PNTV: Superhuman by Habit by Tynan (#123)

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to Philosopher's Notes tv. Today we've got a great book, Superhuman by Habit by Tynan. Superhuman by Habit. Now, I randomly found this book, looking for another book on Amazon, bought it and then I saw that this cover, which I thought was pretty cool, in the title Superhuman by Habit. Who doesn't want to be superhuman by habit? So picked it up. Glad I did. It's an extraordinary little manifesto on how to apply all the ideas we talk about in habit building and willpower, etcetera, In a really concise, inspiring, fun, practical how to manual that I highly recommend. It's really, really good. We'll be talking a lot more about willpower and we've got a number of these episodes coming up on Willpower, the willpower instinct, the talent code, Talent is overrated, all that stuff. But this little book does a great job of making all that come to life. So let's look at five of my favorite big ideas. We'll start with what is a habit? What is a habit? Well, Tyneman tells us that a habit is an outfit of none wears, of course. And in addition to that, a habit is a set of behaviors that are just on autopilot. We just do them without having to think about it. And he makes the great distinction, whereas willpower is finite, so you only have a certain amount of willpower to use in any given day. You can only get yourself to do so many different things in any given day. And what you want to do is use that limited amount of willpower to create habits. And everyone who we admire has habits. They're consistent on their fundamentals. That's how Robin Sharma describes it when he studies greatness. What he sees is people manifest greatness in different ways, but they're all consistent on their fundamentals. Their fundamentals are different whether they're an athlete or a musician or an entrepreneur or CEO. But they all are consistent on their fundamentals. They become superhuman by habit. So we want to use our finite willpower to create habits that are then set on autopilot. So we need to think about it. You don't want to negotiate with yourself every single day about whether you're going to meditate or exercise or whatever. It's big idea number one. Big idea number two is do not, don't miss a day. Not even one. Consistency is huge. Tyen makes a strong recommendation to set up habits you can do daily, not weekly or every third day or whatever. Those are easy to kind of get out of a rhythm on. You want to set daily goals Daily habits that you can be consistent on and not miss a day, period. He tells a great story about a friend of his who was asking him, okay, well, what do you do if you miss a day? He says, well, look, if I miss a day, then literally I schedule that activity that I missed today as the most important thing the next day. And his friend says, well, but what if you miss two days? He says, I don't miss two days, period. I absolutely just don't miss two days. I just loved the intensity with which he communicated that. He basically says, look, if you miss two days, you might as well start over again. Don't miss a day. And if you miss a day, make getting back on board with that habit the most important thing you do the next day. Never, absolutely ever miss two days in a row. Not if you're serious about building a habit. Really, really cool idea. Third one is use your mistakes. Now, obviously we're not going to do this perfectly. We're going to fall short again and again and again and again and again and again. That's just part of the process. But we want to use our mistakes. And he has this great line which is similar to what we talked about in our episode on mindset, fixed versus growth mindset. He says, look, don't tell yourself, I am bad at this. I am bad at this. That's not a healthy way to orient to our mistakes. That's a fixed mindset orientation. That's saying that I am unequivocally bad at something. He says, we need to say to ourselves, I am. This pen is not quite working. I am better than this. Exclamation point, exclamation point. So don't. When you have a mistake, don't say to yourself, I am bad at this. I should just give up. I can't meditate, I have no willpower, etc. That's not helpful. Fixed mindset, not going to grow. What you want to do is have a growth mindset. I am better than this. That behavior isn't my best. I can do better than this. That's a really powerful distinction. A huge way that we want to engage or a very important way that we want to engage in, in the process of creating habits, becoming superhuman. That's our third idea. Focus on process is our fourth idea. So let's say you want to lose weight. If you want to stress yourself out, hop on the scale every single day and measure your progress by the results you're getting. Measure your progress by the results you're getting. If you want to Stress yourself out and make the results as short term as you possibly can. It's a great recipe to stress yourself out, be all about results and all about immediate results, right? And then you're going to give up your habit immediately because you're not going to see the results you want to see as fast as you want to see them. You're going to say it's not working, you're going to give up. Tynan makes the brilliant recommendation to focus on process, not the actual progress or the results. Right? So if you're looking to lose weight, don't step on the scale and use that as your measure and obsessed about that. Focus on your process. Are you doing what you said you would do to lose weight? Are you eating a certain way or have you cheated on that? Well, focus on that and get better at your process and let the outcome be a natural byproduct of your commitment to the practice, to the process. It's a huge distinction. Again, focus on the process. If you want to become superhuman by creating awesome habits, if you want to stress yourself out, focus on the results and make them huge and make them need to happen immediately. It's an awesome recipe, alright. And the final big idea here is we're whipping through these negative habits. So there are a lot of positive habits you can build. My fundamentals are, as you know, if you've watched many of these or read the philosopher's notes. Exercise. You couldn't pay me to not exercise. Nutrition, I eat whole foods, not refined foods, not complicated, and rest. Those are my fundamental three exercise, nutrition and rest. I also train my mind via meditation and do a bunch of other things. Those are my core fundamentals. They're just non negotiable. Creativity goes into that, etc, etc. Etc. But we also need to identify what are our negative habits. So we want to create positive habits, obviously, but we also want to pay attention to the negative habits, the things that are just destroying us, leaking energy. And if you're human, you have negative habits, what are yours? What are the habits that you engage in that you just know aren't serving? You probably don't need to think too hard about one or two or three of those that come to mind. Well, figure out when a good time is to eliminate those negative habits and replace them with a positive habit. Tiny goes off about identifying the triggers of when you start to do your negative habit and then replace, notice that trigger and then replace the behavior you take with a more positive behavior. We're not going to go into that right now. But I want you to focus on what can you remove from your life. For me, as I get into this turning pro, creating, studying, embodying, teaching mode, I have noticed how much more productive I am when I eliminate my online time. Just dramatically reduce it. I get rid of email completely email two people basically on our team to do things and move it forward. But I'm not on all day and it's very, very restricted. That was a negative habit for me jumping into my email all the time. That's a fantastic way to make sure you never get anything done that's truly meaningful and impactful. Then if you all got different ones that don't serve us, Another big one for me is staying up late at night. I don't do well when I stay up late at night so I have a digital sunset. I've replaced it with a new set of habits that are huge with what are your negative habits? Remove them. What's a habit? It's now fitted non wears. It's also something you create by using willpower wisely and then moving forward. Don't miss a day, be consistent and definitely don't miss two days in a row. Use your mistakes to your benefit. Look at it and say I am better than this. Not I am bad at this. I am bad at this. Is not helpful at all. I am better than this. Growth mindset, not fixed mindset. I think Emerson just joined us. Hi buddy. Focus on process. You want to stress yourself out. Focus on results that will stress you out every single time. Immediate near term results, not helpful. Focus on process. Are you practicing the ideas that you said you would do? Get better at that. Let the results take care of themselves. Negative habits, get rid of yours, install new better positive habits and go on and crush it and become superhuman by habit. Thank you Tynan for the great book. Hope you enjoyed this. Quick look. What was the big idea that really landed? Think about that. Apply it to your life. Move from theory to practice and let's do this. Hope you enjoyed. Look forward to sharing more with you soon. Have another awesome day. See you.