https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gdkBt9it84
[Music] it’s not that luck and Randomness and uncertainty don’t play a role in life they do you know luck luck is a part of all of our Lives to a certain degree both good fortune and bad but by definition 00:00:18
you don’t have control over luck and your habits also matter and I think that the reason they’re so worthwhile uh to focus on and understand is that they are the portion of your life that you can influence that also determines your outcomes it’s not just luck it’s not just habits but one
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of those you have control over and so it makes sense the only reasonable strategy is to focus on what you can control if you spend all of your time focusing on things you can’t control then you’re just going to end up frustrated and so I think habits are maybe the best lever for that talent
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and genes uh they play a role and it’s important you know people have natural predispositions to things that make them better but what you find is that nearly always when someone is a great performer in a particular domain they are both Well Suited so naturally talented or have some
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kind of predisposition to that area and well trained and so even if you are talented you can’t succeed without having great habits to to execute and to fully realize the potential that you have your outcomes in life are often a lagging measure of your habits you know like
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a lot of the time people talk about you know I want to have more money or I want to lose weight or I want some kind of result but the truth is your bank account is a lagging measure of your financial habits your weight is a lagging measure of your eating habits your knowledge is a lagging
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measure of your learning and reading habits and so it’s actually we think the thing that needs to change is the bank account or the test score or the number on the scale but actually the thing that needs to change are the habits that precede those outcomes every action you take is kind of
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like a vote for the type of person you want to become and if you can Master the right actions if you can Master the right habits then you can start to cast votes for this new identity this desired person that you want to be and I think that’s one of the reasons why small habits
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matter so much they don’t necessarily transform your life overnight right right away like doing one push-up does not transform your body but it does cast a vote for being the type of person who doesn’t miss workouts or meditating for one minute might got not give you an immediate sense
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of calm in your life but it does cast a vote for being a meditator the real goal is not to run a marathon the goal is to become a runner goal is not to write a book the goal is to become a writer because once you’ve adopted that identity you’re really not even pursuing Behavior change anymore
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you’re just kind of acting in alignment with the type of person you already see yourself to be it’s kind of like true Behavior changes really identity change because once you’ve changed that internal story it’s way easier to show up each day you’re not even really motivating yourself
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that much to do it you’re just like this is who I am now there’s a sort of an a misalignment of rewards that often happens with habits so there’s an immediate outcome an immediate reward and then an ultimate reward and for your bad habits one reason bad habits stick so readily that they they
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form so easily is because bad habits often the immediate reward is favorable right like what’s the immediate reward of eating a donut it’s kind of great it’s sweet it’s sugary it tastes good it’s only the ultimate reward if you repeat that habit for six months or a year or two years that
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is unfavorable meanwhile good habits are often the exact opposite the immediate reward of going to the gym or going to the gym for like a week isn’t really that great your body’s probably sore you don’t have much to show for it your body looks the same your weight hasn’t really changed but it’s if
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you stick to that for six months or a year or two years then the ultimate reward is favorable and so a lot of the balance or a lot of the challenge of building good habits and Breaking Bad Ones is figuring out how to pull the long-term costs of your bad habit habits into the present moment so
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you feel a little bit of that pain right now and have a reason to avoid it and pull the long-term rewards of your good habits into the present moment so it feels good and you have a reason to kind of make it through that like valley of death in the beginning and stick with it while you’re
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waiting for those delayed rewards to accumulate I think we could just summarize that whole uh cognitive bias or mismatch uh misalignment of rewards by saying the cost of your good habits is in the present and the cost of your bad habits is in the future and the fact that we prioritize
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the present over the future ends up making a lot of habit change difficult for that reason if I was going to give some practical takeaways uh I would say first thing that you can do is probably optimize your environment because sometimes that’s all you need to do so might
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as well start there and then maybe it’ll take care of itself you know like I mentioned putting the apples in a bowl on the counter that was all I need to do and then the habit of eating apples every day was done uh or maybe uh you know putting your TV inside a
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wall unit or something maybe that’ll be enough to reduce it or curb the The Habit unsubscribe from the food blogs and now you’re not tempted to eat as many cookies or something like that um mobile phone super important yes right things like that removing the the applications or like
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you deleting Instagram off your phone well that was enough now your Instagram habit is roughly where you want it to be and you just look on the desktop instead of on your phone and that that was enough and now you’re you’re fixed so environment design good place to start next
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thing that I would recommend is the two minute Rule and scaling your habits down making them as easy as possible basically just down scale it to a point where you can answer the question can I stick to this habit 98 of the time without fail no matter what the conditions and if you have
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to say no to that then it’s probably too big to start so you know pretty much every habit has an entry point uh or the first thing that you try to do just focus on mastering that and uh I think that’s a good place to focus and then building off of that the the last one that I recommend is
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um there’s this great story that I mentioned in the book about Twyla Tharp the famous dance choreographer and instructor and she trains for still even now she trains for two hours a day she’s you know 50s 60s she’s been training for a long time dancing her whole
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career but she doesn’t actually focus on the exercise habit The Habit that she focuses on building is I put on my workout clothes and my sweatshirt and I hail the cab on the side of the street and if I’ve done that then I’ve completed the habit and I think the the Insight
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that she realized is that habits are often the entry point not the end point they’re the cab not the gym they’re like an entrance ramp to the bigger routines in your life and if you can master that habit that like little decisive moment that determines what happens
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in the next chunk of time then the rest of it kind of Falls in line like I have this moment each morning where either I open up Evernote and I start writing the next article I’m going to work on or I go to ESPN to check the latest sports news and what happens in the next hour
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is really determined by what happens in the first like 30 seconds because if I go to ESPN then the next hour is kind of shot but if I start writing the article if I master that entry point then I’m kind of speeding in the right direction and the momentum carries me into the rest of the
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task and I think that for me that’s a little bit inspiring when it comes to building habits because what you realize is that there’s actually not that much to change there may be five or ten of those little decisive moments those little entry points throughout your day that determine whether
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the next chunk of time is productive or not and if you can organize your environment or join a community or restructure your habits so that those entry points are mastered then you’re much more likely to live a good productive day and so I think that those three things environment design
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scale your habits down and master the entry points those are some really good places to start foreign [Music] the information in this video comes from the Fantastic book Atomic Habits by James Clear this book is jam-packed with simple tools that you can apply to change your habits and
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dramatically improve your life right now you can listen to Atomic habits on Audible which has the world’s largest library of audiobooks and makes it incredibly easy to digest the material while you are working exercising gardening or on the go I use it all the time while drawing these animations
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let audible help you discover new ways to laugh Be Inspired or be entertained new members can try it free for 30 days visit audible.com after skool or text after skool to 500-500 that’s audible.com after skool or text after skool to 500 500 to try audible free for 30 days [Music]
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