Why Entrepreneurs Struggle with Happiness with Joe Fier

And with this lull in these habits, I realized I was just not. I was becoming this kind of like going back to someone who I wasn't really wanting to be and hey, I'm Joe Fear and welcome to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast. This is where we talk all about building businesses so they give you the freedom and fuel for your life. I'm not here to help you build a billion dollar business, but I am here to help you create a business with systems that work for you so you can make more money than you need just by working part time. You I was a chronic hustle mode kind of guy and I want to share my experiences and mentors I've met along the way to help you reframe things to be the most effective as an entrepreneur. I wish I had this guidance and insight when I was younger. So that's what I'm doing here for you. Please share and enjoy. Hey this episode I want to talk about happiness and being self employed, an entrepreneur, going out on our own and doing our own thing because we want freedom, right? We want all of these things that we can create and kind of control our time lifestyle. Well, you know, I was reading a study and this is from an app I've been using on my Apple Watch that's called welltory W E L L T O R Y They're not sponsors or anything. I'm just, I love the app because it tracks my stress level and it gives me suggestions based on all these things, heart rate and whatnot. And there's an article I read last night that was about happiness and how basically happiness breaks down to genes are a part of it. You know, it says that 36% of our happiness is actually determined by our gen. So we can't really do a lot there it seems like. And then 10% is circumstances. And then what's interesting is 54% came out to percentage of happiness is determined by the activities that we're choosing. And as we know, you know, as entrepreneurs, that's obviously a lot of our activities that we choose to do and there's a lot going on and you know so much that I have my beautiful toddler right next to me drawing me pictures. Thank you McKenna. Keep on drawing. So you know, there's, there's all these things that we bring into our activities that really determine our happiness. There's a lot that we can't do with the gene side of things, circumstances. But with activities and our habits primarily we can control. By the looks of this study and some other Ones I've seen about 54% of our happiness and just think of what that does for our lives and the people around us and our businesses as well. So there's another part of this study here. It talks about how people who are self employed actually have self reported lower levels of happiness as compared to people who are full time employees under someone else, you know, in another business that's not their own. So that got me to thinking in terms of happiness and where I've seen it in my own life and some experiences and I talk about habits and the power of those. And I've had podcast guests like BJ Fogg, who I'm going to quote who's been on, and I think I'm going to bring him back because he's just fascinating in terms of his research into habits and his book Tiny Habits, which I highly recommend for entrepreneurs specifically. Man, this just shows you that there's so much opportunity for us to grow and for us to control our happiness, more or less. I mean, obviously we can't always be happy, but we want to strive to feel great and feel good as much as we can because we know our lives are going to reflect and be better. So in some previous episodes I talk about how I have these daily habits. There's about 10 of them that I do every single day as best I can and I average maybe 80% of the way. And there's a group, you know, Trevor and Mike, who have been Trevor Turnbull, Mike Prince, they've been on this podcast and they head up the Better man community. And on Facebook it's free. You could check them out on social media. I highly recommend them. And there's a group of us that support each other daily in a small WhatsApp group. And it's to do these daily micro actions, these habits. It's things like getting enough sleep at least seven hours. It's drinking, you know, like four big jugs of water basically a day. It's doing a hundred pushups, it's doing breath work, it's doing journaling things like that every single day. And what I noticed, and what we all noticed is we've been doing this for about four months while there's been lull, like it all kind of dropped a little bit for us and not going to go into that basically. But what I noticed with that lull when I started dropping off, hitting more like 60%, 50% and kind of just like doing it a little loosey goosey. And I did that purposely. You know, we did this as a group to, like, loosen up a bit. Well, I saw how it dramatically changed how I felt and how I acted, like, around my daughter, who's next to me still and doing an amazing drawing for us. I'm going to say it's for us, for everybody. Thank you, dear. And I was not being as calm with her or as patient. I would try to control things a little bit more. And with this lull in these habits, I realized I was just not. I was becoming this kind of, like, going back to someone who I wasn't really wanting to be. And that was a little bit more of the controlling. It was working more. It was just getting a little bit more tense in a lot of situations. And I noticed this in myself. And I have some history that I'll tell you as well about how when I get out of these habits that I feel really support my happiness and support me feeling great, it doesn't take long for me to kind of slip back into a mode that's a little bit more anxious, a little bit more stressed out, a little bit more go, go, go, feeling all the time and less grounded, less settled, and less present. And that is happiness to me. Like, feeling great is happiness. There's obviously other elements, but the fact that if I could be present and be with, let's say, my daughter, who was just with me, she's gone now from the room. Like, I would want to control that before. Be like, it's got to be perfectly quiet and can't be like, no, it's real. Like, this is life, and I want to embrace life. This is my lifestyle. I choose to do this. This is why I became an entrepreneur. So I choose, and I really need to est. Establish habits that are consistent and things that I can stick to every single day. And I'm going to tell you the solution that I feel like can help me sustain through a lull and hopefully you as well, because the power of why I'm sharing this with you is to help you with happiness. You know, we all have some kind of lull in our life, and that's going to translate to others around us in our business. So simple habits and things like I've talked about in some previous episodes are very helpful. And these habits, I've done the math. It's like, it comes out to about maybe two hours a day to do habits that are really going to sustain and make you feel great. And that's like, what I was talking about before, might even be less, but it's like a simple little workout. Do some cardio, because it's proven to help your brain and help your, you know, move that body. You're going to feel better. Things like sleep, obviously it takes more than two hours, so I'm not really counting that. But I aim for at least seven hours for you. Might be six, might be eight, who knows? Figure it out. And drinking enough water, doing pushups, doing the breath work, doing journaling, that all takes time for me. I love to play music and cook some food too. I've been into that lately. Cooking for the family, it all takes time. But you know what? When I'm putting it in there and wrapping it up as like an investment for me to live and feel great, then it's not. It doesn't feel like a cost. Like this is something I know that it's a non negotiable and this is what I need to do to live. Hey. I wanted to pause this and give a quick thanks to my friend Greg Merrilies and his team at Studio One Design. They're the ones that built my website over@hustleandflowchart.com I couldn't be happier. They nailed it. It looks so professional. They basically read my mind on the vision and they executed it beautifully. I now have a perfect offer to display. It looks super clean. I've already been getting a lot of people asking all about it and I've been referring everybody to Studio One. So they actually put together a quiz for you if you're looking to optimize your current website or build a new one as a full quiz that gives you a ton of results on how to improve and optimize what you're doing. So go complete that quiz@studio1design.com Joe. That is studio the number one design.com Joe. It'll give you a free report after you finish that quiz. He's also given away some cool bonuses. So go check it out@studio1design.com Joe and I'll just do a quick story for anybody who doesn't know my father. I'm just gonna ju he committed suicide about three years ago. It was right before my daughter was born. It was actually over three years ago. Now it's almost four years. Holy crap. It was two weeks before my daughter was born. My dad committed suicide and it rocked me, obviously. And that guy was a man of habit. I'm just going to tell you right now, he was a complete man of habit and creature of habit. And he made it very clear that he was as well. He was a runner, he was a musician, he played with music. You know, socialized. He cooked amazing food. He dreamed of cooking every single. I remember that as a, as a kid he would like wake up dreaming of what he was going to cook. I'm like, you're crazy. But that was him. And he just always felt great doing this stuff. And then there was about two years, he didn't do it anymore, kind of. He became a different person in a way. And those two years led to a downfall that obviously ended his life at the end. And it's just interesting to think of these factors. I truly believe it's these habits and it's either if they're, if you're aware of them or not, but like it's, it's pretty easy to slip out of habits and it doesn't take long to drop into a dark place, whatever that looks like to you. Not saying it's always what he did, suicide, but let's be honest, it's stressful being an entrepreneur, being self employed when everything feels like it's on your back. And this is why I'm motivated to share this with you and why this show and where things might come in the future. I'm really debating if I should write a book and maybe I'll get some feedback from you. If you feel like that's something in this topic is important to you, please let me know because I'm feeling called to write something about habits and write about it in the form of helping people who are self employed. People who feel like they are kind of doing it for themselves are, you know, not not doing it for themselves or doing it for others, but that the weight is kind of on you because as the stats say here, like most self employed people are just, they're not feeling great and there's a lot of negative daily emotions and stress and worry and anxiety and because there's just so much that we have to take on. There's a lot of things that we're thinking of all the time that a lot of employees aren't thinking about. So when it comes to habits, I truly feel like it's important to figure out what are these things that work for us and, and my solution going forward and what I even proposed to the group that I'm with is to let's figure out the 80, 20, like what's working best and like what are those non negotiable things that make us feel great. For me, it's moving my body, it's getting enough sleep. I love doing something creative, something like music or cooking, something I can express myself and Take time doing it. It's kind of meditative. If I allow myself to do that and not rush through it. And it's socializing helps as well. It's like these are non negotiables for me, don't take long, but when I do them, I know my day feels great and everything else kind of falls into place. And that's what I hope that you can figure out and kind of do the same. And I'm going to give you a couple quotes from BJ Fogg. He's been on the podcast a couple years back.

If there's something I could add to my book Tiny Habits and I tried to add it to the paperback but they wouldn't let me. It's a graphic with a big circle that says behavior. So there's the set of behaviors. Inside of that would be a smaller circle that says habits. So habits are a type of behavior. The big category is behavior. Habit is a type. A one time action is a different type. So all behaviors, whether it's a habit, a one time action, or different kinds of there's a variety of behaviors. I mapped out 15 ways behaviors can change. They all come down to these three components. Motivation to do the behavior, the ability to do the behavior, and a prompt. And all behaviors, whether there's habits or one time actions or stopping behaviors, are characterized by those three things. Motivation, ability, prompt. And that's for all people, all behaviors, all ages, all cultures. It's a universal model that I call the Fog Behavior model that has been the foundation of my work since 2000 and 22,007. And that is what inspired and led to the Tiny Habits method, was looking at my own model and understanding that in a new way. I'll just give an example. Where does motivation fit in? Ideally you find, let's say that you want to get more fit. Ideally you find an exercise you already want to do. There are dozens and dozens of ways to get more fit. And this is part of the system and part of what I describe. And so you don't just assume you have to run for an hour a day. Ideally you find a new behavior or habit that you want to do where the motivation's already built in. For me in my life, when I'm living in Maui, which is half the time it's surfing. I don't have to motivate myself to go surfing. When I'm here in California right now, I love rowing on hydro. It is so fun and awesome and I love it. And so that's the best approach, the best system is to find whether it's weight loss or sleeping better or being more productive is matching yourself with behaviors that will take you to that outcome, but behaviors you already want to do. So you can then check the box on motivation. Say, bam, I already want to do this. Then it's the ability thing. How do I make this easier to do? And make it easier to do? And then all you're left with is prompt. And you say, okay, what's going to prompt me to do this? And in the Tiny habits way, you use an existing routine, something you already want to do, something you already do to be your prompt. Like brushing is the prompt for flossing, for example.

I'm going to read this and this is actually from my podcast bot. If you have not used it, it's over@hustleandflowchart.com bot b o t. That's hustleandflowchart.com bot. And essentially this thing aggregates all the information from this podcast and you can ask it questions about any problems or ask it about a specific episode. So I basically prompted and said, hey, give me some good BJ Fogg quotes. And here's the thing, like BJ Fogg, before I read this, he's a Tiny Habits is his book. And the whole thing is that he talks about habit stacking and the fact that you can take something you're already doing or something that's kind of naturally in your routine and you could stack a good habit behind that. So like if you're looking to floss your teeth more often, well, you're probably brushing your teeth at least every day or two times a day. Well, stack the flossing right afterwards and then celebrate it if you actually do it. He said the celebration is, is really what locks it in. And that's key. And he quotes this is a quote at least my bot is telling me is a quote from my own podcast. So I'm trusting it says celebration is really a powerful thing. And that's what I remember is that is a lock it in moment. It's like a fist pump. Hell yeah. And that's just it feels good. And he also quoted, and this is another quote says people change by feeling good, not by feeling bad. And that's true. And I've read that in a lot of other places too, and I believe it. We feel better when we change and we actually lock something in when we feel good. It's not when we're brute forcing it stressed out. It's when we're calm, collected, and actually understanding what we're doing. And then we realize, oh crap, we're in control of this thing. So locks it in. And that's why we want to celebrate when we do these actions that we know are making us feel good in life. And he also quoted another quote it pulled out here. It says the most effective habit changes are the ones that are easiest to do. And this is where it goes back to the habits. And I was in my lull of maybe 60% of my habits, my daily micro actions, I realized I'm like, well maybe some of these just aren't non negotiables. So what are those ones? The ones that are kind of sticking? The ones that feel like they're part of me, the things like moving my body, sleeping. Because I just know it feels better when I do that and play music. Like it's just, I love it, it's, it's so good. But when I don't do it, I just feel like I'm like, yeah, I'm like robbing myself of something. So. But maybe that's not the easiest ones. Maybe it's things like flossing, you know, it's stacked behind a brushing teeth. There's, there's certain things that, and that might not lead to happiness so much, but it could point is, make it easy, easy and find out what is really a strain or what supports you the most when it comes to these daily actions. And I guess I'll leave it there. And BJ Fogg, I really love his approach and the fact that he's trying to make it simple and that's really what it should come down to. And these microhabits, these daily actions, they obviously if you drop them and especially if they're the ones that are really supporting your happiness, I mean they could lead you to a very dark place. And I don't want that for anyone. And as entrepreneurs, self employed folks listening here, I mean we got it. We're choosing a path that's tougher than most and we're really hard on ourself a lot of times. And a lot of times it's not self imposed. But the thing that can be self imposed is if we establish these really good habits for ourself and do them daily and track them and know that you're doing it for you first. So this, it's like Goggins, he talks about create a mission statement for yourself and get the hell up and go do it for you. Like jump out of bed and be motivated, whatever that is. And for me it's usually breath work and Then moving my body right there in the morning because I know that sets me up in emotion. Those are non negotiables. So figure out what those are for you. And if you want some support, I genuinely think, and this is more of like a geared for a men's group, but let's be honest, like, like I'm gonna urge these guys to open it up for women too or figure out some kind of solution. But the whole thing is even if you're a woman, you can, you can benefit from going here and getting their resources. So I highly recommend going over to the Better man community on Facebook because they have some free resources. It's a free group as well. But go over there. There's a whole bunch of these micro actions that they recommend. And if you want to go listen to some episodes, from those guys to Trevor Turnbull is one of the episodes. And then Mike Prince. Those two guys created this community and I'm a part of them. And we talk about these habits. I talk about some other episodes too. So if you want to get some ideas of how to implement these things, I mean those are definitely great resources for you and I would love your thoughts if you want to know more about this because I definitely have a lot more thoughts and I think I'll share more episodes on this topic as well because I really want self employed entrepreneur folks, really everyone to find more happiness for themselves and sustain that happiness. I think that's the big, biggest thing is sustaining this. It's not just a big pop, it's a sustaining type of thing. So let's do this together. You're not alone. And thank you for listening. Check ya later. Bye. All right, all right, that's what I got for you today. And remember, it's not all about living to work. It's all about working to live if you need to do the work. But you know, work can be fun and it should be fueling for your life. So if you enjoyed what you just heard, if you got some nuggets of wisdom that you want to share or you're just noodling on right now, please go tell others. The way that people find this show and how you can help others get their aha moments is through word of mouth. So if it is telling your friend, telling your family, send an email to your list writing a review or whatever it might be. Everything helps. So thank you so much for listening to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast and I will see you next time.