Speaker 1: Hello, everyone, Welcome to a special Many episode. You know,
Speaker 1: from the very beginning of the show, we've been trying
Speaker 1: to better understand and solve a pretty specific problem in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways. I think this is one of
Speaker 1: the fundamental things this show has oriented around, and it's
Speaker 1: really how do we bridge the gap between what we
Speaker 1: know and what we do. We're all exposed to so
Speaker 1: many life changing ideas every day. We consume so much information.
Speaker 1: We learned so many things things that could benefit us
Speaker 1: and our spiritual lives. Our personal lives are business lives,
Speaker 1: but we in the world are overfull of information and
Speaker 1: this starts to become problematic because we end up knowing
Speaker 1: a lot but not being able to translate a lot
Speaker 1: of it into our lives. And it's really by living
Speaker 1: these various ideas that we actually see transformation happen. It
Speaker 1: was one thing to know a lot about recovery for me,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't until I started living recovery, when I
Speaker 1: started taking the principles and really putting them into practice
Speaker 1: and found a way to embody them that my life
Speaker 1: really changed. And there are so many things that are
Speaker 1: like this. It's great to know all different types of
Speaker 1: exercise and all the benefits that it offers, but if
Speaker 1: we can't consistently exercise, we don't get those benefits. Same
Speaker 1: thing in our spiritual lives. We might know that being
Speaker 1: more present is really valuable, so we know it, but
Speaker 1: we don't do it. We don't know how to do it,
Speaker 1: and there are things that get in the way of this.
Speaker 1: And this is one of the fundamental things, Like I said,
Speaker 1: we've been trying to solve and a question I've been
Speaker 1: asking since very early on in the show. So I
Speaker 1: wanted to do a little series of episodes on why
Speaker 1: it's so hard to turn what we know into what
Speaker 1: we do and really look at what some of the
Speaker 1: biggest obstacles in personal or spiritual growth are and how
Speaker 1: we can overcome them. And so this is the first
Speaker 1: episode of that series. So the first really big obstacle,
Speaker 1: I think, is that we think we have to make
Speaker 1: really big changes. We've talked about this one a lot
Speaker 1: on the show. We've talked about taking small steps, mini steps,
Speaker 1: tiny habits with b J. Fogg. We've covered this a
Speaker 1: lot of different ways and from a lot of different angles.
Speaker 1: But that's because it's so important and there are two
Speaker 1: main problems that come from us thinking we have to
Speaker 1: make really big changes. The first is that if we
Speaker 1: think that in order for us to grow or change,
Speaker 1: we have to make really big changes, and we look
Speaker 1: at our lives and we don't see how we could
Speaker 1: make big changes, then we conclude, well, I guess I'm
Speaker 1: not going to do anything because I can't figure out
Speaker 1: how to make the big change. If I think, well,
Speaker 1: I need to exercise an hour and a half a
Speaker 1: day to get in better shape, and I look at
Speaker 1: my life and I go, well, I don't see how
Speaker 1: that's going to happen. We don't do anything. A great
Speaker 1: example for this in my own life is if I
Speaker 1: think about this podcast. If I had in the beginning
Speaker 1: thought well I need to record three fifty some episodes
Speaker 1: and we're gonna need to send out hundreds of emails
Speaker 1: and all the blog posts and all that, I never
Speaker 1: would have gotten started. Instead I just thought about, all right,
Speaker 1: well we're going to create a couple of podcasts, right.
Speaker 1: I kept it really small, and I just did sort
Speaker 1: of one thing at a time, and I'll come back
Speaker 1: to this podcast later as an example. But problem number
Speaker 1: two is that if we think we need to make
Speaker 1: big changes is that we do get started on them,
Speaker 1: but we take on too much. And while this often
Speaker 1: starts in a very promising way, we can't keep it
Speaker 1: up and we get discouraged and quit. We see this
Speaker 1: a lot with New Year's resolutions. People are like, well,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna start exercising an hour a day, writing in
Speaker 1: my journal for thirty minutes a day, meditating for thirty
Speaker 1: minutes a day, and I'm finally going to learn the guitar.
Speaker 1: And we start out doing all those things, and for
Speaker 1: the first few days weeks, it goes pretty well, it's
Speaker 1: pretty exciting. But then life has a tendency to get
Speaker 1: in the way and those things start to fall apart
Speaker 1: and we get discouraged and we quit. So that's the
Speaker 1: second problem with thinking we have to make really big changes.
Speaker 1: So what works better, Well, what works better is to
Speaker 1: make small changes that are sustainable. I've used this example
Speaker 1: a few different times because I think it's a really
Speaker 1: good one, so I'll use it again. And it's really
Speaker 1: about my meditation practice. I was on again, off again
Speaker 1: meditator for probably twenty plus years, meaning that I took
Speaker 1: a transcendental meditation class at eighteen, so I've been trying
Speaker 1: to build a consistent meditation practice since I was eighteen,
Speaker 1: and I was never successful at it. I would have
Speaker 1: periods of time of meditating consistently, but they wouldn't last.
Speaker 1: And the biggest problem was that for me, I just
Speaker 1: kept hearing you need to meditate for thirty minutes a day. Now,
Speaker 1: this has changed a lot in more recent years, but
Speaker 1: go back twenty years and most people in most books
Speaker 1: were saying, hey, you need to do it for thirty minutes.
Speaker 1: So I would say, okay, I'm gonna meditate for thirty minutes. Well,
Speaker 1: thirty minutes was really hard for me. As I've jokingly said,
Speaker 1: it was kind of like the circus came to town
Speaker 1: when I sat down to meditate, and it was not
Speaker 1: the friendly circus, and so thirty minutes was really hard.
Speaker 1: So I would start out and I would do it,
Speaker 1: and I'd have a lot of motivation and I could
Speaker 1: stick with it, but it was too hard, and eventually
Speaker 1: I started to fall off, and then eventually I would
Speaker 1: quit and that would be the end of that. Until
Speaker 1: you know, a month would go by or two months
Speaker 1: would go by, I'd get reinspired. Oh, meditation is really important.
Speaker 1: I really want to do it, and I would try
Speaker 1: the same thing again, I gotta do it for thirty minutes,
Speaker 1: and the same pattern repeated year after year. It was finally,
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's probably been about eight years now
Speaker 1: that I said, all right, enough of that, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: try something totally different. And I said, I'm gonna meditate
Speaker 1: for three minutes a day, but I'm gonna do it
Speaker 1: every day. And so that was really my focus, three
Speaker 1: minutes every day, and I was able to do that.
Speaker 1: That was easy enough to do, It fitted my schedule
Speaker 1: and it wasn't too mentally hard for me. And then
Speaker 1: once I did that, once I had that established, I
Speaker 1: was able to grow that to five minutes, to seven minutes,
Speaker 1: to ten minutes. And now for the last eight years,
Speaker 1: I've been someone that meditates probably of every day over
Speaker 1: the last seven or eight years, and most of the
Speaker 1: time I'm meditating around thirty minutes. Right. So I got there,
Speaker 1: but I had to get there via small steps. The
Speaker 1: idea here is that little by little, a little becomes
Speaker 1: a lot. I think that's a Tanzanian proverb and it's
Speaker 1: one of my favorites of all time. Little by little,
Speaker 1: a little becomes a lot. We had a guest on
Speaker 1: quite some time ago. Her name was Michelle Seeger, and
Speaker 1: she researches why people stick with exercise, and she said
Speaker 1: there's only one basic instruction. Take any and every opportunity
Speaker 1: to move in any way possible, at whatever speed you like,
Speaker 1: for any amount of time. And I love that. And
Speaker 1: she said everything counts. And her point was, it adds up.
Speaker 1: A little here, a little there, a little here, It
Speaker 1: all starts to add up. So take every opportunity to
Speaker 1: make a small change. One of my favorite books that
Speaker 1: dowd ah Ching says, the giant pine tree grows from
Speaker 1: a tiny sprout. The journey of a thousand miles starts
Speaker 1: from beneath your feet. So the changes we want to
Speaker 1: make start where we are in a really small way,
Speaker 1: but sustainable way. To come back to this podcast, right,
Speaker 1: I think we've probably been listened to something like eighteen
Speaker 1: million times by now. We've got three fifty plus episodes,
Speaker 1: so we've we've created this body of work that's pretty
Speaker 1: big in a lot of ways, but the way we've
Speaker 1: done it is just day by day. Each day. I
Speaker 1: just read a little bit of the book for the
Speaker 1: interview I'm preparing for Chris keeps editing week by week.
Speaker 1: We've just slowly built this thing, right, And if we'd
Speaker 1: started by setting out to record three episodes, we would
Speaker 1: have been overwhelmed and we would have never started. There's
Speaker 1: another idea that applies in this way that I think
Speaker 1: is really interesting, and it's really If we think about water.
Speaker 1: At two in eleven degrees, water is hot, but at
Speaker 1: two twelve degrees it boils, and with boiling water comes steam,
Speaker 1: and steam can power a locomotive. Right, that one extra
Speaker 1: degree makes the difference. So as we slowly aggregate these
Speaker 1: small changes over time, it can turn into something really
Speaker 1: big and powerful. Another phrase I love is little and
Speaker 1: often right, do something a little bit, but do it often.
Speaker 1: So I'd encourage you to look in your own life
Speaker 1: right now, are there changes that you want to make?
Speaker 1: And if so, how can you start small? Very often
Speaker 1: much smaller than maybe you think. But where can you
Speaker 1: make a commitment to some small change that you can
Speaker 1: start doing and be consistent with Certain elite trainers, when
Speaker 1: they're talking about training an athlete, they really focus on
Speaker 1: first consistency, So they say to themselves, how many days
Speaker 1: a week does this athlete need to be training, and
Speaker 1: they then work on getting the athlete training that many
Speaker 1: days per week. So let's say it's five days a
Speaker 1: week the athlete needs to be training. And then they say, well,
Speaker 1: how long does the athlete need to be training? Four
Speaker 1: and so they start to slowly increase the duration so
Speaker 1: they get them to the consistency five days a week.
Speaker 1: Let's say they need to get to five days a
Speaker 1: week for three hours. They started five days a week
Speaker 1: for a much smaller amount, get the consistency in, and
Speaker 1: then they slowly start to build the duration, and then
Speaker 1: finally at the end they then add in intensity and
Speaker 1: they start increasing the intensity. But often we try and
Speaker 1: start with the consistency of the duration and the intensity
Speaker 1: all turned to eleven for you spinal tap fans out there, right,
Speaker 1: So let's start smaller. And so one of the reasons
Speaker 1: to summarize that I think it's so hard to turn
Speaker 1: what we know into what we do is this barrier,
Speaker 1: which is that we think we need to make really
Speaker 1: big changes. And the antidote to that is to start
Speaker 1: with really small changes, focus on getting consistent, and then
Speaker 1: build from there. Because it's so important, I think to
Speaker 1: be able to go from what we know to what
Speaker 1: we do. We've actually created a program that helps bridge
Speaker 1: this gap in our spiritualize and it's called the Spiritual
Speaker 1: Habits Program. It's all about how to turn what we
Speaker 1: know into what we do, and we're going to be
Speaker 1: opening that group program back up for enrollment in May,
Speaker 1: so stay tuned for more on that. If you're not
Speaker 1: already on our email list, i'd encourage you go to
Speaker 1: one you feed dot net and get signed up now
Speaker 1: so you hear all about the program, and then next
Speaker 1: week we're going to talk about the next big challenge
Speaker 1: I see in terms of why we struggle to really
Speaker 1: put knowledge into practice. So I hope that was helpful.
Speaker 1: I appreciate you listening, and I will see you next time.