Speaker 1: What really changed my mindset about meditation was when I
Speaker 1: started meeting who was meditating. Welcome to the one you
Speaker 1: feed Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of
Speaker 1: the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out,
Speaker 1: or you are what you think ring true, and yet
Speaker 1: for 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 m Thanks for joining us. Our guest today
Speaker 1: is Tony stubble Bind CEO and co founder of lift
Speaker 1: or as it's now called Coach Got Me Coach dot
Speaker 1: me as an app that helps you achieve any goal,
Speaker 1: change any habit, or build any expertise. Here's the interview.
Speaker 1: Hi Tony, Welcome to the show. Eric, Thanks for having me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm really glad to get you on and talk through
Speaker 1: some of the concepts that are behind your app, which
Speaker 1: you're now calling coach dot me that I know is
Speaker 1: Lift and I'm a longtime Lift user, so maybe we'll
Speaker 1: get into that a little bit. So I'd like to
Speaker 1: start off, like we always do, with the parable. There's
Speaker 1: a grandfather who's talking with his grandson and he says,
Speaker 1: in life, there are two wolves inside of us. One
Speaker 1: is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and
Speaker 1: bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And
Speaker 1: the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second.
Speaker 1: He looks up with his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather,
Speaker 1: which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you how
Speaker 1: that parable applies to yourself in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do. Well. I just I definitely
Speaker 1: know professionally, nobody starts a company like mine unless they've
Speaker 1: seen both sides, unless they've had both wolves. And I
Speaker 1: think of just my entire career has been has been
Speaker 1: a search for work that felt more gratifying, and at
Speaker 1: first I thought, well, I should take the job that
Speaker 1: gives me the most money. And then I had that job,
Speaker 1: but it was it wasn't intellectually satisfying. So I went
Speaker 1: to find a job that I thought was the most interesting,
Speaker 1: but then I found that it wasn't like a particularly
Speaker 1: well run company. I didn't feel like my contributions were
Speaker 1: having any impact. So then I started to work for startups,
Speaker 1: and I mean that just't even got worse because most
Speaker 1: startups fail in spectacular fashion. And I thought, well, okay,
Speaker 1: what if I to it myself? And so I started
Speaker 1: accompany for myself, and my entire thought process for the
Speaker 1: first three years of running that company was like, I
Speaker 1: have to prove that I can make this company a success.
Speaker 1: And then I got into year four and it was
Speaker 1: profitable and I had a team that was running it
Speaker 1: on my behalf and I had maybe only a day
Speaker 1: a week of work to really keep it running. And
Speaker 1: so I got to examine, well, is this what I
Speaker 1: want to do with the rest of my life? Do
Speaker 1: I want a life of leisure? Didn't really feel like
Speaker 1: that was great work out for me. Do I want
Speaker 1: to recommit to this first company? No? And so I
Speaker 1: really like I had to then say, well, what is
Speaker 1: my life's mission? Because I just achieved what I wanted
Speaker 1: to do it do and it wasn't as gratisfying as
Speaker 1: I hoped. And so for me, the answer was obvious.
Speaker 1: I've just always been interested in, you know, what is
Speaker 1: the difference between um, mediocrity and excellence? And I think
Speaker 1: all of us have a mediocre version of ourselves and
Speaker 1: all of us have an excellent version of ourselves. And
Speaker 1: you know it's kind of uh like good news bad news,
Speaker 1: the the excellent version of yourself doesn't happen accidentally. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so tell us a little. So you went on
Speaker 1: to found UM, you went on to found Lift, which
Speaker 1: is a which now you call Coached at Me, which
Speaker 1: is really about how do people build good habits and
Speaker 1: how do they how do they transform their life via
Speaker 1: the habits that they have. Would that be a an
Speaker 1: accurate summation. Yeah. We changed our name just recently for
Speaker 1: the new year to coach dot me because we wanted
Speaker 1: to take a really active role in helping people achieve
Speaker 1: their goals, any goals, and so, uh, you know, probably
Speaker 1: the best way to describe that, or the way and
Speaker 1: to think of it is that it's the community of
Speaker 1: people coaching each other and people in the community are
Speaker 1: trying to achieve practically every goal that you've ever heard of.
Speaker 1: So something really popular like the paleo diet or training
Speaker 1: for a triathlon, those goals are matched by people who
Speaker 1: are learning to meditate who or who are who are
Speaker 1: exploring gratitude practices. So really the poll gamot, Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: there's a lot out there. Let's talk about some of
Speaker 1: the some of the underlying principles that you used when
Speaker 1: you originally built the application, and let's talk about, you know,
Speaker 1: for lack of a better word, the science of behavior
Speaker 1: changer of habits. You use something that you refer to
Speaker 1: a lot called the fog behavior model b M A T.
Speaker 1: Can we talk through what that is and then how
Speaker 1: that ties into what you've done at lift? Yeah right,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I keep calling it the old name. You
Speaker 1: gotta give me some time year. It's only like January
Speaker 1: twenty and I've got years of calling it the old thing.
Speaker 1: It's fair. We have a jar and people in the
Speaker 1: company's here up all the time like eight dollars. We'll
Speaker 1: let you slide. But uh, you know, a name change
Speaker 1: is tricky that way. Uh, when we started the company,
Speaker 1: we were doing a lot of research into behavior design
Speaker 1: is what we'd call it, sort of the science of
Speaker 1: behavior design. And one of the people that I liked
Speaker 1: the most as a professor at Stanford B J. Fogg,
Speaker 1: who runs um a behavior design lab down at Stanford.
Speaker 1: And what I liked about him is that he created
Speaker 1: frameworks for thinking about behavior design that we're really simple.
Speaker 1: And in fact I took a course from him. We're
Speaker 1: part of the courses. They teach you how to teach
Speaker 1: his B. Matt model in two minutes or less, and
Speaker 1: so like I actually was able to like walk around
Speaker 1: and teach other people what he had taught me. And
Speaker 1: I think that's the mar of a good teacher. And
Speaker 1: his you know, his realization is that probably one of
Speaker 1: his biggest or most influential is that when you think,
Speaker 1: well why am I not succeeding or why especially when
Speaker 1: you judge someone else and you say, well, why are
Speaker 1: they not succeeding, the first thing you think is, well,
Speaker 1: they're not motivated. They're lazy and not motivated. But actually
Speaker 1: there's almost always three factors and at play, and a
Speaker 1: lot of times were over focused on motivation. So the
Speaker 1: three factors would be motivation, Yes, ability, you know, it's
Speaker 1: sort of like you can't bloss if you don't own floss, right,
Speaker 1: that's an ability thing, not a motivation thing. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then the third trigger, so if it doesn't occur to you,
Speaker 1: then you're not going to do it and um. And
Speaker 1: so as you design for an intervention with yourself or
Speaker 1: with someone else, you kind of evaluate where they are,
Speaker 1: you know, on that on that curve, do they have
Speaker 1: enough motivation? If they do, then it's an ability issue.
Speaker 1: And a great example. Like great examples I would say
Speaker 1: are like smoking. Most people know that smoking is unhealthy,
Speaker 1: and in fact, most people who are smokers, many people
Speaker 1: who are smokers, would want to give it up. It's
Speaker 1: not a motivation issue. It's that smoking is addictive, and
Speaker 1: so it's actually really hard to give up. On the
Speaker 1: flip side, your dentist tells you to floss every time
Speaker 1: you see you go in for a visit. Uh. Flossing
Speaker 1: is trivial, it's super easy, but it's not super fun,
Speaker 1: it's not super exciting. You might not be really that
Speaker 1: motivated to be a floss er. And so what your
Speaker 1: dentist is always trying to do is like actually make
Speaker 1: a coherent sales pitch for why you should should floss
Speaker 1: because your dentist is identified that well, he's handed you
Speaker 1: free floss every single time you've ever gone in for
Speaker 1: a visit. So it's not an ability issue. Like you know,
Speaker 1: my high genis actually has made floss in front of
Speaker 1: her and um uh. And so it's clearly a motivational issue.
Speaker 1: Is that this is going to be an embarrassing admission.
Speaker 1: But that regular floss caused me all kinds of trouble.
Speaker 1: But when they've got that new kind, it's like you
Speaker 1: you know, the little floss er things. I turned into
Speaker 1: a flossher overnight. So I think that points to at
Speaker 1: least in my case, I need to with the ability. Yes,
Speaker 1: I'm I imagine most of our listeners and the rest
Speaker 1: of the world will be like you, which is yes,
Speaker 1: anybody can floss, but in my case there might be
Speaker 1: might be more to it, you know, but it's a
Speaker 1: great example. Then even I am a little bit over
Speaker 1: focused on motivation when it comes to flossom, and like
Speaker 1: we all do that, and you know, whatever a person's
Speaker 1: motivation is, you can do more. You can often make
Speaker 1: the habit or the goal easy enough that it will
Speaker 1: work with that level of motivation. And you know, the
Speaker 1: thing is, we're not trying to rehabilitate criminals here, right,
Speaker 1: We're almost always working with people that have some level
Speaker 1: level of motivation, right, even if that motivation seems seems intermittent.
Speaker 1: So to take this this model is to say that
Speaker 1: we need to make sure that we have enough of
Speaker 1: the motivation, the ability, and then we are reminded to
Speaker 1: do it or not do it often enough that we
Speaker 1: that that stays front of mind uns up at the
Speaker 1: right times. It is. You know, when we designed the app,
Speaker 1: we we were looking at all three and so, Like,
Speaker 1: motivation could be coming from the community. They're cheering you on,
Speaker 1: or you're seeing your progress and you're attached to that progress. Right.
Speaker 1: Ability can come really from again the community, who are
Speaker 1: there to answer your questions like what is the best
Speaker 1: way to do this? What is the easiest way to
Speaker 1: do this? How do I get started? I'm having this trouble?
Speaker 1: What do I do about it? Right? Like, all of
Speaker 1: those are questions that trip you up. And uh, then
Speaker 1: now with the switch to coach to me, we actually
Speaker 1: have personal coaches who you can hire for fifteen dollars
Speaker 1: a week who are like dedicated to giving you that
Speaker 1: information and helping you make your goal as easy to
Speaker 1: achieve as possible. And that's an ability tactic. And then
Speaker 1: we have reminders. So you set a reminder and it
Speaker 1: pops up on your phone and you think, oh, right,
Speaker 1: I had decided that I was going to go to
Speaker 1: the gym, or I had decided that I was going
Speaker 1: to go somewhere different for launch. That's healthier, right, Like
Speaker 1: a lot of times you make this decision the day
Speaker 1: before and then you forget about it, and it's just
Speaker 1: you know, the issue is don't let yourself forget right.
Speaker 1: So the trigger is that reminder. Um, I think there's others.
Speaker 1: So as far as the app, it's the reminder. I
Speaker 1: think in other aspects of life, I've heard of triggers
Speaker 1: being things like, um, leave your shoes by the front door,
Speaker 1: or do these things that make you almost you know,
Speaker 1: run in to what is you set out to do. Right,
Speaker 1: that's a good way of kind of physically designing your
Speaker 1: space in order to trigger the behavior. Um. And at
Speaker 1: one I do like I try and drink a fair
Speaker 1: amount of water during the day. So my actual habit
Speaker 1: is refill my water bottle when I get to my desk, right, Like,
Speaker 1: that's the actual thing I need to do. Once I've
Speaker 1: done that, I'm triggered to drink water all day. Um
Speaker 1: now I have a question for you, if that's okay
Speaker 1: here as a long time user. Uh, we've built the
Speaker 1: app initially in this very really direct kind of operating
Speaker 1: conditioning way. Is that how a psychologists would say there's
Speaker 1: a positive reinforcement with all this other stuff. But as
Speaker 1: we've talked to people, we see the other side of
Speaker 1: positive psychology, which is about belief and mindset change. So
Speaker 1: there's a different Stanford professor Carol Dweck who wrote really
Speaker 1: influential work on UH on how your mind set effects
Speaker 1: your performance. So a lot of sort of two two
Speaker 1: common mindsets, one a growth mindset and another fixed mindset.
Speaker 1: Some people believe they were born as smart as they are,
Speaker 1: and other people believed that they worked for it. People
Speaker 1: who believe that they worked for it, I like also
Speaker 1: see sort of the corollary that they want to be smarter,
Speaker 1: if they want to be more successful, all they have
Speaker 1: to do is put in more work and uh and
Speaker 1: they do and uh. So that's an interesting observation. But
Speaker 1: my favorite thing about her research was that she found
Speaker 1: that people were flexible in this mindset. So the most
Speaker 1: famous of the studies was in taking high school kids
Speaker 1: and taking like a group of them and giving a
Speaker 1: module a lesson like twelve hours total on how people
Speaker 1: achieve goals through work and practice. And the kids who
Speaker 1: happen to have had that module tested higher for the
Speaker 1: like remaining four years of high school. So we're like, amazing, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: can you learn that mindset? And uh? And That's what
Speaker 1: I've run into with a lot of my peers and
Speaker 1: coaching is that they come into it thinking, well, I
Speaker 1: might be really direct, but then what they find is
Speaker 1: that their biggest success stories were almost epiphany like or um,
Speaker 1: you know, we're definitely mindset related. And the one, the
Speaker 1: one story I think about a lot from my from
Speaker 1: our community, sky Robin he writes in and he said,
Speaker 1: you know your app is so great. He you know,
Speaker 1: it helped me pick up a low carb lunch habit
Speaker 1: and now I lost ten ten pounds, So thank you
Speaker 1: for that. And now that I've lost this weight, I'm
Speaker 1: using you guys to learn Italian and Vietnamese and um,
Speaker 1: because I want to travel the world. And I was like, well,
Speaker 1: first of all, thing few, Second of all, what did
Speaker 1: losing ten pounds have to do with traveling the world? Right?
Speaker 1: If so, it's just he had he was stuck because
Speaker 1: he thought he was stuck, and then he had some
Speaker 1: small success or may I wouldn't consider ten pounds a
Speaker 1: small success, but in the overall like scheme of his life,
Speaker 1: the ten pounds isn't going to be nearly as important
Speaker 1: to him as this year of travel. And so it does.
Speaker 1: He had this little success and then became a block
Speaker 1: thought of himself as a completely different person as traveling
Speaker 1: the world, and like, what did we have to do
Speaker 1: with that? Or what did be J Fox B Matt
Speaker 1: model have to do with that? I see how it
Speaker 1: helped the the low carb lunch habit, but I think
Speaker 1: that there's something much more magical that's going on around
Speaker 1: belief change, in surrounding yourself by people who are succeeding. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's true. And I think that if we
Speaker 1: have a habit of letting ourselves down and building habits, right,
Speaker 1: which I certainly have a you know it points in
Speaker 1: my life, a long history of that, I'm going to
Speaker 1: do this, and I do it for a day, a week,
Speaker 1: to whatever, and then I quit. And then a period
Speaker 1: later I go, I'm going to do this, and then
Speaker 1: I start and then I quit. Um. That takes a
Speaker 1: toll on It really does put It tends to put
Speaker 1: us more into that fixed mindset like, well, look, I've
Speaker 1: tried this and it didn't work. Oh I tried this
Speaker 1: and it didn't work. So I must just be the
Speaker 1: kind of person that can't do it, or that I
Speaker 1: don't have the willpower. And I think that the power
Speaker 1: of successfully building a habit, at least for me at
Speaker 1: different points, has been the belief that, oh, all right,
Speaker 1: now I can take what I learned, and so not
Speaker 1: only a do I now have a little bit more
Speaker 1: belief in myself and confidence. Now I actually also have
Speaker 1: some um experience to draw on, some skill to draw
Speaker 1: and of like, okay, well remember when I was trying
Speaker 1: to lose ten pounds and I ran into that problem. Okay,
Speaker 1: now I know what to do with that a little
Speaker 1: bit more. And a lot of times I think the
Speaker 1: failures feel more visible to us. It's almost like all
Speaker 1: we do is fail, So my bother even though it's
Speaker 1: you know, the the flip side. The other way to
Speaker 1: frame that should be incredibly obvious. Right, we're not children anymore.
Speaker 1: What happened? Right? How did we go from naive, ignorant
Speaker 1: like you know, not that smarter educated children to adults? Right?
Speaker 1: We learned something along the way. So clearly we're capable
Speaker 1: of change and um, but I think we get caught
Speaker 1: up in seeing all the ways that you know that
Speaker 1: we have have failed. Well, what I love about both
Speaker 1: you know Carol's work and we're actually we have Carol
Speaker 1: coming on the show in the neture, which I'm excited about.
Speaker 1: Can I can I be like in the background, sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: she's wonderful. UM. So I think the combination of so
Speaker 1: that mindset. The other piece then is the recognition that
Speaker 1: there is that there is a way, there are ways
Speaker 1: to change your behavior that um, that work. And and
Speaker 1: so I think in a lot of cases it's that
Speaker 1: recognition like oh, I don't have instead of I'm a failure,
Speaker 1: I didn't do this, it's an I don't I don't have,
Speaker 1: um that I don't have that ability yet, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't have that skill, I don't have that knowledge
Speaker 1: of how to do it. And I think that's the
Speaker 1: other big pieces what I love about that that model
Speaker 1: or and there's you know, there's other similar ones out there,
Speaker 1: but that general idea that in order to the stuff
Speaker 1: is hard first, there's a reason why everybody struggles with it,
Speaker 1: and that there are ways to approach it that are
Speaker 1: much more effective than others. You know, when we actually
Speaker 1: get to coach people, we really see how people trip
Speaker 1: over where they want to be. That it's they have
Speaker 1: this idea that they want to be perfect tomorrow, and
Speaker 1: so they try and be perfect tomorrow, and then they
Speaker 1: trip up over that. That's another good B. J. Fog
Speaker 1: concept idea of a tiny habit. Yeah, I actually I
Speaker 1: sort of feel the way he explains that makes such sense.
Speaker 1: But I'll preface this by saying I find it almost
Speaker 1: un American in that it's so patronizing. Right, But his
Speaker 1: canonical example is that don't start with a blossom habit.
Speaker 1: Start with a loss one tooth habit. And if you
Speaker 1: can floss one two, then tomorrow you can ploss two
Speaker 1: teeth and eventually your floss your whole mouth. But if
Speaker 1: on day one you floss all your teeth and you
Speaker 1: hate it, then you're not gonna come back for day two,
Speaker 1: And of course it's un American, because I mean, this
Speaker 1: is a more is better country and uh and why
Speaker 1: would we want to do a tiny habit when we
Speaker 1: want to do you know, when our goal is to
Speaker 1: do a massive habit. But it's what it is is
Speaker 1: about building momentum. And I am more likely to use
Speaker 1: the word momentum there because everyone wants momentum. And so
Speaker 1: the big thing is can you do this five days
Speaker 1: in a row? Can you do this eleven days in
Speaker 1: a row. That's actually when we see the failure rate
Speaker 1: start to go down, usually around day eleven, and almost
Speaker 1: all the goals that we've looked at hard or easy,
Speaker 1: that's when it starts to get um a lot easier
Speaker 1: for people apparently interesting And uh yeah, I do have
Speaker 1: an example of someone that I worked with. He was right,
Speaker 1: you know, trying to write his dissertation. He just felt
Speaker 1: like he was never going to finish his dissertation. Of course,
Speaker 1: everyone has ever written a dissertation felt like that way
Speaker 1: at some point, and um uh, I said, well, you know,
Speaker 1: what are you trying to do? He's like, well, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm trying all I want to be able to do
Speaker 1: is write for eight hours a day. But I keep procrastinating.
Speaker 1: I can see you laughing there, right, because that all
Speaker 1: you want to do is write for eight hours. I'll
Speaker 1: tell you, actually, um, Stephen King doesn't write for eight
Speaker 1: hours a day. His productivity system is to write a
Speaker 1: set number of pages. And the thing that blew my
Speaker 1: mind is that he finishes his work generally between one
Speaker 1: pm and four pm. You never never seven pm, right,
Speaker 1: And so here's like one of the most prolific authors
Speaker 1: of all time. His thing is just to write consistently.
Speaker 1: So anyways, go back to my friend who's trying to
Speaker 1: write the dissertation, and uh, I say to him, Okay,
Speaker 1: let me just do a little bit, a little exercise.
Speaker 1: We'll we'll get to eight hours. I'm like, I'm not
Speaker 1: trying to contradict him or start an argument. Like we'll
Speaker 1: work our way up there. But let me start with something.
Speaker 1: How about tomorrow, you time yourself, how long does it
Speaker 1: take you to go from sitting at your desk to
Speaker 1: writing your first sentence? And just tell me how fast
Speaker 1: that is, and we'll start with that. So it comes
Speaker 1: back later that next day and he says, hey, hey,
Speaker 1: you know that was actually really good advice rather than procrastinating,
Speaker 1: I chat like, I challenged myself, how quickly can I
Speaker 1: do that? It took him too minutes, And once I
Speaker 1: got the first sentence on paper, I wrote for two hours.
Speaker 1: And then I thought, well, this is more than I've
Speaker 1: written in weeks, So good job, and maybe all I
Speaker 1: need to do is write for two hours every day.
Speaker 1: And so like, to me, that's the power of momentum,
Speaker 1: is that he had this giant idea in his head
Speaker 1: that had completely paralyzed him, and when he reframed it
Speaker 1: in terms of, well, let me get a small wind
Speaker 1: tomorrow and build on that, it just transformed him overnight
Speaker 1: into a productive dissertation writer. I mean to the point where,
Speaker 1: you know, weeks later he was telling me, you know,
Speaker 1: he was writing his dissertation from his cell phone, right, like, no,
Speaker 1: no one who procrastinates is capable of writing on their cellphone.
Speaker 1: We talked about some of those things on this show
Speaker 1: so much. I mean, I you know, I call some
Speaker 1: of that stuff. One is the all or nothing mentality,
Speaker 1: right like I'm gonna write eight hours a day or
Speaker 1: I just don't do it at all. And it's so
Speaker 1: easy to fall into that um. And then the other is,
Speaker 1: you know, my my saying to myself always is that
Speaker 1: a little bit of something is better than a lot
Speaker 1: of nothing. Like, you know, ten minutes of exercise is
Speaker 1: far better. You know, ten minutes of exercise every day
Speaker 1: is far better than three hours every two weeks. It's
Speaker 1: just And that's the way I work. That's just, and
Speaker 1: I think a lot of us are that way, and
Speaker 1: that that breaking these things down into these small steps
Speaker 1: is so obvious when you think about it, and yet
Speaker 1: so rarely do most of us do it. It's hard
Speaker 1: to give ourselves permission to do it. And that's That's
Speaker 1: a lot of what I see when I see a
Speaker 1: coach work with someone is a lot of the big
Speaker 1: part of the role of the coaches just to give
Speaker 1: that person permission to start small. Yeah, and that ends
Speaker 1: up being really powerful. UM. Also, I was thinking, uh
Speaker 1: the other day about something I heard Tony Robbins say.
Speaker 1: He says it in a bunch of different ways, but um.
Speaker 1: One of his things is that UM an experience is
Speaker 1: ten times more powerful than UM an opinion, sort of like,
Speaker 1: if you experience success, that's ten times more powerful than
Speaker 1: me telling you you could be successful. And I mean
Speaker 1: that goes back to the belief change, right, Like, theoretically,
Speaker 1: you know that if you work hard, you can achieve
Speaker 1: every a lot of things, a lot more than you
Speaker 1: currently are, but until you actually have a victory under
Speaker 1: your belt, you don't really believe it. That is so true.
Speaker 1: So let's change gears just a little bit and talk
Speaker 1: about a favorite subject of mind, which I think is
Speaker 1: also a favorite subject of yours, which is meditation. And
Speaker 1: you guys are actually working on a book, but first
Speaker 1: let's maybe just for fun, we can talk about how
Speaker 1: I build a meditation habit partially using lift that you know,
Speaker 1: sort of incorporated a lot of these these different ideas
Speaker 1: um so, and I'd be I'd be curious if because
Speaker 1: it sort of ties to so much of what you said.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've been trying to meditate on and off
Speaker 1: for a long time. I don't really want to talk
Speaker 1: about how old I am, but it's been a long time.
Speaker 1: I got interested in meditation very young, and I was
Speaker 1: very intermittent. You know, I'd meditate and it part of
Speaker 1: the problem was just that whole like like you said,
Speaker 1: I would say, you know, I'm gonna sit down and
Speaker 1: meditate for forty five minutes, which like, if you've got
Speaker 1: a brain like mine, that's like going to the horror show.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just it's awful. And so I would
Speaker 1: do it for two days and be like, all right,
Speaker 1: you know, I give this up. But the thing in
Speaker 1: Lift that I loved, the thing that helped me the
Speaker 1: most was the streak, the number of days in a row,
Speaker 1: Because once I got to a certain number of days
Speaker 1: in a row, it became a thing. And I can't
Speaker 1: tell you how many times that I was like, oh, Christ,
Speaker 1: and have I'd be laying in bed and realized I
Speaker 1: hadn't done it and be like, Nope, I'm not giving
Speaker 1: up my you know, I'm not giving up my hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty days. I'm not giving up my and that
Speaker 1: for me, that work, some pride in that some game,
Speaker 1: you know, making the game out of it. But boy,
Speaker 1: it saved me so many times. I think I'm somewhere
Speaker 1: around four hundred and sixty days or something at this point,
Speaker 1: and I know I would be nowhere near that if
Speaker 1: it wasn't just for that that streak. And I have
Speaker 1: to say that at one point I forgot to check
Speaker 1: in long enough on Lift that my streak ran out
Speaker 1: and I had to email your customer service and plead
Speaker 1: with them to go in and update it so that
Speaker 1: I could have my little uh my, my three d
Speaker 1: day flame or whatever it was. Yeah, well I'm glad
Speaker 1: we did it, um, because that that streak is really important,
Speaker 1: and I'm glad to hear that you have a four
Speaker 1: hundred days streak when you talk about just first of all, um,
Speaker 1: a life worth living, right, And I said, like this company,
Speaker 1: starting this company was part of it was a statement
Speaker 1: for how I want to live my life. Just to
Speaker 1: have you tell me that story that we played any role,
Speaker 1: and I mean honestly with but that we played any role,
Speaker 1: and you having a four day meditation street, it's very gratifying.
Speaker 1: The thing though, is that we have met We've watched
Speaker 1: eight thousand different people try to meditate right in within
Speaker 1: that and we were able to survey them and find
Speaker 1: out their stories. And basically there's two types of stories.
Speaker 1: There's the the person who says, all I tried to
Speaker 1: do was meditate for forty minutes, but I couldn't keep
Speaker 1: a clear head, So maybe maybe maybe I'm not cut
Speaker 1: out for meditation doesn't work. Meditation doesn't work for me, yeah, right,
Speaker 1: and they take it very personal, is like this is
Speaker 1: my my bad, right and uh. And in fact, nobody
Speaker 1: can meditate for forty minutes with a completely clear head.
Speaker 1: People can meditate, uh, but nobody keeps a clear head
Speaker 1: even for two minutes. Or as a meditation teacher I
Speaker 1: work with sometimes said is, well, if you could keep
Speaker 1: a clear head for forty minutes, we take you to
Speaker 1: the hospital. Like this is not it's not natural or normal.
Speaker 1: And so then the other story that we heard is, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I just start for two to five minutes
Speaker 1: whatever felt, you know, fit into my day, build up
Speaker 1: a streak, and I got better over time. But it
Speaker 1: can still be a struggle. But that's okay, And um,
Speaker 1: you kind of dig into that and you realize that
Speaker 1: the struggle, the supposed struggle, is um just a person
Speaker 1: judging themselves. That what's actually going on is your mind
Speaker 1: wanders and then you bring it back to your point
Speaker 1: of focus, usually breath, So you're breathing, you're focusing on
Speaker 1: some point in your breath and uh, and then you
Speaker 1: realize you're thinking about where where you're gonna get lunch
Speaker 1: that day, and so then you catch yourself and you
Speaker 1: bring it back, and we call that like that the
Speaker 1: two phases. They're sort of awareness followed by focus. You
Speaker 1: become aware that your mind is wandered, and then you
Speaker 1: refocus on your on your breath. Uh, that's a mental
Speaker 1: push up. Every single time you do that, you become
Speaker 1: better at becoming aware of what your mind is doing,
Speaker 1: and you become better at controlling where you focus it.
Speaker 1: And so in fact, if your mind never wandered, you
Speaker 1: wouldn't get to do any pushups. And so I think
Speaker 1: of it as a good thing. Every single time my
Speaker 1: mind wanders, it's a good thing. But the people that
Speaker 1: are struggling, I think they got told that meditation is
Speaker 1: about calm. And actually, in fact, I'm an advisor at
Speaker 1: a meditation startup called calm dot com. So it's not
Speaker 1: like it's not a mystery why that idea I got
Speaker 1: put in people's heads. But the thing is, it's not
Speaker 1: all calm. It's at the end of the meditation many
Speaker 1: people feel more calm than they did at the beginning.
Speaker 1: But the between A and B, it's not about having
Speaker 1: a completely clear head. And if you start judging yourself
Speaker 1: every time your mind waters it's going to feel like
Speaker 1: a struggle. Yeah, that's my story exactly. I mean that
Speaker 1: was I think the combination that the three things for
Speaker 1: me that that finally clicked were one we talked about,
Speaker 1: I think tracking it and just making a game out
Speaker 1: of it. Um second was just doing a shorter amount.
Speaker 1: All right, three minutes. I'm gonna do three minutes for
Speaker 1: a few days. And then that that last one was
Speaker 1: such a big one because I really did. I look
Speaker 1: at it now, I'm like, I read so many books
Speaker 1: about it, and I know they all said this, but
Speaker 1: it just never sunk in that it wasn't about the
Speaker 1: experience itself. I thought I should peaceful while I meditated,
Speaker 1: and I was not anywhere near peaceful when I meditated, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, And so I finally realized it's not about
Speaker 1: that three minutes, fifteen minutes, hour, whatever it is, It's
Speaker 1: about the rest of the time around that. Um that
Speaker 1: that's and and that I you know that I don't
Speaker 1: know where I heard it from, but somebody referred to
Speaker 1: it as like mental hygiene, and I was like, that
Speaker 1: makes sense, like brushing your teeth, because I'm not brushing
Speaker 1: my teeth, going like this is awesome or you know,
Speaker 1: like man I was, I was really killed it on
Speaker 1: the you know, with a toothbrushing tonight, right, I just
Speaker 1: do it and and that was And once I did that,
Speaker 1: then I actually started to have more of meditation that
Speaker 1: was enjoyable because I stopped fighting it. But boy, it
Speaker 1: took me. I mean, like I said, I tried this
Speaker 1: on and off for a long time before I figured
Speaker 1: those things out and it it all changed. I think
Speaker 1: the other thing that's important in that is that this
Speaker 1: idea like every time we come back to our breath
Speaker 1: or would come back to whatever our anchor as we
Speaker 1: get better, is absolutely true, except that some days you're
Speaker 1: you feel far worse than you ever did before. Like
Speaker 1: it's just it's not a linear thing. It's not like
Speaker 1: each day I'm getting my focus grows every day. It's
Speaker 1: some days you just all over the place and some
Speaker 1: days and just that's fine. Yeah. You know, I've never
Speaker 1: seen this be taught successfully except through having a guided
Speaker 1: meditation teacher, and that guide can be recorded. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: we have guides on coached to me. Certainly I learned
Speaker 1: originally through the Headspace app advisor Calm. I've seen it
Speaker 1: in person. It's basically when you start to judge yourself
Speaker 1: and a human voice voice. It has to be a
Speaker 1: voice that can't just be an article or something you read,
Speaker 1: has to be an actual voice who feels present with you,
Speaker 1: says you know what, that's okay? Right. It's like actually
Speaker 1: a lot of times when you listen to a guided meditation,
Speaker 1: like the teacher is just every like thirty Games is saying,
Speaker 1: did your mind just wandered? Totally normal, Let's bring it
Speaker 1: back to your breath, and you just need to be
Speaker 1: reassured because it's so because you don't know what to
Speaker 1: expect and you're kind of projecting onto it. Um. I
Speaker 1: find it is an amazing practice that basically affects every
Speaker 1: part of your life. Is calming and reduces stress. Um.
Speaker 1: Everyone Uh would rather be more productive, more present um.
Speaker 1: And you know that's trained by being aware of what's
Speaker 1: distracting in your head and being able to point your
Speaker 1: focus where it needs to go. I think what really
Speaker 1: um changed my mindset about meditation was when I started
Speaker 1: meeting who was meditating. Right. So, my parents were married
Speaker 1: by their tai Chi teacher. You know, it's like born
Speaker 1: and Kyle Inlifornia and like it could not be a
Speaker 1: more hippie situation. And so I always thought meditation was well,
Speaker 1: you know, from their generation, as just like, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: something my parents would have done, you know when they
Speaker 1: you know, in the seventies, and you know, it just
Speaker 1: kind of has this little bit of a spiritual, uh
Speaker 1: connotation for me that I didn't. I didn't think that's
Speaker 1: what I was looking for. But then I started meeting
Speaker 1: really successful entrepreneurs and who were not particularly spiritual. They
Speaker 1: just felt like they had a job to do and
Speaker 1: it was better if their mind was more under their control.
Speaker 1: And then I started researching it, and I realized that
Speaker 1: professional athletes were meditating. And then I did more research
Speaker 1: and I realized that hedge fund managers were meditating. And
Speaker 1: you actually, I came to think about it in a
Speaker 1: completely different way that met meditation is something that you
Speaker 1: can do for purely practical benefit. Right. I was in
Speaker 1: a hospital last year, not for myself, but visiting someone,
Speaker 1: and I walked by this room and in some meditation room, like, oh,
Speaker 1: so this is part of the pain management strategy for
Speaker 1: this hospital is to teach people how to meditate. And
Speaker 1: that's not about spirituality. It's a that's a very pragmatic concern.
Speaker 1: And you know, so as telling this story to a
Speaker 1: meditation teacher. Actually, his name is Will cabots In, and
Speaker 1: if you recognize the last name, it should it's John
Speaker 1: Cabotsen's son. And John Cabotzen is the you know, sort
Speaker 1: of the you know, one of the founders of American mindfulness.
Speaker 1: And so Will kevitz In, great meditation teacher, and you know,
Speaker 1: been in this his whole life. I was telling him
Speaker 1: about about that we wanted to write a book and
Speaker 1: we wanted to call it the Strongest Mind in the Room,
Speaker 1: just because I wanted to get as far away from
Speaker 1: the spiritual aspects as possible. And he pauses for a
Speaker 1: second and he goes, well, that sounds like the dark side.
Speaker 1: And then but this is what I love, and this
Speaker 1: is how you know that he's a meditator. Rather than
Speaker 1: immediately trying to argue with me, he goes, why do
Speaker 1: I think that? And he just started like he caught himself,
Speaker 1: and he goes, why do I think that? And he
Speaker 1: just started kind of saying, well, let me share with you.
Speaker 1: And they starts, you know, talking out loud, and I thought, well,
Speaker 1: here's a guy that recognized he had a reaction that's awareness,
Speaker 1: and then he was able to point his control to
Speaker 1: something UM, something constructive. He actually he told us a
Speaker 1: really interesting story about UM. A parallel debate in the
Speaker 1: mindfulness community is it okay to teach mindfulness to the military.
Speaker 1: I think it's a great way to frame it. It's
Speaker 1: like half of the you know, on one side of
Speaker 1: the debate, you have people in mindfulness community that's just like,
Speaker 1: why would we want to train more efficient killers? And
Speaker 1: then you have the other half of the debate, it's like, well,
Speaker 1: there are already efficient killers. What we want them to
Speaker 1: be is to be mindful and to be aware and
Speaker 1: to think, well maybe there's another way that I can
Speaker 1: do this, And you know, so of course it is
Speaker 1: actually going on UM and a sort I feel that
Speaker 1: if you train someone for practical reasons, they'll often come
Speaker 1: to some some higher good along the way, and the
Speaker 1: practical reasons are just for entry point to teaching meditation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's such an interesting debate on so many levels. UM.
Speaker 1: You know, because mindfulness certainly at least originated within a
Speaker 1: broader philosophical teaching, you know, Buddhism, and so is is that.
Speaker 1: You know, that debate is if you strip it out
Speaker 1: from that, does it still what meaning does it have?
Speaker 1: And and is it our people using you know, this
Speaker 1: wonderful thing for for bad purposes? And but I think
Speaker 1: it's the way I tend to think about it ultimately,
Speaker 1: is it's like any other technology, right, the genies kind
Speaker 1: of out of the bottle. You you can't you can't
Speaker 1: put technology back in the bottle. It's a question of,
Speaker 1: all right, how can we talk about it, discuss it
Speaker 1: and frame it in positive ways because there's no there's
Speaker 1: no going back with it now, right, Buddhism can't take
Speaker 1: it back. It's gone. I mean, it's out there. It's
Speaker 1: a it's kind of a it's the debate now is okay,
Speaker 1: what do we you know, what do we do with that?
Speaker 1: And what individuals want to do with that? You know,
Speaker 1: what is it that you want to teach or carry on?
Speaker 1: But from a cultural perspective, I think the horses horses
Speaker 1: left the barn. Well, but this goes right to the
Speaker 1: heart of the you know the title of this podcast,
Speaker 1: and this is so uh. You know, once you become
Speaker 1: once you have awareness, you become aware of both wolves
Speaker 1: and you realize that you know that one of them
Speaker 1: is more fulfilling. And I think people with awareness tend
Speaker 1: to habitate towards being better versions of themselves. It's actually,
Speaker 1: I mean, I know Will have it in share is
Speaker 1: that view because he told me a story about you know,
Speaker 1: I know him because he teaches meditation, uh twice a week,
Speaker 1: I think at a startup in the same building as me,
Speaker 1: startup called medium dot com, which is a blogging a platform,
Speaker 1: and he and so he was invited in because the
Speaker 1: CEO meditates and wanted to teach it to everyone else
Speaker 1: because he thought they would be better workers. And Will
Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, I could see how this would be
Speaker 1: good for productivity, but I feel like I should warn you.
Speaker 1: You know, people might become more aware and then realize
Speaker 1: that working in tech isn't there calling like you might
Speaker 1: have people quit because of this and uh And I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, that's an interesting point, but you know,
Speaker 1: I'll risk it, like, you know, I'll just make sure
Speaker 1: that we have a mission driven company. Anyways, I think
Speaker 1: that's it. You know, It's like, certainly someone could work
Speaker 1: at a startup for selfish reason's exciting. You can make money,
Speaker 1: you know, there's prestige if you live in the Bay Area. Uh.
Speaker 1: But but you know it just like meditation doesn't make
Speaker 1: you more of that, it makes me less of that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think it's like anything else, it's it's rare
Speaker 1: that at least at least I know, it's rare that
Speaker 1: I approach anything with purely good or purely bad motive.
Speaker 1: There's almost always some blend in there of like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I want to meditate because of this, but at all,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, it's it's it's just hard to
Speaker 1: I don't I don't know that I believe in completely
Speaker 1: pure motivation from anybody. So tell me what is it
Speaker 1: about meditation that you think are the biggest benefits? I mean,
Speaker 1: the one you just named Um, you know, when you
Speaker 1: were talking with Um, what was it? Will? Yeah, when
Speaker 1: we were talking with Will is probably the one. When
Speaker 1: people ask me what I think the biggest benefit is,
Speaker 1: it's exactly that thing is that there seems to be
Speaker 1: just a little bit more space from when I have
Speaker 1: some stimulus that I have a response and it's not
Speaker 1: even that response isn't even necessarily outward right, because it's
Speaker 1: but it's like I have a stimulus there's either either
Speaker 1: there's a little bit more space or there's a quick
Speaker 1: thought and then I go, wait, do I really believe that?
Speaker 1: Do I? Like? You know, which is just great because
Speaker 1: it helps to disrupt these habitual thought patterns that certainly
Speaker 1: in my case, have been very destructive at points exactly.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you've ever been to a therapist or
Speaker 1: a relationship therapist, one of the great things they can
Speaker 1: do is they can point out patterns in your life. Right,
Speaker 1: But that's not sufficient because when those patterns come up,
Speaker 1: you're you don't notice them, none of your therapist office
Speaker 1: at that time, right, Like someone has to point you out.
Speaker 1: I mean that goes back to b J fog and triggering,
Speaker 1: right and sort of like that, a little bit of
Speaker 1: space where you have trained yourself how to be aware
Speaker 1: of your thoughts and then how to shift them somewhere
Speaker 1: is what allows you too. Then after knowing a pattern,
Speaker 1: then you can do something about it. Um. I just
Speaker 1: I think about that those two things. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: basically three legs to meditation as I experience it, and
Speaker 1: you know, I probably there's meditation curus to experience something
Speaker 1: completely different. There's talk of the ultimate bliss all sorts
Speaker 1: of stuff way beyond where what I got is a beginner.
Speaker 1: But as a beginner, there's three things that happened really quickly.
Speaker 1: You train awareness, you train control of focus, and you
Speaker 1: train more calm. But I mean overall, I'm calmer when
Speaker 1: I'm meditating, But everyone, everyone, I think, focuses on the
Speaker 1: calm without focusing on what it would mean if you had, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, complete awareness of what's going on in your head,
Speaker 1: because I think you know, we don't. We don't face
Speaker 1: that often. How how out of control we are. Right.
Speaker 1: There's another book that I like, thinking Fast and Slow,
Speaker 1: that sort of that talks about two different modes of thought.
Speaker 1: One is very instinctual, it's what is actually happening most
Speaker 1: of the time. And then the other is um and
Speaker 1: that in that mode is very fast. That's that you're
Speaker 1: maybe make rapid fast decisions there. The other is very
Speaker 1: slow and effortful. But it's what we think of it thought.
Speaker 1: It's the rational part of your brain, and if you try,
Speaker 1: you can turn it on, but mostly it's off. Um
Speaker 1: and uh like being able to have awareness of like,
Speaker 1: oh right, my like irrational lizard brain is taking me
Speaker 1: this direction. That's not actually what I want to do.
Speaker 1: Let me turn on my rational brain for a second
Speaker 1: and switch gears right. That comes up in parenting, It
Speaker 1: comes up in work, comes up in relationships, friendships, It
Speaker 1: comes up. Um, I got yelled at, rightfully so on
Speaker 1: the street, Like you know, I bike home sometimes and
Speaker 1: I like trying to weave through a cross walk that
Speaker 1: had a bunch of people. It's like it's either I'm
Speaker 1: weaving through cars to make this turn or weaving through people.
Speaker 1: And this woman yelled at me, and I was like, like,
Speaker 1: part of me was like, don't you dare yell at me?
Speaker 1: And then then part of me was like, oh, you
Speaker 1: know what I should actually say is thank you for
Speaker 1: saying something. You're right And she yelled and walked away
Speaker 1: before I had a chance. But I was like this
Speaker 1: close to being able to say that because I have
Speaker 1: enough awareness now I mean not the will kinds in
Speaker 1: level right enough that I was like, well, I was
Speaker 1: having a defensive reaction, but I'm actually capable of a
Speaker 1: really generous reaction there even there, and uh, you know
Speaker 1: that second person is who I want to be, and
Speaker 1: that that is exactly you know what triggers you um too,
Speaker 1: behave in a way that you don't want to behave
Speaker 1: it For me, you know, it's like eating things that
Speaker 1: I don't want to eat, or you know, staying in
Speaker 1: bed too long or getting angry for no good reason.
Speaker 1: I just I have a lot more control of that
Speaker 1: because I built up a meditation practice. Yeah, exactly. That
Speaker 1: awareness is that I was doing an interview right before
Speaker 1: this and we were talking about awareness, like if you
Speaker 1: don't have that, all the rest of this stuff is
Speaker 1: just you're just not gonna do. You can't do anything
Speaker 1: with it because you don't know what you're there's nothing,
Speaker 1: there's no I love that analogy you just made of
Speaker 1: like being you know, with your therapist. And I've been
Speaker 1: in those situations where somebody will point out something to
Speaker 1: me and it's so it hits me. I'm like, that
Speaker 1: is so freaking obvious, and I don't think about it
Speaker 1: again for two weeks until they you know, like, it's
Speaker 1: just it's not it's not there for me in my
Speaker 1: day to day life. I know it, but I can't.
Speaker 1: I intellectually know it, but I'm in no way incorporating
Speaker 1: in my life. And I think that that really helps.
Speaker 1: Um we I just looked at the clock and we
Speaker 1: are at like way over normal time, which what happened?
Speaker 1: I feel like I could do this all day, So
Speaker 1: but I'm gonna I'm gonna honor my at least only
Speaker 1: double the normal time of the show. But I want
Speaker 1: to finish with one thing that you talk about that
Speaker 1: I think is an interesting idea, and I just want
Speaker 1: to talk about, which is the idea of cognitive budget.
Speaker 1: And I was joking earlier about how mine is gone
Speaker 1: for the day. So what is cognitive budget? Well, it's
Speaker 1: the idea that you have a certain number of decisions
Speaker 1: to make in the day and uh, and you actually
Speaker 1: have control over where you spend those decisions. And so
Speaker 1: a decision is not like, uh, you know, what car
Speaker 1: do I buy? I mean, that's certainly a decision, but
Speaker 1: it's also what what pants do I put on? What
Speaker 1: shirt do I put on? Or do I even put
Speaker 1: on pants? That's exact. That could be another if you
Speaker 1: work from home and I which I've had that period
Speaker 1: in my life, or you're a streaker. Yeah, well let's
Speaker 1: move on. I look forward to meeting your audience. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I actually it's an idea that I heard the
Speaker 1: opposite way, there was a really good article in New
Speaker 1: York Times about decision fatigue, and it was explaining how
Speaker 1: people um stop being able to make rational decisions at
Speaker 1: the point in which they became fatigued. And you know,
Speaker 1: like I'm always trying to reframe something in the positive.
Speaker 1: So decision fatigue is an excuse, right, Well, like I'm
Speaker 1: not a good parent when I get home because I
Speaker 1: used up all my dew decisions at work. Right. But
Speaker 1: the flip side of it is just you could decide
Speaker 1: how to spend your decisions differently. And the example I mean,
Speaker 1: since I spent a lot of time with entrepreneurs, and
Speaker 1: especially out here intact people have this irrational love of
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs. The example I use is, you know, he
Speaker 1: wore a black turtleneck every day, you know, for basically,
Speaker 1: you know, a long time at the end of his life.
Speaker 1: And what that meant is that when he got up
Speaker 1: and got dressed, he just reached it into a pile
Speaker 1: of black turtle next and put on a black turtleneck.
Speaker 1: No decision necessary. When I get up, I look at
Speaker 1: the weather, I think about I look at my calendar.
Speaker 1: Who am I meeting? Am I going to be? Uh?
Speaker 1: Like on a podcast interview where I'm visible, Am I
Speaker 1: going to be meeting people outside of the company? Like
Speaker 1: what what is it that I should wear? And so
Speaker 1: I basically would probably leave the house fifty decisions behind
Speaker 1: where Steve Jobs would have left the house, and so,
Speaker 1: you know, he wanted to spend those fifty decisions at work.
Speaker 1: And certainly I would rather spend my fifty decisions at
Speaker 1: work or with my friends, or on exercise or with
Speaker 1: my you know, with my spouse, like all, I would
Speaker 1: rather spend it all somewhere else than I'm getting dressed.
Speaker 1: And once I realized that, I just became a lot
Speaker 1: more regimented about things that didn't matter that much, right,
Speaker 1: Like I got a lot more uh pairs of the
Speaker 1: same type of socks, Like why am I look a
Speaker 1: software trying to make a decision? Right? Just like get
Speaker 1: you know, like I'm going to wear socks. I know that,
Speaker 1: and um, Sam, I just like a lot of things
Speaker 1: in the morning about saving myself for later later in
Speaker 1: the day. And I thought that was a really powerful
Speaker 1: way then to look at habits, because people would ask
Speaker 1: me sometimes what are the habits of really successful people?
Speaker 1: And if you think about it, in terms of cognitive budget.
Speaker 1: The answer is, any habit is the habit of a
Speaker 1: successful person because that's something that saves yourself to be
Speaker 1: fully present on the things that matter. So, for example,
Speaker 1: if I have a habit of going to the gym
Speaker 1: and on Tuesday's I know that I'm going to do
Speaker 1: this workout routine, I'm not having to spend decisions debating
Speaker 1: whether I go to the gym, which exercise routine I'm
Speaker 1: going to do. So that's a that's a savings on
Speaker 1: the cognitive budget. Yeah, we we call that negotiations. Sometimes
Speaker 1: you're negotiating with yourself. Should I go to the today,
Speaker 1: what should I work on? Should I do weights? I
Speaker 1: don't feel like doing weights, but I'm supposed to do
Speaker 1: weights right, and so like each the outcome of each
Speaker 1: negotiation is a decision, and you waste a lot of
Speaker 1: your energy there where Absolutely, if you have a consistent
Speaker 1: gym routine that you're first of all, it'll hold off.
Speaker 1: It'll hold when you're you are fatigued, and people who
Speaker 1: go to the gym later in the day or at
Speaker 1: risk because there they get tired. Um. And also it
Speaker 1: won't spend down the rest of your day. Uh, so
Speaker 1: and a lot of us kind of refused to plan. Uh,
Speaker 1: and we maybe, you know, in order to preserve some
Speaker 1: option value, like well, maybe you know, I'll have more
Speaker 1: energy in the afternoon, so I won't go to the
Speaker 1: gym this morning. But what we're really doing is, you know,
Speaker 1: spending a lot of our cognitive budget because we can't
Speaker 1: hold ourselves anything and everything ends up getting negotiated. And
Speaker 1: it's not that do you want to live a really
Speaker 1: boring life, it's you just want the boring parts of
Speaker 1: your life to be boring or another Tony Robbins quote,
Speaker 1: I like the other day said, you know a lot
Speaker 1: of us major and in minor things, right, It's like
Speaker 1: I love that absolutely, Like why am I fussing over
Speaker 1: my socks? Like I'm I'm running a company? Like what
Speaker 1: how does that compare? Yeah, exactly does negotiation? Do you guys?
Speaker 1: That does that go into your habit framework? Because we
Speaker 1: just talked about it in the context of preserving cognitive budget,
Speaker 1: but it sounds like it's a it could be a
Speaker 1: pretty key part into staying on habits to how do
Speaker 1: you how do you go into saying these things are
Speaker 1: I'm not negotiating these things is that. Is it simply
Speaker 1: that you just say to yourself, this is non negotiable,
Speaker 1: or where does that fit into the to the building
Speaker 1: the habit phase. And you have the experience of having
Speaker 1: a streak, and so your streak is not negotiable, right,
Speaker 1: Like you are going to meditate, And I don't think
Speaker 1: it doesn't sound like you negotiate very much on whether
Speaker 1: you should meditate. I bet you negotiate on how long
Speaker 1: and when? Yeah, yeah, I do, I mean and and
Speaker 1: so yeah, and when I'm in you know, there's a
Speaker 1: little negotiation when I'm nearly asleep and I realize that
Speaker 1: I haven't but it's not much. And I have sort
Speaker 1: of a fallback plan that says, Okay, when that happens,
Speaker 1: here's what I'm gonna do. It's I'm not going to go,
Speaker 1: you know, sit in a you know, on a cushion
Speaker 1: upstairs for you know, an hour, but I'm going to
Speaker 1: do something. I've got some things that I fall back on.
Speaker 1: But yeah, you're right that I try not to negotiate
Speaker 1: when becomes a problem for me because my my schedule
Speaker 1: is kind of chaotic. But when I can get it routine,
Speaker 1: it's so much better to just know when it's going
Speaker 1: to happen. Yeah, we have a lot in the app
Speaker 1: about making your life easier and helping you pre decide. Right,
Speaker 1: So it's um, you know, convert a big goal into
Speaker 1: a routine, like that's a predecision. I might do this
Speaker 1: every day or at least a couple of days a week.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do it this many days a week. I'm
Speaker 1: my set a reminder for this time on these days. Um.
Speaker 1: Uh even um, as we add in more levels of coaching,
Speaker 1: one level is a daily plan, so it's actually a
Speaker 1: coach has written for you today do this. You just
Speaker 1: you know, a user coach to me is already in
Speaker 1: the habit of opening that and then it just tells them, oh,
Speaker 1: this is how many push ups I'm going to do
Speaker 1: today or right? And um and the last level of
Speaker 1: coaching is that is actually a personal coach and um,
Speaker 1: you know that's just another example of someone who's helping you,
Speaker 1: uh not negotiate, right is that? Um? I tell the coaches,
Speaker 1: you know, the new coaches, it's okay if you don't
Speaker 1: feel smart, what you want is for the person in
Speaker 1: coach to feel smart. So like a question like what
Speaker 1: days were you planning to go to the gym this week.
Speaker 1: It doesn't make the coach feel smart, but it actually
Speaker 1: is a really eye opening question for most people who
Speaker 1: are like, well I hadn't just I did at all, right,
Speaker 1: And those sorts of basic planning questions are about predeciding
Speaker 1: so you're not having to negotiate in the moment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's such a good approach, and I like that idea
Speaker 1: of people buy into stuff that they have a say
Speaker 1: in coming up with or thinking about versus. You know,
Speaker 1: there's that some of us I won't name anybody might
Speaker 1: sometimes resist authority, So if it feels like that in
Speaker 1: certain cases. But the saying is the interesting thing to
Speaker 1: watch so many people be coached is actually there's a
Speaker 1: type of person that wants to be told what to
Speaker 1: do and it wants to do it. And then there's
Speaker 1: a different type of person who hates to be told
Speaker 1: what to do and definitely won't do it, and you
Speaker 1: just have to coach um. And that's actually partly why
Speaker 1: we've ended up with so much so many humans. Why
Speaker 1: it's a community is because software is not that great
Speaker 1: at being that flossible, but a human figure that out
Speaker 1: pretty quickly and said, wow, Okay, this is a person
Speaker 1: that just wants to do it on their own, and
Speaker 1: I'll advise them, which is how I am. Like I
Speaker 1: alway tell my coaches right away. I don't want to plan.
Speaker 1: I don't want you to tell me what to do.
Speaker 1: I want to tell you what I did, ask you questions,
Speaker 1: and get your feedback. And for me, that's very valuable.
Speaker 1: That's because I'm uncoachable and that's how I ended up
Speaker 1: being the CEO. Yep, I can I can relate. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you so much. This has been Like I said,
Speaker 1: I could probably do this for another hour, but this
Speaker 1: has been really fun. Um, thanks for being on the show.
Speaker 1: Thanks for the the app. I'm a I'm a big fan.
Speaker 1: And do we tell people where they can get it? Yes? Please,
Speaker 1: I'll have it linked in the show notes, but go ahead,
Speaker 1: definitely so the you are out. The website is coach
Speaker 1: dot me and that's not a dot com or anything
Speaker 1: that's coached at me. And then you can download the
Speaker 1: app also from the Google play Store for Android and
Speaker 1: from the Apple Store for the iPhone, so you can
Speaker 1: use on the iPhone, on Android or the web. You know,
Speaker 1: basically everyone should be able to use it. Yep, and
Speaker 1: it's there's there's a lot in it. I probably use
Speaker 1: of what's in it, but but it's uh, it's been
Speaker 1: really effective for me. So thanks again, Tony. All right,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for having me, and good luck everyone. Yes,
Speaker 1: take care. You can learn more about Tony Stubblebine and
Speaker 1: this podcast at one you feed dot net slash t
Speaker 1: s