Let’s talk about the Power of Habit

let’s talk about the Power ofHabit what is going on you guys Tyler you’re wandering therapisthere today I am flying solo today but I’ve got some thoughts on my mind that I’dlove to share and hopefully will be helpful to you um I uh Bradon is out busy he hadanother meeting today he’s had some changes in his life life that uh have him kind of going a lot of different directions right now but he will be backhere on Monday um so yeah so today I wanted to talk about something that I’ve actuallybeen kind of studying a lot for my own gain and that I’ve been working on for myself and thought I might just sharesome of the key elements that I’m learning and that I’m trying to put into place that seem to be helping with youso if you’re in a position right now where you know every one of us probably is I mean part of the reason why a lotof people listen to this podcast in the first place is actually because of the fact that we’ve formed bad habits thatare somehow causing problems in our life or destroying our lives and now we’re learning how to try to create new habitsso that’s what we’re going to talk about today is some key principles and understanding about habit how they how ahabit forms how we can alter a habit or change a habit and just becoming moreintentional aware with what it is that we’re actually doing to our own lives with the inputs we’re putting in and how

What Are Habits?

that relates to the outputs that are coming out so there’s a few things I’ll share some personal examples with this Ithink I’ve referenced one of these things in our last podcast with Brandon about trying to stop drinking soda andhow some of these principles have applied maybe talk about that with you and then also some things that I’m currently working on in my ownlife um so yeah so so the information that we’re going to talk about kind of comes from several different sources theprimary ones that we’ll talk about today come if you’re interested and want to go check these out are The Power of Habitby Charles doig Atomic habits and then an old classic book that’s one of myfavorites of all time called the greatest salesman in the world by AG manino and I’m going to fuse severalprinciples from each of those books into the discussion today in thinking aboutthis process of habit so the first thing I just challenge you guys to thinkabout is what is what is a habit that’s been with you for a very very long timemaybe a bad habit that you want to get rid of um I have one in particular I’m doingpretty well with it right now but uh I have a tendency to not only bite my fingernails but after I bite myfingernails I tend to uh sort of clean up all the skin around it my cuticlesand then that ends up ripping and making me bleed and a lot of times I have kind of like sores on my on the ends of myfingers it’s been something that has been with me for pretty much my whole life I remember it being a little beinga little boy I was probably I had to have been like N9 or 10 years old I would always chew my nails to the pointof bleeding and and I would usually do it when I was nervous or stressed out about something and I remember you know

Habit Formation

my parents trying to help me my mom got that really nasty tasting stuff that you put on the ends of your fingers so itwould remind you not to bite your fingernails and uh we tried that for a while while but then I just got to whereI sort of liked the taste of it and it didn’t really help anymore because because the Habit was so strong Iremember being in like uh must have been 13 14 at the time maybe in a soccer tournament and it was a championshipgame and we went to a shootout and I happened to be the fifth shooter so there’s you know you taketurns shooting like penalty shots in soccer I happen to be the fifth shooter and I was chewing my nails the wholetime during this shoot out to where there was like nothing left and it was basically just raw sores on the end ofall my fingers and my mom was sitting there watching the whole thing on the sidelines and she told me afterwardsthat she wanted to yell at me to stop chewing my nails but she was so afraid that she would ruin my psyche and my routine that she just let it happen andthen I took my shot you know whatever and uh so I think back on that that you know that’s been with mefor like truly like a bad habit it’s been with me for you know what 40 yearsuh almost 40 years probably and I’ve worked really hard at trying to get ridof that habit and there have been periods of time where you know maybe there’s been some success I’ve gone forweeks months at a time I think I’m on a pretty good streak right now I think I’m about six or seven weeks in this timearound of kind of breaking this habit that I have with my fingernails um but I’ve learned a lotabout myself in the process and I’ve started to learn a lot more about myself and what actually happens and I wanted

Cue-Routine-Reward

to share a few of those principles with you as you think of your own habits you know some of you might have addictive things that are goingon um that uh you know that are causing real havoc in your life you know somekind of a sexually compulsive Behavior or maybe some kind of substance problem or a spending problem or it might bethat you’re numbing out with uh your social media or something else to the point of it being detrimental to yourlife uh and can’t seem to stop it um that’s what we’re going to talk about today is how do you how do youunderstand and alter a habit so the first thing that I wanted to kind of get into kind of comes from the The Power ofHabit by Charles doig and it’s learning to understand thenature of our habits and how they actually work within us so physiologically habits neuro neuroneurologically habits form in an effort for our brains to reserve energy to conserve energy andand not have to use up all of the the energy stores that it has so you know you’ve heard the you’veheard the term neurons that fire together wire together well if you do that multiple times then those neuronskind of form a pathway and then that pathway starts to be coated over by a process called myelination myelinationbasically protects that pathway and makes it stronger and it also makes it more likely to be used and it can now beused in ways that require less energy because it’s something the body and the Brain already know so it starts tohappen automatically so when we’re changing any type of a behavior we’re actuallyworking against what the body has already formed in a in an effort to try to conserve its own energy that’s whychanging a habit is so difficult that’s why it’s so hard is because the body wants the brain the brain in some wayswants everything to be in order it wants to have order and simplicity and it wants to conserve everything and nowwhen you step in and try to change something what you’re doing is working actually against what the brain has tried to do because it thinks that whatyou were doing is what you wanted it to be doing so so you can look at it from kind ofthis idea of willpower willpower is theresource The Willpower is the resource that is sort of given to us every day ona certain level to to make conscious choices with or unconscious choices withthat is the piece of us that would allow us to work towards changing some of our behaviors but willpower alone is afinite resource and it runs out and it runs low and so sometimes we wake up and some something has happened and we’rehighly motivated to do something you know some of us probably had this I’ve I’ve a thousand times been highly motiv

Identifying Habits

motivated to stop like messing with my fingers and and cutting myself and um we dive into it we go allout but then it can’t be sustained because thatwillpower depletes itself and if it doesn’t get replenished and used properly then we’re left with nothingbut the Habit Loop and no motivation to change it anymore and then the Habit wants to kind of take over again and putyou back on the same track over and over and over again that’s why somebody who’s been an alcoholic for say like 20 yearsbut they’re sober um you know they’ll always talk about like your first drink is basicallyyour last drink again because the brain will if you go back to drinking the brain will already is cued to want toremember that even though it’s rewired itself in some ways it’s already primed for that old Habit to kick back in andum so we want to choose to use our willpower towards the establishment ofthe new habit and sometimes we try to go and do like 20 things at a time and instead of doing 20 things at atime one to two things at a time consistently done until it becomes a newhabit a little bit at a time will yield bigger results than really big things all at once and your willpower getsdepleted so for you know uh I talked about this I think on the last podcastbut with my soda drinking I decided to stop drinking soda for a while this was probably a decade ago and I I said I’mgoing cold turkey I’m not drinking any soda anymore um but then every single day I

Willpower

was failing and uh and I was thinking man like how come I keep how come I keeplike relapsing on soda like it can’t be that addictive but it actually was for me I was drinking I think about 128 264ounces a day minimum um I knew that I had a problemwhen I’ve I’ve always in my lifetime had really good teeth um but I went to thedentist and he he said before he even took the x-rays he said you drink way too much soda I said actually I do I drink a tonof soda how do you know that and he’s like oh I can tell you right now You’ got a bunch of cavities that need to be fixed I’ve never had cavities in my lifebefore and um and then he took the x-rays and I had 13 cavities 13 littlecavities all over my teeth and he said they were in all the places that people who drink a lot of soda have them sothat was like my wakeup call that was that that was that moment of like like unmanageability in my life where I waslike wow this this isn’t just some casual problem this is a real problem for me and I need to make some changesin my life and so I started and I tried to just go all out and quit and I couldn’t I kept failing and so I starteddoing some of the tools that I teach my clients and one of those tools is to actually map out the process of a fullrelapse and the the mapping of the process of the full relapse includesemotional processes mental processes logistical things and events that happen

Changing Bad Habits

in your day and you map it out in as great of detail as possible almost try to see everything you can and then yougo back through it and you look for okay what is the payoff that I get when Idrink that soda and I could tell you both positives and negatives the consequences you know obviously decreased Health being on theverge of being diabetic um obviously problems with my teeth teth uh shame feeling uh gainingweight um all of those things but the the payoff is is there is a real payoffwhen it comes to emotional coping for me there’s a little bit of like a a boostright when that carbonation hits the top of your brain um I mean my mouth’s wateringright now as I talk about it and uhand so there’s that payoff there’s the payoff of the emotional sort of like soothing that happens and for me it’sweird but I think I might have ADD because when I drink caffeine it actually like zones me in more insteadof hyping me up it almost kind of puts me into a grounded State and so that’swhat going in at 3:00 every afternoon to the gas station was was doing for me nowaccording to the Power of Habit the way that you start to break that habit is you have to find the three parts ofit one is the thing that kicks off the trigger or the urge two is the processthat you use to get to the payoff and three is understanding what the payoff is and then according to the Power ofHabit you work on the middle part so you’ve got to change the pattern thatyou get to get to the payoff so what I needed was some kind of grounding Ineeded some kind of like soothing and I needed some kind of like head Rushthat’s what I was going for when I was going into the gas station every day to get my soda and so I’m going to have tounderstand that I’ve got to find and build a new Pathway to get to those same rewards that doesn’tinclude drinking 128 ounces of soda every day um and and that just understanding

Building Good Habits

that makes it so that I’m not a bad person because I can’t stop it means that I’m not being effective and that Ido have some things that that need some attention and that now I need to learn how to be intentional with the way I goabout moving towards those things that need attention in and doing those in ways that are more effective than thecurrent way I’ve been doing it because I get all those negative outcomes so you take that and you sayokay I’m going to work on the middle part but now the middle part feels big it feels overwhelming and this comesfrom Atomic habits and atomic habit says that small changes over time producemassive results so the small change that I came to whenI understood my pattern is that I I Iwould relapse every time I went into a gas station I was on the road a lot for work at the time and that was my way ofkind of like having something to do while I drove and um I I realized oneday after I’d been going into this the gas station for like two straight weeks getting a soda that right when I walkedthrough the door and I looked over at the the lighting of the drink machines my mouth would start towater and it dawned on me that if I didn’t go into the gas station there was a very good chance that I would neverdrink a soda because I didn’t really buy it anywhere else my habit Loop was at the gas station fountain drink becauseFountain drinks are way better than bottled drinks anyway everyone knows that um but uh at least I I believe thatBrandon might disagree but that became the one thing that I was going to put my willpowerinto to my finite use of willpower was going to be don’t go into the gas

Environment’s Role

station period um that was one thing that I could do that’s one thing that I feltlike I could follow through on and I started to do that and low and behold I got to a week of not drinking soda andtwo weeks of not drinking soda and 3 months of not drinking soda and 6 months of not drinking soda and it grew it tobe about eight years of not having a soda and it all started with one thing thatwas an like a break in the middle part of my pattern it was just one thing and thenthat one thing grew into multiple things and that’s what’s that’s what’s cool about habits is once we learn tounderstand what they do you can actually start to stack them on top of each other for good so think about it from likerecovery you know at first in my own recovery from saypornography I realized that my habit included always it was every time I acted out I was always alone on theinternet and I was usually stress boor tired something like that and then I hadcertain patterns that I would use where I would purposely carve out time to quote do homework or a project orsomething and then after I’d get something done I’d want to go and celebrate and so then I’d go over to like social media or YouTube and I’dscroll and I’d find hobbies and interest but then that would get boring and then inevitably something on the sidebarwould pop up some clickbait and I’d finally succumb to that and click that and then I’d feel bad about it and be like oh well I’ve already messed up andthen I jump over and go and go and fully act out and what I realized when I startedto map out my own processes is that if I and I really I really was highly motivated at the time to want to changethis Behavior because I was going to lose everything in my life that was important I realized that it felt sooverwhelming to try to quit I any believe that I could quit um but I knew I had to it was a rough spot to be inemotionally and I realized that when Istarted to map out my patterns the way that I could be 100% attrying to stay sober from pornography had to mean that I couldn’t be on the internetalone and when I started to look at that I realized that if I had the internet on my phone I would totally cheat on thatso my first two bottom lines were no internet alone and for me I I got rid of

Consistency

all all internet technology off of my phone so I was basically at a dumb phone level for a couple of years then I had athird one that I added which was that I just didn’t get on YouTube at all because YouTube was like this just theInsignia that I would see it would already it would in essence make my mouth start to water again it would it would turn on that kind ofurge um so I I set those three bottom lines in placeand I treated them like my life depended on it it just took those three things now I’m saying just some people arethinking you’re crazy like you didn’t have the you didn’t use the internet alone and yeah that happened for probably three years or so before Istarted to bring back certain things I think YouTube I brought back about four or five years in um with with somedifferent kinds of new rules but the point is is that that that was the basis of changing a habit so that habitstarted to change and it got to where I realized I could have confidence that I could be sober and I didn’t have to workat those bottom lines that I had set in place after a few months they were just the way that I lived they became the newnormal they became the way that I lived my life and so then I had this leftover willpower now that I had used toestablish those habits that I could put towards something else and the next thing that I decided to do is say youknow what I want to be a little bit more present with my daughters um so I’m going to put my willpower into making surethat my new bottom line is is that I always sing to them and tell them a story and tuck them into bed at night I

Real-Life Examples

want to take ownership for for the bedtime routine because that’s going to allow me to have presence with mydaughters and some kind of influence and I made a goal that I would have have and develop a relationship with my girlsthat for as long as they lived in my house I would always be welcome visitor inside their bedroom a a safe placewhere they could go and have their own safety but they would want me to be there if they ever needed anything to talk or or haveconnection um so I put my willpower into developing the bedtime routine and once that started to happenit became a new normal part of my life and I now had willpower to put towards something else and the next piece wasthat I wanted to learn how to battle better for my wife’s heart so I decidedto start reading certain other books dedicating some time in my dailies towards understanding how to be a betterhusband how to be more engaged how to be more empathetic and that became part of mygoal and that I would dedicate some of my time and my energy towards that andso you see how it starts to happen where it stacks on top of each other and if you do it that way then the originalhabit that you were looking to change the original the original habityou were looking to change is already taking care of itself and now you’ve created a buffer that is actuallydistancing you from that in the first place but now that buffer is also moving you into new places where your lifestarts to look different it starts to take on a different Hue a different color a different vibration and youstart to not even consider that You’ ever wanted to do those things in the past I never ever thought that thiswould be possible when I started my recovery because I was so consumed in my head in my downtime with all of thethoughts of fantasy objectification sex was the constant driver I never thought that I couldstand in a place that I am today and say you know what yeah sex is is a part of my life and I love it but man I I look

Conclusion

forward to having downtime so I can think of projects at work and I can ponder my clients problems and I canthink about how I can learn to be a better therapist or a better father and and those things start to come naturallynow as a result of all those little habit Stacks that happened over time so whatever it is that you’retrying to change try to find one or two things that will start to move the markdedicate your willpower to those two things until they become habit and once they become habit takeyour willpower and add something else on top of it and over time you start to create this chain of of lifechanginghabit based off a very very simple and small things um another principle that I’mlearning that’s been very helpful with this is is that habits don’t die easy and one of the things that comesfrom the from the book Atomic habits is this idea that if you set a goal to makeany change in your life most of us set a goal and then when we’re not perfect at it we experience itas failure and we throw our hands up and we say oh well it’s our It’s All Is Lost and according to Atomic habits we haveto treat ourselves differently we got to treat ourselves with a little bit more of a growth mindset and the commitmentto change becomes the commitment to changebecomes I’m going to set my new line and I’m going to make sure that I’m asconsistent as possible and if I have a slip on that new line it will only be asingle slip instead of multiple days so I will never go two days in arow with the old habit I will go multiple days with the new habit and ifI have a break then I’ll pick it right back up so I’m exercising the muscle of the change rather than exercising themuscle of the Habit because the way habits formed in the first place was they just happen to be a repeatedpattern that happened over and over again it’s just that we with a lot of our bad habits didn’t realize we were forming those because we didn’tunderstand ourselves in the way that we work so now we’re going to use the same processintentionally to let our bodies and brains do exactly what they’re designed to do which is they want to makewhatever we’re choosing to do more easy if we’re doing it consistently and and that’s how it’ll form theHabit so um one other thought for you this is something that that kind ofdoing this kind of work you know we talk about this frequently but it puts me in touch with my my grandfather my grandpaHarris he was a big big guy on like self-help and self-discipline and habitsand doing this work puts me in touch with with him that way and uh one of thethings that he kind of left with me I happened to be living in his house um hehad gotten remarried after his wife died and he was living in a in the same condo complex as his condowas but me and my wife were actually renting his condo from him and uh whenhe passed away we were the ones living in his house and so we were kind of starting to round up his stuff after hepassed away and inside of there we found um books upon books journals uponjour journals of him writing day after day writing his affirmations in ajournal um he had a personal Creed that he had created that he would quote to himself every day and inside of hispossessions there was a book and it was a an old book um called the greatestsalesman in the world by AG manino and the gift in that was that that book Ipicked it up and I started to read it and I realized that my grandfather had annotated it he’ put notes all throughout the book so I got this giftof being able to read not only what I think is one of the best books on habit and healthy life ever written in thegreatest salesman in the world but I got to read my grandfather’s notes and the commitments that he was making and thethoughts and insights that he was having and um it was just such a treat and a treasure to be able to kind of see thebehind the scenes work that my grandfather had done throughout his life to produce theoutcomes of who he was to me just as my grandfather on the front and I I was kind of stunned at how mucheffort and work he had put into developing the life that I so muchadmired and respected um so this book the very first part of the book it’s a book that kindof goes through this sort of like Journey that a man goes on to try to understand himself better and he wantsto become the greatest salesman in the world not ever realizing at the end of the book this is really a book aboutlife and it goes through 12 different or 10 different Scrolls and each scroll islike a principle of being a great salesman or a great person I I know this going to be alittle bit long but I want to read it this is the first scroll and I remember just reading this with my grandfather’snotes down the side and just thinking about his life and then seeing how he had kind of put this into practice andand so I just want to read it to you this is the first scroll it says today I be a new life and the goal the goal inthe in the greatest salesman in the world is that you take one scroll and you read it the same scroll for 30 daysin a row with the idea that these ideas will sort of settle into you and becomepart of your being in your life if you repeat them multiple times and then you move to the next scroll so so you’reactually going to go about 20 you’re going to go about 10 months before you actually finish the book if you do it the way that it was designed becauseyou’re going to read the scroll for 30 days each scroll for 30 days soum so it says today I begin a new life today I shed my old skin which hath twolong suffer the bruises of failure and the wounds of mediocrity today I am born a new and mybirthplace is a Vineyard where there is fruit for all today I will pluck Grapes of wisdom from the tallest and fullestvines in the vineyard for these were planted by the wisest of my profession and have come before me generation aftergeneration today I will Savor the taste of grapes from these Vines and I verilywill swallow the seed of success buried in each and new life will Sprout inside of me the career I’ve chosen is Ladenwith opportunity yet it is fraught with heartbreak and despair and the bodies of those who have failed were they piled one at topanother would cast its shadow down upon all the pyramids of the earth yet I will not fail as the others for in my hands Inow hold the charts which will guide me through this perilous Waters to Shores which only yesterday seemed but a dreamfailure will no longer be my payment for my struggle just as Nature Made noprovision for my body to tolerate pain neither has it made any provision for my life to suffer failure failure like painis alien to my life in the past I accepted it as I accepted pain now Ireject it and I’m prepared for wisdom and principles which will Guide Me Out of the Shadows into sunlight of wealthposition and happiness far beyond my most extravagant dreams until even the golden apples in the garden ofasperities will seem no more than my just reward time teaches all things tohe who lives forever but I have not the luxury of Eternity yet within my allotted time I must practice the art ofpatience for nature acts never in haste to create the olive king of all the trees a 100 years is required an onionplant is old in nine weeks I have lived as an onion plant it has not pleased menow I wh become the greatest of olive trees and in truth the Great greatest of salesmen and how will this beaccomplished for I have neither the knowledge nor the experience to achieve greatness and already I have stumbled inignorance and fallen into pools of self-pity the answer is simple I commence my journey unencumbered witheither the weight of unnecessary knowledge or the handicap of meaningless experience nature already has suppliedme with knowledge and Instinct far greater than any beast in the forest and the value of experience is overratedusually by old men who nod wisely and speak stupidly in truth experience teachesthoroughly yet her course of instruction devours men’s years so the value of her lessons diminishes with time necessaryto acquire her special wisdom the end Finds Its wasted the end finds it wastedon dead men furthermore experience is comparable to Fashion an action thatproved successful today will be unworkable and impractical tomorrow only principles endure andthese now I possess for the laws that will lead me to Greatness are containedin the words of these Scrolls what will they teach me is to prevent failure than to gain success forwhat is success other than a state of mind which too among a thousand wise menwill define success in the same words yet failure is always described in one way failure is man’s inability to reachhis goals in life whatever they may be in truth the only difference between those who have failed and those who havesucceeded lies in the difference of their habits good habits are key to all success badhabits are the unlocked door to failure thus the first law I obey which precedesall others is I will form good habits and become their slave as a child I wasa slave to my impulses and I am a slave to my habits as are all grown men I have surrendered my free will to the years ofaccumulated habits and past Deeds of my life and have already marked out a path which threatens to imprison my future myactions are ruled by appetite passion Prejudice greed love fear environment habit and the worst of these tyrants ishabit therefore if I must be a slave to habit let me be a slave to good habitsmy bad habits must be destroyed and new furrows prepared for good seed I willform good habits and become their slave and how will I accomplish this difficult feat through these Scrolls it will bedone for each scroll contains a principle which will drive a bad habit from my life and replace it with onewhich will bring me closer to success for it is another of nature’s laws that only a habit can subdue another habit soin order for these written words to perform their chosen task I must discipline myself with the first of mynew habits which is as follows I will read the each scroll for 30 days as prescribed manner before I proceed tothe next scroll first I will read the words in silence then I will read the words in silence after I’ve partaken of my middaymeal last I will read the words again just before I retire at day’s end and most important on this occasion I willread the words aloud on the next day I will repeat the procedure and I will continue in like manner for 30 days thenI will return to the next scroll and repeat the procedure for another 30 days I will continue in this manner until I have lived with each scroll for 30 daysand my reading has become habit and what will be accomplished with this habit here in lies the hiddensecret of all man’s accomplishments as I repeat the words daily they will soon become part of my active mind but moreimportant they will also seep into my other mind that mysterious source which never sleeps which creates my dreams andoften makes me act in ways I do not comprehend as the words of these scrolls are consumed by my mysterious mind Iwill begin to awake each morning with a Vitality I’ve never known before my Vigor will increase my enthusiasm willrise my desire to meet the world will overcome every fear I once knew at Sunrise and I will be happier than Iever believed it possible to be in this world of strife and sorrow eventually I will find myself reacting to allsituations which confront me as I was commanded in the Scrolls to react and soon these actions andreactions will become easy to perform for any act with practice becomes easy thus a new and good habit is born forwhen an act becomes easy through constant repetition it becomes a pleasure to perform and if it is apleasure to perform it is man’s nature to perform it often when I perform it often it becomes a habit and I becomeits slave and since it is good habit this is my will today I begin a new lifeum I know that’s long there’s a lot there you’ll have to read the book to understand the tone ofit but that’s that’s the principle you know we if some of you are maybe lookingat the healing Journey that Brandon and I created there’s actually assignment an assignment that’s inside that healingJourney that’s based off of this principle where you create basically avision of what you want your life to look like and then you put it on repeat for a number of days with that principleof allowing the the conscious and the active mind to process it so many timesthat eventually the brain can’t help but just make it normalso that’s uh that’s the idea soum thank you guys I hope this is helpful small but simple steps done consistentlyover time understanding what it is that you’re actually trying to speak to in your habits so for me my fingernailsit’s about management of stress I need to learn a new pattern to get to the management of stress but themanagement of stress matters um form good habits and become their slave so hopefully that’s helpfulto you guys thank you for being here um if this is valuable please share it with other people uh we love having you herewe love having you be a part of what we’re trying to do and uh until next time in the words of my grandfather keepon keeping