Triggered - How To Create New Habits To Move You Forward

Most people spend their entire life stressed without ever giving a single thought as to what it is they really want or what's important to them. See, I'm here to cut through all that noise, connecting you to yourself and the life that you were meant to live. I used to slave away at a corporate job that I hated, but I broke through the social norms and pursued my passion. As a result, I own my own coffee company, I'm espresso sommelier and I get to travel the world. You too can live a life that you love, but it starts with getting clear about what you want. It starts with a new decision. I'm your host, Donnie Rouse and you are listening to the podcast One Life Habits. In order for us to make any progress in any category of our life, it's going to require us to take on and create new habits. But what exactly is a habit and what is it composed of? In order for you to break through and create new habits that are going to empower you, it's very important to understand how they're formed. It's like what's the recipe of a habit? So our three elements of a habit, it is the cue that is the trigger that puts you into a response. Secondly, there's the routine. The routine is the action that you go into. And then lastly is the reward. And the reward is the reason why you're doing it in the first place. Right? Because if it was something was painful, if you didn't benefit in some way from an action, whether it be physical, mental or emotional, then you would abandon the habit altogether. So that's why it's extremely important to look at what it is that you want that may not feel good and look at it and say, okay, well in order for me to repeat this pattern, there has to be something that's, there's something that I'm holding onto. And sometimes on the emotional level, it could literally just be getting attention and self love for yourself. So let me give you an example. I'm going to tell you a story from my own life to tell you how one, you can create new habits and secondly, how you can create a piggyback, which is a way of taking a positive habit you have, then piggyback something else on there that you could that just ensures that you follow through with the habit. So we'll start with the piggybacking. So I have been, I released my one life blueprint and I'm teaching people this philosophy on how to go about creating your life. And the most important part of this course, after You've created this vision for all the. All the categories of your life. The most important thing for you to do after that is to look at those visions, right? Because the visions are what connect you emotionally to what it is that you want. Connecting to those visions is what inspires you to take the action. So there's something that has to happen before that, right? Because now you have to get. You have to have a trigger, some routine that gets you to follow through and make sure that you're just looking at these visions for your life. And I experienced this firsthand with, when I was creating this, that it was always a problem for me because I'm like, well, I have this thing, and I know when I'm looking at it that it feels great. It reminds me of what it is I'm going after. And it has the ability to literally pull me right out of any funk that I'm in. But then why wasn't I doing it? Like, why was I going, you know, why would I sit in that uncomfortable spot for days and sometimes even weeks without looking at the blueprint? And then I started looking into habits, and I was like, well, you know, it's just that I know the benefit I get from it, but I haven't routined the. Made it a routine to look at that. And I was like, well, how can I make that routine again, looking at the cues, the things that you're doing. And I realized, well, you know, in order for me to make it easy, I have to attach it. I gotta piggyback it on something that I'm already doing. So I looked at my morning routine. I thought about first of, when is it that I wanna look at my blueprint to get inspired and to remind me of all the reasons why I'm doing what I'm doing, all the visions that I'm going for. Well, I mean, two times, right? There's one, doing it in the morning. So this way you're reminded and you feel fresh. And then secondly, when you go to sleep, those are the two best times to program your mind. And so I normally have this book on my desk. But here's the thing. Like, when I'm getting ready to go to sleep or when I'm waking up, I am not going to my desk. So I was like, okay, well, then what do I do in the morning? I was like, okay, well, you know, what I do is I wake up, I journal, I drink my water, and then I start my day. So I was like, all right, well, okay, let's start doing it. Just with the water. So I tried using that as my. The water as my trigger. And I did the water. And I would notice that sometimes when I would do in the morning and evening, like in the evening I would, I have like a. I'll drink a hot tea and I'll sit by my bed in a chair and I'll meditate for 15 minutes and then I go to sleep. And in the morning I sit in a different chair and I'll have like a hot lemon, hot lemon water. And I'll. I'll do some journaling there. Two different chairs, right? So I put the. This notebook next to the one that. Where I would use it in the morning, but I wouldn't look at it in the evening, so I would overlook it. And then, so I was like, all right, well how do I again, how do I go about making sure that I look at this morning, day and night? Change your routine. I now meditate in the morning and evening and do my journaling all from the same chair. It might sound simple, but it's, you know, it's the simple things that we often forget. And I want you to realize that this was something that I was struggling with for a while, just trying to maintain because I knew the reward, but I just hadn't developed a routine on it. And there was no cue. Now the cue is when I immediately, right when I start to sip my water, I see that book in front of me and I know the very next thing is for me to visit the visions for my life. And I'll give you one more example. So the next example I'm going to give you is, is with regard to creating a new teen, I had this emotional trigger where I would go, you know, it'd be wherever it was. Maybe going into a store where I can see somebody like, maybe like a gentleman who's bigger than me. And all of a sudden I go into like the self judgment mode. It's like a. It's like the spiral like that, you know, I'm weaker or there's a lot of internal dialogue. And it would literally, once I started, got on that ride, it would just bring me down and down and down. I mean, if you saw my face, you could see me going, and like the energy's just being sucked out of me. And I said, well, all right, well what can I create? So that is like, well, first of all, let's understand what is the cue and whose cue was like someone who was bigger than me, like, you know, like more maybe could be muscular, could be fatter. It could be anything. Like, just someone who is bigger in size than me. And often it had something to do with the look on their face. Like, if they looked like they were disgruntled and like, in angry, they would. It would put me in that state. So I knew what the cue was. And so the next thing is to change the routine. So the routine I would go into then is like, I was looking for different questions, like, well, what can I say that remind me and bring me to a place that I want to go? And then I started thinking about asking myself different questions to bring something else in. Like, all right, like, trying to remember. Like, trying to remember something about myself that I'm proud of, but it wasn't trigger. And then I said, you know what? I'm no different than anybody else. We're all the same. And then when I would condition that and I would also step into a bold state, meaning step into a bold. In remembering this truth, I would feel good. And then I celebrate the fact that I actually took the action, especially at the end of the day in my journal, I would celebrate the actions I took to reinforce them. Now, this is a very, very basic thing, and it could be. You can use this in any way in your life. When I talk. When I was doing. Talking about the health category to people in the program, they would. They asked me, well, what is your. Like, how do you prevent yourself from. From cheating? And, like, you know, maybe eating at night? I said, well, at night it's easy. Like, sometimes I used to. I used to want to go to the cabin. I used to want to pull out as Oreo cookies, and I would sit there and I would just start dunking away. But I knew that if I. There were certain things I do, like when I went for those, and I wanted something sweet, right? The really. What I was looking for was I wanted something sweet. That was that. The cue was that. And then I would. I would go for the Oreos because I really like Oreos. But instead what I did was I changed the routine. Instead of having Oreos, I would go to having a grapefruit because it satisfied that same desire for sweetness. But once I had a grapefruit one, I was pleased. It gave me the reward that I wanted. And then also after having a grapefruit juice, if you've ever had grapefruit juice or drink, like, drink lemon juice straight, you know, after having something that acidic and tart, you don't want anything else in your. Like, you don't want to put anything else in your body. After that. So after that I would be like, you know what? I don't really, really want Oreos anymore. And then I would go to sleep. Now whether or not that's, you know, I don't know if grapefruit juice is, you know, does contain more sugar. Maybe it's not the best thing to do at night. I'm not sure. It could be lemon water, I don't know what it could be. But anything that you can put in place that will trigger a different response. And then the reward comes from. It could come from the pleasure of the thing or it could come from the pleasure of knowing that you took action and just like that pat on your own back and that applauding to yourself. But you just have to remember to do it. So let's go over like, let's recap everything I just mentioned. So we mentioned about habits. Alright, what exactly is a habit? Habits are gonna composed of three things. Cues, routines and rewards. In order for you to replace a habit with something more powering, you have to understand what the cue is, right? If you get stressed out and then first thing you do is you got to get, you want to go to the refrigerator and start binge eating. You got to understand what is the stressor, like what is the response that you're doing and then trigger a different response that you have to swap it out. You can't just eliminate a response. You got to swap and give yourself something more empowering that will give you the reward that you want. Like think of the satisfaction of turning to like going. Same thing I just mentioned going to the grapefruit juice and then giving yourself that pat on the back, realizing that you took a step that's gonna reap your rewards in the long term, small step over time, big rewards. And then lastly we covered about piggybacking habits. What can we do? How can we remember to do something? And it comes from linking up to something that we already do in the example I gave is I did a, I did, you know, I put like my water right next to my journal, next to my blueprint book. This way I knew that every time I would journal, every time I sat in that chair I would look at my like my blueprint and then that was it and then the routine was done. So that is, I hope this helps you. I mean we're in a new year, we're in 2024 right now. And everybody wants to create, you know, new, empowering, healthier habits for their life to go after and to achieve their dreams. But the problem is that a lot of people don't have the knowledge of what exactly a new routine is because your life is made up of your habits. So if you want to change your life, you got to understand how to change your habits. So I hope this gave you some insight and just maybe gave you some inspiration to try switching some of those habits so that you could, you know, you could step forward in the year a lot more congruent, a lot more just with more routine and more congruence. So that's all I got for you guys today. I hope you enjoyed this. If you did, please share this with five people. And thank you so much for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed this. I hope that it enriches your life in some way. And if you have any questions or would like to comment, you can visit my website@www.donnyrouse.com. again, www. O n n y r a u s.com God bless you guys. Thank you so much for tuning in. Remember, you only get one life. Live fully, live passionately, and most of all, live now. God bless you guys.