Speaker 1: I've got to add to them. It's taps, it's the
Speaker 1: You project, It's myself and Robert Capuccio, who rocks up
Speaker 1: every Thursday at my joint. And when I say it
Speaker 1: rocks up, I'm talking virtually rocks up and just appears
Speaker 1: like a little body ferret out of a cage, although
Speaker 1: that's not where ferret should be, a ferret out of
Speaker 1: a tunnel in the ground, a virtual tunnel in the ground.
Speaker 1: There's a little bit of ferret about you, you know that,
Speaker 1: like in a loving way. You've got a bit of
Speaker 1: ferret energy.
Speaker 2: Are you saying you suspect they steal things?
Speaker 1: Is that what ferrets do?
Speaker 3: They did they're incredible thieves. Apparently you could train them
Speaker 3: to neck nearly anything.
Speaker 1: Ah well, who knew? Are they? Is that something that
Speaker 1: criminals do? They have ferrets that they train up gangs
Speaker 1: of ferrets to just run in the streets nicking things
Speaker 1: of value.
Speaker 3: According to my teaste in cinema, Yes, a long time ago,
Speaker 3: like one hundred years ago, people had well trained ferrets.
Speaker 2: I'm not going to steal anything from yours. It's a sandwich.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I feel like the ferret's going to eat
Speaker 1: the sandwich before you get that. But I feel like
Speaker 1: I could be hallucinating that. Somewhere back in the cognitive
Speaker 1: archives is a recollection of a ferret that used to
Speaker 1: steal money and bring it back to its owner. Like
Speaker 1: quite a lot of money used to go into people's homes,
Speaker 1: steal passion, bring it pack. Is that possible or do
Speaker 1: I just make that up?
Speaker 3: I don't know, I've only seen it in films, but yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm sure if they're really well trained and they're good
Speaker 3: at it, and they're kind of small, so you can't
Speaker 3: really you know, it's not like they attract a lot
Speaker 3: of attention to ferret, would they.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And imagine trying a fingerprint a ferret down at
Speaker 1: the police station. I mean, that's going to be tricky,
Speaker 1: isn't it. How are you going to do that? Like
Speaker 1: it's going to get through the bars. You put him
Speaker 1: in the cell or her in the cell, they're going
Speaker 1: to be out at a minute.
Speaker 2: No apposable thumbs, Like where do they put the ink?
Speaker 2: It's just it's a mess.
Speaker 1: Yeah, imagine trying to handcuff that little fucker.
Speaker 3: That's why I so few frereks actually get prosecuted. You
Speaker 3: never hear about that in the paper. It's just too difficult, spices.
Speaker 3: We'll just let them go. Hopefully they take that act
Speaker 3: of grace and use it to change their thieving waste.
Speaker 1: Well, everybody's just jumped out, how are you, bro? What
Speaker 1: time is it over there? Where are you in San
Speaker 1: Diego at the moment?
Speaker 2: I mean San Diego? So what time is it? Right? Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's eighteen forty four.
Speaker 1: So it's oh, it's in the PM. It's called it
Speaker 1: to seven is for you. It's called it to one
Speaker 1: ish also in the PM. But we are Thursday are
Speaker 1: Wednesday evening. We would chatting in the bat. We're chatting
Speaker 1: a little bit before we went live about the idea
Speaker 1: of something that I talked to about about people a lot.
Speaker 1: Also something that's been an issue for me over the years,
Speaker 1: and something that I spoke about. I was going to say,
Speaker 1: yesterday wasn't yesterday, It was the day before. In I
Speaker 1: was in Brisbane. I was talking to a room full
Speaker 1: of lawyers out to my lawyer friends that I met
Speaker 1: the other day, and we were talking about habits and
Speaker 1: patterns of behavior and almost like this unconscious programming that
Speaker 1: runs our life to an extent that may or may
Speaker 1: not work, like the auto pilotleness of our existence or
Speaker 1: the groundhog dayness of these repetitious thoughts and beliefs and
Speaker 1: ideas and behaviors and results that kind of are not optimal.
Speaker 1: So in that kind of whole wheelhouse of you know,
Speaker 1: like everyone who listens to this show, if not everyone,
Speaker 1: nearly everyone wants to think better, do better, create better,
Speaker 1: Which is why people tune in is to figure out
Speaker 1: how do I change my thinking and my habits and
Speaker 1: my behaviors and my lifestyle and my results, and how
Speaker 1: do I be a better version of me whatever that means,
Speaker 1: how do I succeed whatever success means for me individually?
Speaker 1: And you know, I guess trying to have enough self
Speaker 1: awareness to recognize the stuff that you do that doesn't work, Like,
Speaker 1: what is the thing that I do that really is
Speaker 1: hardwired into my normal operating system, that is, on a
Speaker 1: level a form of self sabotage, you know. So an
Speaker 1: obvious one for me was for about twenty years just
Speaker 1: eating everything that wasn't fucking nailed down, despite the fact
Speaker 1: that I didn't need more food. I just wanted more food.
Speaker 1: I just ate more food. I just enjoyed more food,
Speaker 1: because I had, if not a food addiction, something in
Speaker 1: the zip code of a food addiction, you know. But
Speaker 1: you can't change what you can't acknowledge or you can't
Speaker 1: own up to. Is this something that you talk to
Speaker 1: people about. Is this something that you've had to navigate yourself?
Speaker 1: And if so, how do you go about it?
Speaker 3: I mean, this is a big part of what I
Speaker 3: talk to people about, but it's also something that I've
Speaker 3: had to utilize in my life frameworks. Guy, as you know,
Speaker 3: So I have a whole model around this, and it's
Speaker 3: you know, it's basically what you would find in any
Speaker 3: habit model, except a couple of other elements that kind
Speaker 3: of connect it to certain things that increase the probability
Speaker 3: of starting and doing something until it becomes a sustainable behavior.
Speaker 3: I mean, with turettes, I'm easily distracted, you know, Like
Speaker 3: my my attention span is kind of like a ferret.
Speaker 3: If you put that instead of training that ferret for
Speaker 3: a life of crime, you put that ferret on cocaine,
Speaker 3: which is also a very unethical thing to do to
Speaker 3: a ferret. But my brain kind of works the way
Speaker 3: a ferret on cocaine.
Speaker 2: That brain need.
Speaker 3: Work, so for me, if I don't have models, if
Speaker 3: I don't have rituals, if I don't have intentionality, I'm
Speaker 3: like completely all over the shop. So this is something
Speaker 3: that's extremely important to me.
Speaker 1: Do you think that the is the mind bear, it's
Speaker 1: the main barrier to starting? Just the fact that it's hard,
Speaker 1: or it's uncomfortable, or it's unfamiliar, or it's uncertain.
Speaker 2: Is it?
Speaker 1: That? Is it? Just because even though the thing, even
Speaker 1: though I'm not producing the results I want to produce,
Speaker 1: even though I'm not in the health state that I
Speaker 1: want to be in or the job or the income
Speaker 1: or the whatever, I'm kind of familiar with it. So
Speaker 1: there's a kind of an ease to it. Is that
Speaker 1: part of the challenge?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would imagine that is part of the challenge.
Speaker 3: I was thinking, like the key to or the lock
Speaker 3: on any type of transformation begins with awareness, and I
Speaker 3: think it's a lack of self awareness. Why do I
Speaker 3: even want to start this? What am I expecting? Am
Speaker 3: I prepared for what it takes? Why do I even
Speaker 3: do the habits that I want to break in the
Speaker 3: first place? I think the first step is examining that
Speaker 3: because that is your level of intentionality that'll teach you
Speaker 3: a lot about your environment, the rewards you're seeking. I
Speaker 3: also think we're not really aware of what it takes
Speaker 3: to get started. Like bj Fok in Tiny Habits talks
Speaker 3: about breaking it down to the most ridiculous. I think
Speaker 3: for a lot of people, it's like, Okay, I got
Speaker 3: to overhaul my entire life right now, and they're not
Speaker 3: really contemplate. Okay, well, what do I have to sacrifice?
Speaker 3: Am I prepared to sacrifice that? Where a tiny habit
Speaker 3: would be.
Speaker 2: Okay?
Speaker 3: I want to become an expert in this subject matter,
Speaker 3: so I'm going to need to start to read and
Speaker 3: study and explore. Sometimes a great place to start is
Speaker 3: five minutes a day because just starting it's like, oh wow, okay, one,
Speaker 3: I've proven to myself I can do it.
Speaker 2: Two.
Speaker 3: Once I start exploring something, I open that book, it's
Speaker 3: almost like an open.
Speaker 2: Loop in your brain.
Speaker 3: You ever have this experience where you just cannot start something,
Speaker 3: but once you start it, you got to go on
Speaker 3: the road and you got to go give a seminar somewhere,
Speaker 3: And whilst you're on the road, you know, if you
Speaker 3: didn't start, it would be out of your mind. But
Speaker 3: because you already started it, but it's incomplete. It drives
Speaker 3: you crazy a little bit, and just like you're thinking about, oh,
Speaker 3: I can't wait to get back from being on the
Speaker 3: road because I've got to complete this.
Speaker 2: Does that happen to you that kind of like open
Speaker 2: loop scenario?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Sometimes sometimes I find also that the days that
Speaker 1: I am busier, I'm way more I'm way more efficient,
Speaker 1: I'm way more motivated, I'm way more productive. And I
Speaker 1: know that sounds dumb, but what I mean is, like
Speaker 1: I was talking to you, Sam, Yeah, we're not full disclosure,
Speaker 1: but partial disclosure everyone. I've had a few challenges. My
Speaker 1: dad's beene a bit crook, right, So anyway, I've been
Speaker 1: up in more Well, which is four hours of driving
Speaker 1: two hours each way. I was there all day yesterday,
Speaker 1: which is the place that I want to be, but
Speaker 1: I was in hospital with dad all day yesterday. And
Speaker 1: so what that means is there's about fifty things that
Speaker 1: I didn't do yesterday that I should have done, right,
Speaker 1: And so that's cool, but obviously he's the priority, so
Speaker 1: that it doesn't matter. But what that meant was last
Speaker 1: night I got home and I think I did.
Speaker 4: About eight hours of things in three hours, and I
Speaker 4: did it really quite easily, because in my mind it
Speaker 4: is like, well, Craig, this is you don't you don't
Speaker 4: have an option.
Speaker 1: You need to get this done. And it's like I think,
Speaker 1: I give my like if I've got three things to
Speaker 1: do today and it's not a busy day and there's
Speaker 1: no real pressure, there's no deadline. I'm not recording a podcast,
Speaker 1: I'm not doing a gig, I'm not traveling anywhere. It
Speaker 1: really doesn't matter. I'll look up it's three o'clock and
Speaker 1: I've done fucking nothing. Like people think I'm so busy
Speaker 1: and I'm so efficient, and I'm not like I can be.
Speaker 1: But it's it's like almost this this subconscious knowing or
Speaker 1: this conscious knowing. I don't have to be productive, so
Speaker 1: I'm not. But it's like you know when you when
Speaker 1: I travel into state, like I said, day Monday, Tuesday,
Speaker 1: you know, plan strains, automobiles and presentations and meetings, and
Speaker 1: you know I am so efficient and so organized in
Speaker 1: that context, but there's this like almost subconscious part of
Speaker 1: my brain where I don't need to be that today
Speaker 1: and I don't choose to be less productive. I just
Speaker 1: am it's like I sabotage myself. But maybe maybe having
Speaker 1: days where I'm less productive is actually what I need.
Speaker 1: Who knows.
Speaker 2: It could be.
Speaker 3: I noticed that I'm far more productive when I'm in
Speaker 3: perpetual motion. It could have something to do with dopamine,
Speaker 3: because it's goal focused and there's all these things you
Speaker 3: got to do, and every time you're completing something, you're
Speaker 3: getting another head of dopamine. So you're producing dopamine, You're
Speaker 3: activating the ventulustra atom.
Speaker 2: To anticipate reward.
Speaker 3: Orbital frontal cortex is scanning your environment for other goal achieving,
Speaker 3: you know, rather than tension relieving activities for that particular day.
Speaker 2: So I think it has a lot to.
Speaker 3: Do with the dupaminergic system and just the overall momentum
Speaker 3: in general. When I have a little bit of pressure
Speaker 3: on me, And that also makes sense from a stress
Speaker 3: hormone level, elev nor epanaphorin epinafferin you're just going to
Speaker 3: be in a different state than if you're in first
Speaker 3: gear for like twenty four hours, if you will.
Speaker 1: I think also for me, there's the micro and the macro.
Speaker 1: The micro of my life is what I'm doing now
Speaker 1: in this moment. I'm talking to Bobby in this moment
Speaker 1: at twelve fifty three in Melbourne on a Thursday. Right now,
Speaker 1: I've got a coffee here, I've got my computer in
Speaker 1: front of me. You know, I know that we've got
Speaker 1: about thirty minutes more to go. This is the micro,
Speaker 1: but the macro is well. I've got this company called
Speaker 1: the You Project. We've got two thousand episodes of this
Speaker 1: this podcast. I'm finishing my PhD. I've got parents who
Speaker 1: are that, you know. And then there's like, what's I think?
Speaker 1: Because there is the macro and the micro, so that
Speaker 1: most of the time our head is in the microw
Speaker 1: the micro the what am I doing now? What can
Speaker 1: I get now? What feels good now? What tastes good now?
Speaker 1: What's comfortable now? What can I avoid now and do later?
Speaker 1: Like I wrote this thing the other day on social media,
Speaker 1: and it's just it's just a whiteboard thing and there's
Speaker 1: four words and the four words are tomorrow, soon, Monday,
Speaker 1: and January one. And the message is these are the
Speaker 1: fourth most popular times to start any kind of personal transformation.
Speaker 1: So tomorrow, soon, Monday, January one. Interestingly, today doesn't make
Speaker 1: the top ten You know, the funny thing is that, like,
Speaker 1: how many times have somebody said to you, hey, Bobby,
Speaker 1: how do I do this? Or you know, at the
Speaker 1: risk of sounding cliche, I'm probably the single question I've
Speaker 1: been asked most is essentially how do I get lean
Speaker 1: or how do I get fit right? That's or a
Speaker 1: version of that question. I've been asked a million different questions,
Speaker 1: brain questions, human behavior questions, but over the totality of
Speaker 1: my career, it's from the eight and year old gym
Speaker 1: instructor to now. And more than half of the time
Speaker 1: when I tell people or I give them advice, you know,
Speaker 1: I go, look, here are some things to think about.
Speaker 1: It's virtually never that they're going to start that today,
Speaker 1: Like it's always thanks, you know, it's always going to
Speaker 1: be soon or tomorrow or Monday or January one, but
Speaker 1: it's never now. And it just interests me because the
Speaker 1: issue is now, Like I have an issue now. I
Speaker 1: don't have an issue next Monday. I have an issue now.
Speaker 1: I'm like, we have an issue now, so start now.
Speaker 1: And you've got an answer now, or you've got at
Speaker 1: least the very least you've got some direction, or you've
Speaker 1: got a framework or you've got some kind of resource
Speaker 1: or tool or strategy, so start now. And it's so
Speaker 1: funny when I and I generally don't push people, but
Speaker 1: every now and then I'm like, well, why wouldn't you
Speaker 1: start this today? And you can just see people cognitively
Speaker 1: scrambling for some kind of rationale Bobby, not today, because
Speaker 1: fucking any day, but today, and then because every you know,
Speaker 1: we never live in any place but the present, so
Speaker 1: it's always going to be sometime in the future that
Speaker 1: place we never inhabit.
Speaker 3: I wonder if that has And by the way, I
Speaker 3: have been exercising for my entire life and I have
Speaker 3: run into the same Oh my goodness, you know what
Speaker 3: I've eaten this today? Tomorrow I'm going to and it's like, dude, right,
Speaker 3: what are you doing? It's like, so I do a
Speaker 3: lot of the same things, although I'm really good at
Speaker 3: starting back up and staying consistent for a while. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but I do have that pattern. And I wonder for
Speaker 3: people if it goes back to that all or nothing
Speaker 3: type of mentality, going back to bj fog where it's
Speaker 3: almost like, hey, if you you could do one small
Speaker 3: thing starting like today, now, what do you think would
Speaker 3: be an accessible behavior that might support that health and
Speaker 3: fitness goal of whatever it is that they said that
Speaker 3: they were trying to do. And I know that I
Speaker 3: was once attending this class on food science and this
Speaker 3: medical doctor shoes brilliant, and what she had people do
Speaker 3: was just eat whatever you're normally gonna eat, but just
Speaker 3: pay attention to what it is, be mindful, and add
Speaker 3: plants to it or add vegetables, just throw it on.
Speaker 3: It's like, oh, that's very specific. That's like every single meal.
Speaker 3: There's no way to get that wrong. It's either I
Speaker 3: did it or I didn't do it, so there's no ambiguity.
Speaker 3: Oh and I can start that today. And once they
Speaker 3: start that at a very small level, they start to
Speaker 3: shift their identity from someone who who doesn't do any
Speaker 3: health and fitness supporting behaviors to someone who does. And
Speaker 3: it's a lot easier jump making bigger and bigger commitments
Speaker 3: from that because a lot of habits, you know, James
Speaker 3: Clear and Atomic Habits talks about this where it relates.
Speaker 2: To your identity.
Speaker 3: Like imagine you got cast as the leading role in
Speaker 3: a major blockbuster film that they're producing, and you were
Speaker 3: playing the role of a lead character who just engaged
Speaker 3: in health and fitness type behaviors. Let's say you had
Speaker 3: a job that was really demanding and because of that,
Speaker 3: you had to elicit top peak levels of emotional, physical,
Speaker 3: cognitive performance. What would that person eat? How often would
Speaker 3: they go to the gym? Would they just like skip workouts?
Speaker 3: Would they just be like eating sugar and ultra processed
Speaker 3: foods every single day, every single meal?
Speaker 2: Like? What is that character? And where could you start?
Speaker 3: Because every time you engage in that behavior, that's could ruin.
Speaker 3: It's a vote for your identity of who you're becoming.
Speaker 2: And that's that's kind.
Speaker 3: Of a powerful way to look at habit formation as well.
Speaker 3: But I think I think where the real magic is
Speaker 3: is looking at what you.
Speaker 2: Currently do that you want to stop doing.
Speaker 3: I think there's a lot of valuable information and we
Speaker 3: just go to, oh, I don't want.
Speaker 2: To do this, I'd rather do this, but what we'll
Speaker 2: come back.
Speaker 3: There's a lot to learn from what you're already doing
Speaker 3: if you can look at it with some objectivity.
Speaker 1: And I think and that is the that is the
Speaker 1: ever present challenge, Like how do you look at your
Speaker 1: own shit with objectivity? When everything that you look at
Speaker 1: is the subjective looking is subjectively. You know your window,
Speaker 1: and I know what you're saying. I think part of
Speaker 1: it is for me. And this is again, this is
Speaker 1: This is not a recommendation or advice any on. This
Speaker 1: is just my experience. So I needed to try to understand,
Speaker 1: for example, my relationship with food and understand the emotion
Speaker 1: around food, and to start to you know, because we
Speaker 1: are It doesn't matter how how logical we are, how
Speaker 1: intelligent we are, how much we know you know the
Speaker 1: research da da da da da da da. When humans
Speaker 1: are emotional, generally, the emotion drives the behavior, not the
Speaker 1: mind right or not the logic, not the rational part
Speaker 1: of the brain. And so it's being able to say, listen,
Speaker 1: I struggle with this particular issue, with this habit, with
Speaker 1: this behavior, and it's it's quite emotionally driven, and it's
Speaker 1: driven out of fear, or it's driven out of resentment,
Speaker 1: or it's driven out of anxiety, or it's whatever it is, right,
Speaker 1: or it's driven out of a need to be comfortable
Speaker 1: in the moment. And so to try to turn down
Speaker 1: the emotion, recognize the emotion, feel the emotion. We're not
Speaker 1: denying how you feel, but trying to turn up the
Speaker 1: logic and strategy, knowing that in a minute, you're going
Speaker 1: to be five years older. Right, in a minute, bro,
Speaker 1: you're going to be five years older, and you're going
Speaker 1: to be probably unless something changes. Because by the way,
Speaker 1: you've been having a version of this conversation since two
Speaker 1: thousand and six. Right, So so if nothing changes, nothing changes,
Speaker 1: And being able to just like we would like, look
Speaker 1: at a business project or a financial endeavor, or you know,
Speaker 1: some kind of strategic thing that we're in the middle of.
Speaker 1: Imagine if we could take that analytical strategic thinking and
Speaker 1: apply it to the project that is us or we
Speaker 1: might even call it the U project, if there's a
Speaker 1: name for a show. Right, But being being able to go, yeah,
Speaker 1: I unless something changes based on my current trajectory in
Speaker 1: the last ten years and my current trajectory in five
Speaker 1: years or two years or five months, I'm going to
Speaker 1: be in a shit place. So is that where I
Speaker 1: want to be? No, and we're not talking about self loathing.
Speaker 1: I always say this, we're talking about self awareness. Don't
Speaker 1: beat yourself up, don't throw yourself under the metaphoric bus.
Speaker 1: We don't need that. That's not the point. You're not
Speaker 1: a bad human. You're not terrible, you're not weak, you're
Speaker 1: not shitouse, You're none of that. You're okay, you're human.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, this shit is not magic.
Speaker 1: You won't magically get better, you won't magically get lean,
Speaker 1: you won't magically get rich, you won't magically become a
Speaker 1: high performer, you won't magically build resilience. You need to
Speaker 1: do the fucking things that create the outcomes you want.
Speaker 1: And will you like it some of it? No? Will
Speaker 1: it be hard, fucking oath? Will it be fun? Probably
Speaker 1: not at times? And is that okay? You know? For
Speaker 1: me this is the like we can analyze and reanalyze
Speaker 1: upside down inside out. But at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: you know, knowing matters, but doing matters the most. You know,
Speaker 1: it's for me. It's just that I think that also,
Speaker 1: and I'll shut up after this, But I feel like
Speaker 1: for a lot of people, Bobby, there's got to be
Speaker 1: some internal shift, like something It shouldn't have to happen,
Speaker 1: because I think we have the capacity to do amazing things.
Speaker 1: But I like the times mostly where I've seen people
Speaker 1: do fucking mind blowing incredible things like life changing. I
Speaker 1: can't believe what they're doing and creating is often after
Speaker 1: there's been a catastrophe or a near catastrophe now and
Speaker 1: then all of a sudden, there's a reset in their brain.
Speaker 1: All of a sudden, they have a totally different perspective,
Speaker 1: They're looking through a different window. Their values have just
Speaker 1: been turned on their head, or at least their priorities
Speaker 1: have been turned up. So, oh fuck, you know what
Speaker 1: matters the most in my life is not dying.
Speaker 2: Let me get.
Speaker 1: Onto that, you know. So I think there's that, and
Speaker 1: I've seen that. You've probably seen it. I saw it
Speaker 1: with my dad when he had his first heart attack.
Speaker 1: Just the complete one eighty in thinking, in behavior, in
Speaker 1: habits and lifestyle, in everything. And the dude who couldn't
Speaker 1: lose two kilos for thirty years was overweight. That dude
Speaker 1: lost twenty five kilos in five months and never regained
Speaker 1: it because he had a reset. But the thing was
Speaker 1: that ability to create this amazing transformation was always there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that is interesting. I observed a lot of that
Speaker 3: Joe nine to eleven in both through actions, like people
Speaker 3: who became completely different, people live their life completely differently.
Speaker 1: I experienced that you just remind mind people that, yeah,
Speaker 1: because a lot of people might not know you were
Speaker 1: in the middle of that.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I lived. I lived at ground zero Joe,
Speaker 2: nine to eleven.
Speaker 3: Like the World Trade Center came down on top of
Speaker 3: my building. Like the whole place was just this dark
Speaker 3: dust cloud. So I got I had the opposite.
Speaker 2: Happen to me.
Speaker 3: I got very ill living in that toxic dust cloud.
Speaker 3: It was let's just say it was extremely unhealthy and
Speaker 3: dangerous for people to be living down there. And I
Speaker 3: started to notice a lot of things related to illness.
Speaker 3: And when I came out of that, I became so
Speaker 3: much more relaxed with so many of my behaviors I
Speaker 3: was I was told that prior to nine to eleven.
Speaker 3: I know, you can't imagine this, Craig, but I was
Speaker 3: hard to be around. You know, people like you were
Speaker 3: so uptight. I wouldn't eat anything.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't go out for a drink. I wouldn't I
Speaker 2: wouldn't even just go to a film.
Speaker 3: I wouldn't do anything if it didn't have to do
Speaker 3: with growth development and my career trajectory.
Speaker 2: Nothing.
Speaker 3: And when all that stuff happened, well, I had this
Speaker 3: thought like Okay, you're gonna you know you're gonna die someday,
Speaker 3: and you know, now you've been living in this place
Speaker 3: for a while, that someday might be a lot closer
Speaker 3: than you think. And I'm not going to go into
Speaker 3: all of the details about why.
Speaker 2: I came to that conclusion. It's pretty sad.
Speaker 3: A lot of people, again, their health was significantly impacted
Speaker 3: living at ground zero, and I just started taking on
Speaker 3: behaviors and living in the moment and behaving in ways
Speaker 3: that prior to nine to eleven I never would have
Speaker 3: engaged in, or I rarely would have engaged in. Then
Speaker 3: I would have liked engaged in like self flagellation and
Speaker 3: self loathing, and got back on track and not went
Speaker 3: out and spoken to another person in a social setting
Speaker 3: for another three years because I had to catch up
Speaker 3: on work and studying. So I've seen that go in
Speaker 3: both directions. I want to talk about something that I
Speaker 3: was recently struggling with, and it's not it's not a
Speaker 3: huge thing, but you know how you one thing is
Speaker 3: out of alignment, and it throws so many other things
Speaker 3: out of alignment and it becomes kind.
Speaker 2: Of a big thing. So for me, it was late
Speaker 2: late night snacking.
Speaker 3: Where I would just eat, you know, after dinner late
Speaker 3: at night. And I'm not talking about necessarily really sugary,
Speaker 3: fatty foods, you know, I would just you know, snack
Speaker 3: on pistachio nuts or almonds or quote unquote healthy choices.
Speaker 3: But I noticed that I would go to bed and
Speaker 3: feel like shit, and my stomach would heark because I'm
Speaker 3: eating too late at night, and then I wouldn't sleep
Speaker 3: very well. Then the next day I would wake up
Speaker 3: and I'd be exhausted. So I'm not switched on, and
Speaker 3: that further exacerbates my stress. So I started looking at
Speaker 3: this talk about examining habits, like what's the information?
Speaker 2: And you know, my framework.
Speaker 3: Is core habits, right Q observation, ritual, and enforce Like
Speaker 3: what enforces that the reward there that perpetuates that behavior.
Speaker 3: And the first thing you look at is all of
Speaker 3: your cues. So my fridge was a cue. Also I
Speaker 3: was keeping stuff like nuts like on the counter. Cornell
Speaker 3: University did the study and they found out that people
Speaker 3: who kept food readily visible out like on counters in
Speaker 3: the kitchen were on average anywhere from they weighed four
Speaker 3: to thirteen kilos more than people who didn't who had
Speaker 3: their food tucked away. So environmental cues, like what's going
Speaker 3: on in my environment that's prompting this behavior?
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: The second thing was like observation, you know what what
Speaker 3: am I experiencing? So you take a look at external environment,
Speaker 3: the cues, the observations more internal. What is happening at
Speaker 3: the times where I'll reach for food late at night
Speaker 3: and I noticed I'm feeling anxiety. I'm thinking about stuff
Speaker 3: that happened during the day. I'm thinking about the next day.
Speaker 3: Even when I write that stuff out in a to
Speaker 3: do list, you know, which does help. There was a
Speaker 3: certain time period I was going through and it caused
Speaker 3: me a lot of anxiety. So I'll just like reach,
Speaker 3: I'll just open up the fridge, or I'll go rummage
Speaker 3: through all the bags. That's my ritual. And then the
Speaker 3: last thing I took a look at is well, how
Speaker 3: do I want to feel like I'm doing that for
Speaker 3: a reward? Every behavior you have, even if it's like
Speaker 3: smoking something that's quite damaging, there is a positive intention.
Speaker 3: Maybe that's to get relief, to get a break, to
Speaker 3: feel like you have some locus of control. There's something
Speaker 3: positive that you're after, like, what is that exactly?
Speaker 1: I thought, Okay, now, not maody smugs. Nobody smugs because
Speaker 1: it makes them feel bad, Like the obviously in that
Speaker 1: smoke is anyway that that process of sucking on that
Speaker 1: dot in the moment anyway it makes them feel good
Speaker 1: or they wouldn't do it. Yeah, so I totally agree.
Speaker 3: Or at one time it made them feel good, and
Speaker 3: maybe they're chasing that benefit. So I started to realize
Speaker 3: that what I was looking for is relief. It wasn't
Speaker 3: even comfort, it was a relief from this constant anxiety.
Speaker 3: And I also noticed that another thing in my environment
Speaker 3: that provoked this behavior was when my wife was home.
Speaker 3: So she's not at home, I don't do that as readily.
Speaker 3: And I was like, well, why is that really? Not
Speaker 3: blaming amy, but it's like, oh, because when I'm anxious,
Speaker 3: the last thing I want to do is have that
Speaker 3: anxiety bleed into all the stuff that she's got going on.
Speaker 3: So I was like, all right, let me just sit
Speaker 3: here and nibble on a whole bag of something. You
Speaker 3: know how that goes. And then once I understood what
Speaker 3: provokes the behavior, what I'm feeling when I engage in
Speaker 3: the behavior and how I'm really trying to feel well.
Speaker 3: Now there's all these replacement behaviors. So I spoke to
Speaker 3: Amy elicited her social support is a critical element of
Speaker 3: either habit cessation or positive habit formation. And we just
Speaker 3: started going out for walks every night and not talking
Speaker 3: about the stuff that was giving me anxiety, just talking
Speaker 3: about anything, and that walk gave me the same feeling
Speaker 3: with Amy next to me, which gave me a much
Speaker 3: better feeling than sitting in my house and ruminating. I
Speaker 3: was like, oh wow, that's a great replacement behavior. And
Speaker 3: after a while that became the habit without even thinking
Speaker 3: about it.
Speaker 2: It was just automated.
Speaker 3: After dinner we would go for a walk, which is
Speaker 3: a really good idea to do anyway after a meal.
Speaker 3: And there was just so many things that fell into place.
Speaker 3: I was getting what I wanted from a behavior that
Speaker 3: was constructive and not working against me.
Speaker 1: What about I love what you're saying. What about people
Speaker 1: who need to change your habit and maybe they've got
Speaker 1: a habit that really is on some level controlling then
Speaker 1: rather than the other way. And I'm not necessarily talking
Speaker 1: about let's just put aside the big ones at the moment.
Speaker 1: Let's put aside booze and drugs and addiction, but it's
Speaker 1: like the more kind of mundane stuff. And of course
Speaker 1: all of that matters, but for the moment, just things
Speaker 1: that we do that are somewhat ineffective or potentially a
Speaker 1: little bit self destructive, or at the very least, we're
Speaker 1: just wasting our talent and time, you know, based on
Speaker 1: who and how we want to be. And we have
Speaker 1: this cycle of which I think is nearly all of.
Speaker 5: Us starting and stopping. Start, lose motivation, lose focus or whatever.
Speaker 5: Something happens, hurt my back or get busy at work,
Speaker 5: or get distracted, or fall in love, fall out of love.
Speaker 1: Oh fuck that thing I started and I did for
Speaker 1: three weeks six months ago. I better do that, but
Speaker 1: this time, fuck, I meant this time, now, this is
Speaker 1: the time. And then it lasts for two and a
Speaker 1: half and then we wake up and now we're sixty.
Speaker 1: How do how do we outlast our motivation? How do
Speaker 1: we how do we be the you know, and I
Speaker 1: know there's no single answer to this. This is conversation starter,
Speaker 1: but and I've got some ideas on it, but like,
Speaker 1: what's your go to? Because so many people that you
Speaker 1: and I work with and talk to, and so many
Speaker 1: of our listeners on some level. And I don't know
Speaker 1: if you've done it, but I guess you've done it.
Speaker 1: I've definitely done it. Where there are things that I
Speaker 1: literally tried to change some things fucking sixty times before
Speaker 1: I actually got it across the line. You know. Like
Speaker 1: I've said many times, I had really unhealthy eating habits
Speaker 1: till I was about thirty five now, and I was
Speaker 1: working in the health space for seventeen years up to that, right,
Speaker 1: So I was simultaneously telling people how to eat or
Speaker 1: giving people advice that I wasn't executing myself. I was
Speaker 1: one hundred percent a fraud, not trying to be but
Speaker 1: a fraud in the sense that I was not doing people.
Speaker 1: I was not doing things that I was advising people
Speaker 1: to do. And it wasn't I wasn't trying to be bad.
Speaker 1: I wasn't, but it just took me so long to
Speaker 1: get my own shit together, you know. And by that
Speaker 1: I mean the when nobody's looking stuff. When people were looking,
Speaker 1: I was amazing, of course, because that's my ego, right,
Speaker 1: But when people weren't looking, I was eating everything that
Speaker 1: was not nailed down, and then I would then I
Speaker 1: would train and live and eat like an elite athlete
Speaker 1: for two weeks, and then I'd go on a one
Speaker 1: week bend or an ice cream and fucking cheesecake, put
Speaker 1: on six kilos in a week, and you know, and
Speaker 1: still all the time having enough knowledge and awareness, but
Speaker 1: still not doing it. What are your thoughts around that,
Speaker 1: because it's it's so easy to sit on a podcast
Speaker 1: and about the theory of change, but at the call fights,
Speaker 1: at the miss emotional psychological behavior call fights and change,
Speaker 1: it's wayh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's absolutely true.
Speaker 3: And I think one thing that's important to remember is
Speaker 3: everybody struggles with this stuff. You know, some people claim
Speaker 3: they don't put they're liars, And I think the you
Speaker 3: need you need a system. Right, everything that we do
Speaker 3: habitually consistently, we are either leveraging a system or we
Speaker 3: had a system originally. So you will rise or fall
Speaker 3: to the level of your systems or I like to
Speaker 3: call them frameworks. Let's go back to the core framework, right,
Speaker 3: cor in habit formation rather than habit cessation. First step
Speaker 3: is getting very very clear, like you said, something that
Speaker 3: we can all relate to you just feel like, oh,
Speaker 3: I'm just wasting my potential all day long. Okay, that
Speaker 3: is an interpretation. What exactly is happening? Like, what is
Speaker 3: the behavior that you're engaging in? Because if you don't
Speaker 3: get down to like, okay, wasting your potential doing what
Speaker 3: by just like not being born smarter? Is there something
Speaker 3: that you do that you should be doing something else?
Speaker 3: Is there something you do that kind of puts you
Speaker 3: in this state or sucks your time with no real benefit.
Speaker 3: Like let's talk about doom scrolling for a second. Now,
Speaker 3: how many of us have done stuff like that where
Speaker 3: you're just posting something, You look at one thing, it's
Speaker 3: like oh wow, okay, and the next thing, and the
Speaker 3: next thing and the next thing, and then whatever you're
Speaker 3: looking at, whatever you draw your attention to, the algorithm
Speaker 3: figures it out. So now it's just gonna feed you
Speaker 3: that stuff. So if you're living in high anxiety and
Speaker 3: you know it's gonna feed you fear based stuff. If
Speaker 3: you love cats, you're gonna watch cat videos all day long.
Speaker 3: So oh, it's this doom scrolling thing. And it's not
Speaker 3: the doom scrolling, it's how often and how long I
Speaker 3: do it for? I would say the first step is
Speaker 3: just being aware of that, like how many times a
Speaker 3: day are you doom scrolling? Like how long? And what
Speaker 3: creates that? Like, there's got to be a queue for
Speaker 3: the behavior. So Wendy Woods at University of Southern California,
Speaker 3: she estimates in her research that over forty percent of
Speaker 3: the things we do in.
Speaker 2: A day are not intentional.
Speaker 3: It's not like I'm going to sit down and waste
Speaker 3: ninety minutes by scrolling through utter nonsense on social media.
Speaker 3: We are just responding to conditioning within our environment over
Speaker 3: forty percent of our day. You do something long enough,
Speaker 3: it's going to become habitual. What's the whole point of
Speaker 3: this first thing? It's like, well, where where is that?
Speaker 3: Like for me, it's my desk right, And for me
Speaker 3: it's like, let's say it's a device. I've got my
Speaker 3: mobile phone. When I take a look at this, this
Speaker 3: becomes a cue. So one of the things I did
Speaker 3: is I took all of my social media apps off
Speaker 3: my phone and I put them on a completely different device.
Speaker 3: So now I got to go looking for this thing.
Speaker 3: So that's intense. I can't be responding to my environment
Speaker 3: because I put it out of my environment also, and
Speaker 3: I know everyone's living situation is different. Where I live,
Speaker 3: I have a lounge, a business center, and a courtyard.
Speaker 3: Just get out of the house sometimes the hardest thing
Speaker 3: for me. And this is the thing about working at home,
Speaker 3: where used to have space in between meetings, like you
Speaker 3: walk from one meeting to another. You don't have that
Speaker 3: everything's next, next, next, next, so you don't get out
Speaker 3: of the house. It's like, Okay, go downstairs, because I
Speaker 3: know if I'm outside and I only brought with me
Speaker 3: what I'm looking to work on, like my computer, I've
Speaker 3: just changed my environmental cues. Or a coffee shop is
Speaker 3: where I benefit from the white noise of having people
Speaker 3: around me. Once I'm at a coffee shop, I can
Speaker 3: zone out and in focus to such a greater degree
Speaker 3: as long as I don't interact with anyone than in
Speaker 3: any other environments.
Speaker 2: That's one. That's the cue. What's the environmental cue?
Speaker 1: I was just going to say, I'm exactly the same.
Speaker 1: I mean, you've had coffee with me at the Hamptons,
Speaker 1: where I shout out to the Hampton spolk, and I
Speaker 1: can be in Mayhem where there's people in and out,
Speaker 1: there's tradees coming in getting coffees. There are kids, there
Speaker 1: are school kids, there are it's a very busy cafe.
Speaker 1: I'm sitting in my corner, a special little spot, and
Speaker 1: I'm more focused and more productive than sitting in a
Speaker 1: quiet room at home. Most Yeah, I get. I mean,
Speaker 1: I love my quiet room at home with it I'm
Speaker 1: in right now. But there are times when my attention
Speaker 1: is so diverted, like my ability to focus and concentrate
Speaker 1: depending on the time of the day. But if I
Speaker 1: came in, if I got out of bed and I
Speaker 1: came into this room at six fifteen and I just
Speaker 1: sat here, I know that my productivity would be one.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't do it, but it would be way less
Speaker 1: than when I'm I don't know why it is. It's
Speaker 1: maybe it's just habit. Maybe it's just there's this Maybe
Speaker 1: my brain gets in that environment because I've done it
Speaker 1: for so long where it knows. Oh, this is where.
Speaker 1: This is where we get set for the day. This
Speaker 1: is where we plan, this is where we post something,
Speaker 1: or this is where we respond to emails or I
Speaker 1: don't know why I'm talking in like we I don't know,
Speaker 1: maybe I.
Speaker 2: But yes of personality is living in that head.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right, I'm with you. There's something about being
Speaker 1: in that white noise is a good is a good
Speaker 1: description because it's yeah, okay, core.
Speaker 3: See see And that goes right into oh right, and
Speaker 3: oh is observation and what am I observing?
Speaker 2: Imserving?
Speaker 3: I'm observing three variables basically that deal with readiness and
Speaker 3: probability of engagement and sustaining long term behavior.
Speaker 2: One is enjoyment.
Speaker 3: How much am I enjoying this if my environment is
Speaker 3: white noise, having people around, and I could write that
Speaker 3: chapter sitting in a coffee shop more readily and more
Speaker 3: creatively than sitting in a quiet room.
Speaker 2: Go do that.
Speaker 3: Another thing sometimes is when I'm going through creative work
Speaker 3: and in the beginning, before you're in a state of flow,
Speaker 3: it's just painful, it's tedious. What is it that I
Speaker 3: enjoy that would not only compliment this, but I can
Speaker 3: attach an activity I don't want to do to something I.
Speaker 2: Really enjoy doing.
Speaker 3: I mean, if you go to see a film, try this,
Speaker 3: or go watch a clip on YouTube and watch the
Speaker 3: most epic scene in your favorite film with the sound off.
Speaker 2: It's kind of stupid, like they make the it's not
Speaker 2: just the dialogue.
Speaker 3: They make these soundtracks, there's this background ambient music to
Speaker 3: elevate your level of emotion and engagement.
Speaker 2: I use that.
Speaker 3: I listen to soundtracks that are not overwhelming, but they're
Speaker 3: is and I listened to them softly, and it keeps
Speaker 3: me so focused on my work in the moment. So
Speaker 3: that's one is how much am I enjoying it?
Speaker 6: I just elevated that, And I just want to jump
Speaker 6: in and say, isn't it interesting to understand the way
Speaker 6: that your brain and your.
Speaker 1: Creativity and your focus and your productivity work best because
Speaker 1: you'll go in one environment where like that's your dream
Speaker 1: space to just produce, but for somebody else that wouldn't
Speaker 1: work at all, you know, So recognizing individually, it's like
Speaker 1: like right now, I'm sitting in you know, my office,
Speaker 1: which is air conditioned. I'm looking out the window, which
Speaker 1: I've spoke about too many times, at all these beautiful trees.
Speaker 1: I've got bare feet, black T shirt, shorts, and I'm
Speaker 1: really comfortable. And if I'm in a really comfortable environment,
Speaker 1: my brain works better, you know, like for doing things
Speaker 1: like if I had just sit here and do this
Speaker 1: in an office space in a suit, and a tie.
Speaker 1: I don't know why, but just for me. And even
Speaker 1: the other day when I was in Queensland, I spoke
Speaker 1: to them last week about the gig and there was
Speaker 1: all of these lawyers in a corporate space and then
Speaker 1: I said to the lady who's organizing it, please tell
Speaker 1: me I don't have to wear a suit. Then she laughed,
Speaker 1: I go, you don't want me in a suit. I'm
Speaker 1: not as good. I'm literally thirty I'm thirty percent more stupid.
Speaker 1: I go, you just want me wearing whatever I'm comfortable,
Speaker 1: and then she goes, wear whatever you want. And it's like,
Speaker 1: I know, I could probably overcome this, but even down
Speaker 1: to what I wear affects how well my brain and
Speaker 1: my emotion and my creativity and my mind in general works.
Speaker 1: You know, So having that contextual and that situational awareness. Oh,
Speaker 1: you know, on top of all this, food works for me,
Speaker 1: like eating nuts before Ben doesn't work for Bobby. But
Speaker 1: we might also find well, creatively, Bobby's better when he's
Speaker 1: around other people and there's lots of kind of human
Speaker 1: interaction and white noise. Then if he's sitting in some
Speaker 1: office space with white walls and the windows, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for me, when I'm by myself in silence, sometimes
Speaker 3: that just doesn't work for me. I'm not saying I
Speaker 3: want to interact with people, because a lot of times
Speaker 3: when I'm doing creative work, I absolutely don't. But just
Speaker 3: knowing they're there, I can see them, I can feel
Speaker 3: their presence.
Speaker 2: And another thing is is importance. The stronger what you're.
Speaker 3: Doing is connected not just to an outcome or goal,
Speaker 3: but of value, something that is inherently sacred to you,
Speaker 3: the greater the chance of you engaging it and sustaining it.
Speaker 3: So how important is this related to your values? How
Speaker 3: is important? Is again identity? Like who do I want
Speaker 3: to see myself at? Who do I want to be?
Speaker 3: It's almost like the whole the Bukowski example. Charles Bukowski
Speaker 3: struggled and was dysfunctional in just about every hour of
Speaker 3: his life, but he was an infinitely prolific writer because
Speaker 3: at his core, his identity was I'm a writer. So
Speaker 3: it's not like he would stay up till three in
Speaker 3: the morning writing because he was so disciplined. What else
Speaker 3: does a writer do? A writer by nature writes, So
Speaker 3: it was so ingrained in who he was he could
Speaker 3: not not write In interviews, he talks about how painful
Speaker 3: it was to not sit down at the time think
Speaker 3: about this. This is something that most people struggle deeply with.
Speaker 3: For him, he's so identified with being a writer. He
Speaker 3: deeply struggled in trying to abstain from writing. So who
Speaker 3: do you want to be? And you know, where are
Speaker 3: you starting? Like, what's your level of confidence? Basically, and
Speaker 3: that's where you select. You want to select something that
Speaker 3: is challenging. The more challenging the habit, the greater the
Speaker 3: drive and sustainability. But not at first, at first start
Speaker 3: where you can develop evidence that you are able to
Speaker 3: do this as small as you need to make that habit.
Speaker 3: And then as you start expanding the size of that habit,
Speaker 3: you want something that's not so far out of your
Speaker 3: capacity that it frustrates and overwhelms you, but enough that
Speaker 3: it stretches you. Because that's actually a motivational force. Because
Speaker 3: if what you're doing is aligned to your true values,
Speaker 3: intrinsic motivation is connected deeply to the pursuit of mastery.
Speaker 3: That's not going to deter you, that's probably going to
Speaker 3: engage you. And the third aspect is rituals. And I
Speaker 3: see people really get into a lot of trouble here
Speaker 3: because it's vague ambiguities rather than meaningful specifics that lead
Speaker 3: them into habit formation, something.
Speaker 2: Like I want to lose to.
Speaker 3: Side that again, people run into a lot of trouble
Speaker 3: around rituals because it's vague ambiguities rather than meaningful specifics
Speaker 3: that guide them into habit formation. And this is why
Speaker 3: they struggle. It's like, well, I want to make more money. Okay,
Speaker 3: what are we talking about here? Are we talking about
Speaker 3: two dollars three five? Or are we talking about a million?
Speaker 3: Like what exactly do you mean by that? Well, I'm
Speaker 3: going to lose weight, Okay, Well, what's the behavior that's
Speaker 3: kind of creating a barrier for that? And what behavior
Speaker 3: would you rather do instead? So, like when are you
Speaker 3: going to do this thing? How often are we talking
Speaker 3: three days a week, five days a week, every day?
Speaker 3: How long are you going to engage in this? For
Speaker 3: like have a beginning and an end and it could
Speaker 3: be just five minutes a day to start. That's great,
Speaker 3: but that is a definitive metric. And what that does
Speaker 3: is it gives you all of these variables. Each variable
Speaker 3: is another point of evidence increasing your self efficacy, your
Speaker 3: level of confidence that you can engage in this. But
Speaker 3: it also creates a lot of variability around resilience. Resilience
Speaker 3: has to do it adaptation. So if let's say on
Speaker 3: a Thursday, I miss a meal, that's only one variable.
Speaker 3: If it's like, okay, I'm going to eat better, well
Speaker 3: that's all or nothing. Wow, I screwed up mine as well.
Speaker 3: Eat everything that's not nailed down in your language, and
Speaker 3: I'll start again Monday. But if it's only one variable,
Speaker 3: that was just one meal, one meal is specific time,
Speaker 3: and then I could start.
Speaker 2: To learn from my failures.
Speaker 3: The failures become more important than the successes because it's like, Okay,
Speaker 3: what was different about lunch on a Thursday versus Monday
Speaker 3: when it wasn't an issue? Ah, Okay, I know how
Speaker 3: to modify that variable. So you're not only having behaviors
Speaker 3: that are modifiable. You don't have to go through the
Speaker 3: whole story about I failed on this and you're explained
Speaker 3: toy style becomes dysfunctional, becomes permanent and pervasive and personal.
Speaker 2: No, it's just something that happened.
Speaker 3: Oh and by the way, that gave me information that
Speaker 3: allows me to plan better and move further along my
Speaker 3: goals than if that setback never occurred, And finally, like,
Speaker 3: what are you doing to reward this cycle? And sometimes
Speaker 3: it could be just stopping and recognizing, going okay, how
Speaker 3: do I feel right now?
Speaker 2: Other times it.
Speaker 3: Could be elictiting social support, like sending a text message
Speaker 3: to someone who you know cares about you, supports you,
Speaker 3: and is not trying to derail you. You know this person,
Speaker 3: now what, Oh you're doing this whole health kick thing.
Speaker 2: One drink? You can't have one drink, crag.
Speaker 3: It's like, not that person, I hate it, but someone
Speaker 3: who's like, yeah, you know, I think this is a
Speaker 3: really great idea.
Speaker 2: You know what do you mean for me? I love you. Yeah.
Speaker 3: By the way, I just went seven days without touching
Speaker 3: a drink. I just went seven days without eating a cake.
Speaker 3: You know, I went seven days by adding plants to
Speaker 3: my food. Wow, the awesome job. That's a reward, that's
Speaker 3: an enforcer, Rinse and repeat. So if you have a framework,
Speaker 3: it's not like, oh, wow, now I've got a system
Speaker 3: that will guide me through a series of successive wins.
Speaker 2: That's not how life works.
Speaker 3: But you have something to navigate through, and when the
Speaker 3: inevitable setbacks occur, you can get back on track because
Speaker 3: your success is connected to the system, not how you
Speaker 3: feel about it in the moment, not the story you're
Speaker 3: telling yourself in your mind.
Speaker 1: Wow, that was a lot. That was good, though, I
Speaker 1: also think your honor, Like when I talk to people
Speaker 1: about where they are now, Okay, so we're in a
Speaker 1: place metaphorical, literal place of financial place, or physiological place,
Speaker 1: or spiritual or sociological situation that we want to change, right,
Speaker 1: So this where I am, this where I want to be.
Speaker 1: Being able to recognize that I've kind of started and
Speaker 1: stop this process a lot, and you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: I make progress that I lose motivation. Then the motivation goes,
Speaker 1: so the behaviors go, so the results go, and now
Speaker 1: it's July or now it's January or whatever. I think
Speaker 1: part of it is also being able to be really
Speaker 1: practical about what happened the last twenty times. So Craig,
Speaker 1: you've tried this before, Yeah, cool, tell me what happened, Well,
Speaker 1: this happened. That happened. Cool. So the thing is that, well,
Speaker 1: how do we how do we outlast that emotional kind
Speaker 1: of state, that excitement that euphoria, that motivation, that inspiration
Speaker 1: that's probably going to disappear in the next week or two.
Speaker 1: Well maybe you'll maintain it for a month or two
Speaker 1: because you're a unicorn, but you're definitely got it. Not
Speaker 1: going to stay permanently excited and motivated and inspired in perpetuity.
Speaker 1: So how do I keep doing the thing that works
Speaker 1: when I can't be fucked? How do I keep doing
Speaker 1: the thing that works when it's not fun, quick, easy,
Speaker 1: or payments, or how do I keep doing the thing
Speaker 1: that works when in the middle of the doing it's
Speaker 1: not very rewarding, Like today it's not very I would
Speaker 1: rather just eat that fucking pizza because that is rewarding.
Speaker 1: It's like I skip the pizza. I don't have instant
Speaker 1: weight loss. I eat the pizza. I have instant mouth gasm. Right,
Speaker 1: And so that initially I think it's yes, we need structure,
Speaker 1: we need process, we need accountability. But over time we
Speaker 1: want to turn that thing that sometimes behavior into an
Speaker 1: all the time behavior, which then becomes just a cognitive, emotional,
Speaker 1: and behavioral default setting. So now this is just me.
Speaker 1: This is not me trying, This is not me ticking
Speaker 1: a box, This is not me being resilient. This is
Speaker 1: not me making an effort, this is this is what
Speaker 1: I do every day. Of Course I don't smoke, of
Speaker 1: course I don't drink. Of course I lift weights every day.
Speaker 1: But that's not me being disciplined. That's me being Craig Harper.
Speaker 1: So there's no accolades for me in that. I don't
Speaker 1: need a pad on the back for that. That's just
Speaker 1: my you know. It's like you don't need to give
Speaker 1: me a round of applause for cleaning my teeth or
Speaker 1: having a shower. This is what I do. And so
Speaker 1: in my mind it's always been how do we turn
Speaker 1: that thing that you keep starting and stopping into something
Speaker 1: that is just ingrained into your daily operating system, Because
Speaker 1: when it just becomes part of who you are and
Speaker 1: how you are, now you don't need to keep trying
Speaker 1: to find discipline and self control and motivation, you know,
Speaker 1: because now that's you. That's you. You're the guy, You're
Speaker 1: the girl who you don't drink. It's not like, oh,
Speaker 1: you're being very good, you're on the wagon. No, you
Speaker 1: don't fucking drink. Sure you used to, but you don't
Speaker 1: now and you really don't. You're not just abstaining. You're
Speaker 1: not just being disciplined, You're not just eating well. No,
Speaker 1: this is how you eat full stop. This is how
Speaker 1: you live full stop. This has become something which was
Speaker 1: once a part time kind of operating thing to now
Speaker 1: this is you. And I think that you know, for me,
Speaker 1: that's the challenge of trying to create habits, you know,
Speaker 1: subconsciously programmed, behaviorally programmed, socially programmed habits and behaviors which
Speaker 1: truly reflect or align with your values and your goals.
Speaker 1: Because I mean, life's always going to be hard work
Speaker 1: on a level. But when we can kind of build
Speaker 1: those behaviors or those habits that really kind of serve
Speaker 1: us rather than sabotage us, then that makes that makes
Speaker 1: some things much easier anyway. You know, like the things
Speaker 1: that I like for me and you, I'm sure there
Speaker 1: are so many things that I do that just work
Speaker 1: well for me that don't require effort. It might require
Speaker 1: physical effort because I've got to go and lift away,
Speaker 1: but there's no sacrifice in that because I like it
Speaker 1: and it works for me. And this is the other thing.
Speaker 1: When the things that you once did that you didn't
Speaker 1: enjoy actually become the things that you now enjoy because
Speaker 1: they are positive in your life. Then it takes more
Speaker 1: effort to stop it than to maintain it, if you
Speaker 1: know what I mean.
Speaker 2: Oh absolutely.
Speaker 3: I think anybody who has started exercise and struggled with
Speaker 3: it but then has found themselves consistently exercising for years,
Speaker 3: missing or workout is so much more difficult physically, emotionally,
Speaker 3: mentally than getting to the gym. And again you're eight.
Speaker 3: It's at that point it is not this plan. Exercise
Speaker 3: is not something you do. It is a reflection of
Speaker 3: who you are. I think a lot of it has
Speaker 3: to do with how we talk to ourselves and how
Speaker 3: we talk to each other when we're going around and
Speaker 3: we're building these habits. So University College London, Philipp Lally
Speaker 3: her research on habit formation, right what she found was
Speaker 3: consistency was the number one success factor and it takes
Speaker 3: anywhere from eighteen to two hundred and fifty four days
Speaker 3: to form a habit. And I think that depends on
Speaker 3: quite a few variables, so it's a wide range. But
Speaker 3: let's talk about motivation. I just I just want to
Speaker 3: talk about what I mean by motivation because I know
Speaker 3: different people have different meanings they attached to it. For me,
Speaker 3: motivation is a reason for doing something or behaving in
Speaker 3: some way, So motivation becomes really important in doing anything.
Speaker 3: I think when people say motivation, a lot of times
Speaker 3: what they're talking about is excitement. Am I excited about
Speaker 3: doing this? And you can be really excited about something
Speaker 3: and get on the motorway and nobody's excited on the motorway.
Speaker 3: I got the five Interstate out here by me. Nobody
Speaker 3: has ever driven the five Interstate and in a state
Speaker 3: of excitement except psychopaths because it's horrible. So you're not
Speaker 3: going to be excited about doing something all day every day,
Speaker 3: so you need something there. One value, aside from how
Speaker 3: much is what I'm doing aligning with the identity that
Speaker 3: I have or I want to have or my highest
Speaker 3: values of a value that I'm placing a lot more
Speaker 3: emphasis on developing is curiosity. Lately, I feel like curiosity
Speaker 3: is an antidote for so many things, Like when you're
Speaker 3: engaging in something, you got to understand that you know,
Speaker 3: success is what comes to fruition as a result of right,
Speaker 3: where behaviors are not going to bring about your outcome,
Speaker 3: but they can be successful if they're rewarding in and
Speaker 3: of themselves, Like what are you observing? What are you
Speaker 3: curious about? What are you learning from the behaviors you engaging?
Speaker 3: So let's say I went to the gym three days
Speaker 3: this week and that's the first time in the years
Speaker 3: I've done that. What you learn about yourself, Like, what
Speaker 3: do you know about yourself now that you could put
Speaker 3: because that learning becomes an immediate reward attached to a behavior,
Speaker 3: and also understanding that you might have to restructure things
Speaker 3: because discipline fails, especially when you're exhausted, especially when you
Speaker 3: have decision fatigue. Like you talked about eating a pizza.
Speaker 3: You know, I am much more likely to eat pizza
Speaker 3: in a pizza rhea than I am in a coffee shop.
Speaker 3: I'm just weird that way, right, So like maybe avoiding
Speaker 3: having pizza in the house or if you have family
Speaker 3: members that will just have an absolute fit over that
Speaker 3: because I'm not giving up my pizza because you're like
Speaker 3: at least not having it with such a high degree
Speaker 3: of accessibility. So there needs to be a space between
Speaker 3: stimulus and response. You got to think about stuff before
Speaker 3: you just reach for that food. And if Jill brings
Speaker 3: pizza into the office and you wind up eating it again.
Speaker 3: That's where a system is really important. What's the story
Speaker 3: you're telling yourself? Oh my god, I always do that. No,
Speaker 3: you just had one slice of pizza. One slice of
Speaker 3: pizza is not going to matter a month from now,
Speaker 3: Not to mention a year from now, get back on track.
Speaker 3: I think that becomes critical.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what's always interesting to talk to you? I'm always
Speaker 1: learning something. You are the perpetual teacher. You are the
Speaker 1: coach of coaches. Love talking to you. How do people
Speaker 1: find you? Follow you, connect with you?
Speaker 3: That's places LinkedIn Robert Caapuccio dot com, self help, antidote
Speaker 3: dot com.
Speaker 1: And what's your home addressing case people want to drop by.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's that's two twenty two High Street. That's my
Speaker 3: take home address. Don't don't bother the sending a letter there.
Speaker 1: A nice good mate. Appreciate you. Thanks for being on
Speaker 1: the show again as you do every Thursday, well Friday.
Speaker 2: People love chatting to you.
Speaker 1: Thanks buddy.
Speaker 2: Thanks bybe