The G.E.M. Series Episode 14: How to Successfully Build Atomic Habits
[00:00:00] Blake: welcome to the gym series powered by rocket level. On this podcast, we empower entrepreneurs to succeed by setting big goals, executing like a pro, and having a fearless mindset. The gym series is all about investing in yourself. We're here to share the path to getting what you want out of life. By sharing the stories of entrepreneurs who have done this themselves.
[00:00:24] Providing thorough research from our team on what careers and habits are yielding the best results and discussing the mindset it takes to overcome the obstacles that all future entrepreneurs will face investing in yourself, starts with putting in the work every single day. And this podcast is here to help you do exactly that.
[00:00:41] My name is Blake Chapman. I'm the vice-president of the ambassador program here at the rocket level. And I'm thrilled to be your host for the gym series. Hello, and welcome to the gym series. Today's episode is going to be about five actionable strategies that you should be taking away from the book atomic habits by James Clear.
[00:01:00] So a little bit of backstory here in several episodes. I've had the honor of interviewing many successful entrepreneurs and people that have done some very uncommon, difficult, and impressive things ranging from. Getting a startup to 50 million to winning a super bowl. And something that I picked up on was that a lot of them referenced the book atomic habits as a must-read and an absolute game-changer.
[00:01:23] So naturally I had to get the book, so I read it and I went ahead and I picked a few key takeaways that James clearly shares. And I got to say, I was blown away. James clearly says that according to researchers at duke university habits account for about 40% of our behaviors on any given day. Understanding how to build new habits and how your current ones work is totally essential for making progress in your health, your happiness, and your life in general, knowing this information is great, but there's still so much to break down.
[00:01:55] So I was thrilled to find out that James actually takes it a step further and provides five strategies that will help you out with making small improvements daily in your life. And making sure that you do it in a way that actually sticks. So, number one, the first strategy is to start with an incredibly small habit.
[00:02:12] A quote that James pulls in is to make it so easy. You can't say no. And what he says is that when most people struggle to build new habits, they say something like, I just need more motivation, or I wish I had as much willpower as you do. And this is the wrong approach. Research shows that willpower is like a muscle, It gets fatigued as you use it throughout the day.
[00:02:33] Another way to think of this is that your motivation ebbs and flows. It rises and it falls Stanford. Professor BJ Fogg calls this the motivation wave. They've actually given it a name, solve this problem by going ahead and picking a new habit that is easy enough that you don't need the motivation to do it. So what James is getting at is rather than starting with 50 pushups per day, go ahead and start with five pushups per day, rather than trying to meditate for 10 minutes per day.
[00:03:03] Start by meditating for one minute per day, make it easy enough that you can get it done without motivation. The next strategy that he provides is to increase your habit in very small ways. Another quote that he pulls, that I thought was just amazing. Successes are a few simple disciplines practiced every day, while failure is simply a few errors in judgment repeated every day.
[00:03:27] And what he goes on to explain is that 1% improvements add up surprisingly fast. So does the 1% decline, rather than trying to do something amazing from the beginning, start small and gradually improve along the way your willpower and motivation will increase, which will make it a lot easier to stick to your habits for good.
[00:03:47] I think that this is so important and it's just the mindset that I've tried to take on for myself. Because just like you can have compounding interest, you can actually compound your skills, your talent, your health, everything is compounding. And it's those small, tiny, tiny movements that actually make all the difference.
[00:04:08] So it's important to be deliberate and focus on small improvements. The third strategy that James breaks down is as you build up to break habits into chunks. I thought this one was really interesting. So what James is saying is that if you continue adding 1% each day, then you'll find yourself increasing very quickly within two or three months.
[00:04:30] And it's important to keep each habit reasonable so that you can maintain momentum and make the behavior as easy as possible to accomplish by building up to 20 minutes of meditation, split it into two segments of 10 minutes at first, trying to do 50 pushups per day. Five sets of 10 might be much easier as you make your way there.
[00:04:51] It's funny. I've been doing the pushup thing and, you know, that's been, that's been, what I've done is I've broken it up into, five sets of 10 that's. That's been the way that I've. Every time I'm like, okay, I'm going to do five sets of 10 and I'm going to drink one glass of water every time I do it, it's simple.
[00:05:07] It's easy. And it's a nice break in between my, in between my jobs that I can have a little time to clear my mind and know that I'm doing something that improves myself just a little bit every day. And, yeah. You know, chunks it out so that I can actually get it done. So I really love this and I highly recommend you try it out.
[00:05:25] So moving on to the fourth strategy. When you slip get back on track quickly. And the quote that James provides for this is the best way to improve your self-control is to see how and why you lose control, which is by Kelly McGonigal. And the big thing that he touches on is actually he references top performers.
[00:05:51] So top performers, he says, make mistakes. They commit errors and they get off track just like everyone else. The difference is that they get back on track as quickly as possible. Research has shown that missing your habit. Once no matter when it occurs, occurs actually has no measurable impact on your long-term progress.
[00:06:10] So rather than trying to be perfect, abandon your all-or-nothing mentality, you shouldn't expect to fail, but you should plan for failure. Take some time to consider what will prevent your habit from having. What are some things that are likely to get in your way? What are some daily emergencies that are likely to pull you off course?
[00:06:27] And how can you plan to work around these issues? Or at least how can you bounce back quickly from them and get right back on track? You just need to be consistent, not perfect. Focus on building the identity of someone who never misses a habit twice. I, I know that we're all going to have our cheat days or, you know, a day where maybe we don't execute on exactly what the goal is that we want.
[00:06:53] But the idea is one, give yourself some grace and then say, I'm going to get right back to it and get right back to it. If you think like that, that's going to allow you to, you know, have more of an open mind to get started. Getting into this negative feedback loop where you say, oh, well, I guess I'm done there.
[00:07:11] And I can't continue on, this mindset I've found is extremely helpful. And then the final strategy here, strategy five. This is, this is kinda, you know, it's stuff that you think is common sense, but whenever it's broken down, the way that James breaks it down, it just makes such an impact. It just gave me a really clear, a clear way to, to be able to, get to a point where I can.
[00:07:33] Finish what I'm trying to finish and change my, instead of goal mindset, change it into an idea that I should change my lifestyle or makes, you know, slight adjustments so that I can go for the long run. So strategy five is to be patient and stick to a pace you can sustain. So he says here that learning to be patient is perhaps the most critical skill of all.
[00:07:58] You can make incredible progress. If you are consistent and patient, if you're adding weight to the gym, you should probably go a little slower than you think. If you're adding daily sales calls to your business strategy, you should probably start with fewer than you expect to handle. Patients are everything do things that you can sustain.
[00:08:16] New habits should feel easy, especially in the beginning. If you stay consistent and continue increasing your habit, it'll get hard enough. Fast enough. It always does. I mean, I think we've all run into that at some point in our lives. These are the big five that James breaks down. I would love to hear how it goes.
[00:08:33] If anybody has been trying some of these out for themselves. And, you know, I'll, Hey, I'll keep you all posted on how it goes with me. Cause I know that I'm implementing some of these in my own life as well. That is everything for this episode of the gym series. Thank you so much for checking it out and, have a great day.
[00:08:51] Thank you for joining us on this episode of the gem series, the podcast for anybody dedicated to investing in themselves. If you'd like to see the resources mentioned in this episode, learn more about what we're up to at rocket level, or come over and join our team. Just click on the links below until next time.
[00:09:07] This is Blake Chapman, and remember to be awesome and do awesome things.