Speaker 1: We often think that, oh, if I start with something
Speaker 1: so small that it isn't going to make a difference,
Speaker 1: it's not gonna matter. But the truth is, because that
Speaker 1: momentum builds after you get going, you can often start
Speaker 1: with something very tiny and then it will blossom into
Speaker 1: something much bigger afterward. Welcome to the one you feed
Speaker 1: throughout time. Great thinkers have recognized the importance of the
Speaker 1: thoughts we have, quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or
Speaker 1: you are what you think, ring true, and yet for
Speaker 1: many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us.
Speaker 1: We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We
Speaker 1: see what we don't have instead of what we do.
Speaker 1: We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.
Speaker 1: But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It
Speaker 1: takes conscious, consistent and creative effort to make a life
Speaker 1: worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep
Speaker 1: themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their
Speaker 1: good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest today is
Speaker 1: James Clear, entrepreneur, weightlifter, and travel photographer. His work can
Speaker 1: be found at James Clear dot com, where he writes
Speaker 1: about scientific research and real world experiences that help you
Speaker 1: rethink your health and improve your life. His blog gets
Speaker 1: millions of visitors per year. Here's the interview. Hi James,
Speaker 1: welcome to the show. Hey Eric, thanks so much for
Speaker 1: happing me. It's great to be here. Yeah, it's uh,
Speaker 1: it's great to get you on. I think the listeners
Speaker 1: are really going to enjoy this one. I have. Your
Speaker 1: writing on the web is very compelling, and I think
Speaker 1: we actually talked about a lot of the same things.
Speaker 1: I think you might be a bit more eloquent about it,
Speaker 1: but you're there's just a real common sense approach to
Speaker 1: everything you do, which is something that always resonates with me. Oh,
Speaker 1: thank you. I really appreciate that. So war podcast is
Speaker 1: called The One You Feed, and it's based on the
Speaker 1: parable of Two Wolves, where there is a grandfather who's
Speaker 1: talking with his grandson and he says, in life, there
Speaker 1: are two wolves inside of us that are engaged in
Speaker 1: an epic battle. One is a good wolf, which represents
Speaker 1: things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other
Speaker 1: is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and
Speaker 1: hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks
Speaker 1: about it. For a second, and he looks up at
Speaker 1: his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins?
Speaker 1: And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd
Speaker 1: like to start off by asking you what that parable
Speaker 1: means to you in your life and in the work
Speaker 1: that you do. M Yeah, it's a good thing to
Speaker 1: think about. It's it's an interesting concept because I think
Speaker 1: often uh, society pushes us to feed um, maybe the
Speaker 1: evil wolf in some ways, or we at least reward
Speaker 1: that inside and society in many ways, you know, if
Speaker 1: you think about it, money and uh and wealth is
Speaker 1: the only addiction that we applaud, you know, um, millionaires
Speaker 1: around the on the covers of magazines. But people who
Speaker 1: are addicted to drugs rather than money, or alcohol rather
Speaker 1: than money or um, you know, have needing disorder or
Speaker 1: whatever else, they aren't, you know, they aren't applauded for that.
Speaker 1: So I don't know. It's interesting how a similar mindset
Speaker 1: and obsessive mindset can be positive or at least seen
Speaker 1: positively in one way and and very negatively in another. Um. Anyway,
Speaker 1: that was just a thought that popped in my mind.
Speaker 1: But as far as my own work, I I have
Speaker 1: I guess I'm in a fortunate position now. So I've
Speaker 1: been an entrepreneur for four years. During the first two years,
Speaker 1: I started a bunch of different things that you know,
Speaker 1: failed or flopped in one way or another, and then
Speaker 1: eventually found my way to building a business that succeeded
Speaker 1: and did well. UM. One of the best piece of
Speaker 1: the of advice that I got early on was to
Speaker 1: try things until something comes easily. So in that first
Speaker 1: year I tried probably I don't know five or six
Speaker 1: different business ideas just to see what would stick. And
Speaker 1: then eventually, like I said, I sort of made my
Speaker 1: way toward toward building a business around UM teaching people
Speaker 1: how to travel for free with freedom Flyer miles and UM,
Speaker 1: you know, different works. I've done travel photography, working over
Speaker 1: twenty countries now, so it was something that was like
Speaker 1: top of mind for me as well. And uh, after
Speaker 1: I built that up over the first two years, I
Speaker 1: was able to transition a little bit so that the
Speaker 1: businesses run mostly by employees now and I check in
Speaker 1: every week or so. But the last two years I
Speaker 1: focused pretty much exclusively on writing at James Clear dot com,
Speaker 1: which is how we got in touch, and so I
Speaker 1: guess what I'm getting to is I don't have to
Speaker 1: worry about money now, which is very different than where
Speaker 1: I was when I was starting, um, you know, four
Speaker 1: years ago, and so I don't have to worry about
Speaker 1: feeding that wolf as much. And so all the work
Speaker 1: that I do at James scare dot com is focused.
Speaker 1: The phrase that I use a lot is mission first,
Speaker 1: business second. So you know, I'm work, got my first
Speaker 1: book right now, and I have a habits workshop that
Speaker 1: I'll sell and um, I'll be paid to go speak
Speaker 1: at different conferences and whatnot. But the business model is secondary.
Speaker 1: The primary thing that I care about is spreading the
Speaker 1: message and trying to build a platform where I can
Speaker 1: help as many people as possible. UM. Last year, my
Speaker 1: articles are read by our two million people. This year
Speaker 1: that doubled over five million UM. And so that's like,
Speaker 1: that's probably the most important metric for me at this
Speaker 1: point is growth and reach and impact in some way, UM,
Speaker 1: And I feel lucky that I am able to feed
Speaker 1: that wolf of integrity and value and meaningfulness and UM
Speaker 1: and impact and sort of do work that focuses on
Speaker 1: that rather than work that focuses on the bottom line.
Speaker 1: Right well, what I think is really interesting about that however,
Speaker 1: and we'll get into this a lot as we talk
Speaker 1: through the show, is what we're doing here is is
Speaker 1: very similar. I think our business model is certainly secondary.
Speaker 1: This isn't a show where the goal is to is
Speaker 1: to make a lot of money, so that so that
Speaker 1: means there are other things that that I still do
Speaker 1: for for money. But one of the things I think
Speaker 1: is interesting is a lot of people tend to have this, well,
Speaker 1: I can't really do the thing that matters to me
Speaker 1: until I can do it all the time or completely,
Speaker 1: versus the ability to sort of start where you are.
Speaker 1: And I know that a lot of what you talk
Speaker 1: about from creating habits perspective and being successful talks a
Speaker 1: lot about that all or nothing mentality. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: this is one of the biggest pitfalls we've we uh,
Speaker 1: we find ourselves then when it comes to building new habits,
Speaker 1: are really just making a behavior change of any type?
Speaker 1: Is that we think? You know, it's so easy to
Speaker 1: overestimate the idea of one defining moment or you know,
Speaker 1: overnight success or this massive transformation or change like flipping
Speaker 1: a switch and becoming a new person. Um and so
Speaker 1: we see things in very black and white terms, but
Speaker 1: it's not that way at all. Um too to share
Speaker 1: a story about this in the stories Eli telling us
Speaker 1: about this guy named Dave Brailsford. And Brailsford was hired
Speaker 1: by Great Britain's professional cycling team. They're called Team Sky
Speaker 1: and when they hired him, they had never wanted tour
Speaker 1: to France and they said, Mr Brailsford, would bring you
Speaker 1: on because you want to win tour to France. What's
Speaker 1: your plan for doing this? And he believes in this
Speaker 1: concept called the aggregation of marginal gains, and the way
Speaker 1: that he describes it is it's the one percent improvement
Speaker 1: and nearly everything that you do. And so they started
Speaker 1: by looking for improvements that you would expect of a
Speaker 1: professional cycling team. They got bite tires that were slightly lighter,
Speaker 1: They had their outdoor riders where indoor racing suits because
Speaker 1: they were lighter weight. They had their riders were biofeedback
Speaker 1: sensors to see how they were responding to the training.
Speaker 1: You know, they did all these things that that are
Speaker 1: associated with cycling performance, but they also made a bunch
Speaker 1: of changes that you wouldn't expect. So they figured out
Speaker 1: the type of pillow that led to the best night's sleep,
Speaker 1: and had their riders bring it with them on the
Speaker 1: road to hotels. Can you share that? I wish I knew.
Speaker 1: They taught their writers how to wash their hands to
Speaker 1: reduce the risk of infection and UH and try to
Speaker 1: promote health in the best way possible and help them recover.
Speaker 1: They figured out the massage gel that led to the
Speaker 1: best recovery over time, and so they use that every
Speaker 1: day after practice. So they made all these little changes
Speaker 1: and Brailsford said, I think if we if we can
Speaker 1: execute on this strategy, we can actually make this happen.
Speaker 1: I think we can win a tour to France in
Speaker 1: five years. He ended up being wrong. They won the
Speaker 1: tour to France in three years, and then they won
Speaker 1: again in the fourth year with a different writer. And
Speaker 1: when the professional cycling team from Britain went to the
Speaker 1: Olympics in London in two thousand twelve, Team Grade Britain
Speaker 1: won seventy of the gold medals available to them. So
Speaker 1: the moral of the story here is that one percent
Speaker 1: gains actually can add up to something very significant over
Speaker 1: the long run. It doesn't have to be a major
Speaker 1: switch or some like, you know, incredible change that leads
Speaker 1: to significant results. And I think that this is important
Speaker 1: because we often when we talk. You know, your original
Speaker 1: question was about this idea of the all or nothing mindset,
Speaker 1: or you know, if I if I just do a
Speaker 1: little bit and make a mistake every now and then,
Speaker 1: does that actually add up to anything? And the answer
Speaker 1: is yes, it does add up to something significant if
Speaker 1: you can just maintain it consistently. It doesn't mean you
Speaker 1: have to be perfect by any means, but if you
Speaker 1: can aggregate these little one percent choices and tiny improvements
Speaker 1: day after day, even if it's only three days or
Speaker 1: four days or five days a week, it doesn't have
Speaker 1: to be seven, then it can actually lead to a
Speaker 1: very significant result in the long run. Yeah, You've got
Speaker 1: a lot of different things that that touch on it.
Speaker 1: There's something that I say a lot on the show,
Speaker 1: which is, uh, a little of something is better than
Speaker 1: a lot of nothing, which I think reflects a phrase
Speaker 1: that you have which is reduced the scope, stick to
Speaker 1: the schedule. So I've been an athlete pretty much all
Speaker 1: my life. I played baseball through college, and I compete
Speaker 1: in Olympic weightlifting now and um when I first started
Speaker 1: training in the gym. I don't know. I just thought like,
Speaker 1: if I couldn't get the perfect workout in, then it
Speaker 1: wasn't like I wasn't doing enough. Basically, it was it
Speaker 1: was very much all or nothing mentality. So as an example,
Speaker 1: you could say something like, if your goal is to
Speaker 1: run three miles after work today, you look up at
Speaker 1: the clock and you know it turns out that you
Speaker 1: were going to run for this next hour, but time's
Speaker 1: gotten away from you a little bit, and you only
Speaker 1: have twenty five minutes left, and you're like, well, twenty
Speaker 1: five minutes is enough time for me to get changed
Speaker 1: and run three miles and you know, get back. So
Speaker 1: what I would have said in a situation like that
Speaker 1: in the past is, well, let me not waste this time, right, Like,
Speaker 1: maybe I don't have enough time to to get my
Speaker 1: workout in, so I'll answer, you know, some emails that
Speaker 1: are important, I'll make that phone call had been putting off,
Speaker 1: or I'll do something else like productive. Right, I'd rationalize
Speaker 1: using the time in a better way. But what I
Speaker 1: think is actually more useful now is to reduce the
Speaker 1: scope of what you're planning to do, but always stick
Speaker 1: to the schedule of doing it. So maybe running through
Speaker 1: miles isn't possible in twenty five minutes, but you could
Speaker 1: run one mile, for example, or you could get your
Speaker 1: shoes and run tense prints, whatever is actually feasible within
Speaker 1: that that amount of time. And I got this idea
Speaker 1: from a software company called thirty seven Signals, which has
Speaker 1: been very successful. They they're of a hundred million dollar
Speaker 1: company at this point, and one of their main principles
Speaker 1: is that they always ship software updates on time. It
Speaker 1: doesn't matter if it's as big as what they were
Speaker 1: hoping like. It may not be the full feature that
Speaker 1: they were hoping to launch, but it's going to get
Speaker 1: out at the deadline. And I've seen this to be
Speaker 1: very useful in a variety of different areas. It's useful
Speaker 1: in the health example as I just gave, but it
Speaker 1: also is very helpful for work related habits. So when
Speaker 1: it comes to my writing, I published new articles every
Speaker 1: Monday and Thursday. It doesn't matter how long or how
Speaker 1: short they are, how good or how bad they are,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter how I feel about the work. The
Speaker 1: main thing is that I ship something every Monday and Thursday.
Speaker 1: And of course I'm going to try my best each time.
Speaker 1: But what I've realized is that occasionally there'll be a
Speaker 1: dud of an article. But that's a cost that I'm
Speaker 1: willing to pay because I know that if I stick
Speaker 1: to the schedule every Monday and Thursday, if I show
Speaker 1: it can sistantly, then there are going to be some
Speaker 1: gems in there. That's on average eight or nine articles
Speaker 1: a month for me. I know that if I try
Speaker 1: my best on those eight or nine, there's gonna be
Speaker 1: two or three decent ones. Now I can't predict what
Speaker 1: they're going to be, just as I can't predict when
Speaker 1: my best lifts are going to be in the gym.
Speaker 1: Right like I train every Monday, once say, and Friday.
Speaker 1: If I only went to the gym when I felt motivated,
Speaker 1: when I felt inspired to go, then you know, I
Speaker 1: would never be able to show up consistently enough to
Speaker 1: put up a decent number. But I know that if
Speaker 1: I show up three days a week, every week, then
Speaker 1: sometimes there's you know, there's gonna be a good number
Speaker 1: on the board. There's so much good stuff and what
Speaker 1: you just said there, and I think that idea of
Speaker 1: I like that phrase reduced the scope, stick to this schedule,
Speaker 1: or as I said, a little of something is better
Speaker 1: than a lot of nothing, because at least, you know,
Speaker 1: my life is very and I think a lot of
Speaker 1: our listeners and a lot of people in the modern
Speaker 1: world to their lives are very chaotic and routines are
Speaker 1: harder to come by than they used to be. You know,
Speaker 1: you've got a kid who's got this on this night,
Speaker 1: and this on that night, and then the next week
Speaker 1: it's here, and and I've just found that ability to say, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to be flexible on what it is
Speaker 1: that I do. Um, it's gonna be five minutes versus
Speaker 1: ten minutes or whatever it is. But that that you
Speaker 1: stick with that schedule, I think that's really important. The
Speaker 1: next thing that you led into in there is something
Speaker 1: we've talked about a lot on this show, and it's
Speaker 1: the idea of doing what you've committed to doing regardless
Speaker 1: of what your mood or not letting your mood be
Speaker 1: your decision making tool. Yeah. I the way I phrase
Speaker 1: it a lot is don't let your emotion drive your behavior.
Speaker 1: So I when I started writing, I actually wrote in
Speaker 1: private for over a year before I published anything. And
Speaker 1: I was coming up with all sorts of excuses for
Speaker 1: why that was. You know, my ideas aren't fully formulated yet,
Speaker 1: my marketing skills aren't good enough. I you know, I
Speaker 1: don't I'm not a great writer. I haven't figured out
Speaker 1: my voice whatever, all these different things. And eventually I
Speaker 1: talked to a friend of mine named Todd Henry. And
Speaker 1: Todd's a published author and much better writer than I am,
Speaker 1: and so I was talking to him and I said, Todd,
Speaker 1: I I feel like I only right when I get
Speaker 1: this burst of motivation or this you know, the spark
Speaker 1: of inspiration that created of mus like, that's when I
Speaker 1: get my best ideas. So all right then, and he
Speaker 1: was like, well, that makes sense silently, right when I
Speaker 1: feel motivated to it just happens to be every day
Speaker 1: at eight am. Right Like When he said that, I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, this is the difference between professionals and amateurs, right.
Speaker 1: Amateurs do things when they feel motivated or when it's
Speaker 1: easy for them, when they feel inspired, and professionals do
Speaker 1: things on a schedule. Um. And so that was when
Speaker 1: I decided to set my Monday Thursday publishing schedule. And
Speaker 1: I've been able November twelve, two twelve was the first day,
Speaker 1: the first Monday, that I published, and I've been able
Speaker 1: to stick to that schedule ever since. The caveat here
Speaker 1: is that you have to choose a schedule, a pace
Speaker 1: that you can sustain. Um. One of the stories I
Speaker 1: like to tell about this is about Southwest Airlines. So
Speaker 1: in the mid nineties. Southwest had been growing very rapidly
Speaker 1: for almost twenty years at this point, and this was
Speaker 1: a period of time when most airline companies were either
Speaker 1: losing money or going bankrupt, at least in the United
Speaker 1: States and in I believe it was. Southwest had off
Speaker 1: first to expand to over a hundred different cities, and
Speaker 1: if you're a business, this is a great problem to
Speaker 1: have right there, like, okay, we have tons of options
Speaker 1: for growth. But what Southwest did was they turned down
Speaker 1: almost all of them. They only expanded to four new
Speaker 1: locations in and Jim Collins, the author of Good to Great,
Speaker 1: I think he's the one who originally found the story,
Speaker 1: and one of the reasons that he says Southwest was
Speaker 1: so successful is that they they set like an upper
Speaker 1: bound for their growth, like an upper limit for what
Speaker 1: they're gonna do. Right, They had a hundred options, but
Speaker 1: they said, we're only going to grow to four new places.
Speaker 1: And sometimes I like to keep that in mind when
Speaker 1: it comes to behavior change and building new habits as well.
Speaker 1: You know, so often we think about the lower limit
Speaker 1: for what we want to do. I want to work
Speaker 1: out for at least forty five minutes, or I want
Speaker 1: to write at least a thousand words to day, or
Speaker 1: you know, I want to lose at least fifteen pounds
Speaker 1: in the next four months. But I think in many
Speaker 1: ways it would be much more useful to set an
Speaker 1: upper limit for our behavior, especially in the beginning, because
Speaker 1: the only thing that matters is the consistency of the habit.
Speaker 1: It's not the result that matters in the beginning, because
Speaker 1: if you don't do the action consistently, then you're never
Speaker 1: going to get the result anyway. So if you can
Speaker 1: check your ego a little bit and set an upper
Speaker 1: limit for yourself, you could say something like like I
Speaker 1: had a reader the name as Mitch. He lost over
Speaker 1: a hundred pounds over the course of two years, and
Speaker 1: when he was adding exercise into his routine, he told himself,
Speaker 1: I'm not allowed to stay at the gym for more
Speaker 1: than five minutes, so he would go to the gym.
Speaker 1: He does for over four weeks. First four weeks he
Speaker 1: went to the gym for five minutes a day, five
Speaker 1: days a week, and then when he got to six minutes,
Speaker 1: he left and he was like, after four or five weeks,
Speaker 1: I kind of, you know, felt like I'm coming here
Speaker 1: all the time. I sort of want to stay longer. Right,
Speaker 1: And the important thing there is he wasn't worried at
Speaker 1: all about the result or the outcome in the beginning, Right,
Speaker 1: he was only focused on the behavior. How do I
Speaker 1: make it a habit? How do I become the type
Speaker 1: of person that shows up at the gym every day?
Speaker 1: How to become the type of person that doesn't miss workouts?
Speaker 1: And once I know that I'm gonna be here consistently,
Speaker 1: then I'll worry about improving the performance. But so often
Speaker 1: we flip it. So often we're so obsessed with the
Speaker 1: idea of the outcome or the result that we want
Speaker 1: that we never think about how can we actually build
Speaker 1: this into a behavior that's habitual and repeated. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: had todd On is one of our first guests, and
Speaker 1: and he's amazing and one of the things. One of
Speaker 1: the earlier guests we also had was a guy named
Speaker 1: Dan Millman who wrote um a book, The Way the
Speaker 1: Peaceful Warrior. But he talked in our interview about this idea.
Speaker 1: It's very similar. He called it, you know, start small
Speaker 1: and connect the dots. But you know, exercise for two
Speaker 1: minutes a day, but do it for you know, do
Speaker 1: it every day for a week or two weeks, and
Speaker 1: then if you if you exercise for four you've just
Speaker 1: you've doubled it. But I think it's it's back to
Speaker 1: that idea of all or nothing. It's really it's easy
Speaker 1: to get into that. All right, I'm gonna go forty
Speaker 1: five minutes a day every day, and then when I
Speaker 1: when I fall off, it's it's hard to maybe stick
Speaker 1: to that, which I think is what you're saying is
Speaker 1: to keep keep the scope at what we can do.
Speaker 1: The podcast, for example, we do once a week, occasionally
Speaker 1: put out a mini episode on the weekends. And the
Speaker 1: data is clear that if you want to grow a podcast,
Speaker 1: you put one out, you know, as frequent as you can.
Speaker 1: But the reality is it's not a pace we could keep.
Speaker 1: And so it's more about the slow and steady every
Speaker 1: week on Tuesday, an episode goes out well. And the
Speaker 1: data is also clear that podcasts that put something out
Speaker 1: every week succeed more than ones to do five in
Speaker 1: a row and then don't do it. It's exactly you know.
Speaker 1: That's so I would say, yeah, that's a great strict
Speaker 1: So that idea of breaking things into smaller, smaller chunks
Speaker 1: is um one that that I'm a big fan of.
Speaker 1: And you have something you call the two minute rule.
Speaker 1: I think I call it the five minute rule. I
Speaker 1: think they're very much a very similar thing. Can you
Speaker 1: tell us about the two minute rule? Sure? So the
Speaker 1: original and two minute rule comes from David Allen's book
Speaker 1: Getting Things Done, and it's just a productivity strategy that
Speaker 1: he uses to try to do things that you keep
Speaker 1: putting off. So for example, um, making the phone call
Speaker 1: that you've been wanting to make for the last week,
Speaker 1: or responding to that email that's been sitting in your inbox,
Speaker 1: or washing the dishes that are in the sync, throwing
Speaker 1: a load of laundry, whatever, if it takes less than
Speaker 1: two minutes, do it right away. That's his two minute rule.
Speaker 1: But I think we can adjust that rule for building
Speaker 1: new habits and behaviors, and the basic idea is nearly
Speaker 1: any habit that we want to do, for the most part,
Speaker 1: is going to require some conscious effort. They're they're actually
Speaker 1: bigger in scope than what academic researches would define as
Speaker 1: a habit. Academic researchers would say a habit is something
Speaker 1: you do automatically, like scratching your head or biting your
Speaker 1: nails or um flossing your teeth. But a lot of
Speaker 1: times when we talk about building new habits, we're talking
Speaker 1: about things that are you know, I want to make
Speaker 1: a habit of eating healthy, or I want to make
Speaker 1: a habit of going to the gym, or I want
Speaker 1: to make a habit of making five sales calls a day,
Speaker 1: whatever it happens to be. And these are things that
Speaker 1: are going to require conscious effort. But the thing that
Speaker 1: often happens is that when we think about the whole
Speaker 1: habit that we're trying to build in scope, it seems
Speaker 1: like too much. You know, It's kind of like what
Speaker 1: I mentioned earlier. If you wanted to run three miles,
Speaker 1: maybe you get home from work at the end of
Speaker 1: the day and you feel exhausted, and the thought of
Speaker 1: running three whole miles sounds like too much for you, right,
Speaker 1: It's it's more than the motivation or willpower that you
Speaker 1: have available at that time. So rather than focus on
Speaker 1: the entire event, on the whole scope of the project,
Speaker 1: focus just on the first two minutes of it. So
Speaker 1: not most habits cannot be completed in under two minutes,
Speaker 1: but nearly any habit can be started in less than
Speaker 1: two minutes. And so the idea behind this is put
Speaker 1: all of your motivation and willpower into starting the behavior
Speaker 1: and trust that in many ways, motivation comes after starting,
Speaker 1: not before. You know, we have this this sort of
Speaker 1: myth in our head that we the reason that we
Speaker 1: don't get started on things is because we don't have
Speaker 1: enough willpower. We weren't born with enough willpower. It's not
Speaker 1: this innate, I don't know trait that we with something
Speaker 1: we lack for one reason or another, and that if
Speaker 1: we only had more willpower and then that would be
Speaker 1: the solution to you know, to to accomplishing these tasks.
Speaker 1: But what often happens is that the willpower shows up
Speaker 1: not before we begin, but after. And pretty much anyone
Speaker 1: has experienced this in one way or another. When you
Speaker 1: started behavior and all of a sudden, it's much easier
Speaker 1: to finish it. You know a lot of times, like
Speaker 1: if you're it may be hard for you to get
Speaker 1: your workout going, but if you can simply get to
Speaker 1: the gym and start your first exercise, you're going to
Speaker 1: follow through with it at the end, um to the end.
Speaker 1: So the idea behind the two minute rule is focus
Speaker 1: all your intensity and motivation on the first two minutes.
Speaker 1: So for example, if we take the running thing, then
Speaker 1: it's just get your shoes on, get out the door,
Speaker 1: close the door, knob right, something like that. And then
Speaker 1: after that, if you don't run at all, fine, no
Speaker 1: big deal, no need to judge yourself. But often you'll
Speaker 1: find that you feel motivated enough to finish the task. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's exactly what I do it for five minutes, and
Speaker 1: I'm very deliberate about setting a timer, but it's usually
Speaker 1: I can trick myself into starting for five minutes. And
Speaker 1: then momentum is a is a particularly powerful force. You know,
Speaker 1: nine times at a tent you're right, it's sufficient to
Speaker 1: to get the thing done. And I think the corollarity
Speaker 1: of that too, and I've seen you reference it is
Speaker 1: a lot of the things that I tend to put
Speaker 1: off feel overwhelming to me, and breaking them down to
Speaker 1: two minutes doesn't feel overwhelming. Or if it's an overwhelming thing,
Speaker 1: breaking that thing into so many small tasks that I
Speaker 1: can find one that's easy to start on. This is
Speaker 1: the classic phrase that Leo about to use is all
Speaker 1: the time, right, like, starts with something so easy you
Speaker 1: can't say no to it, right if you you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of the time this is some of this
Speaker 1: comes back weaves back in with the one percent gains
Speaker 1: story that I mentioned in the beginning. We often think that, oh,
Speaker 1: if I start with something so small that it isn't
Speaker 1: going to make a difference, it's not gonna matter. Um.
Speaker 1: But the truth is, because that momentum builds after you
Speaker 1: get going. You can often start with something very tiny
Speaker 1: and then it will blossom into something much bigger afterward.
Speaker 1: You talk about not needing to be fantastic at the start,
Speaker 1: you just need to be there at the start. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean this idea that we're we have to be
Speaker 1: an expert to some degree I think is is uh
Speaker 1: is incorrect. So the phrase that I've been taught by
Speaker 1: a friend of mine named Beck tench she she worked
Speaker 1: at a science museum, but she wasn't a scientist, and
Speaker 1: she said, one of the interesting things I learned when
Speaker 1: I was there was about how scientists treat failure. You know,
Speaker 1: when a scientist runs an experiment, there are many pieces
Speaker 1: of data. Some of them agree with the hypothesis they have,
Speaker 1: some of them may not. But they don't necessarily see
Speaker 1: the pieces of data that don't agree with the hypothesis
Speaker 1: as a failure. Um, it's just a piece of data.
Speaker 1: It's just another data point. So there may be a
Speaker 1: positive result, there may be a negative result, but it's
Speaker 1: just a data point to them. And I think that's
Speaker 1: a much more powerful way to look at failure in
Speaker 1: our own life. You know, you don't need to show
Speaker 1: up and have positive, positive string of data points from
Speaker 1: the very beginning when you start a habit. You could
Speaker 1: try to start a habit fail and then say, huh,
Speaker 1: that's interesting, what a useful data point. Let me take
Speaker 1: that and turn that into something right, use that as
Speaker 1: fuel for the next adjustment I need to make, rather
Speaker 1: than as an indication of who I am. So often
Speaker 1: we make the mistake of seeing seeing failure as an
Speaker 1: indication of our identity of our self worth of the
Speaker 1: type of person that we are, the talent that we have,
Speaker 1: or what we're capable of. But that's not true at all. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, if you went to if you went to
Speaker 1: a restaurant and ordered, uh, you know, an entree and
Speaker 1: it came out and you ate it and it was bad,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't accuse yourself of being like a terrible food order. Right.
Speaker 1: It's not like it's not a reference to the quality
Speaker 1: of you as an individual just because the result is negative. Um,
Speaker 1: and said you would just see it as a data
Speaker 1: point of Oh, I don't like this food, or this
Speaker 1: is something I'm not going to order again in the future.
Speaker 1: And I think it would be much more useful if
Speaker 1: we took that same approach to creative tasks that we
Speaker 1: have in our work, to health and personal tasks and
Speaker 1: other growth tasks that we have in our life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you say that. A lot of people see failures, like
Speaker 1: you just said, as an indication of who they are.
Speaker 1: But mentally tough people, uh, define themselves more by their perseverance.
Speaker 1: There's a you know, I don't know, it's interesting there.
Speaker 1: I mental toughness is a topic that I've been thinking
Speaker 1: about more recently, and I'll probably write write a lot
Speaker 1: more about it at some point. But one of the
Speaker 1: articles that I've written recently that I enjoyed is about
Speaker 1: this finished concept called c sue and there's a there's
Speaker 1: no direct translation for the word in in English, but
Speaker 1: se sue and finishes sort of this quality that that
Speaker 1: the Finns are proud of having, this idea that they
Speaker 1: persevere even after their out of options, even after there's
Speaker 1: you know, no necessarily um forward or way to succeed
Speaker 1: in a particular task. Yet still they find a way
Speaker 1: to to move forward. And I find that that a
Speaker 1: lot of people who are really successful, whether it's entrepreneurs
Speaker 1: and CEOs or at lead athletes at some level, um
Speaker 1: really successful comedians or entertainers, whoever it happens to be,
Speaker 1: in the very beginning, they keep getting riddle with these failures,
Speaker 1: but they have this this like quality of C sue
Speaker 1: in the beginning, this ability to persevere and continue to
Speaker 1: move forward even and when they're not getting positive results.
Speaker 1: You know, sometimes it's so hard to continue moving forward
Speaker 1: if you don't have an indication that you're making progress.
Speaker 1: But there's this I don't know there's this magical quality
Speaker 1: of learning that requires failure in the beginning, and the
Speaker 1: people who embrace that are the ones who end up,
Speaker 1: you know, developing a significant skill set in the long run.
Speaker 1: I know it's something you've been writing more about, and
Speaker 1: it's a the idea of grit or mental toughness. Do
Speaker 1: you have any thoughts on how people go about acquiring
Speaker 1: more of that? Yeah, that's a good question. That's the
Speaker 1: main thing that I've been thinking about UM as I'm
Speaker 1: as I've been working on this recently. I think the
Speaker 1: the idea of starting small makes sense in this particular
Speaker 1: case as well, because one of the I think in
Speaker 1: many cases one of the most dangerous things you can
Speaker 1: have is actually to grow very fast or really quickly.
Speaker 1: Like most of the trouble that I've gotten myself into
Speaker 1: or troubles maybe the wrong word. Most of the the
Speaker 1: setbacks that I've had um have happened when I've tried
Speaker 1: to do too much too fast, and or or when
Speaker 1: I've gotten to a level that maybe I'm not prepared
Speaker 1: for too quickly, and so in other words, it's kind
Speaker 1: of like training yourself with small failures to develop the
Speaker 1: ability to overcome those and once you develop the ability
Speaker 1: to overcome something small, you can step up to the
Speaker 1: next level and take a slightly greater risk and then
Speaker 1: fail there, but still be able to handle it because
Speaker 1: now you have a new skill set, And then take
Speaker 1: a slightly greater risk and again be able to handle
Speaker 1: that because now you're a little bit better than you
Speaker 1: were before. And um, I think that idea of progression
Speaker 1: works really well here, um as well, because if you
Speaker 1: can prove yourself, prove to yourself that you're mentally tough
Speaker 1: in a small way, then maybe you can take that
Speaker 1: and leverage it into proving it again to yourself in
Speaker 1: a slightly bigger way. Yeah, it's a really interesting It
Speaker 1: is about how do we define failure and how do
Speaker 1: we define success? And one of the things that you
Speaker 1: you talk about and I am I've learned, you know,
Speaker 1: I've learned so many of these things through what can
Speaker 1: only be described as bitter experience. But is the idea
Speaker 1: of don't make the second mistake? Well, I guess I'll
Speaker 1: back this one up with a little bit of research.
Speaker 1: So there was a study done at University College London
Speaker 1: in uh in England, and they they were looking at
Speaker 1: the length of time that it took to actually build
Speaker 1: a new habit, and there's all these miss out there
Speaker 1: takes twenty one days when you habit our thirty days
Speaker 1: or whatever. What they found was that on average it
Speaker 1: took about sixty six days. But that's even that number
Speaker 1: is is largely unhelpful, I guess, because it's of huge range,
Speaker 1: you know, and as you would expect, it depends on
Speaker 1: the habit, right, Little things like drinking a glass of
Speaker 1: water at lunch may only take three weeks, whereas big things,
Speaker 1: um like going for a run three days a week,
Speaker 1: or you know, some other habit that's much larger and
Speaker 1: requires more effort and um and willpower may require eight
Speaker 1: months before it becomes routine. And so the range that
Speaker 1: they saw was anywhere from like eighteen days to two
Speaker 1: fifty something days um. But the message that the exact
Speaker 1: numbers aren't important. The messages it's going to take months
Speaker 1: probably to build a new habit. But the the second
Speaker 1: finding of the study, which I thought was very interesting,
Speaker 1: is that they looked at the people who stuck with
Speaker 1: habits over the long run and the consistency that they had,
Speaker 1: and what they found was that different people failed at
Speaker 1: different points along the curve, But at no point did
Speaker 1: missing one day, whether it was the first day, the
Speaker 1: tenth day, the hundredth day, the thousand day, missing one
Speaker 1: day had no measurable impact whatsoever on your ability to
Speaker 1: stick to a habit over the long run. And so
Speaker 1: this goes back one to the they all or nothing mentality, right,
Speaker 1: But it also triggered this idea in my mind, which
Speaker 1: is that top performers in many different industries make mistakes
Speaker 1: just like everybody else. I mean, you know, they're not perfect,
Speaker 1: They're just like you and I. They make errors, they
Speaker 1: slip up, they have a bad day. There's urgencies and
Speaker 1: emergencies of life they have to deal with that prevent
Speaker 1: them from doing their habits consistently every now and then.
Speaker 1: But the key is when they get off track, they
Speaker 1: find a way to get back on track as quickly
Speaker 1: as possible. So the phrase that I like to keep
Speaker 1: in mind is never missed twice, or don't make the
Speaker 1: second mistake, as you said. And so if I can
Speaker 1: figure out a way that once I get off track,
Speaker 1: I can get myself back on track as quickly as possible,
Speaker 1: I know that that's not going to hurt me in
Speaker 1: the long run, I don't need to be perfect, and
Speaker 1: there's no measurable impact that missing yesterday will have if
Speaker 1: I can get back on track today. And so for
Speaker 1: that reason, I think one of the most useful exercises
Speaker 1: you can go through when it comes to building new
Speaker 1: habits is uh then. This is an idea from a
Speaker 1: book called The Willpower Instinct by Kelly McGonagall. She's a
Speaker 1: professor from Stanford and her idea or her strategy is
Speaker 1: the main thing that takes your willpower off course or
Speaker 1: that depletes your willpower is not understanding how and when
Speaker 1: you lose willpower, how and when you get off track. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, if you get a piece of paper
Speaker 1: and list out all the things that could take you
Speaker 1: off track with your habits. You know, my kid gets sick,
Speaker 1: or I you know I'm ill, or I um, you know,
Speaker 1: I forget I didn't set a reminder on my phone,
Speaker 1: or you know a thousand other things that could take
Speaker 1: you off course. I my friends asked me to go
Speaker 1: out to eat when I'm trying to stick to my diet,
Speaker 1: whatever it happens to be. For the habit that you're
Speaker 1: working on, list out all the possible scenarios you can
Speaker 1: think of that could take off. Course. If you can
Speaker 1: prevent those things, great, go ahead and prevent them. But
Speaker 1: if you can't, then come up with an if then
Speaker 1: scenario for what you're going to do to get back
Speaker 1: on track as quickly as possible, because then it becomes
Speaker 1: less a story of Oh, I'm a victim that happened
Speaker 1: to me. Um, now I don't know what to do.
Speaker 1: It takes me two weeks to get back on track
Speaker 1: or two months before I feel motivated again to do this.
Speaker 1: It's less about that victims story of this happened to
Speaker 1: me and this is why I got of course, and
Speaker 1: more about okay, this happened, here's my plan to get
Speaker 1: back on track. And if you can develop the strategy
Speaker 1: to never miss twice, then you'll probably have much more
Speaker 1: success of a long run, and the little airs that
Speaker 1: occur every now and then, which you are going to
Speaker 1: happen to all of us, won't have a measurable impact
Speaker 1: on your results. Yeah, that's such a big one. And
Speaker 1: the bitter experience I was talking about is that seems
Speaker 1: to be the thing in the past that would always
Speaker 1: derail me, is I would fall off the wagon, whatever
Speaker 1: that wagon might be, um and then just give up.
Speaker 1: And I think a lot of it gets back to
Speaker 1: the stories we tell ourselves about what that stuff means.
Speaker 1: And you just you touched on in a minute ago
Speaker 1: that that the idea of failure is a is not
Speaker 1: an indication of who we are. But I think it's
Speaker 1: so easy for us to start telling ourselves stories when
Speaker 1: we miss a day or we fail to get into
Speaker 1: Oh well, this means I'm just not cut out to
Speaker 1: do this, or I always do this thing, or what's
Speaker 1: the point and those are all just they're nothing but stories. Yeah.
Speaker 1: A great book to read on this particular topic is
Speaker 1: called Mindset by Carol Dweck. She also is a researcher
Speaker 1: at Stanford and the strategy that she lays out of
Speaker 1: the um the discovery that she lays out from her
Speaker 1: research in that book is that there are two types
Speaker 1: of mindsets. The first type of mindset is a fixed mindset,
Speaker 1: and the fixed mindset believes that talent matters and that
Speaker 1: you know, we're very focused on the outcome, the result
Speaker 1: that we get. We tend to avoid challenges that are
Speaker 1: face to us because we think our skill set is fixed.
Speaker 1: To some degree. I was born this way. These are
Speaker 1: the this is the talent that I have. This is
Speaker 1: the type of person that I am, um, And it
Speaker 1: looks at outcomes as an indication of who we are.
Speaker 1: So what you're mentioning there? Oh, I slipped on on
Speaker 1: this habit. I always do this. I'm a failure. I'm
Speaker 1: the type of person who you know isn't good at
Speaker 1: working out, or I'm the type of person who isn't
Speaker 1: natural at sales or whatever. It happens to be the
Speaker 1: growth mindset. So this first mindsets the fixed mindset. The
Speaker 1: second mindsets the growth mindset. Growth mindset is very focused
Speaker 1: on effort rather than outcome. I worked really hard on this.
Speaker 1: This is why I did a good job. Your process
Speaker 1: focused how can I commit to the system and continually
Speaker 1: get better rather than worrying about a particular outcome. And
Speaker 1: you embrace challenges that come your way because you see
Speaker 1: them as ways to develop your skill set. So the
Speaker 1: growth mindset says, my abilities are not fixed. It's not
Speaker 1: a talent question. I can improve in some way even
Speaker 1: if I'm not good at it now. And the key
Speaker 1: to realize here is that you don't have a fixed
Speaker 1: mindset or a growth mindset. We have that we but
Speaker 1: we all have both in certain areas. So if you
Speaker 1: take my writing for example, I'm very growth mindset oriented.
Speaker 1: I'm always looking for ways to improve. I think, okay,
Speaker 1: I can look at my progress of the last year
Speaker 1: or two, I've definitely become a better writer. Let me,
Speaker 1: you know, look at other writers who are great at
Speaker 1: the aircraft and see what I can learn from them
Speaker 1: and try to develop my skill set. Always focused on
Speaker 1: moving forward. But with sales and selling, I would always
Speaker 1: tell myself the story of I'm not a natural salesman.
Speaker 1: I prefer to be really high integrity. This isn't something
Speaker 1: that you know I'm good at for that reason all
Speaker 1: these other things, and so I was hamstring myself saying, oh,
Speaker 1: this isn't who I am. Right, I was just saying, oh,
Speaker 1: this is a fixed thing. It's just not me. And
Speaker 1: so we can do this to ourselves in many different
Speaker 1: areas where we say we're fixed in a certain area,
Speaker 1: but we may be growth in another area. And when
Speaker 1: you notice yourself having that fixed mindset of you know,
Speaker 1: using failure as an indication of who you are, or
Speaker 1: using an outcome as an indication of what you're good
Speaker 1: at or how talented you are. You need to remind
Speaker 1: yourself that the growth mindset is what is true. Right.
Speaker 1: This is the approach that we need to take. That
Speaker 1: skills can be developed and cultivated, that you have the
Speaker 1: ability to improve in some way even if you failed
Speaker 1: in the past. It's not an indication of the outcome
Speaker 1: that you're destined to have. It's is something that has
Speaker 1: happened in the past. I've got two last areas i'd
Speaker 1: like to cover with you, which tend to be two
Speaker 1: of themes that I always like to explore, and luckily
Speaker 1: you've written about them a little bit. One of them
Speaker 1: is the idea of comparison. So you've got an article
Speaker 1: where you talk about a show choreographer who puts out
Speaker 1: a bunch of work that she doesn't feel as great,
Speaker 1: and then or that she does feel as great, and
Speaker 1: then something she puts out that she doesn't think it
Speaker 1: is good becomes very successful. But you talk through that
Speaker 1: that article about the idea of comparison, and comparison is
Speaker 1: one of those things that I think can be potentially
Speaker 1: very painful to us, and I'm interested to hear more
Speaker 1: about it from you. Yeah, So the story is about
Speaker 1: this choreographer named Agnes de mil who she choreographed a
Speaker 1: bunch of different shows that she thought you were great,
Speaker 1: as you mentioned, and then she did the choreography for Oklahoma,
Speaker 1: which is a blockbuster hit on Broadway, performed over two
Speaker 1: thousand times and had all the success, and she thought
Speaker 1: her work was average. And so she was talking to
Speaker 1: Martha Graham, who is one of the most famous dance
Speaker 1: choreographers of the twentieth century, and she was like, Martha, I,
Speaker 1: you know, I feel like maybe I'm not cut out
Speaker 1: for this work, because my whole concept of what is
Speaker 1: good work and what is bad work seems off. I
Speaker 1: you know, the work that I thought was great, nobody
Speaker 1: cared about. The work that I thought was very average.
Speaker 1: People loved. Maybe I'm not cut out for this. And
Speaker 1: Martha Graham just looked at her and said, you have
Speaker 1: something inside of you, a unique set of skills, a
Speaker 1: unique set of circumstances and experiences and ideas that if
Speaker 1: you don't put it out there, if you don't deliver
Speaker 1: it to the world, it will never it will never be,
Speaker 1: it will never exist in any other way. No one
Speaker 1: else can produce that. Your job is not to determine
Speaker 1: whether or not that is valuable. Your job is not
Speaker 1: to compare it to someone else or try to measure
Speaker 1: how good or how bad it is. Your job is
Speaker 1: simply to create the work. Is simply to put it
Speaker 1: out in the world, and then you can let the
Speaker 1: world decide whether it's good or not. And I think
Speaker 1: that that's a great way to think about comparison for
Speaker 1: for all of our our our own work and the
Speaker 1: you know, the comparison trap that we often fall into
Speaker 1: when comparing our lives and um and our our choices
Speaker 1: to other people. You know, like, your job is not
Speaker 1: to determine whether your life is more valuable than someone else's,
Speaker 1: or your work is more creative or more compelling than
Speaker 1: someone else's. Your job is simply to live out the
Speaker 1: path that you have because if you don't live it out,
Speaker 1: nobody else will be able to. There's no one else
Speaker 1: that can put out this unique set of creative output,
Speaker 1: this unique set of circumstances and ideas and experiences, this
Speaker 1: unique set of conversations and stories and pieces of advice,
Speaker 1: whatever it happens to be that you want to deliver
Speaker 1: to the world. It's your job simply to deliver it,
Speaker 1: not to try to measure it, and then you can
Speaker 1: let the world decide whether they love it or not. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that's such a great, a great piece of
Speaker 1: advice on this, because it's so easy to get into
Speaker 1: comparing and one of the other things that listeners might
Speaker 1: be tired of hearing me talk about it. But the
Speaker 1: the other thing I've noticed about comparing is that you know,
Speaker 1: there's always somebody who you could think is better than
Speaker 1: you in certain things, somebody who could think is worse
Speaker 1: than you in certain things. But the thing I've noticed
Speaker 1: in both those cases is I'm not connecting to the
Speaker 1: two people at all. I'm kind of oft in my
Speaker 1: own isolated world. Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, you're kind
Speaker 1: of in the theater of your mind rather than in
Speaker 1: the you know, the real world producing something. And one
Speaker 1: of the phrases that I keep in mind on this
Speaker 1: sometimes it's it's very easy to judge from the crowd.
Speaker 1: It's much harder to be in the arena and actually
Speaker 1: do the work. And as much as possible, I think
Speaker 1: we should try to keep ourselves in the arena rather
Speaker 1: than up in the crowd judging what's going on in
Speaker 1: the field. Yeah, I was just on somebody else's show
Speaker 1: earlier today doing an interview, and he's somebody who's also
Speaker 1: in the UM bodybuilding world, which I thought it was
Speaker 1: interesting to have me on UM. Nonetheless, we talked a
Speaker 1: little bit about that, and I'd just be curious about
Speaker 1: your perspective because in the body building weightlifting world, there
Speaker 1: certainly is a great degree of comparison in physique, for example,
Speaker 1: or things like that. And it's easy to see how
Speaker 1: that quote from Martha Graham makes sense in a creative expression.
Speaker 1: How would you handle comparison in a more um physical
Speaker 1: sense like that. Yeah, that's a good question. As as
Speaker 1: someone who was an athlete, I feel like comparison and
Speaker 1: competitiveness often get confused, you know, And so for a
Speaker 1: long time, for most of my athletic career, I was
Speaker 1: very comparison focused, right, like, how am I outperforming the
Speaker 1: person next to me? Or how am I performing against
Speaker 1: the team that I'm playing against. But competitiveness does not
Speaker 1: necessarily require you to compare. You can compete against yourself,
Speaker 1: you can compete at the highest level possible. You can
Speaker 1: try to improve and be as ambitious as possible. But
Speaker 1: the judgment of whether or not it's good or whether
Speaker 1: or not you're better. Actually, if you think about it,
Speaker 1: does not help you perform. It's not the performance. The
Speaker 1: performance itself is what matters, not the judgment of it.
Speaker 1: Um from your from your side, and if you're If
Speaker 1: we take the body building example, comparing yourself is not
Speaker 1: what makes you a better bodybuilder, right. It's like doing
Speaker 1: more reps, or focusing on a new type of exercise
Speaker 1: that maybe you've neglected in the past, or optimizing your
Speaker 1: nutrition to a certain degree. You know, it's like spending
Speaker 1: time in the arena of doing the work that makes
Speaker 1: the difference. It's being more focused and missing fewer workouts.
Speaker 1: These are the things that actually drive better results, not
Speaker 1: how much time you spend comparing yourself to someone else. Um,
Speaker 1: the comparison is not the work, but we often confuse
Speaker 1: it with being associated with the work or motivating the work,
Speaker 1: and so we we spend too much time focused on it.
Speaker 1: If you were able to relieve yourself of all comparison
Speaker 1: but do more work than you had before, you would
Speaker 1: probably get better results. So I think I think oftentimes
Speaker 1: we use comparison as a crutch by saying, oh, this
Speaker 1: is what motivates me or is what you know. I'm
Speaker 1: always thirsting to get to the next level or whatever.
Speaker 1: But being focused on comparison and judgment is not the
Speaker 1: same as being competitive. And being competitive is great, but
Speaker 1: it doesn't require you to compare yourself to others. I
Speaker 1: think that can be similar to worrying, right. A lot
Speaker 1: of people think that worrying about something is the same
Speaker 1: as doing something about it. And one of the rules
Speaker 1: I tried to put in place for myself and I
Speaker 1: do with varying degrees of success, though, is that if
Speaker 1: I start to worry about something, I asked myself, is
Speaker 1: there any positive action I can take that would improve
Speaker 1: this outcome whatever that thing is? And if so, I
Speaker 1: try and do it, and almost instantly upon that, the
Speaker 1: worry or the comparison or all that stuff vanishes once
Speaker 1: I'm engaged in some sort of positive action. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: actually one of the main reasons why I tend to
Speaker 1: not watch any news or television really unless it's an
Speaker 1: Ohio State football game. Um. But uh, I I found
Speaker 1: that after a while, I was like, watching the news
Speaker 1: didn't give me any particular action to take to become
Speaker 1: a better person. It didn't allow me to do anything
Speaker 1: positive or to to make the world a better place
Speaker 1: in any way. And this is different. The criticism that
Speaker 1: I'll get sometimes when I talk about this is people
Speaker 1: are like, oh, well, you're an uninformed citizen. Well, this
Speaker 1: is different than saying that I don't want to learn
Speaker 1: or that I'm uninformed. Right. If it's something that's important
Speaker 1: to me or that I want to get better at,
Speaker 1: or an action that I actually want to take to
Speaker 1: to make the world a better place, then of course
Speaker 1: I'm going to seek out information to become better on it.
Speaker 1: But what I'm saying is I found that watching the
Speaker 1: news is relatively useless for me because getting that information
Speaker 1: pushed on me doesn't prompt me to make any better action.
Speaker 1: All it does is just prompt me to worry um
Speaker 1: or think about things that that don't allow me to
Speaker 1: become a better person anyway. Yeah, I agree. I think
Speaker 1: that's I've been doing a course for some of the
Speaker 1: listeners on the seven habits of highly effective people, and
Speaker 1: that falls right into that um circle of concern versus
Speaker 1: circle of influence kind of thing. Yeah, exactly. So. The
Speaker 1: last thing that I'd like to talk about is and
Speaker 1: I love the way you phrased it, because it's but
Speaker 1: it's something I'm always talking about and always wrestling within
Speaker 1: it's And you say, ambition and contentment are not opposites,
Speaker 1: but we often make the mistake of thinking that they
Speaker 1: are incompatible. Can you talk a little bit more about that,
Speaker 1: because that's a fascinating topic for me, is how do
Speaker 1: you be ambitious and content at the same time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's you know, and this is something I certainly haven't
Speaker 1: mastered to need degree. It's it's something I've been thinking
Speaker 1: about a lot recently, and that you know, you look
Speaker 1: at on one hand, competitiveness and drive is something that
Speaker 1: is central for me. I mean, it's the the athlete
Speaker 1: in me is like, yes, I love this um And
Speaker 1: then on the other hand, you see people who are
Speaker 1: you know I we're talking about. I was talking with
Speaker 1: some friends the other day about a particular entrepreneur that
Speaker 1: we know, and he said, he's literally the only person
Speaker 1: I know who does not want more. And when you
Speaker 1: think about that, it's like, wow, that is a really
Speaker 1: powerful thing. Right to not once more, that has to
Speaker 1: be the ultimate definition of success. Right to be completely
Speaker 1: satisfied with with where you're at. And so on one hand,
Speaker 1: you're like, oh, if I'm satisfied with where I'm at,
Speaker 1: then why would I feel driven or ambitious to move
Speaker 1: to the next level. But then on the other hand,
Speaker 1: you're like, well, I want to get to the next level,
Speaker 1: like growth is something that's very important to me. So
Speaker 1: how do I how do I emerge these two How
Speaker 1: do I make these two things connect? And the best
Speaker 1: metaphor that I had heard of it came from this
Speaker 1: book I was reading, called The Inner Game of Tennis
Speaker 1: by tim Timothy Galway, and he talks about a rose
Speaker 1: seed and basically says, when rose seed is planted, we
Speaker 1: don't criticize it for not having roots or not having
Speaker 1: stems or whatever. And then it grows and sprouts into
Speaker 1: you know, a bud and a stem, and you know,
Speaker 1: at that point we don't criticize it for not being
Speaker 1: a full grown tree or you know, not having branches
Speaker 1: or more leaves um. And then it continues to grow
Speaker 1: and it you know, develops more leaves and strong and
Speaker 1: so on. And at no point during this this uh sequence,
Speaker 1: do we criticize the rose for being immature or underdeveloped
Speaker 1: or not you know, fulfilling its full potential or not
Speaker 1: being ready yet right, But but it also never stops growing.
Speaker 1: So it's perfectly. It's perfect the way that it is
Speaker 1: at any given time. It's what it's supposed to be.
Speaker 1: It's content, it's happy, but it's also ambitious. It never
Speaker 1: stops growing. And so I think that that's the type
Speaker 1: of metaphor and approach that I would love to take
Speaker 1: with my own life. It's like, I am perfectly happy
Speaker 1: with who I am now, satisfied with the type person.
Speaker 1: I am, satisfied with what I've achieved. I feel self confident.
Speaker 1: I don't feel like I have to prove myself to
Speaker 1: others or justify myself in some way. I don't feel
Speaker 1: a need to compare myself. I simply feel present and
Speaker 1: at peace. But I'm also never going to stop growing
Speaker 1: simply because that's what I do. Not because it requires
Speaker 1: me to be unhappy with my life for the current
Speaker 1: state that I have, not because it requires me to
Speaker 1: constantly question whether I'm doing enough or whether I am enough,
Speaker 1: but simply because growing is what I do. Just as
Speaker 1: a rose seed grows, so do I. And I think
Speaker 1: that that that idea of being both content and ambitious
Speaker 1: is a really powerful thing that that I would love
Speaker 1: to be able to, you know, to master or at
Speaker 1: least do on a on a consistent basis. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: is such a great analogy. And I almost attempted to
Speaker 1: end the interview with what you just said because it
Speaker 1: was so powerful. But I think it is that so
Speaker 1: many of us have this idea that it's dissatisfaction or
Speaker 1: unhappiness that provides the impetus for for growth or change,
Speaker 1: and that certainly is true. You can't deny that that
Speaker 1: is one of them. But I like what you said.
Speaker 1: I think I actually go further, and I think it's
Speaker 1: not just what you do or what a rose does,
Speaker 1: but I think it's kind of what the universe does. Right.
Speaker 1: It's there is a clear bias towards growth and change
Speaker 1: and move forward that seems embedded in everything. And that's
Speaker 1: why I always get sort of because you've got sort
Speaker 1: of the contemplative practices like Buddhism that say, well, you know,
Speaker 1: desire or craving is the is the problem. And on
Speaker 1: one hand, I go, well, yeah, I kind of see that,
Speaker 1: and then on the other hand, I see that that
Speaker 1: idea of growth is seems inherent and I love the
Speaker 1: way you put that. Yeah, yeah, I agree. It's it's
Speaker 1: a very interesting balance to strike and it's also I
Speaker 1: think a very difficult balance to maintain over the long run,
Speaker 1: you know, like in any given moment maybe we feel
Speaker 1: that way, but it's it's a challenge to maintain that
Speaker 1: day after day. Well, James, thanks so much for coming
Speaker 1: on the show. This has been a wonderful conversation. And
Speaker 1: I'll have links to your website and I will you know,
Speaker 1: I do and will continue to encourage anybody to go
Speaker 1: read them because I think you're very, like I said,
Speaker 1: very common sense, very practical, and and things are presented
Speaker 1: in a in a in a way that it's easy
Speaker 1: to take something powerful away. So thanks so much for
Speaker 1: coming on the show. Oh yeah, well, thank you so
Speaker 1: much for having me. I um, I hate to leave
Speaker 1: people without anything. So if they you know, obviously they're
Speaker 1: welcome to stop by the website if they like, but
Speaker 1: if they want more information about some of the habits
Speaker 1: stuff that we talked about specifically, like I have a
Speaker 1: couple of exercises. There's this t chart exercise that's relatively
Speaker 1: useful for building new habits um and a couple other ideas.
Speaker 1: I put them all on a little guide and slowly free.
Speaker 1: They can download it at James clear dot com slash habits,
Speaker 1: so if you feel like checking out more yeh, feel
Speaker 1: free to pop over there and give it a look.
Speaker 1: Excellent and I'll link to that also in our show notes. Well, thanks, James,
Speaker 1: have a great afternoon. Sure thing, all right? Take care bye?
Speaker 1: All right, you bet bye. You can learn more about
Speaker 1: James Clear and this podcast at one you feed dot
Speaker 1: net slash Clear