The Art of Consistency: 10 Simple Rules for Real Growth

[00:00:00]

Forming Habits for Growth

Habits are as entwined into the concept of self-improvement as beaches are to holidays, and I don't know about you, but just lately my habits went right out the window. I had three weeks off cycling and came back to a flood of email, of course,

and the distinct inability to balance my work here on the Growth Mindset Psychology Show with my new podcast about how to change the world, where I'm pushing myself to write hugely complicated episodes that require a ton of reading, and then of course as the extra social tasks of summer, and it's just hot all the time as well, which I guess I'm not used to being British.

But anyway. Rather than complaining, I concluded it's okay to accept that some sacrifices will need to be made in terms of my efficiency

and we are here on this earth to enjoy ourselves after all. So I can be more flexible on my habits and perhaps adapt different ones for summer before I settle down into [00:01:00] my more normal work mode later in the year. So I reviewed my notes from different books about habits to consider which things I should be prioritizing at the moment in terms of my environment or practices

to hopefully maintain at least some focus and consistency in my life when I have found myself lately dropping the ball on basically everything and becoming a bit of a distraction demon who doesn't even know where to start with things. So luckily I run a psychology show, and this was a very useful exercise for me right now

and it's worth saying that habits of course, aren't just for New Years, and it's a constant battle as things in our life change and we adapt to things. So if you are having the same dilemma as I have been having lately, this might be a welcome episode for you. Or if you are in that lovely space that you get on holiday, when you do have a step back from your routine and you can think about how you might change things when you get back to it, well that's also fine.

So. Hello and welcome to the Growth Mindset Psychology Podcast [00:02:00] today, learning about the science of self-improvement and philosophy over life. Well lived, as always With me, Sam Webster Harris.

One very important thing to say when it comes to habits and consistency is we don't need to completely upheave our life in one grand act of self renovation. It is more a question of finding one, maybe two ideas that you can action and take for a spin for a few months before you revisit other ideas later and tweak a few other things.

So I think it's always a topic that is relevant to revisit as your life keeps on changing, as it always does, and hopefully some of these 10 ideas today will be useful for you now and maybe next year, a different idea or two within these 10. Will become a new priority for you to work on,

so one thing we can be certain about is that I definitely will not be actioning all 10 of the ideas that are about to talk about today. But the point is that you need to understand all of them to think about which ones might be causing you issues now and which are right before a [00:03:00] review.And on that I will be back.

Pre-roll Acast Advert

after the break.

#1 - Start with "Why"

The number one habit That is really foundationally important is to start with why. I'm sure you've heard the Simon Sinek talk, if you are vaguely into self-improvement and he is right.

This rule is also very topical as it's the first rule and it makes sense because if you need to really work out why you want to do something, for it to be able to actually affect your identity and for you to become that person that you want to be. Although this rule was first brought to us by Simon Sinek,

It's been with us since stoics, who had the philosophy of leading a purposeful life and tapping into your own intrinsic motivations. 'cause that's a key psychological factor in habit formation.

and this is certainly something that Steve Jobs did, for example, you just have to understand the deeper reason behind why you want to read a particular habit and not just use the superficial obvious ones and actually really tap into something that resonates deeply and fundamentally with [00:04:00] you.

And the science certainly agrees when you look at

in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. A study on intrinsic motivation found that when individuals pursue goals for intrinsic reasons such as personal growth or community contribution, they'll exhibit much more persistence, engagement, and satisfaction compared to extrinsic motivations like rewards or pressures.

Also a study in the American Journal of Health Promotion showed that individuals who identified personal meaningful reasons for lifestyle changes such as quitting smoking or exercising more, were much more successful in maintaining these changes long-term compared to those motivated by external factors.

and some of the reasons that people fail to really start with why and then failed in their actual habit is due to a lack of self-reflection, not investing in the time to introspect into their selves and discover what their real motivations are, and that leads to goals that don't align with their personal values.

people that just decide to go to university without actually thinking about something they really want to study often don't do so well and end up in a job they don't care about.

you need to [00:05:00] actually understand yourself to be able to do this properly. Another reason that people fail to do it is just through external pressure from others. Society often emphasizes external rewards like money, fame, approval, and that will cause individuals to pursue goals for the wrong reasons, which just leads to a lack of genuine commitment or really caring.

One of the reasons lots of people have a DHD in their job is doing something they just don't care about. I worked in an accountancy when I was 18 and I, managed to stay there for two days before I went nuts and was like, yeah, I just don't wanna be an accountant. And I just couldn't do it. And if I'd done that with my life, I'd be a nightmare.

Luckily, I realize this, so it's fine. But anyway, it just proves the point that just doing things that sound like a good job to others doesn't mean it's a good job or a good habit for you. and the last failure I think that people fall into is just having a short term mindset.

They'll focus on immediate gratification. We'll really overshadow the importance of their long-term purpose and it'll lead to goals that are abandoned when they no longer provide the instant rewards, if they haven't set [00:06:00] that long-term setting of why they want to be doing it. ' cause when there isn't like that really big intrinsic motivation of why in that bigger goal to head for like just the small, instant rewards do become very appealing.

so if you don't truly ask yourself why before you start, you're likely to have decreased motivation.

and just lose steam. As the habit starts to get harder and you face challenges, you may also experience a lack of fulfillment in the habits that you're doing and achieving the goals that don't actually resonate personally with you could just leave you with a sense of emptiness, even if there is some external success and you're just much more likely to have burnout.

Pursuing a goal without an intrinsic motivation would just lead to well burnout and dissatisfaction.

So for example,

If you exercise just to lose weight for like a specific event, but not because of your actual health in the long term, you'll often likely abandon any fitness routine post the event and just fall back to your old ways.

And if you look at companies like Patagonia, founded by Yvonne Chenard, maybe I haven't said his name correctly. The company's mission is to protect the [00:07:00] environment, and that is their why behind building one of the coolest, most sustainable Businesses on the planet, they make great clothes, but you just know that they're built to last and that they'll repair them anytime.

and it's got one of the most loyal customer bases and is a real industry leader in sustainability because of they really started with their why from the outset.

Okay, so you're gonna start with why.

#2 - Making the habit obvious

So let's jump on to rule two, making the habit obvious. This rule is very much inspired by James Clear's atomic habits, where he really talks about designing your environment to make your good habits visible and easy to access.

This could mean placing your running shoes by the door if you wanted to run more, or having healthy snacks at eye level in your pantry and having cake and chocolate very far away, or just not even in your house. And perhaps just as importantly. Also prepare time for it. So have an obvious time in the day to do the habit rather than leaving it at the bottom of your priorities.

Hoping that magically [00:08:00] some time to exercise might happen. It has to be in your calendar. There has to be an obvious uninterrupted period to do any habit that will take your time. Otherwise it won't happen So if you have a lot of reminders around you in your calendar, et cetera, the habit will stay very present in your to-do list and it will get done.

And again, the science agrees. A study in the Journal of Environmental Psychology demonstrated that environmental cues significantly influence our behavior. Participants who were exposed to subtle cues related to an activity were much more likely to engage in that activity without even conscious awareness of the influence.

And this is also something that's just consistently found, is that humans really don't think they're infected by their environment, and yet they are. Like even if you're shopping on a webpage and it has like some money signs in the background, you're much more likely to be affected by the price of choosing.

Or if you have something that just looks very calming in the back and outside of habit formation. Just the general environment affects people so much they don't even notice like [00:09:00] a study on what affected people's. Purchases on a SETI website found that like people had no idea what was causing their purchase behavior, but if they had a background that really focused on like money signs and like things that people were prioritized, like the price of the so and always went for the cheapest things.

Whereas if they kind of had a website that looked very like chill beaches, relaxed vibes, they always went for things that looked like the comfiest sofas. And consistently, every single person on the exit questionnaire thought that the environment of the website made no difference to their purchases, which is cool when you think about like your habits, it's actually the environment will make no difference to how you think about what you're thinking, but actually what you're thinking will be very different and you'll start doing these habits just anyway.

'cause you're like, oh, it's easy to do. Of course, I'm a person that would've done this habit, even though if it was a different situation in your environment, you totally wouldn't have done it. So. Preparing your environment is so important.

Another study in the [00:10:00] British Journal of General Practice highlighted that consistency in the context, the place, and the time of performing an action really leads to much stronger habit formation. The study showed that people who exercise at the same time and place were much more likely to stick to their fitness routines.

so this highlights the importance of trying to reschedule something at the same time of day and making it like a very habitual part of your routine.

And it also highlights the potential leverage we can get from a change in our routines. Perhaps at New Years when like we're starting a new job or doing something different is when our environment changes quite a lot. We're much more open to new habit formations 'cause we haven't got lots of strong habits already there.

'cause it is harder to break already strong habits that exist if they're not good for us. if you're trying to quit smoking, but you're always going through the same parts of your house and the same work routines, you're always gonna have the same triggers to smoke at these same points, but it's easier to quit if you are moving to a different house and a different job kind of thing.

Now obviously if you want to quit [00:11:00] and there's nothing else changing in your environment that doesn't help you. But you can try and think of ways to just have some different environments to trigger you less in the first stages of quitting, for example.

now let's look at some of the reasons that people don't optimize their environment and some of the consequences of not doing it.

So, one of the reasons people don't optimize their environment is because it's just already a bit cluttered. And a disorganized or cluttered environment can make it very difficult to establish clear cues of your decide habits.

If your room is covered in random clothes and stuff everywhere, it's hard to make it obvious that you're running shoes by the door, et cetera. if you're, you've just got shoes everywhere, and it's the same with your pc. If you wanna just open your PC and just work on , just your writing habit each morning, but you open it and it's full of like notifications and a hundred different tabs, it's unlikely that you're actually gonna be focused.

So cleaning up your environment is very essential for this.

Another reason that people fail to make their new habit obvious is just that they just have a general lack of routine and without any set of routine, it's challenging to [00:12:00] create obvious cues for your new habits to sit in them when your day is completely random.

it's hard to say what you need to remove from your day to like put that new habit in there and it doesn't have any contacts of where it should be. And so like having some more consistency in your general day the rest of the time makes it easier to then have a consistent time that you're gonna go running, et cetera.

And then number three. And perhaps the biggest reason people fail to make their habits more obvious is that they just underestimate how important environmental factors are. So that's why I was talking about the studies beforehand. 'cause many people just don't realize how powerful their environment is and how much impact their surroundings have on their behavior.

That just leads them to overlook the fact that their environment is massively getting in the way of their habits.

and when you do that, you'll just have many missed opportunities to set up habits. Like a failure to set up. Some clear cues will just result in you forgetting about the habit that you're even going to do. And suddenly it just becomes something you haven't done in a week and then you just like don't do it.

[00:13:00] Another consequence of not leveraging your environment is that you then purely rely on willpower. And willpower actually isn't as strong as we think it is without environmental support. People who rely heavily on willpower will just run out of it. Sometimes it's a limited resource and we've only got so many shits to give, at some point.

And sometimes we don't have any shits to give on a certain day, and we just don't have that willpower to take ourselves to the gym or to quit smoking, et cetera, and we just give up. whereas if our environment is optimized to help us, we can just leverage free willpower because it just comes to us automatically.

So, as I've kind of already mentioned, but a few examples of what you might use would be if you're trying to eat healthier, is just keeping unhealthy snacks outta sight completely. Or not even in your house at all. Like just don't buy chocolate and crisps and then you won't have them to eat in your house.

And it sounds annoyingly simple and it's a bit hard to do, but like once you've started doing it a few times, you just don't have any of the junk food in your house. It's a lot easier to eat healthier. and the other thing is to just keep the healthy options visible to you, [00:14:00] which will encourage you to eat healthily.

like my friend, he has like the fruit bowl out in his kitchen and then he does have. Some junk food, but he's locked it in a safe in his pantry and he's given the code to his wife so he can't get into it. But what was funny was six months later, the safe broke and so the door was always open, but he just got used to the fact that there's a safe that he's not allowed into without talking to his wife.

So even though he can technically go into the safe because it's broken, he just doesn't 'cause in his head, he knows it's in the safe and he knows that it's for his own good. So he doesn't go in the safe anymore to eat junk food. I just really like this example. So I wouldn't recommend buying a safe and locking your junk food away because it's just such a cool life hack.

even if the safe doesn't work, it still works. So that's cool.

Numerous successful authors just created a habit of writing by setting up a dedicated writing space and a writing time to make it a natural part of their daily routine. And I'm very much looking forward to building my own writing cabin. One day when I have a garden, already can't wait. I'm like, so excited to be old and have a cabin.

[00:15:00] okay.

#3 - Create small and achievable steps

Anyway, this does looking like a longer podcast, but I'm loving it. rule number three, create small and achievable steps following Andrew Hoberman's insights on neuroplasticity. Just start with small, manageable steps that your brain can easily adapt to. This reduces resistance and makes habit formation much more seamless than trying to have a big overhaul change

that's just very overwhelming. I think this rule really emphasizes the importance of just not doing too much at once. I am sure we've all heard of someone that's managed to turn their life around in a single day. They've quit drugs, they've quit eating meat. They've started a business and become a marathon runner all at once.

And there is the odd person that does it, but they are massive outliers. and just because it's such a weird thing, it becomes a story that you hear about it. And 99% of people don't do that. They do small changes that actually work or they try and do something big and they fail and it's not an interesting story so you don't hear about it.

but [00:16:00] 99% of very big changes happen very slowly over time. 1% at a time. as you'll often hear in books, in every self-improvement place. I'm sorry to say, but most normal people that I know aren't going to quit smoking, become a vegetarian marathon running millionaire overnight.

if this is disappointing for you, you, you can stop listening to the podcast and follow someone else who will pretend that this could happen. 'cause, it can't anyway, in reality, you just have to prioritize where you're going to fight your fights and just take small steps instead of overwhelming yourself all at once.

because if you try and do too many things, you'll just end up failing at a few things, which means that you feel bad about yourself and fail at everything all at once, and you'll just end up quitting. So definitely smaller, achievable steps. And again, the science agrees, which is why I'm talking about it.

In a Journal of Consumer Research, it found that incremental goal setting and the act of breaking down goals into smaller, more manageable tasks led to increased task completion rates. [00:17:00] Participants who set incremental goals are much more likely to stay on track compared to those who aim for larger, less defiant goals.

When individuals see themselves successfully completing small tasks, they're much more motivated to carry on and more likely to believe that they can achieve the larger goals coming up next. And that will lead to much more sustainable behavior change.

Related to this, a study on neurons highlighted how achieving small goals will just activate the reward system in the brain releasing dopamine. And this neurochemical response encourages continuous progress and stronger habit formation.

So actually giving ourselves these small little goals instead makes the habit much stronger in our head because if we get rewarded psychologically for it as we do it. So if this is such good advice, why don't people do it? Well, reasons that people fail to set smaller goals is that they may be over ambitious and slightly a bit lost in their own naivety.

And I'll set goals that are too large, ambitious, that could just become very overwhelming, which leads 'em to procrastinate and abandon the [00:18:00] goal. And ambition is great, but having too much ambition is a bit of a curse.

So it's good to dream a bit, but just don't dream. Too hard. It just needs to be something that is like a realistic next step. another reason that people don't set smaller goals is, they underestimate the power of small progress people might think that they need to go to gym for an hour, whether it's not worth going, but actually if you're kind of unhealthy, going to the gym for 10 minutes and just starting with something really small is really powerful.

It's really useful. Like my girlfriend obviously isn't gonna work out with me for two hours whilst I'm just doing some like psycho burpees routines. But she started doing like a 15 minute workout every day and she freaking loves it. She's getting stronger. And then sometimes she does 20 minutes, sometimes she does 30 minutes now that she's started.

but it would've been silly to try and do it all at once that's maybe more obvious with Jim, And people won't realize that it's the same with business. They'll try and start like something really big right away when they haven't really learned some of the basics.

and it's absolutely fine to go a bit slower and to make small progress into something that could be really huge in the future. Which leads us onto the third reason [00:19:00] that people fail to really set small goals is just lack of patience.

We have a culture that values quick results and slow and steady progress achieved through small steps can just be frustrating to many of us. it's not just that lots of us are being diagnosed with A DHD, it's that our whole society has like an A DHD mentality to actually paying attention to anything

It just leads us to be impatient and discontinue things when we have a very simple reward of doing something easier for us. It just doesn't seem rewarding when, we go running for a few days, but we don't instantly feel 10 times fitter.

We don't instantly get like these long time periods to reflect on how wonderful life is whilst we're running 'cause we're too busy trying to not be sick, et cetera. Like these things take time before you really enjoy the benefits of running when you first start, but you have to go through the bad part.

and so if you fall into these alluring traps Of making goals that are too big straight away without setting up small wins. you're just much more likely, again, to have burnout By taking on too much, too quickly and getting demotivated,

And the power of small little habits [00:20:00] really stack up like the British cycling team, based their success on just making numerous, very small enhancements and habits from just better hand washing to optimize their health, to tweaking slightly the bike ergonomics, which these little 1% improvements cumulatively led to them gaining some significant success and winning repeatedly for years in a row in international competitions.

So remember, you can do huge things by starting with some very little small wins.

I a

Midroll Acast Advert

m sure you can't wait to hear what I'm about to say next, but we're gonna have a quick pause for an advert just so the show can continue to run and so that I can continue working on the show and making these things for you

#4 - Leveraging habit stacking

now let's move on to rule number four, leveraging habit stacking. This concept was popularized by Charles Duhig in his book, the Power of Habit, and it's all about linking. New habits to existing ones and is quite similar to the, other example of making your [00:21:00] habit obvious.

but this is just one specific way of doing it. So for example, if you already had a habit of drinking coffee every morning, and you wanna become a meditator, try stacking a habit of meditating for five minutes right after your coffee so you always know the time and place of doing it, and it's very obvious and easy to stack on.

something that I used to do when I was coding was whenever we had our lunch break, I'd always just do a 10 minute hit workout right at the start of my lunch break before I sat down to eat with everyone. It was just an easy way for me to make sure that I just fit it in and didn't try to do it like in the middle of other things, it was just like, yep, I can get a 10 minute HIIT workout done, feel like ready for the rest of the day.

And then if I wanna do more exercise after work, sure. But it just meant I knew that I'd always got something done.

And apparently I'm a genius because of a study in the Journal of Experimental Psychology showed that linking a new habit to established cues, habit stacking this leverages associative learning principles and makes it easier to form new habits.

And to be fair, it's not like I'm a massive genius. [00:22:00] I think we all know that if we want to do something like take our daily vitamin, it's really good to just. Link that to things like when we'd have breakfast, is to just have your vitamins and it's obvious for these little things like that.

And yet we do often forget about it when it comes to the bigger things

and sure it's not always obvious. Some of the reasons that people fail to find a way to stick habit onto another habit is just having a lack of established routines already. And without those solid existing routines, it's obviously challenging to, stack up new habits effectively, which is something I guess I've already spoken about.

Another reason is that you might have incompatible habit combinations. Sometimes your new habit just doesn't naturally fit with an existing one. Which leads to a clash rather than a seamless integration. So it's worth thinking about these things first before just putting things at the same time in the day and hoping that they work together.

Because perhaps if you have your really strong coffee and a shower in the morning and then sit down to meditate after your shower, you might be buzzing too much from your caffeine to meditate. And you might wanna meditate before the coffee in the shower, because [00:23:00] otherwise, like you're just gonna be like bouncing around your mind like fidgeting all the time rather than meditating.

and lastly, another reason that people fail is just overcomplicating the process. And they, they'll try to stick too many habits at once altogether, and make the whole process overly complex, which will just lead to some more failure.

Or one of my favorite routines that I've done since I can remember, which was a habit that was just drilled into me as a child, was reading before I go to sleep.

and I think reading is just one of those brilliant things that lots of people want to do more of. And just being able to get 10 minutes of reading a day can get you to read so many different interesting books through your life compared to not. So reading for poor bedtime, for example, is a very good habit stacking

process,

#5 - Self Reflection

right? Rule number five.

Self-reflection. Now, the stoics did this and, they really tried to embrace what was called stoic reflection. and basically just looking at how the day went and just analyzing what made them happy, what made them sad, angry, what they did well, and what [00:24:00] they did badly, and how they can improve on it.

And In some ways all very obvious, but it's also something that most people just don't do that much of, and this is why people keep on talking about the benefits of journaling is it helps you reflect on what's working and become better. And the growth mindset is not about doing things perfectly straight away.

It's about actually just spending some time to put some thought cycles into how to become better without necessarily getting it perfect always, without necessarily instantly getting it perfect straight away, but actually accepting that everything takes some hard work And some of that hard work is failure and realizing that you're doing the wrong thing to actually ultimately get there.

The Journal of Applied Psychology found that professionals who engage in end of day reflection performed significantly better than those who didn't. And certainly if you look at the top athletes or the top CEOs, all the top coaches and therapists, they definitely reflect on what it is that they did that day and what went right and what didn't.

And so whatever you're doing, if you want to [00:25:00] really get better at it, you just need to spend some time looking at what worked, especially when it comes to habit formation.

Now, a few of the reasons people don't do it is of course lack of time. Everyone's in a bloody rush the entire time, always going everywhere, and they just feel they couldn't ever have enough time to dedicate to any daily reflection or meditation and journaling and things like this.

And part of the reason they don't feel they have enough time for it is they don't value it enough. And undervaluing reflection is a major issue because you don't usually see immediate benefit straight away, so you just find it harder to prioritize it. Or we may also have discomfort with introspection.

People often reflect on their actions and see that they can be a bit of a dick and they don't like that. And sometimes we'll have thoughts that can be uncomfortable and stuff that we want to avoid and say, well just avoid introspecting. And it's not just like that. You maybe have like a bad behavior towards others.

It might just be that you're a bit lazy than you'd like to imagine yourself. Or a lot of the reasons that you're not doing very, very well or successful are [00:26:00] completely your own fault, and that can be discomforting. Your ego doesn't like hearing that it's your own fault that you're not doing better at something.

But this is exactly what you need to hear If you have a growth mindset. So if you're not reflecting, it might just be that you have a bit of a fixed mindset approach to the things and you need to actually just be a bit more humble if you genuinely want to grow and become a better person.

a lot of people have this sort of expectation that they can do lots. They're just a bit shocked that they're not more successful. And so many people have this kind of surprise at how badly they're doing in life, and it's just complete lack of self-awareness to realize that everything is their own fault and they can do better at it.

it sounds a bit harsh, but it does take real self-awareness and emotional intelligence to accept these things. And the ego just doesn't want you to do these things, but it's so important.

you don't need a really expensive business coach when you can coach yourself just by like making the things apparent to yourself. And again, in relationships, like taking time to think about your interactions with your loved ones can really improve your [00:27:00] communication and your relationships. And it can improve your empathy to understand why people are behaving that way

It can prove your own self-awareness to look at the kind of behaviors that you have and how you can change them and become a better person to be in a relationship with.

Same with your finances. If you just invest in some things that you think are cool and don't really reflect on why you're doing all these things, or you spend lots of money on stuff that isn't important, and you don't reflect on why you're making these spending choices you can get to the end of the year without really improving your financial situation In the same way that if you just take a bit more time to really reflect and learn and think about why you're making these choices.

So this is all really important.

#6 - Prioritize consistency

Rule number six is to prioritize consistency over intensity. So this very much echoes Ali Abdul's approach where he Really highlights the importance of being consistent rather than necessarily intense. it's better to exercise moderately every day than to have one super intense workout followed by days of not doing anything.

A really good [00:28:00] rule is from James clear's atomic habits, which is just never letting our failures slip further by just never missing two days in a row.

So if you have a daily habit, it's okay to miss one day. Like it's natural, it happens, but you just have to put extra energy, extra effort, all your motivation onto ensuring you definitely do not miss the second day. And this rule allows you to deal with the unplanned issues that life throws you, but it motivates you to never let it become a habit of missing your activity so that your habit stays consistent.

and then when you prioritize consistency over intensity, you can of course increase intensity over time without demotivating you through failure.

A study in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health found that consistent moderate exercise led to significant improvements in longevity and health. And it even surpassed many of the benefits from doing intense but irregular exercise. And it's not just health.

Also, research demonstrated that consistent space learning was much more effective [00:29:00] for retention compared to like intense cram sessions. This is observed in both academic and skill-based learning and certainly, if you want to learn a language doing one hour once a week, actually you have six days of forgetting it compared to doing like 10 minutes every day.

some of the reasons people fail to do this are reasons that, that I've already mentioned one overestimating capability and thinking that they can just do better, but do something way too intense and leading them to burnout. People that they think they're fair, they go turn out, they absolutely came themselves at the gym for an hour and then they can't move for the rest of the week.

another reason people fail to do small stuff is they just undervalue the effort of doing small things.

They'll think that their daily efforts are perhaps insignificant compared to doing an intense effort and they just don't prioritize doing small things. And the other reason for that is they want really quick, really big results. Our model, our modern culture of instant gratification is a bloody nightmare and just makes us forget about the fact that slow progress is how the world was built

and achieving our goals through consistency seems much [00:30:00] more unappealing than just having instant success. 'cause you only see instant success on Instagram but it's not even true. Those people were hustling for years before they got to where they were.

So whether you want to start learning a language, becoming an exercise freak, or becoming a really good meditator, you just need to start with a few minutes a day and just be consistent rather than trying to do something really big.

And it's the same with money, you're much more likely to see succeed starting with just making some small savings regularly and slowly increasing over time. Then trying to like throw all your money at some high risk strategy and losing it all. 'cause that's usually what happens.

#7 - Make it enjoyable and reward yourself

So anyway, before this all starts to sound a bit too sciencey,

The next rule is making it enjoyable and giving yourself a pat on the back and utilizing reward systems. 'cause making space to congratulate yourself, reflecting on how well you've done is actually very hard, especially with our, just our general negative predisposition to judge ourselves harshly. Even if you didn't [00:31:00] run as far as you wanted to in a week, or you didn't hit your sales targets, you should still remind yourself that you showed up and worked hard.

The growth mindset, of course, is very much about rewiring our brains to respect and congratulate effort over any specific outcome. 'cause outcomes come and go, but with a growth mindset, we should be happy to do our best every time, regardless of whether it always works out.

It motivates us to build resilience. And the resilience is the thing that then leads to more success over time. Like the sales person that gets demotivated by a weak of poor performance, even if it's not their fault, like the market just doesn't need the thing that week. Well, they'll never last well in the long term.

Or the runner that has a week of feeling a bit tight and slow and just doesn't do their workouts won't be as good as someone that like puts their head down and does something useful to get their miles in. does the right kind of recuperation activities extra to make sure that they're still doing the best that they can, rather than just copping out for the day.

So we should reward ourselves simply for the act of sticking to a habit [00:32:00] rather than necessarily reaping the benefits straight away

So this could be as simple as giving yourself a small treat at the end of each week for consistently executing on your habit, or even having little, small, like fun cues that just tick something off in your brain, like having a stack of paperclips on one side of the desk and after you do like the small activity, making a sales call or doing a workout, moving to a pile on the other side of the desk, or having something to tick off on the fridge.

So every time that you've done it, you just give yourself like a visual reward. And having a streak there is like super powerful. I do my Duolingo every day because it gives me a bloody tick. Like it doesn't matter. Whether I learn anything, whether I do it for like five hours or if I do it for five minutes, I get my little tick and I'm like, yes, I've done something.

and it hits the brain. So just giving yourself like a little something that makes sure you've acknowledged it and feel rewarded is really powerful.

But some of the problems that people might experience doing this is like setting up a reward system that isn't quite appropriate or sufficiently motivating to the individual. Like some people love their little streaks [00:33:00] and just having it in the right place, but other people might want a chocolate

or to get to watch a movie that night or something. Another common thought that people have with, creating their reward system is that like they might put too much of a delay in the reward system. So a delayed reward doesn't effectively reinforce the behavior due to just like immediate feedback is much better than something really far away.

I mean this is really obvious with your dog. if your dog does something great, but you don't actually give it a treat straight away and you just give it a treat later on in the afternoon, it's completely forgotten what it did that morning or why you're giving it a treat and it's not gonna suddenly sit for you just 'cause you gave it a treat three hours later.

And actually humans we're kind of the same. If you wanna reward yourself with a bit of cake, 'cause you run five kilometers, like you have the cake when you get back, and it's fine. you'll run more because if, you are always gonna get cake afterwards. whereas if like the cake comes like three days later 'cause you ran a few days ago, it's completely lax context and your brain doesn't quite pick it up properly.

and [00:34:00] then one danger of using external wards is doing them too much. Again. Like we all know with kids, if you try to motivate them too much and do everything for them, it's not very useful. if you pay them to get good results in their exams, they might lack their own intrinsic motivation to do stuff for their own free will.

Just 'cause they think the world is always gonna just provide for them to make them do things. If you build too much external awards into things, we won't actually have our own intrinsic motivation and our own intrinsic rewards from doing it.

So like, don't go too far with this one, but do also do it 'cause of consequences of not doing it, is that you'll just have not enough motivation without any rewards and you're less likely to form the habits 'cause. You won't be having that positive reinforcement from doing it.

'cause Sure, like one of the rewards that you are eventually looking for from exercising is perhaps fitting into newer clothes that are smaller and stuff. But that's not gonna happen for a few months. So you do need some like positive reinforcement on the way you get there. and if you don't do it properly, like the whole experience will just be less enjoyable.

And if you want to make a habit, a part of your life, you have to enjoy it. A new habit is to be part of [00:35:00] your identity and if it's gonna be part of your identity, you have to enjoy it. And sure if you first start running, it might not feel that great. So if you can find other ways to enjoy it, that's gonna be really useful to you because it's gonna take a few months before it starts to feel easier.

and you have lots of benefits from it. So, quite a few things to think about here.

And like, so a few examples you might wanna use is perhaps for weight loss, like a reward, like a nice, treat yourself, like a spa day. perhaps like rewarding yourself with cake isn't the best goal if you're trying to do weight loss. So,

so if you already don't care about your weight, but just wanna run more I do then like, it's okay to reward yourself with cake. So sorry if that example didn't help very much. another example perhaps in professional milestones is celebrating work achievements with your colleagues for like a team dinner and like having like a monthly outing to celebrate different stuff can just reinforce some successful work habits and let people know that like they're doing a good job.

or perhaps if you're a student, making sure that you give yourself some breaks or treats after a study session can really improve your study habits rather than trying to take everything on all at once.

Because [00:36:00] if it's actually much more enjoyable, if you know you're gonna have like some things that you enjoy in the day, mix it in with your studies rather than trying to tie yourself into a machine.

Okay, so we are getting through them now.

#8 - Preparing for obstacles

Moving on to rule number eight, preparing for obstacles.

This is a strategy that resonates with both stoic philosophy and modern psychology. If you have a plan B, it just helps in maintaining your habit streak. So some people will have these like conditions with stop them from doing something. So like they might say that I will go for a run if I am feeling energetic and if the weather is good.

And when I have finished my work. But in reality, that's the opposite of preparing for obstacles. That's creating obstacles. you actually wanna have a very different approach and be like, I'll go for a run if I have energy or if the weather is good or if I finish my work. So you'd only need one outta the three things available to go and do your run instead of having the perfect conditions of all options met at the same time.[00:37:00]

And then you need to prepare for what to do about the other two that aren't as good as you want them to be. So if it's rainy, then you need to have the right gear for the rain. I literally just went out for a run today and it was rainy as hell, but I had an okay jacket. I had to put my hood up for a bit because of getting brain freeze from like the wind and rain in my face.

But after 10 minutes it passed and I just carried on running. Whereas if I'd let that rain stop me, I just wouldn't have had a run at all. But if the wind is absolutely too crazy, maybe you have a backup workout that you can do inside a gym or at your home.

'cause you shouldn't let just something as simple as the weather be an absolute blocker for you. Otherwise, especially if you live in the uk, you're never gonna do any exerciseif it's weather dependent,

So you need to prepare both psychologically for the obstacles in your head as well as the physical obstacles preventing you from doing a habit to have a plan B.

and there's just some real benefits behind like coping planet as it's called when it comes to habit formation. The Journal of Behavioral Medicine found that individuals who developed coping plans for potential obstacles were more successful in maintaining [00:38:00] exercise routines compared to those who did not plan for setbacks.

Now. That won't shock anyone with it. I mean, who thought have a good backup plan means you're more likely to get the thing done. but you know, sometimes these things are obvious, but we still don't prioritize them or like make them in our head. when we make our plans for a new habit, we kind of have these like beautiful, blue sky plans and we're like, everything's gonna be perfect and brilliant.

I'm gonna live my best life. And we sort of forget that. Like the reality is, like, there are some problems. So this isn't the most fun part of planning a habit, but half the days when you're doing this new thing is it isn't gonna be perfect. It is gonna be kind of crap. whether that's the weather or whether you are like starting to make some more savings and slowly investing in things, but the stock market goes down so it looks like your money's gone down

Or whether you're trying to communicate better with your partner, but you've had a fight like these things still happen. Even when you're trying and doing your best, like it's okay, but you do need to have some like other plans to how to cope with things going wrong,

And what are some of the problems that people have when it comes to kinda setting [00:39:00] up a plan B? Well, the first is, again, overconfidence thinking that they're just gonna be able to handle everything without any preparation.

They're not gonna be caught off guard by obstacles. They're just gonna be amazing as soon as they start this habit. And then actually in reality, like problems happen and they don't quite get it done and they lose track of stuff. another issue that people has is just lack of foresight. we don't all have a qualification in bloody risk planning and risk management.

And we can fail to anticipate some of the potential challenges that we're gonna face and feel unprepared when they arise. some of that just comes from doing the habit for a while, like. if you've been a runner for five years, you know a lot more about the kind of plan Bs and how to like, keep your habit going than the first day you do it.

So in summary, like the reason you wanna do some more planning and setting up of a plan B is that you don't want your habit to get derailed because unexpected obstacles will derail this habit formation and just stop you from doing it.

And even with the best intentions, like you're still gonna feel stressed if you can't do the thing you really want to do.

so either way, not planning, gives you some more stress, and we don't want that to happen

. [00:40:00]

And on that,

we will be back after a short break.

#9 - Seeking Social Support

So we're getting close now. rule number nine is, so important and I think, often really, really underlooked, this rule is seeking social support by sharing your habit goals with friends, by joining a community.

the accountability that you get from this significantly boosts your commitment and significantly. Increases your rate of success. When you have peer support, you can get inspiration from those around you. And you can also reinforce your identity as being someone that does this activity by talking about yourself as someone who does it.

And by having friends that do it too, if we keep our plans inside our head, it just feels like a bit of our own little secret that we hope that we might do this thing and we just set ourselves up for failure because no one else expects that we're going to do that thing. 'cause they don't even know we want to do [00:41:00] it.

And when we keep it to ourselves, we just make it psychologically safe for ourselves to fail. 'cause no one has that expectation from us. So we can't fail them and so we think we can't fail ourselves apart from of course we are failing ourselves 'cause we're not actually then doing the thing we want to do.

So I talked about running too much. So let's talk about something at the other end of the spectrum. let's say you're trying to quit drugs or maybe you're trying to quit drinking, for example. If you are going out, you might want to tell your friends ahead of the evening that you are planning to not drink tonight, or you're not gonna smoke weed tonight maybe you wanna try having something alternative, like a alcohol, free beer or smoking CBD, et cetera, and ask them to not offer you the drug that you're trying to not have.

'cause if you haven't told anyone and you turn up and people have already bought you a pint or they're rolling a joint and they're passing it round, it's very easy to go with the flow and lose momentum of your new habit Because if that is your habitual behavior when you're around those people, if you haven't told them that you need to do something different.

But if you prepare people [00:42:00] beforehand and you prepare them that you need them to be supportive and say that it's important to you, it's gonna be much easier for you to deal with these situations and not have it to be so difficult. and you might even want to go further and besides talking to your friends, you might wanna seek like a coach or even therapy to help you.

Establishing a new habit, like a fitness coach could make a huge difference to whether you're gonna show up for a workout when you're feeling tired or even like just A workout buddy. Like having that commitment to someone makes you much more likely to do it than you just saying, oh, maybe you go for a run each evening.

'cause of anytime you don't feel like doing it, you're not gonna do it. But if you've already got it booked in with a friend or a coach like you are obviously gonna go because we don't like to fail other people. So we're much less likely to fail others than we are to fail ourselves. So like leverage that,

Make sure that you're doing habits with other people and that you owe that commitment to them as well as yourself.

And as I said, you could also talk to a therapist about it they can be really fundamental in helping people overcome addictions. 90% of people that try to give up smoking without any support, like they fail the positive side is that it's [00:43:00] still possible to give up smoking without any support, but it's much harder to do it than when you have support as well.

And if you're making a plan with other people, you're just much more likely to think through all the little things that could go wrong and have someone to talk to. And there's times that are difficult and just psychologically the whole process is easier. And relying less on willpower and using the power of others in our environment can really help us here.

research published in the Addictive Behaviors Journal showed that community support was a key factor in successfully quitting smoking or drinking, and highlights the importance of social networks in our behavior change, when it comes to, exercise, a study in the Journal of Sports and Exercise Psychology found that social support from friends and family just significantly increases adherence to our exercise routines.

so there's clear proven benefits for doing this, but then why do some people not do it or fail to do it? Well, the firstly is like reluctant to share goals, as I said, We feel like if we tell people they have the expectation of us, so we're worried we might fail them. But often like that thing's really powerful and it makes us more likely to do it.[00:44:00]

And we might also just feel vulnerable or embarrassed to share this goal with others. Like maybe you've never even told your friends or family that you do smoke weeded every day and it's not something you wanna talk to 'em about,

but then it just makes it much more difficult for us. Like another issue is that some people don't have a very supportive network. some friends are like a bit toxical, like they're too busy taking drugs and drinking to actually want to help you if you want to stop.

And the fact that you want to stop seems a bit offensive to them. And they're like, oh, you don't wanna be our friends anymore. You like think you're better than us. that's not a helpful mentality. If someone's saying that to you and they're your friend, they're not really looking out for your own mental health or your own physical health,

and not having a good supportive network is really difficult. and it's not much more I can do than say, try and find a better supportive network. And that's not easy to do. So like I recognize this is a problem for people. another issue that people have is that they just underestimate the importance that support has, which is why I'm doing this podcast episode is that many people don't realize how amazing social support can be when you try to form a habit and you wanna maintain it.

[00:45:00] Like it's just, it's so good. but if you don't do it, when you try and take on a new habit in isolation, it can lead you to feel lonely and isolated, especially when things are difficult and you don't have someone to talk to or someone that understands your problems.

sometimes we just need someone to listen to us and to just talk about our problems and we feel much better. isolating yourself doesn't help,

in any kind of city, there's always probably some free meetups You can go and join to go and do stuff together. try joining a running club or a workout group to stay motivated if you're studying, finding someone you can study with, whether you are like learning coding alone or you're at uni studying for your exams, like finding someone that you can study with when you have some challenging course material can really help you encourage each other

another thing that you can do that often people don't realize is you can kind of join professional Networking groups and there's often people willing to mentor people who are just like a bit further ahead than you. They, I think lots of people when they start their first business, like they really need some support from someone that's got a little bit more experience than them.

and one of the best ways they can learn and reflect is by teaching others. So in my whole entrepreneurship [00:46:00] journey, I've always been helping other people and teaching people that to know a little bit less than me, than mentoring them because I learned so much from it.

It was always a chance for me to reflect on the mistakes I made in the same situation and the mistakes I might be making right then and there. And usually talking to people and telling them about the things they're doing wrong highlights the things we're doing wrong ourselves.

So there's. Nearly always people willing to be mentors for wherever you're at. Whether you wanna be a public speaker and a comedian, or an entrepreneur or like a marathon runner. there's always people around that are willing to help coach you a bit for free. So just joining the networks is so good.

Okay. getting through them. Finally. Whew. This was a longer episode than I planned, but I'm glad to be, digging into some science and, putting the time in cause I missed the episodes a few days ago. and I'm enjoying this and setting my intentions and getting these things sort of right whilst we've got some time to reflect on them is so good.

#10 - Be kind to yourself

so anyway, hitting you up with the last rule Rule number 10, be bloody kind to yourself. Practice mindfulness and self-compassion, like when you're mindful of your progress and you practice [00:47:00] self-compassion, if you face setbacks, it's so much easier to keep going.

It's how you also build resilience because habit formation is a journey. Not every day will be perfect. Not every day will be easy, but at least we can be mindful of the fact that like it is always gonna be difficult sometimes and be self-compassionate towards ourselves.

The journey of personality and social psychology demonstrated it. Self-compassion leads to higher levels of personal wellbeing, lower levels of depression and anxiety, and the ability to come up with more resilient coping strategies in the face of stress, which is something you're going to face when you have new habits.

mindfulness techniques actually aid in breaking bad habits and help us form new ones by increasing the awareness of our triggers and the automatic behaviors that we have.

some of the reasons that people don't do this or do this wrong is that they often misunderstand mindfulness. They think that like mindfulness just has to be. Purely just meditating or that self-compassion has some kind of like passive indulgent thing. Like we just sort of get to the end of the day and be like, oh, I'm such a [00:48:00] brilliant person.

Aren't I wonderful? I'm gonna sit here for like five minutes with my like, herbal tea. And when, think about how wonderful I am, it's not exactly that. it's a bit more like gritty and just sort of accepting that you're not a perfect person and not being so lost in your ego to think that and accepting that, you can deal with some of these imperfections slowly with small improvements rather than just being like, cool, I have to like, change everything straight away.

Another issue that people don't do this is, there can be like a culture and stigma around the whole, self-compassion and things and talking about being kind to yourself can just sound like a bit wishy.

And so doing this in a way that other people can see it, can create stigma from others and make you feel like you don't wanna be clear that you're doing it. then of course the general issue that I've spoken about a lot is just that how busy our lifestyle is and how important we think all our priorities are in the whole world.

Has this, fast-paced nature inherent in modern life. Making it challenging for anyone to stop and find some mindfulness in our days.

and sure, it doesn't have to be meditation. Meditation is great. I love it. But it might be taking yourself for a [00:49:00] walk without necessarily listening to your podcast and like spending some time outside or even climbing or like cycling.

I found that can be really good ways to just sort of zone out. I also don't mind doing the house tidying and basic chores where your brain just turns off for a bit and you get to reflect and think without feeling like you're in a constant rush. that's a nice way for mindfulness and definitely a stress relief to feel like you're doing something useful.

an important part of being kind to yourself and self-compassion is that you just reduce the harsh self-criticism. And it's not that you did this wrong because you're an awful person,

is that you just have a lot on and that you may be doing too much at once, et cetera. And so without some self-awareness and some emotional regulation from some mindfulness, we can actually find it much more difficult to create new habits and maintain them

'cause these things can be stressful, emotional things like it might be very important that you have to like, that you start exercising more for your health and you can feel like real failures if we can't always do these things and that, that can be a very emotional and triggering thing for us. That actually makes us wanna like run away and like give up.

But it's okay. And we are just here to be nice to [00:50:00] ourselves and just take it all one step at a time.

Okay. So that was quite a lot of rules and things you have to get in when you're like, okay, Sam, I just wanna get better at sit-ups. Do I really need all this bloody stuff?

Bonus Rule - Don't overwhelm yourself

Well, here's my bonus rule, which, is just prioritizing. ultimately there are lots of different habits that we can be doing that we might wanna do and then actually setting up a habit and into a way it can be successful sounds from this podcast so far.

you need a lot of other habits to go with it. you need to have a journaling habit and a meditation habit, And we need our day to be perfectly organized so we can fit these things all in. Well, if you try to religiously do everything all at once perfectly on day one, that would be silly. And,

It's okay to not overwhelm ourselves with trying to do too much.

One of the most useful things we can do is, is doing less and just cutting stuff out. And you don't need to be that person that wakes up at 5:00 AM and meditates for half an hour and journals for half an hour and then yogurts for an hour

and eat some cheer seeds with the green tea before they [00:51:00] write their book, before they finally get into work at bloody midday. 'cause I've been so busy with all their bloody habits it's much more important to do just some small things that are manageable and not overwhelm ourselves.

Like yes, it helps if you can reflect on what you've been doing. Yes, it helps if you can meditate or do something mindfully, but you don't have to do all of these things straight away.

And I think what's more important from this list is that you use them now whilst we're in the holidays, to have a framework around how you think about and plan for your habits that you're going to do over the year

cause you might not need to journal every day about your running habits, but if you're using Strava you can maybe put an extra minute afterwards just to review how hard it felt and like what gear you were using, et cetera, to kind of like just learn a bit more and to have a bit of self-reflection on it.

Whilst you've got some time now, you might spend some time on Meetup, Googling different running clubs. You can join

Or talking to some of your friends who, also exercise a lot about some of the things that they did when they first started and

How you can [00:52:00] incorporate running into some of the other habits that you already do. these are some useful things to prioritize right now without trying to think about all of this all at once, every single day of the rest of your year. so importantly, don't overwhelm yourself and just prioritize like what's actually most important for you, because there's no point ruining your new habit by also trying to meditate and journal every single day around that habit

'cause that's two more habits that you have to do. and if one of them goes wrong, you'll ruin all of them. So importantly, don't overwhelm yourself. It's the holidays. It's a great time to think about who you want to be and like how you're practically gonna make that happen.

But you don't need to do too much. And if anything, I think it's better to do less.

Like I'm thinking about the things that I want to do and I really want to grow the podcast. And one of the ways that you can grow a podcast is by doing YouTube. But I have found like this year that I've spent a lot of time thinking about doing YouTube and spending time doing stuff without putting as much stuff out

and if I think about that compared to if I use that time to make better episodes, [00:53:00] I think that would actually be more beneficial right now

'cause I don't need to overwhelm myself. I don't need to do everything all at once. And it's better to do one thing really well than to try and do everything but do it kind of all right.

so try and think about whatever your habits are with that kind of mindset, if you can.

Send off

Okay. As I mentioned in the last episode, I am running my new show, how to Change the World, the History and Future of Innovation, and if you were to go ahead and subscribe to that show wherever you get your podcast, and send me a screenshot to Growth mindset podcast@gmail.com, you could win two free months of free coaching with me.

Now, in terms of habits, I think diving into the philosophy of what on earth humans are doing on the planet and how we got here is a really great habit that you can build for yourself.

To better understand everything around you and how you interact with it and what you might want to do to change the world or your own world. So I certainly look forward to catching you there.

Now, another thing you might [00:54:00] not be aware of is that as a podcaster, my love language is positive reviews and comments. So it would be a massive help to me and spring in my step if you were to feel like dropping a review. And then finally, remember, there are always endless ways that you can grow and improve yourself.

And that doesn't mean you have to put off your happiness until the next goal, and then the next goal, et cetera. Happiness and joy in life is all about being present and accepting yourself, so don't stress out too much or be in a rush to do everything all at once. It's fine. The time will present itself when you need it, .

And sometimes the best thing to do is actually nothing.

Regardless, wherever you are, you have got this, the.

Thank you so much for listening. Go you. Your consistency to reach the end of an episode is legendary, my hero. If you have any ideas or feedback for the show, I'm always interested to hear from you. You're the best studies show. We need time for information to sink in, so I'm going to give you a five [00:55:00] second pause, silence to reflect on one idea from the show before you jump back into your busy life.

Ready and go.