of that because I built up a meditation practice. Yeah, exactly. That awareness is that I was doing an interview right before this and we were talking about awareness, like if you don't have that, all the rest of this stuff is

just you're just not gonna do. You can't do anything with it because you don't know what you're there's nothing, there's no I love that analogy you just made of like being you know, with your therapist. And I've been in those situations where somebody will point out something to me and it's so it hits me. I'm like, that is so freaking obvious, and I don't think about it again for two weeks until they you know, like, it's just it's not it's not there for me in my

day to day life. I know it, but I can't. I intellectually know it, but I'm in no way incorporating in my life. And I think that that really helps. Um we I just looked at the clock and we are at like way over normal time, which what happened? I feel like I could do this all day, So but I'm gonna I'm gonna honor my at least only

double the normal time of the show. But I want to finish with one thing that you talk about that I think is an interesting idea, and I just want to talk about, which is the idea of cognitive budget. And I was joking earlier about how mine is gone for the day. So what is cognitive budget? Well, it's the idea that you have a certain number of decisions to make in the day and uh, and you actually

have control over where you spend those decisions. And so a decision is not like, uh, you know, what car do I buy? I mean, that's certainly a decision, but it's also what what pants do I put on? What shirt do I put on? Or do I even put on pants? That's exact. That could be another if you work from home and I which I've had that period in my life, or you're a streaker. Yeah, well let's

move on. I look forward to meeting your audience. Yeah, and I actually it's an idea that I heard the opposite way, there was a really good article in New York Times about decision fatigue, and it was explaining how people um stop being able to make rational decisions at the point in which they became fatigued. And you know, like I'm always trying to reframe something in the positive. So decision fatigue is an excuse, right, Well, like I'm not a good parent when I get home because I

used up all my dew decisions at work. Right. But the flip side of it is just you could decide how to spend your decisions differently. And the example I mean, since I spent a lot of time with entrepreneurs, and especially out here intact people have this irrational love of Steve Jobs. The example I use is, you know, he wore a black turtleneck every day, you know, for basically, you know, a long time at the end of his life.

And what that meant is that when he got up and got dressed, he just reached it into a pile of black turtle next and put on a black turtleneck. No decision necessary. When I get up, I look at the weather, I think about I look at my calendar. Who am I meeting? Am I going to be? Uh? Like on a podcast interview where I'm visible, Am I going to be meeting people outside of the company? Like

what what is it that I should wear? And so I basically would probably leave the house fifty decisions behind where Steve Jobs would have left the house, and so, you know, he wanted to spend those fifty decisions at work. And certainly I would rather spend my fifty decisions at work or with my friends, or on exercise or with my you know, with my spouse, like all, I would rather spend it all somewhere else than I'm getting dressed.

And once I realized that, I just became a lot more regimented about things that didn't matter that much, right, Like I got a lot more uh pairs of the same type of socks, Like why am I look a software trying to make a decision? Right? Just like get you know, like I'm going to wear socks. I know that, and um, Sam, I just like a lot of things in the morning about saving myself for later later in

the day. And I thought that was a really powerful way then to look at habits, because people would ask me sometimes what are the habits of really successful people? And if you think about it, in terms of cognitive budget. The answer is, any habit is the habit of a successful person because that's something that saves yourself to be

fully present on the things that matter. So, for example, if I have a habit of going to the gym and on Tuesday's I know that I'm going to do this workout routine, I'm not having to spend decisions debating whether I go to the gym, which exercise routine I'm going to do. So that's a that's a savings on the cognitive budget. Yeah, we we call that negotiations. Sometimes you're negotiating with yourself. Should I go to the today,

what should I work on? Should I do weights? I don't feel like doing weights, but I'm supposed to do weights right, and so like each the outcome of each negotiation is a decision, and you waste a lot of your energy there where Absolutely, if you have a consistent gym routine that you're first of all, it'll hold off. It'll hold when you're you are fatigued, and people who go to the gym later in the day or at risk because there they get tired. Um. And also it

won't spend down the rest of your day. Uh, so and a lot of us kind of refused to plan. Uh, and we maybe, you know, in order to preserve some option value, like well, maybe you know, I'll have more energy in the afternoon, so I won't go to the gym this morning. But what we're really doing is, you know, spending a lot of our cognitive budget because we can't

hold ourselves anything and everything ends up getting negotiated. And it's not that do you want to live a really boring life, it's you just want the boring parts of your life to be boring or another Tony Robbins quote, I like the other day said, you know a lot of us major and in minor things, right, It's like I love that absolutely, Like why am I fussing over my socks? Like I'm I'm running a company? Like what how does that compare? Yeah, exactly does negotiation? Do you guys?

That does that go into your habit framework? Because we just talked about it in the context of preserving cognitive budget, but it sounds like it's a it could be a pretty key part into staying on habits to how do you how do you go into saying these things are I'm not negotiating these things is that. Is it simply that you just say to yourself, this is non negotiable, or where does that fit into the to the building

the habit phase. And you have the experience of having a streak, and so your streak is not negotiable, right, Like you are going to meditate, And I don't think it doesn't sound like you negotiate very much on whether you should meditate. I bet you negotiate on how long and when? Yeah, yeah, I do, I mean and and so yeah, and when I'm in you know, there's a little negotiation when I'm nearly asleep and I realize that

I haven't but it's not much. And I have sort of a fallback plan that says, Okay, when that happens, here's what I'm gonna do. It's I'm not going to go, you know, sit in a you know, on a cushion upstairs for you know, an hour, but I'm going to do something. I've got some things that I fall back on. But yeah, you're right that I try not to negotiate when becomes a problem for me because my my schedule

is kind of chaotic. But when I can get it routine, it's so much better to just know when it's going to happen. Yeah, we have a lot in the app about making your life easier and helping you pre decide. Right, So it's um, you know, convert a big goal into a routine, like that's a predecision. I might do this every day or at least a couple of days a week. I'm gonna do it this many days a week. I'm

my set a reminder for this time on these days. Um. Uh even um, as we add in more levels of coaching, one level is a daily plan, so it's actually a coach has written for you today do this. You just you know, a user coach to me is already in the habit of opening that and then it just tells them, oh, this is how many push ups I'm going to do

today or right? And um and the last level of coaching is that is actually a personal coach and um, you know that's just another example of someone who's helping you, uh not negotiate, right is that? Um? I tell the coaches, you know, the new coaches, it's okay if you don't feel smart, what you want is for the person in coach to feel smart. So like a question like what days were you planning to go to the gym this week.

It doesn't make the coach feel smart, but it actually is a really eye opening question for most people who are like, well I hadn't just I did at all, right, And those sorts of basic planning questions are about predeciding so you're not having to negotiate in the moment. Yeah, that's such a good approach, and I like that idea of people buy into stuff that they have a say

in coming up with or thinking about versus. You know, there's that some of us I won't name anybody might sometimes resist authority, So if it feels like that in certain cases. But the saying is the interesting thing to watch so many people be coached is actually there's a type of person that wants to be told what to do and it wants to do it. And then there's a different type of person who hates to be told what to do and definitely won't do it, and you

just have to coach um. And that's actually partly why we've ended up with so much so many humans. Why it's a community is because software is not that great at being that flossible, but a human figure that out pretty quickly and said, wow, Okay, this is a person that just wants to do it on their own, and I'll advise them, which is how I am. Like I alway tell my coaches right away. I don't want to plan. I don't want you to tell me what to do. I want to tell you what I did, ask you questions,

and get your feedback. And for me, that's very valuable. That's because I'm uncoachable and that's how I ended up being the CEO. Yep, I can I can relate. Well, thank you so much. This has been Like I said, I could probably do this for another hour, but this has been really fun. Um, thanks for being on the show. Thanks for the the app. I'm a I'm a big fan. And do we tell people where they can get it? Yes? Please, I'll have it linked in the show notes, but go ahead,

definitely so the you are out. The website is coach dot me and that's not a dot com or anything that's coached at me. And then you can download the app also from the Google play Store for Android and from the Apple Store for the iPhone, so you can use on the iPhone, on Android or the web. You know, basically everyone should be able to use it. Yep, and it's there's there's a lot in it. I probably use of what's in it, but but it's uh, it's been

really effective for me. So thanks again, Tony. All right, thank you so much for having me, and good luck everyone. Yes, take care. You can learn more about Tony Stubblebine and this podcast at one you feed dot net slash t s