Transcript
Ed Mylett (0:01)
This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. You chose to hit play on this podcast today. Smart Choice. Progressive loves to help people make smart choices. That's why they offer a tool called Auto Quote Explorer that allows you to compare your Progressive car insurance quote with rates from other companies. So you save time on the research and can enjoy savings when you choose the best rate for you. Give it a try after this episode@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates not available in all states or situations. Prices vary based on how you buy, how your habits deliver on your goals. So essentially it's got a little bit to do with goal setting, but delivered by the habits that we create. I'm gonna give you seven steps to making your goals a reality by delivering with them on habits that serve you. And that is one of the things that you've got to evaluate first before we get into the seven steps is you gets great to have goals and outcomes in our life, but if we don't develop habits that serve us and we don't have the ability to create new habits, we're probably going to produce the same exact results over and over again. You know, about 90% of our choices and thoughts every day are identical. And so that's why as a consequence, we produce the same external results. In life, it's much more important to be focused on what's going on inside of us as opposed to what's going on outside of us. Because everything, once it leaves us, is outside of our control. We can control the things that are inside of us, which are our habits and the reason habits matter so deeply. I like James Clear's work on this and other people's, including mine. In my book the Power of One More. I have a whole chapter in there of how to develop healthy habits that serve you. But one of the reasons habits matter is not just our day to day life, but under pressure. In life, under stress, we always respond reflexively. And so it's our reflex to respond habitually. So there's a lot of autopilot in life. That's true. It's why sometimes you can be driving and not even be thinking and just you kind of just pull right off the freeway, go to your house, take the left, take the right. You don't remember how you got home. Sometimes because you're on autopilot, you're on habit mode. But under stress and pressure, we respond to these habits that are ours. And so how do we develop these new habits that serve us as opposed to the ones that don't? You show Me, your habits. And I'm probably going to show you your life. I'm going to show you the difference that separates people is what they do habitually. And so we're going to talk about how to shift that a little bit. So one thing a habit has to have to exist is conditioning, meaning you've got to be able to do it over and over and over again so that it can replace something that was there before. And so for me, when I look at an athlete, for example, that's very, very successful, if I deduce what their habits are and I develop the same habits, I've got a higher likelihood of producing the same results as that athlete if I behave in a certain way. In other words, there's a consequence for choices in behavior, and we choose the right behavior over and over again. Success is really not that difficult. It's a collection of habits. And so if you wonder whether or not, you know, you can be successful or achieve your goals, that's really not the question. The question is whether you'll invest the time to get serious about changing the habits that would deliver on those goals. Goals without an attached habit are really useless, right? But actually having great habits with no goal is also useless. You just be going through the motions without producing a result. And so let's talk a little bit about the goal part first. Seven things that I want to cover today as it relates to goals and habits. Number one thing, with your goals, write this down. Specificity. You've got to get more specific with what exactly it is that you want. Imagine if you were going to invest in a company and they put their annual report out and they go, yeah, we want to be profitable or we made some money. Would you invest in that company? You would want to know specifically exactly what was the top line revenue? What was the bottom line revenue? What was are your expenses? What's your forecast specifically that you believe the dollar amount you're going to hit the street. You would never invest in a company that did not give you specific markers for what they've done and could not tell you specifically what they want to get done and what their goals and outcomes are. Yet most human beings are wandering generalities about they want, I want to be more fit, I want to be happy, I want to be wealthy, I want to make a lot of money. What does that mean? You wouldn't invest in a company that didn't have those types of specifics yet every single day we're walking around wondering whether success will invest in us. Success is not going to Invest in you. If you're general, by the way, your mind cannot go to work. Your brain cannot go to work on processing a non specific general result. It doesn't know how to do it. It's got to be specific. I want 10 of those. I want to weigh 125 or 186. I want 12% body fat or whatever it might be. I want $100,000 in income. I'm going to have five meetings. These are specific things. Then you can build a habit backwards from them. I'm talking about even the people that I coach that you know, pay me a significant amount of money. When we first encounter, I was working with a brand new person just the other day and he said, I just want a win. I just want to win. And I said, okay, what's that win look like? And he goes, I want FU money. I said, okay, cool. I love that. I love your passion for it. What's FU money? He didn't have an answer. And that's why he doesn't have FU money, right? He doesn't have it. And the reason he doesn't have it is he has never gotten specific about what that looks like. And there's a power to getting specific. Right? When you begin to get specific, your brain wants to develop habits to deliver on that outcome if you repeat it over and over again. Why? Because your brain is constantly trying to conserve energy. It's always trying to create a habit so that it doesn't have to think, so that under pressure it'll just be reflexive. Okay, so your brain wants to form a habit to serve your specific outcome. But when that outcome is non specific and general, it'll always revert back on producing the nothingness that that goal is delivered by the habits you already have. So specificity is critical. So what I'm saying to you is when you review your goals, whether that be for the year, the month, or the day, I want to have a good day. What does that mean? Clearly, the more clear, the more specific you are, the higher probability is that you'll deliver on it and that you will begin to create the habits that support it and reinforce it on a regular basis. Because remember, habits need conditioning. You developed this habit you have because you conditioned it over and over again. And the only way that it's going to get replaced with a better one is by conditioning it over and over again. And the only way you're going to condition it is if it's specific. If it's specific. Okay, so please, today I want to have a I want to make 10 contacts, then it's 10. Or if I'm going to sit on, I'm making it up. You're going to do curls in the gym, right? I want to do 10 curls at 30 pound dumbbells, whatever. They might be specific. And we're gonna talk about this later. Measurable and tangible, okay? And so whatever that is, you gotta have an exact amount you want so that we can produce an exact habit. Then the reticular activating system in your brain knows how important this is to you and will begin to find the resources, the people, places and the things that have always been around you, but that you've been oblivious to before to deliver on it. In the Power of One More, my book, I talk about the matrix I call the reticular activating system. The RAs in your brain is the matrix because it's sort of what reveals to you what's important. It can actually slow things down when you're an athlete or create the habits that you need to deliver on it. So this part of our brain's really critically important to program it. It can't program on a non specific general thing. And I'm going to tell you, 99% of people, even the people who you know are one on one, coached by me, aren't specific. And it's the major part of my work with them. Even athletes go, I want to win the fight. Specifically how, specifically when? Want to have a good game tonight? Specifically what does that mean? Three for four, two hits, you want to shoot 68. Like exactly. What does it look like? So that we can build the habits to back that up. And it might not even be that they want to score a number. It might be that I want to hit 10 crisp golf shots right on the button, 10 of them today. Right? Great. Or I want to only have 25 putts. Great. These are specific things that we begin to adjust. You'd be amazed at how much your brain wants to reserve energy. It doesn't want to think, it wants to build a habit so it doesn't have to think anymore and expend energy on it. So that's the good news. So specificity number two. What's the catalyst step? Just write down catalyst step. See, I think that everything James Clear has this thing where he talks about, you know, the two minute rule, the two minute idea, where if you could just get something done for two minutes, it's the beginning of a habit that can give you the catalyst of success. I call mine a catalyst step, meaning if you can just do one thing. Oftentimes there's one move that if you make it, it can handle seven other things. So ask yourself, what's the catalyst step I could take today? So, like, there's this notion when you go to the gym, some people say showing up is half the battle. No, it's not. It's not. It's not half the battle. However, it is part of the battle and so it can be considered a catalyst step. Just getting to the gym, that's not half the battle. It's not even 20% of the battle, but it is part of the battle. So perhaps a catalyst step is getting to the gym. Maybe a catalyst step is, you know, in your business life that you're going to, you know, pick the phone up five times in a given day or type seven emails. But it's some catalyst. You do something that's a catalyst to create change. John Maxwell talks in his book about the law of the catalyst. That is a person in an organization, they're a catalyst for change. So ask yourself, have you got a specific goal of I want to make a hundred thousand dollars this year or I want to weigh 180 pounds or whatever it might be. Ask yourself the next question, am I specific enough? And what's the catalyst habit that I would need? What's the catalyst habit? For example, for me, my energy was very, very low years ago and I decided the catalyst habit that I could control was drinking a gallon of water a day. That was my outcome. Follow me. My outcome was 1 gallon of water a day. Okay. However, that was a habit that was difficult to create. So I said to myself, what's the catalyst step that could get me in the door? And that was this. Here's the catalyst step. I left a 1 liter bottle of water next to my bed, just a liter for when I woke up in the morning. And my catalyst habit was when I woke up, I drank that liter of water before I did anything else. That was a catalyst step to get me towards my outcome. That was specific, which was drinking a gallon for the day, which was deliver on my overall goal, which was to feel more energy and health and vitality in my life. So that's an example of a catalyst step. What is a catalyst that you could do to get you into the game, to get you moving? Much like James Clear's two minute idea. Okay, These are huge things because you can start going step by step. It might be just getting to the gym. It might be ordering that microphone for the podcast. You're going to start just ordering the Microphone, Right. That's a catalyst step. Why does that matter? Because deliberation is delay. Strategy is oftentimes like strategic procrastination in the sense that what you're doing is you're going into all this planning phase, but really it's. It's mocking. You need more planning, you need more time, you need more strategy. That's all an excuse not to take action. And what I'm saying to you is, I cannot teach you how to drive a parked car. The most important thing you can do is to just get going. You've got to write an entire book. Maybe the catalyst step is you're going to write the first sentence of the book. I had a friend of mine, when I was struggling writing the Power of One More, I just couldn't get decided on what I wanted the book to be about. Exactly. He said, forget writing the book. He said, write out what you want the chapters to be. First, you don't even have a title of the book yet. What would the chapters be? And so I wrote the chapters out, just the titles of the chapters, not what was in the chapters, not what I was going to say about them, not the content, not the quotes, not the title of the book, not even the flow of the chapters. Just what would the chapters be? And what that did is, was a catalyst step to get me out of delay, to get me out of procrastination, to get me away from deliberating about it or strategizing about it or planning about it. It got me in motion. And then I wrote those chapters out. I went, no, that wouldn't be the order. I'll flip this. And then the next morning I will go, nah, that wouldn't be a chapter that could fit in that one, but I'm going to make this a chapter. And then all of a sudden, I started recording audios that would start in the book. But the catalyst habit that moved me was the idea of writing the chapters out. The catalyst habit of drinking the gallon a day was to get the 1 liter of water by my bed. Right. And to stop deliberating, stop delaying, stop, stop strategy sessions that end up being procrastination sessions. Okay? So huge, huge deal. Third, this is a big one. Identify the biggest obstacle or distraction to you getting the goal done. What will likely be the biggest obstacle or distraction? Because really, oftentimes in life, it's not about just adding a new habit for a goal. It's about eliminating one that's obstructing our outcome. So part of what we've already created is a catalyst habit, so it's creating a new habit. The third thing then is identify what the obstacle is or the biggest distraction. So could that distraction be Netflix? Could it be your phone? Could it be a particular room you're in? Right. Could it be a person? Could it be a thought? Right. Could it be something else you're doing that's no longer important to you, that's taking up the time that is required to do this new thing you want to do? But if you don't identify what's obstructing you, what the distraction is, oftentimes you will revert back. But you're a pretty powerful person immediately when you've got specificity to your outcomes, Right? That's a big deal. You've developed a catalyst step or habit and now you removed and identified the biggest obstacle or distraction. That's a huge thing. And maybe the biggest obstacle distraction is your lack of self confidence. And you need to immerse yourself in personal development as you get going. But to some extent, if you can. Like for me, I know for the most part my distraction is getting into doing things that I call in the small. I get into the small things. I get into the weeds too much instead of staying in the big and creating the big things and doing the big things that move things? I would say also that prior to the change I've made recently with, you know, I've had some health challenges. So I've gotten off of social media, one of the best things I've done in a long time for, for my physical and mental health. But also it's eliminated a huge distraction. It's just, I can't imagine. You can't even begin to imagine how much time you have when you're not in this stupid phone, looking at stuff that doesn't mean anything. It's really incredible. Or that doesn't even make you feel good. Anyway, so that phone was. Maybe it's the news, right? Maybe it's. You're obsessing over the news. You know, it could be a TV show you're too caught up in. If you wonder whether or not you can build a new habit or not, or you could become obsessed with something. Think about the last time you fell in love with some TV show on Netflix or Amazon and you streamed 18 of them in a row. So you're pretty good at staying focused, aren't you? Right. You got pretty specific with what you wanted to do. But what that stuff can become is becomes the obstacle or distraction and not the thing that leads to our Success. And so identify that number.