Speaker 1: Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers
Speaker 1: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
Speaker 1: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 1: think ring true. And yet for many of us, our
Speaker 1: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 1: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 1: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 1: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 1: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 1: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 1: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 1: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Hello everyone,
Speaker 1: Welcome back to the next installment in this little series
Speaker 1: I'm calling why It's so hard to turn what we
Speaker 1: know into what we do. This is a problem we've
Speaker 1: been trying to solve from the very beginning of this show,
Speaker 1: which is really how do we get ourselves from thinking
Speaker 1: about things knowing things to doing things? Because it's in
Speaker 1: the doing of things, it's by applying things that transformation
Speaker 1: really happens. We are all exposed to so many life
Speaker 1: changing ideas every day we consume so much information, we
Speaker 1: learned so many things, but we don't necessarily make the
Speaker 1: step into these things transforming us. And I've thought a
Speaker 1: lot over the years about why this happens, how we
Speaker 1: can overcome it. A lot of our interviews have been
Speaker 1: about this, and I wanted to create a bit of
Speaker 1: a series here that talks about those It's actually gonna
Speaker 1: be two episodes. The first episode we already had it
Speaker 1: talked about the first main obstacle that I thought of,
Speaker 1: which is that we think we have to make big changes.
Speaker 1: And then this is going to be the next installment,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to cover three different ideas that are
Speaker 1: important here as to why it's hard for us to
Speaker 1: turn what we know into what we do. So the
Speaker 1: next idea that's really important, the next big obstacle, is
Speaker 1: that we simply don't have a clear plan. So let
Speaker 1: me ask you this, which of these do you think
Speaker 1: is more likely to succeed? Do you think Billy who says, well,
Speaker 1: I need to really get in better shape. I'd sure
Speaker 1: like to be healthier and I'm going to start to
Speaker 1: exercise more. Or Sally who says I'm gonna run for
Speaker 1: twenty minutes at eight am on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday
Speaker 1: and do yoga Saturday morning at nine am. Right, it's
Speaker 1: pretty obvious which of those two people is going to
Speaker 1: be more likely to succeed. Right, If we were to
Speaker 1: lay a bet on this, of you would probably put
Speaker 1: your money on Sally. The other ten percent of you
Speaker 1: are really bad gamblers, and thus you should never do it.
Speaker 1: Before we go into the rest of this episode, though,
Speaker 1: just pause a minute and think about something in your
Speaker 1: life that you've been wanting to change, something you've been
Speaker 1: saying you're going to change, or you've been trying to
Speaker 1: change or wanting to change. So bring that to mind,
Speaker 1: and then just ask yourself, you know, how clear and
Speaker 1: specific of a plan do I have? And then bear
Speaker 1: those things in mind as we kind of go through
Speaker 1: the rest of this episode. So you've got something to
Speaker 1: sort of apply this too. So in general, the rule
Speaker 1: is the more specific we get on what we're going
Speaker 1: to do, the better. I often say that ambiguity is
Speaker 1: the mother of procrastination. We procrastinate for a variety of reasons,
Speaker 1: but not being quite sure on what we're doing is
Speaker 1: one of the biggest. So the rule here is always
Speaker 1: more and more specificity, let me be clearer and clearer
Speaker 1: about what I'm going to do in my own life. Right.
Speaker 1: I've gone through different periods. I've always wanted to meditate, exercise,
Speaker 1: and right each day, and so there have been periods
Speaker 1: of time in life where that's kind of what the
Speaker 1: goal is. I'm going to meditate, exercise and right each day,
Speaker 1: and I have some degree of success doing that. As
Speaker 1: I've learned more about behavior change, maybe I get to
Speaker 1: seventy successful with that. But I get up at seven
Speaker 1: fifteen and right for thirty minutes. Then I meditate with
Speaker 1: my Zen group at eight, and I get on the
Speaker 1: bike right after that. At that point, right, I go
Speaker 1: from about seventy percent successful to upwards of successful. Just
Speaker 1: that clarity what I'm doing and when I'm doing it
Speaker 1: is really really valuable. So the process here is to
Speaker 1: really move from a desired outcome something like, oh, I
Speaker 1: want to be in better shape, into a series of
Speaker 1: very clear behaviors. Oh, in order to do that, I'm
Speaker 1: going to run, I'm going to do some strength training,
Speaker 1: and I will do yoga, and then we put those
Speaker 1: behaviors into very clear time slots. That's the basic process.
Speaker 1: So to ask yourself kind of what am I doing?
Speaker 1: When am I doing it? Where am I doing it?
Speaker 1: And where can be important? It sounds silly, but if
Speaker 1: we're thinking about exercise running, am I running outdoors? Am
Speaker 1: I running at the gym? Right? Those are all very helpful,
Speaker 1: and we know that when students put these things into practice.
Speaker 1: When a student decides when they're going to work on
Speaker 1: an essay, they are much more likely to get it done.
Speaker 1: There's been a variety of studies that show this. And
Speaker 1: then the other real big culprit here is we may
Speaker 1: be able to come up with all, right, I'm going
Speaker 1: to do these things at these times, which is really
Speaker 1: a big step forward, but we don't have a coherent
Speaker 1: plan or path that leads us in a continuing method
Speaker 1: through the changes we want to make. One of the
Speaker 1: things that was so helpful to me about a A
Speaker 1: was that it gave me a series of steps to
Speaker 1: follow in order that we're really well thought out, so
Speaker 1: there was a coherent path to move from where I
Speaker 1: started to a deepening process of recovery. So the next
Speaker 1: reason that we really struggle with this turning what we
Speaker 1: know into what we do is simply that we don't
Speaker 1: remember to do it right, whether it's remembering to take
Speaker 1: our supplements, remembering to be mindful throughout the day, remembering
Speaker 1: to move between calls or meetings, remembering to write in
Speaker 1: our journal before bed. There are so many different things
Speaker 1: that we want to do, and it sounds silly, but
Speaker 1: often we don't remember. I have been rehabbing a hurt shoulder.
Speaker 1: I've talked a little bit about this on the show
Speaker 1: here and there, and I'm not going to go into
Speaker 1: a ton of detail about it, but part of rehabbing
Speaker 1: it are physical therapy exercises that I need to do
Speaker 1: every day. They're not hard to do, they don't take
Speaker 1: a long time to do, but I often forget to
Speaker 1: do them. So it's just that I don't have them
Speaker 1: as part of a routine. I haven't really figured out
Speaker 1: where they fit, and so I forget I don't do them.
Speaker 1: So it might be helpful, before we go too much
Speaker 1: further into this, for you just to think of something
Speaker 1: in your life that you've been wanting to do but
Speaker 1: you're having trouble remembering to do, just so you have
Speaker 1: an example in your mind that you could be thinking about.
Speaker 1: As we walk through these ideas, one of the terms
Speaker 1: that is used in psychology, whether it be psychology in
Speaker 1: general or the part of psychology that studies behavior change,
Speaker 1: is the idea of triggers, and a trigger is really
Speaker 1: any stimulus that impacts behavior. So a lot of times
Speaker 1: trigger is thought of in a negative term. I've spent
Speaker 1: a lot of my life in the recovery community, and
Speaker 1: the recovery community of the word trigger is indicated to
Speaker 1: means some event or place or person or thing that
Speaker 1: happens that triggers you to want to use drugs or alcohol.
Speaker 1: So a trigger in this case is negative. Right. We
Speaker 1: more and more here trigger warning before a certain show
Speaker 1: or segment because of somebody has trauma. Seeing something or
Speaker 1: hearing something can retrigger that trauma can bring it back
Speaker 1: up right. So those are examples of triggers in a
Speaker 1: negative sense. But another type of trigger is simply the
Speaker 1: alarm that goes off on your phone that reminds you
Speaker 1: to do something. I have medicine that I take at
Speaker 1: certain times, and I have an alarm go off on
Speaker 1: my phone to remind me to take it. It's a trigger.
Speaker 1: So there are different types of triggers and we can
Speaker 1: use them in different ways and That's really where I
Speaker 1: want to spend The bulk of this episode is talking
Speaker 1: about the different types of triggers and how you might
Speaker 1: use them, because they're really important. So we talked before
Speaker 1: about being specific, right, we need to be specific and
Speaker 1: have a plan. Well, the other part of specific and
Speaker 1: plan is having a trigger or a reminder, and so
Speaker 1: I'm going to talk about what the different types of
Speaker 1: triggers are. So the first is simply time. This is
Speaker 1: a it's two PM, and I'm going to do something.
Speaker 1: So if I take my medicine at seven PM and
Speaker 1: I have an alarm golf on my phone at seven pm,
Speaker 1: I have a time based trigger. The alarm goes off
Speaker 1: at seven pm. I look at it. I go, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's time to take my medicine. I take my medicine
Speaker 1: very straightforward. Another type of trigger that is similar to
Speaker 1: time but not exact, is what I call a preceding
Speaker 1: event trigger or this is offering, referred to as anchoring
Speaker 1: or sometimes habit stacking. And what this means is you
Speaker 1: take something that you're already doing in your life and
Speaker 1: you add the new habit or behavior you want to
Speaker 1: create to it. So, for example, I've had a bunch
Speaker 1: of clients in the past who have dogs. And so
Speaker 1: what we have is a trigger that looks something like this,
Speaker 1: when I get back from taking the dog out in
Speaker 1: the morning, I will sit down and write in my journal. Right,
Speaker 1: So I'm not tying it to a time in this case,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying at seven thirty am. I'm saying, based
Speaker 1: on this preceding event, after I get back from taking
Speaker 1: the dog out. Because taking the dog out is something
Speaker 1: that happens every single morning. It's very very consistent. So
Speaker 1: you don't want to anchor something. You don't want to anchor,
Speaker 1: say this writing in your journal to something that's more sporadic, right,
Speaker 1: You want to really anchor to something that happens every
Speaker 1: day taking the dog out. Right, For most of us,
Speaker 1: brushing our teeth before bed is another really good anchor point.
Speaker 1: After a meal as an anchor point. So looking for
Speaker 1: these preceding events that we can stack something else on
Speaker 1: top of can be really helpful. Another is a location
Speaker 1: And what do I mean by a location based trigger.
Speaker 1: A location based trigger would be every time I go
Speaker 1: in the kitchen. So for example, I might say, every
Speaker 1: time I go in the kitchen, I will take two
Speaker 1: deep breaths. Every time I arrive at a red light,
Speaker 1: I will take two deep breaths, so their location. When
Speaker 1: we hit a certain location, it's a reminder to us
Speaker 1: to do a certain behavior. There is also random triggers.
Speaker 1: What does a random trigger mean? Well, I use this
Speaker 1: in a very specific way, and most of the scientific
Speaker 1: literature doesn't talk about this, but it's a trigger I've
Speaker 1: sort of I wouldn't say I've invented it, but I've
Speaker 1: really used it a lot. We use it in the
Speaker 1: Spiritual Habits program and use it with coaching clients, which
Speaker 1: is we get an app on our phone that randomly
Speaker 1: goes off and gives us a reminder. Well, why would
Speaker 1: I ever want to do that? You might ask, Well,
Speaker 1: if what I'm trying to do is to say, have
Speaker 1: more presence throughout my day, A great way to do
Speaker 1: that is have a random ding go off, and every
Speaker 1: time that ding goes off on my phone, it reminds me, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, now I'm gonna do, say an exercise like
Speaker 1: grounding myself in my senses. So that's an example of
Speaker 1: a random one for trying to sort of in calculate
Speaker 1: a behavior throughout all different parts of the day, a
Speaker 1: random trigger can be really helpful. And then finally, the
Speaker 1: last type of trigger is an emotional state trigger. Now,
Speaker 1: these are very often unconscious and negative, which is I
Speaker 1: get stressed so I eat, or I feel sad so
Speaker 1: I play video games. These are emotional state triggers that
Speaker 1: again are unconscious to a large extent and are not
Speaker 1: very helpful and sometimes unwinding a bad habit. We have
Speaker 1: to start to realize what these are. But an emotional
Speaker 1: state trigger can be really powerful to be used in
Speaker 1: a positive way. So, for example, if I'm trying to
Speaker 1: learn to practice taking more perspective in life or taking
Speaker 1: a different perspective in life, it can be really really
Speaker 1: helpful to have an emotional state trigger. And the emotional
Speaker 1: state trigger looks something like when I notice that I'm
Speaker 1: feeling really tense, then I will insert perspective exercise right.
Speaker 1: And the more that we can train emotional state triggers,
Speaker 1: these become very powerful because it's our emotional states that
Speaker 1: often lead us into trouble. So if we can start
Speaker 1: to recognize an emotional state and we can think, okay,
Speaker 1: when this emotional state comes up, I want to react
Speaker 1: in this way. These become very powerful triggers that allow
Speaker 1: us to transform at a deeper level. So designing the
Speaker 1: right type of trigger is really important. What's the behavior
Speaker 1: that I want to change, what's the thing I want
Speaker 1: to do, and what's the right type of trigger to design.
Speaker 1: So again, if it's something that's supposed to have been
Speaker 1: every day at a certain time, a time based trigger
Speaker 1: makes a ton of sense, very straightforward, very easy to do. If,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, you want to do something every day,
Speaker 1: but you don't want to be locked to the clock.
Speaker 1: A lot of retired people have this. They're like, look,
Speaker 1: I've been locked to a clock in my whole life.
Speaker 1: I don't want to be and yet they want some
Speaker 1: consistency in their lives. And so what we'll do is
Speaker 1: we'll design preceding event triggers or anchor triggers. After I
Speaker 1: have lunch, then I will meditate as an example. Right,
Speaker 1: so it's something they do every day they have lunch.
Speaker 1: We don't want to pin down launch to be like
Speaker 1: every day at noon, you have to do this. They
Speaker 1: want a little bit more flexibility, so we use the
Speaker 1: preceding event type trigger. I talked about how to use
Speaker 1: the random trigger, right it's a trigger that goes off
Speaker 1: to remind you to do something. And then finally, the
Speaker 1: emotional state trigger can be a really powerful one. If
Speaker 1: you're trying to cultivate a practice of looking at the
Speaker 1: positive more than the negative, an emotional based trigger can
Speaker 1: be really good. Every time I notice that I am
Speaker 1: thinking negatively, then I will whatever your exercise of positive
Speaker 1: thinking or gratitude is right, So we can cultivate these
Speaker 1: different types of things. So having the right type of
Speaker 1: trigger is really really important when it comes to changing
Speaker 1: our behavior. And if you don't have the right types
Speaker 1: of triggers, very often what's going to happen is you're
Speaker 1: just not going to remember again, whether it's something simple
Speaker 1: like doing my shoulder stretches, taking your vitamins, or something
Speaker 1: a lot more profound, like really trying to unwind the
Speaker 1: way you think about certain situations. If you don't remember,
Speaker 1: you won't practice, and so we have to remember in
Speaker 1: order to practice, and designing the right type of trigger
Speaker 1: is really really important for that. So that's the third obstacle.
Speaker 1: And then the last obstacle is similar to the problem overall. Well,
Speaker 1: what do I mean by that? Well, we've titled this
Speaker 1: program why it's so hard to turn what we know
Speaker 1: into what we do. Right, Well, the last obstacle is
Speaker 1: that we know too much. We have too much information,
Speaker 1: and I sort of described that as part of the
Speaker 1: problem we're trying to solve, right, We have too much information.
Speaker 1: But it's part of what makes it hard to apply anything,
Speaker 1: to turn any of what we know into what we do,
Speaker 1: is that we end up knowing so much and we
Speaker 1: keep adding to our collection of what we know. As
Speaker 1: I'm saying this, it strikes me that one of the
Speaker 1: phrases I've heard about spiritual development that I love so
Speaker 1: much is that spiritual development at a certain point becomes
Speaker 1: much more about unlearning than learning. It's things that we
Speaker 1: let go of. It's subtractive rather than additive. Anyway, it's
Speaker 1: a little aside as we head into this, but the
Speaker 1: reality is we do take in so much information, but
Speaker 1: just knowing things doesn't change us. That's part of what
Speaker 1: we've been talking about all along here. I can have
Speaker 1: an exhaustive knowledge of what foods are good for me,
Speaker 1: but if I'm not eating them, that's not going to
Speaker 1: do me any good. As an obvious example, and so
Speaker 1: I think a lot of us are searching for these
Speaker 1: Aha moments or these silver bullets or these magic things
Speaker 1: like when I just read the right book, when I
Speaker 1: get the right piece of information, everything will change. And
Speaker 1: while there is truth that occasionally we have an insight
Speaker 1: or an AHA moment that is very transformative. I remember
Speaker 1: one back from when I first got sober at twenty four,
Speaker 1: and it was a line from the A A big
Speaker 1: book that was saying selfishness, self centeredness, is the root
Speaker 1: of our problem. And I remember it hitting me all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, like, oh my goodness. Yes, the last
Speaker 1: seven or eight years of my life, all I've thought
Speaker 1: about is me and how I feel and whether I'm
Speaker 1: getting high. That was the soul orienting principle, and it
Speaker 1: was profoundly self centered. And I remember that moment. It
Speaker 1: was boom. You know, It's like a light turn on.
Speaker 1: And so we have these moments. I'm not saying that
Speaker 1: they don't happen. They do happen, but they're somewhat serendipitous,
Speaker 1: and they tend to be few and far between, and
Speaker 1: we can't control them. What we do control is intentional
Speaker 1: application of an idea or intentional practice of an idea
Speaker 1: or a principle that's important to us. And even if
Speaker 1: we do have one of those aha moment insights, we
Speaker 1: still have to figure out how do I integrate it
Speaker 1: into my life? How do I practice it? Me realizing
Speaker 1: that selfishness, self centeredness was the root of my problem
Speaker 1: did not make it go away. Okay, now I know
Speaker 1: what the problem is. Now I know where I need
Speaker 1: a direct effort. But boy, I still have a lot
Speaker 1: of effort that I have to put in, and I
Speaker 1: have to remember again and again and again. Early on,
Speaker 1: was one of the first guests on the shows, Todd Henry.
Speaker 1: I was probably in our first ten episodes. Those old
Speaker 1: old episodes aren't even available on the feed anymore, but
Speaker 1: all episodes are available on our website. You can check
Speaker 1: those out. But this old episode with Todd Henry, I
Speaker 1: remember him saying something to the extent of most people
Speaker 1: just read, read, read, read, but they're not being changed
Speaker 1: by what they read very much. And if we adjusted
Speaker 1: our ratio of consuming to applying, everything would change. And
Speaker 1: so his point was, if you spend an hour a
Speaker 1: day reading, just change that and spend thirty minutes a
Speaker 1: day reading, and then spend thirty minutes a day thinking
Speaker 1: about how what you read applies to your life and
Speaker 1: where you're going to put it into practice. And I
Speaker 1: don't even think we need to go that far. I
Speaker 1: don't think we need A fifty fifty split would still
Speaker 1: be remarkable. Right. A lot of you listening to the
Speaker 1: show are readers of personal development and self help books, right,
Speaker 1: and most of these books of exercises in them. I'm
Speaker 1: guessing that most of you don't do the exercise right.
Speaker 1: You're reading and you just want to keep reading because
Speaker 1: reading is easy. Doing the exercise is hard. We have
Speaker 1: to stop, we have to reflect, we might have to
Speaker 1: get out a piece of paper. It's harder than consuming
Speaker 1: and so we don't do it very much, which means
Speaker 1: we keep taking in information, but it's not really doing anything.
Speaker 1: We could read twenty blog articles in a day. I
Speaker 1: do this sometimes, you know. I'll just be out there
Speaker 1: on the internet reading one article after the other. At
Speaker 1: the end of the asked me what did you just
Speaker 1: read and learn? I probably would be able to recall
Speaker 1: one thing, maybe, And if you asked me eight hours later,
Speaker 1: I probably would say, um, well, I'm not sure. Right,
Speaker 1: I might remember a couple of things, but but certainly
Speaker 1: nothing that transformed me. And so this idea of all, right,
Speaker 1: let's change this ratio of learning new things to a
Speaker 1: ratio you that gives us some learning and some applying, right,
Speaker 1: some knowledge gathering, some application, some thinking about specifically how
Speaker 1: it implies in my life, some integrating it into my life.
Speaker 1: And as we look at great spiritual traditions, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of examples of where this happens, and even not
Speaker 1: spiritual traditions. If I think about Ben Franklin and his virtues, right,
Speaker 1: Ben Franklin identified thirteen virtues that he thought were really
Speaker 1: important to human life, and so basically what he did
Speaker 1: was he just would work on one virtue for a
Speaker 1: period of time. I don't know if he did them weekly,
Speaker 1: bi weekly, I don't know exactly what frequency went through them.
Speaker 1: But the idea was to focus on them one at
Speaker 1: a time. His thirteen virtues, some of which were pretty
Speaker 1: common ones temperance, silence, order, resolution, Right, So to focus
Speaker 1: on them one at a time instead of trying to
Speaker 1: think of them all and stay with that one virtue
Speaker 1: for a period of time, then move on to the
Speaker 1: next and then cycle back through. The Jewish practice of
Speaker 1: mussar is a very similar one in the Catholic tradition.
Speaker 1: The Spiritual Exercises of Ignacious of Loyola, often just called
Speaker 1: the Ignation Exercises, was a set of meditations, contemplations and
Speaker 1: prayers that were written and you were intended to work
Speaker 1: through them, and then you do it again, and you
Speaker 1: do it again. Right. A A has the twelve steps.
Speaker 1: We worked through the same twelve steps over and over.
Speaker 1: We talked about them over and over. And that's probably
Speaker 1: the best example of my life. I think the most
Speaker 1: transformation I ever had in a short window of time
Speaker 1: was in a A. And I think there are a
Speaker 1: variety of reasons for that. One is, obviously I was
Speaker 1: newly sober. There was the ground was rich for transformation,
Speaker 1: or should I say there was there was a lot
Speaker 1: that needed transforming, right, It was a lot of low
Speaker 1: hanging fruit, maybe, But nonetheless, there was something about a
Speaker 1: A in which we had this common vocabulary, or we
Speaker 1: kept talking about the same things over and over, and
Speaker 1: so we got to really think about applying them in
Speaker 1: a deeper way. We didn't keep learning more and more
Speaker 1: and more and more and more. You could learn the
Speaker 1: twelve steps of a A in an afternoon, right you
Speaker 1: memorize them. There you go, right, It didn't take very
Speaker 1: long for me to do that. We read them at
Speaker 1: every meeting. They gave me something to keep practicing. We
Speaker 1: kept reading the same book, the a a big book,
Speaker 1: or maybe you added in the twelve and twelve, but
Speaker 1: still you're talking a few hundred pages at most of
Speaker 1: total material that we went over again and again and again.
Speaker 1: And of course there are limitations to that, but there's
Speaker 1: also tremendous benefit in not trying to keep adding more
Speaker 1: information and to really work on going deeper into a
Speaker 1: particular piece of information. I've experienced this again in my
Speaker 1: Zen practice. The last couple of years. I went from
Speaker 1: this very wide spiritual practice to a narrower one and
Speaker 1: Zen and where we keep sort of working on the
Speaker 1: same things. It's the same ideas, We have the same
Speaker 1: chance after every sitting session each week. We have different
Speaker 1: readings that we do, but the readings repeat week after week.
Speaker 1: So there was a real formula and a repetition of
Speaker 1: things that allows these ideas to sink in more deeply,
Speaker 1: allows us to see them in greater clarity and to
Speaker 1: really think about how they apply to our own lives.
Speaker 1: And this is really important. And so what I find
Speaker 1: helpful is not that we have to do this exclusively.
Speaker 1: This is not a only think of one idea at
Speaker 1: a time. What I found for me worked really well
Speaker 1: was that I do this podcast every week, right, I'm
Speaker 1: recording another episode and reading in another book every week.
Speaker 1: So I'm exploring and I'm seeking. But I also landed
Speaker 1: on a home base, and that home base was for
Speaker 1: now zen practice because it kept me in some core
Speaker 1: ideas over and over and over again. And really, as
Speaker 1: I was designing the Spiritual Habits program, this was sort
Speaker 1: of the idea was to say, let me pick a
Speaker 1: small number of principles and let me really think about application.
Speaker 1: How do they apply? How do we apply these principles?
Speaker 1: And in the program, we work on a principle a week,
Speaker 1: so we spend a whole week on a principle and
Speaker 1: it allows us to really practice more deeply with that.
Speaker 1: And then you know, you can go back through that material,
Speaker 1: which leads me to the end here and I sort
Speaker 1: of want to recap. The question is why is it
Speaker 1: so hard to turn what we know into what we do?
Speaker 1: And there are a variety of reasons, but I picked
Speaker 1: four that I wanted to focus on here right. The
Speaker 1: first was we think we have to make big changes.
Speaker 1: We set out to do something really big, doesn't work.
Speaker 1: The second was we don't have a clear plan. We're
Speaker 1: not specific about what we're doing. We don't know what
Speaker 1: we're doing. There's just not much clarity. The third obstacle
Speaker 1: is we don't remember. We don't have the proper triggers
Speaker 1: in place to tell us what to do and then
Speaker 1: find only. The last obstacle is we're trying to consume
Speaker 1: too much information. We basically think knowledge will save us.
Speaker 1: And so now I talk about the Spiritual Habits Program
Speaker 1: for a second, because the Spiritual Habits Program enrollment opens
Speaker 1: on May third. Depending on when you listen to this,
Speaker 1: it may be open, it may not be. But the
Speaker 1: Spiritual Habits Program was my attempt to really take everything
Speaker 1: we've learned in three fifty episodes, everything I've learned over
Speaker 1: plus years in recovery, everything I've learned from coaching hundreds
Speaker 1: of people from around the world, and put it into
Speaker 1: one practical program that allowed us to take what we
Speaker 1: know and make it something that we do in the
Speaker 1: spiritual realm. And by spiritual I want to be clear
Speaker 1: I don't necessarily mean like anything really wacky. I mean
Speaker 1: taking what really matters to us, And that's kind of
Speaker 1: for me, spirituality, what really matters, what's important, Taking what
Speaker 1: matters to us and the values that we have in life,
Speaker 1: and finding a way that we apply them so that
Speaker 1: all aspects of our lives change and transform. And so
Speaker 1: the Spiritual Its program is designed very much to solve
Speaker 1: these four problems we just talked about and others, and
Speaker 1: what it's doing. It's taking a small number of widely
Speaker 1: accepted spiritual principles, and it's combining it with the science
Speaker 1: of behavior change in a way that will allow us
Speaker 1: to practice and embody these principles so they actually have
Speaker 1: a chance to really change us. And I'm really proud
Speaker 1: of the program. I think it's a great program. The
Speaker 1: people that have gone through it have had great things
Speaker 1: to say. I've had several people say they've taken many
Speaker 1: programs across their lifetime, many courses across their lifetime, and
Speaker 1: I've heard a bunch of people say this was the
Speaker 1: best program they've ever taken. And I don't say that
Speaker 1: to brag. I just I'm proud of it. And I
Speaker 1: think if you love this show. You're gonna love this program.
Speaker 1: There's a chance to get to know the other people
Speaker 1: in the program in a real deep and intimate way.
Speaker 1: People who were in the last group, the last cohort
Speaker 1: that went through last year, a lot of those people
Speaker 1: are still friends today. The small groups are still meeting.
Speaker 1: Friendships that came together then are still coming together today
Speaker 1: and supporting each other. And I've seen some really beautiful
Speaker 1: connection out of it. And it's a program I just
Speaker 1: feel really good about and really wholeheartedly can encourage you
Speaker 1: to sign up for. So if you'd like to, you
Speaker 1: can go to spiritual habits dot net. The program opens
Speaker 1: for enrollment on May three. You'll get all the details,
Speaker 1: their course dates, everything that we cover, cost all that
Speaker 1: at spiritual habits dot net. Whether or not you sign
Speaker 1: up for the Spiritual Habits program or not. I hope
Speaker 1: these little ideas have been helpful and you can apply
Speaker 1: them in your life. Thank you for listening, and we'll
Speaker 1: be back with our regularly scheduled interviews next week. Thanks bye.
Speaker 1: If what you just heard was helpful to you, please
Speaker 1: consider making a monthly donation to support the One You
Speaker 1: Feed podcast when you join our membership community With this
Speaker 1: monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members only benefits.
Speaker 1: It's our way of saying thank you for your support now.
Speaker 1: We are so grateful for the members of our community.
Speaker 1: We wouldn't be able to do what we do without
Speaker 1: their support, and we don't take a single dollar for granted.
Speaker 1: To learn more, make a donation at any level and
Speaker 1: become a member of the one you Feed community. Go
Speaker 1: to when you feed dot net slash Join the One
Speaker 1: You Feed podcast. Would like to sincerely thank our sponsors
Speaker 1: for supporting the show.