Habits To Manifest & Attract All You Desire In 2023 EP 1366

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And I wanted to ask you about habits and manifesting anything that an individual wants in their life. There's a lot of people watching and listening who want to attract things. They want to attract the right relationships. They want to manifest better health. They want to feel more fulfilled. They want to earn more. All these different things. They want to be in the right career or opportunities. And I'm curious, are there some key habits that you've practiced, studied over the last 15 years of your research and writing? and implemented and tested that have been instrumental in attracting the things you want in life. And if so, what are those key habits?

Yeah, well, the first part of that answer is gonna be so basic and boring that everyone's gonna be like, yeah, I already know that, but not everybody actually does it. So, the first part is just a foundation of like just good health, just really taking care of yourself, just that kind of foundation where it's just like, I am good. if you don't have that, you know, if you're really just like working too hard, you're not resting, you're not taking care of yourself, you're not sleeping, what happens is you're just kind of on this like shaky foundation and we can't really leap off of a shaky foundation. And so you have to have that down. So that's just the simple things like sleep, exercise, eating well, meditation, and then another thing that I just think of is just like self-care, like are you taking care of yourself?

Yeah.

That's the first one, yeah.

First one and those are so fundamental and yet we ignore them so much. Flossing would be another one. You know, these little things like where and if people think like I have that down, I would invite them to like look at like where else can I actually really solidify that foundation? Is there some place where it's a little bit off? Because the next phase that you look at, it's if you don't have that down, like you're really ignoring the thing that's going to make the rest of it solid. It's like a kid who knows that they've got love from their mom. They can go out, run and explore and feel that confidence, but if they don't have that solid base of a secure base, they're going to be constantly looking back. And that's how we are with our habits. And another one is really being present to your emotions, which, you know, It's not a thing that we're taught as guys, I think, when we're first growing up. But really understanding what's coming up in me as I move forward in the world. As I go through relationships and go through my job, am I feeling shaky? Am I feeling scared? Am I feeling angry? A lot of us don't own our anger. We don't even know that it's there. We pretend that we're just these calm, peaceful people. We never get angry.

We don't own our anger, is that what you say?

We don't own our anger.

What does that mean?

So, like, so for me, I was taught by my dad that anger is dangerous. He was angry, he was just anger just spewing all over us, and so that he, you know, he just let himself be angry all the time, and I learned that was dangerous because I saw how it was for me, my mom and my sisters. And so I'm like, okay, Don't do that.

It didn't feel safe.

No, so I just always told myself, if you're feeling anger, turn it into something else. So I can't ever feel anger. So that's one way that guys do it. And the other way is they do it like my dad, which is basically, I'm angry, everyone else around me better look out. I'm just gonna like hurt people through that anger. I'm gonna spew it all over people, make them feel like crap. Those are the usual two ways, and neither of those is actually owning the anger. So only anger is right in the middle where you're like, I can feel anger. It's okay to feel it. I am okay to express it in my body, but I'm not okay with directing it at someone and just like having it be hurting them. I'm gonna go take care of my anger. I'm gonna learn something from that and bring that to the person.

So it's acknowledging that you're experiencing or feeling anger or frustration in the moment, not responding or reacting to it in a negative way, Processing it in a healthy way, figuring out how can I process this self-soothe, talk to someone about it so that it doesn't spew on everyone else. And it doesn't also hurt yourself because when we feel anger consistently, the nervous system gets wired up, we're in stress mode, we're not able to flow as much. Is that right?

That's right. Yeah. So taking care of your emotions is something as simple as breathing and getting present to what's there. you and I both have dived into mindfulness. And so that's a big component of it, is just really being present to the physical sensations of emotions in your body. And it's not that they're bad, we don't have to make them wrong, but could I just be aware that I'm feeling stuff? And does it take any kind of a priority? Does it matter? Could I give myself permission to feel stuff?

You know, there's something I've learned recently about the language we use around emotions too. I used to say to myself a lot, I am angry. Even if it was for a moment, I'm angry. And I started to learn through just kind of like healing therapies over the last few years to say, I'm experiencing anger, I'm experiencing frustration, or I'm feeling anger, feelings. And distancing, not saying that I am, meaning anger is embodied in me, it's part of me. As opposed to saying, okay, it's something I'm experiencing right now, but it's not who I am. That's right. That's right. I think if we can start shifting our language around these things, you know?

Yeah.

As opposed to saying, I'm sad, I am tired. It's like your body is gonna connect with that language, saying this is who you are, not what you're experiencing.

Because these emotions come and go.

That's right, like the weather. Exactly. But if you say, this is who I am, I am sad, Right. Your body's gonna think that you're a sad person all the time.

You just identify with it and that becomes your self image.

Exactly. So I think it's be, you know, we gotta be intentional about the language we use around feeling and expressing these emotions so that it can come and go and we can get back to a healthy state, a conscious state. So the first one is be in great health so that you have good energy and you can show up in the world in a positive way. And the second one is be present to your emotions.

Yeah, and that's really an extension. It's like at the next level of taking care of yourself. Like I take care of my health and all of these basic things. Am I taking care of my environment? Am I taking care of my finances? These are all an extension of taking care of yourself. So finances is another habit that I would say, like, are you actually taking care of things? Do you know where your money is? Do you know where your debt is? Do you know your plan to take care of that? That's a whole is the whole area, right? But it's a simple habit of taking care of your life, taking care of yourself. And we've all seen people who are leaders who don't have some parts of their lives taken care of. That's not wrong. We're human, right? But know what it's like to be led by someone who they've got a huge mess over that they're not taking care of, and you could feel that really draining their energy or They don't know how to take care of their emotions. So that just gets all over us and that's where they're leading from. And so when a leader is not taking care of their life, taking care of themselves, their emotions, their finances, their physical space, and you're someone who I can see as a really good model of that, as I walked into this studio, you could see that you take care of your physical space, of the people around you, of your work.

Right.

And that's a model that we need because people are leading from a place of like, I haven't taken care of this stuff yet. And if you haven't, that's what everyone else starts to replicate. It's kind of like, you know, when.

You'Re in school and I don't know, did you go to school or were you homeschooled?

I went to school.

My kids are homeschooled, is what you're referring to. But when you went to school as a kid, I remember it was hard for me to get homework done if I had a messy room. Yeah. It was like, okay, I could always know that my room is messy and I'm distracted because there's a mess somewhere. It's like once I organized my space, my environment, I felt like I had the space and the freedom and the clarity to focus a little bit better. I struggled as a student so everything was challenging for me even if it was clean, but in general, it's kind of that feeling like, oh, my bed's messy, my room's messy, my finances are messy, my health is messy. That's right. And it's a distraction from you going out and running into the world, you.

Know, knowing that there's safety behind you. Yeah, that's right. It's hard to be fully focused, fully put your energy into something when it's like, All of this stuff, you can feel that around you. That it's a great example.

What's another good habit to attract and manifest what you want?

Well, I'm just going to make a caveat to the other stuff because you can see how that could be taken too far where it becomes a problem. Like I have to take care of everything around me. Yeah, a little bit of like compulsion where it's like before I can do any kind of work, I have to make sure everything is perfect. So I want to just caution people.

That-- because that can be a distraction and a story you tell yourself, I can't take action until this. I can hold you back.

Yeah, and what we've talked about is a lifetime of work. All my finances have to be in order before I start my business?

No.

Like, no, of course you and I both know that's not true, but a.

Lot of people-- I wouldn't be here if that was the case.

Me neither. Yeah, and a lot of people use that as an excuse or a rationalization to not move forward. and what I'm saying is it's a lifetime practice to take care of these foundational habits. So don't let that stop you. Move forward and you'll be continually deepening into that.

Yeah, yeah, be okay with it being imperfect. That's right. It doesn't have to be perfect before you take action. And I think, again, I would not be here if I had to have everything perfect before I started. I leapt with the mess, with the health challenges, with the messy apartments I left, and started to organize as I grew because I realized to get to the next level, you gotta clean up certain things in your life, otherwise you'll stay stuck at that level. So it's just being aware and mindful and in tune with what's happening in your life. Okay, I like that. So what's another habit for manifesting or attracting what you want?

Well, one, as you asked that, I love the framework of that question. One is just actually asking yourself what you want. and you might think that's so basic just because you've been doing it for so long, most people don't even do that. They go to their job, they do what's told, and they just do what they think they need to do, what you should be doing. And none of us are, we're not really taught from an early age to like ask, what do I want? No one asks you, do you want to go to school? Do you want to do this work? You're like, no, I'm just gonna do it. And if you ever tell them, no, I want to go play and have ice cream, They're like, Nope, you can't have that. And so that's painful and we learn to actually suppress our wants. So if you actually want to manifest what you want, you have to first get in touch with what you want. So just, you know, things like, you know, vision boards or just like writing a vision or journaling what you want. Getting in touch with your desire and giving yourself permission to actually want something. For some people, that's a whole edge right there. is like actually asking yourself what you want. And I would, I had a friend who every January would take at least a week to go in on retreat and he would take his favorite books that helped him with this and he would ask, what do I want in my whole life and what do I want this year? And then start to break that down to milestones within the year.

That's cool.

But that's one example of that habit but it could be a daily, you know, morning thing. What do I want today? What do I want out of this day? You asked a great question before we started filming. It was like, what would make this the most powerful conversation you'd ever had? That gets me into the space. It's a habitual question that you ask that gets me into the space of really asking, what would be amazing here? What do I want? And so those kinds of questions really help us to get in touch with that. And until we do that, the rest of it can't flow. Right, yeah.

Getting clear on what you want, the vision.

Yeah, sounds basic, but again, the basics are what matters.

The fundamentals are what people miss out on. Anything else you'd add to this list of habits to attract and manifest?

Yeah, another one, this one is gonna sound, again, really basic, but it's such a deep one, which is that it's an action habit. Again, I think you're kind of a master at it, so it's like talking to someone who's like, yeah, breathe every day, sure. But action habit is just, again, if all of the stuff we've talked about stops you from taking action, that's where we don't want it to get in the way. We want to be in the habit of actually taking action every single day. And so execution could be one way it looks. Again, a caveat is this could be taken too far where it's like everything has to be about taking action and execution and productivity. That's not what this is about. But if you're not in the habit of taking the thing that you saw that you want and starting to actually move forward and manifest it, it's not gonna happen. And so what you want is the action habit to be lined up with that thing that you saw that you want. It's not just random actions every day, although that's still better than what most people do. Random actions is good, like what actions can I take today that would feel really good, that's gonna get me better at the action habit. But what we really want is to be taking action towards the life we wanna create. And I'm gonna point to two examples, if that's okay.

Yeah.

One of them is you. So, I think it might have been the first time we ever met in person was in Manhattan, New York City.

Yeah.

At lunch, right?

Lunch, and you said, I'll be the guy with the rose on the table.

Yeah.

Red rose on the table. And I was like, what an interesting way to invite someone to lunch. It was a cool little cafe or something like that in Manhattan.

It's called Delicatessen in Prince and Sullivan right there, yeah.

Dude, you have such a good memory.

I remember exactly.

And actually, I think that really speaks to you are someone who has a habit of connection. And not just connection, but the next level of connection, not just surface level, but taking that to an elevated level. And I think you have an action habit around that that you formed that creates deep, lasting connections. We're talking more than a decade later because of that rose. You know what I mean? You elevated that moment to something special. And you've done that here with this conversation. You have an action habit of elevating connections to the next level. And I've seen that very rarely. I had another friend, I don't know if you ever met Scott Dinsmore. He had a blog called Live youe Legend. And he was really good at it. Our first time that we ever did anything together, we went on this amazing run in San Francisco through the hills with a sunset that was setting the world on fire, and it was such a memorable moment. And people like you and him don't realize that they're doing, you might not realize you're doing it. I mean, you might consciously do it, but you might not realize how exceptional it is. And I told him, I'm like, your ability, he connected with Warren Buffett through his love story.

Crazy.

You know, he kept updating Warren Buffett's secretary, send this to Warren about his romance with his you know, fiance when they got engaged.

That's amazing.

Little things like that. I was like, he kept sharing these stories. For him, they were just like cool stories, but I could see that he put this action habit into place where he was constantly creating connections with his advisor, his mentors, with his investors, with his friends that elevated things. And so, action habit doesn't have to be elevating connection, but you have put that into place where you might not even realize you're doing it anymore. I'm guessing you're pretty intentional about it, but people like you kind of just start to put into place and then it just becomes just who you are. And so that kind of habit will manifest connections that are deep, lasting, and powerful. And I believe that's why you're where you are today. One of the reasons.

You know, it's interesting. It's funny you remember that story because When I just moved to New York, like a few months before that, or maybe like two months before, and I didn't really know many people. And so I came up with this idea. I said, I was like, okay, I'm gonna do this thing called the Red Rose Project. We're gonna buy a rose every day. There was like a flower shop right by the apartment I was living in. And I was like, okay, I'm just gonna buy a flower every day. I'm gonna go give it to someone in New York City. And just as an experiment, see what happens. I remember trying to give it to a girl one time, and she like.

Ran away from me.

And I was like, oh, that's okay, that's interesting. I gave it to another older lady and she was like, Thank you so much. It's like, I went through the most challenging morning and this brings so much light to my life. You know, I would give it to cute girls or whatever it is, but that was just like, I gave it to you or someone else and I was like, I don't care who I'm gonna give it to. It's like, who do I feel I should give this to? And just see what happens. Amazing. The interaction. Maybe someone runs away from me, maybe someone remembers it 10 years later and it makes an impact in some moment in their life. And I think I-- I bet it did. And I learned, My father used to do this when I was growing up. That's probably where I got it from because he would always read the paper every day and he would cut out newspaper clippings of like different people in the community, whether it be kids doing important things or adults. He would cut out newspaper clippings and either send it to the parents or send it to the adult it's about and write a handwritten note.

It's amazing.

And he would send a $2 bill in it.

Oh my gosh.

And it was just kind of like old school handwritten note newspaper clipping and say, hey, congrats on this and like a $2 bill. and he'd send it to people. He'd find the white pages or the yellow pages, whatever it was, and he'd send these letters every week. That's amazing. So I probably just modeled that.

I was like, how can I kind of recreate this in my own way? What an amazing model to have in your life that formed you. Yeah, it was. Oh, by the way, Scott also carried $2 bills in his wallet. Diddy, that's so funny. Yeah, it's just a memorable thing. It is. And I'm just gonna speak to the people listening and watching is that this habit that you created of that red rose, it was maybe a month long or something like that, doesn't have to be forever, but you manifested the connections that you wanted in your life through that action. And I would, not everyone's going to want connection like that. Someone else might want, I want deep mindfulness and peace in my life. So what are the habits that would manifest that? What are the actions that you could take every day that would start to build that out. And it's magic. Like you see it, this is what I want in my life, and then you start to take that action habit and to create that. And it's like, did I just create magic in the world? And the answer is yes, you absolutely did. And, you know, there's nothing magical at play in one way. It's scientific. It's like actually doing what it takes to make that happen. But on the other side is that something We don't know what gets created when we start to take this action habit. You didn't know what was gonna happen.

No idea. No idea. Yeah, and it's, you know, it's like a little bit of a risk. Okay, I have to put myself out there to strangers and maybe I get rejected or somewhere looks at me, but it is, you have to do, I think you have to do something uncomfortable consistently or something that goes out of your way, out of your norm, right? It's like my dad spent time for an hour every day and would read the paper. Maybe he enjoyed it. It was It's fun, but at first it's like, okay, this is taking an hour a day away from my kids or family or whatever, my work. And I'm doing this extra little thing and creating a memory for someone. They're getting a letter in the mail, they're getting a $2 bill, they're getting a newspaper clipping about them, they're getting a handwritten note. It was like going the extra mile. So amazing. And he would get a lot of business and clients from that, but it wasn't his intention. He was just like, I want to add value to people in our small town community.

And.

And he created memorable moments.

That's amazing.

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Fees extra see full terms@mintmobile.com so I think it's really cool. What a model for all of us to have.

I know, right? Yeah, thanks for sharing that. It's just about being generous, you know, how can you be as generous as possible? Yeah. And even when it seems uncomfortable, even when it seems not convenient.

I would say especially. So, yeah, I would like to just use that as an entryway into talking about something that's really important about these habits. Is that every single one of them, if they're really going to really make an impact on your life and on anyone else's, are going to have what you talked about is that there's an element of risk. which is this uncertainty, maybe a little bit of fear, maybe a lot of fear in some cases, but a little bit of like shakiness to it. And then that discomfort that comes with all of that. And so if you're doing action, if you're doing the action habit that, you know, doesn't give you any of that, and you're like, oh yeah, that's easy. I'm taking a sip of water every day. Like one sip of water a day, that's gonna not gonna create anything, you know, because it was easy and it's what you already know how to do. If it's not giving you that little bit of an edge, a little bit of uncertainty, a little bit of risk, or sometimes a lot, you know, to the degree that you're able to, the capacity that you have to be with that. If it's not giving you that, you're just doing what you already know how to do. You're like, okay, I'm gonna go out for my walk and walk once around the block. That's an amazing habit and it's not going to actually expand your capacity to lead in the world and to create what you want. because it's something you already know how to do. There's no discomfort there. But if you're like, I'm going to strap on my running shoes and go for like a mile run, you're like, oh, it's a little bit of an edge for me. After a while, it doesn't become one. And then you have to find the next one.

The new edge. Yeah.

And the problem with what I'm sharing with people here is that that discomfort and that edge, that uncertainty, the risk, we don't want that. Our minds are just They've evolved to try and eliminate that.

We want comfort.

Comfort and eliminate uncertainty. If there's uncertainty, our minds go into overdrive. How do I get out of this? It's like if you saw a predator on the savanna, not to go too into evolutionary stuff, but you imagine that's happening. Your mind goes into a mode where it's like, do something so that this is to either kill that animal or get the hell out or find some protection. get my posse together so we're safe. Whatever we have to do to not make that a threat anymore. And so our minds go into this mode and we still do it now with our phones, with everything that our minds go into this mode where we have to protect ourselves until we can get to a place of peace. It's like, okay, stable, I'm safe. And that worked well at one point in our evolution, but now because we have these uncertainty devices called phones, We're constantly being given it and we're constantly trying to get out of it by like distracting ourselves, giving ourselves comfort. And so the problem with what the proposal that I have for people is to do something that's a little bit risky, a little bit uncertain every day. Take that action habit is that people don't want that. And you'll get excited about it at first and then after a few days you're gonna stop.

Yeah.

And that's where that place where you want to stop is where the real magic is. -It's just keep going.

-You got to keep going during that. What is the number one habit that you've practiced and implement that has been the hardest to stay consistent with and yet creates the biggest benefit as well?

-That'S a good question. A few come up to mind, but I think the main one is meditation. So I've been meditating since before I started the blog, you know, more than 15 years, close to 20 years, but I have never been consistent with it. And like someone who has a blog called Zen Habits who shaves his head, who's a Zen student, you might think like he meditates every day. Yeah.

Two hours a day, he's got it down.

He's like meditating right now as we're talking. Which I am, but the actual practice of sitting down and meditate, I've had a real struggle doing that. And that's actually been really enlightening for me, is like, why is that? What stops me from sitting down? And it's like, oh, I got all of this work to do, the emails, all of that kind of stuff. So every time I can highlight when I don't do it, it's transformative. So then not doing it is just as trans, almost as transformative as doing it. But when I do sit down and meditate, it has me face the things that are getting in my way from actually meditating. Like the reason why I'm not actually sitting down and I turn away and go to my computer, I actually face that on the cushion and I can see that it's there and that really helps me to like fully face what I don't want to face. And that's the same thing as this action habit that I'm talking about. Like if you can face the thing you don't want to face, it's confronting, we don't want to, it's uncomfortable and It's transformative.

And I think all great things come to you when you face a thing you don't want to face. You know, it's like if you're overweight and out of shape and you face it and you go through the pain consistently daily to do whatever it takes to get in shape again.

Yeah.

Great things come to you. Your confidence comes back. You know, opportunities come to you. People look at you differently with a level of credibility or respect because you've been disciplined now for a period of time. they've seen how hard it's been to overcome this. And they say, wow, that's really inspiring the adversity you overcame or whatever it is. If your finances are all over the place and you put them in order and it takes months to go through all your documents and auto bill pay and getting rid of credit card debt, it's a painful process. But on the other side, you feel peace. Your money starts working for you as opposed to you paying interest all the time on things you're in debt in. All these things, the uncomfortable conversation in a relationship you've been delaying for years. What's on the other side of that is a deeper intimate relationship. Or less pain and resentment. All great things come on the other side of taking an action on the things you don't want to take action on.

I'm going to make one caveat. I 100% agree. 100%. That's just a really powerful statement. All of these great things come from being able to face the thing we don't want to face. And the caveat is, or feel the things we don't want to feel, right? The caveat is we have to choose into it. You know, if that's, there's a little switch that happens. If we say, I am going to take on the thing I don't want to face. If you're like, okay, I'm going to do this and I want to learn something from it and I want to like really be with all of this. If you are being forced to by your boss or by your spouse or by the life, it's basically, it's like being a victim.

Sure. It's like I'm like I have to do this as opposed to I want to.

Yeah, you might actually feel the stuff you don't want to feel and you're like, I don't want to, this sucks. And it's actually going to be maybe more of a painful thing than anything. Yeah. Yeah, so if you decide to choose into it, that's the difference. So just be like, okay, I'll do it because I have to or because Leo said so or Lewis told me. I don't do it. You're going to just be, it's a disempowered way to take on stuff. If you take it on with empowerment, like I'm going to tackle this on. I'm going to conquer that beast. It turns out to not be a beast. It's actually love. But anyway, like you're going to go towards that thing, but you choose to and you want to learn from it and get the most out of it. That's where the transformation will take place. That's where the. I think all of the great things will happen.

Yeah.

You'll feel a lot more confident about.

Yourself, your self-esteem you won't doubt yourself as much. All those things.

Yeah.

What are the top three habits? that are the most destructive habits towards creating the life you want.

This is tough.

So.

The first one, this is, I'm gonna just lump them all together as avoidance.

Yes.

So procrastination is one way we talk about it. This is not necessarily, I hesitate to call it destructive. because it's a protective mechanism, right? So we're trying to protect ourselves by avoiding. So I'm avoiding the difficult conversations with my partner or my team. I'm avoiding taking a look at things, avoiding my finances, all of this stuff that we've talked about. The habit is actually just avoidance on the other side of it. And this is the thing that causes it all to build up. This is why we have this huge mess over here is because I've been avoiding and avoiding and avoiding. And so again, not making it wrong because we can demonize that part of ourselves that procrastinates or avoids. We're gonna just like layer on the second thing that I was gonna say, which is self-hatred. Basically self-judgment, self-criticism, just like hating on ourselves for not doing all of those things that I was just told that I should do, right? So the first one is avoidance and then layering on top of that the second one, which is self-hatred. Hatred might be too strong of a word for some people. It's just self-judgment, self-criticism, self-flagellation. That's also a protective one. We were taught, or some of us were taught from a young age, if you are hard on yourself, mean to yourself, you're going to motivate yourself to get better. It's that football coach is yelling at you.

I experienced that too.

Stop being such a whatever. Don't be lazy, don't be weak, don't be whatever. get up off the ground. And there's a good intention behind it. It's like, if I yell at this person, they're gonna get up and work hard. And it actually does work to some extent.

But it causes a lot of fear in the body and stress and anxiety too.

Yeah, we're motivated, you know? And so you get up. But think about this, like once you have that person stop yelling at you, you're not gonna be doing it. You haven't really learned anything that's actually gonna do that. And internally, it actually is just constantly destructive. We're constantly ruining our self-image. We're not empowering ourselves by beating ourselves up or self-hatred. Yeah, self-hatred, beating yourself up, self, you know, sometimes we don't even notice we're doing it. It's so, so subtle for some of us. Some people know they're doing it. They're like actually, you know, pounding their head on the wall or like yelling at themselves in private. Like, you stupid, whatever, right? But some people, it's so subtle because it's just the voice that you've just learned. This is just reality. so you just don't even realize you're constantly trying to motivate yourself by telling yourself what a crap bag you are. So, I mean, I'm laughing because it's just so human, but it's not funny at all because we're just constantly berating ourselves and that energy that we were getting from like building this foundation, we're.

Just dropping it down. Yeah, and if you're looking to manifest and attract great opportunities, great connections, great relationships, good health, you know, all those things we want in life, self-hatred is going to be a repellent of those things. And it's kind of like, no one wants to be around someone who's constantly putting their own self down. You know, that energy is contagious in a negative way, not a positive way.

Yeah.

We like people who are disciplined and organized and, you know, positive in their energy. They have great attitudes.

It tricks.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They're like, okay, I like being around this person. They make me feel good. When someone's complaining about themselves or. beating themselves up or saying, I'm so stupid or I was an idiot.

Like, yeah, that.

That builds an identity that is not a confident, powerful identity. It's. It's a limited, powerless identity when we say those things to ourselves.

Right.

And again, I love for us to. To, like, bring love to this, because it's easy to judge that. It's definitely. It doesn't.

That's how I used to be a lot of my life. saying all these negative things, and it drove me to get results and succeed in sports and business, but I always felt unfulfilled and not lovable. How can you be loved by someone else if you don't love yourself? If you put yourself down constantly, why would you receive love from others? If you can't learn to accept and love who you are now and the progress you're making.

And I 100% agree with all of that. I love that you've gone through this.

Bring the caveats. Bring the caveats.

Again, if you see that destructiveness, you might just add, your habit is going to be destructive already. So you're going to add more. You're like, ah, I suck for being this way, right?

Yes.

So the love that I want to bring is just that we have these for good reasons. Like there's a, again, that coach, yeah, that coach is trying to motivate you. So we've learned, if I tell myself I'm a crap bag, I'm going to motivate myself. But another one that you pointed to is, Another way that it shows up for some people is I'm just constantly beating myself up to prevent anyone else from beating me up. You know what I mean? If I preempt you and I'm like, ah, I'm so stupid, I don't know why I did that. You could have criticized me, but you wouldn't have criticized me this hard, as bad as I criticized myself. Yeah, I've taken it to the next level and you're just over there like, what the hell is this person doing? Why is he doing this? I didn't, It wasn't that bad, you know, like it's kind of bonkers, right? And so you're like, Calm down, dude. And so then what people do is they try and like comfort you, but they don't really trust you. They don't really want you to be in relationship with them. They're gonna comfort you to the extent that they can or that they have to, but they don't really think that you've got yourself taken care of. You've lost your credibility.

Yeah.

The more, you know, maybe this happens once in a blue moon. You're like, Ah, that was a dumb move by me. It's different than every day or every week you're putting yourself down internally and your energy is low or you're externally verbalizing it and others can hear you. It's just not a good energy. That's another destructive habit that will make you not successful. What's one more that you think if you do these things consistently, it's gonna be hard to get what you want in life?

This one is going to sound like the opposite of the other one. There's this way where this is something that I. I've done so, so often, where we let ourselves off the hook. And it's, again, a protective mechanism, and. And sometimes it can feel really loving. So letting ourselves off the hook isn't always wrong.

Right?

Like, you know, I'm going to take a break today. That's a good thing. We don't want to demonize that.

Right? But.

There's a way where if we just go to that always, every time we get into discomfort, it's just like, okay, this is one where I discovered when I quit smoking. That was one of my first habits. It's like smoking, destructive, okay, don't do that. So I stopped, but then I'm like, why am I putting myself through this pain, this suffering? Why am I doing this? Life is too short for that. So that's the story I told myself.

So let me have another pop. Yeah, yeah. So it's like, this is not a big deal.

Yeah, like what? What's the point of this? I'm just making myself suffer. So I let myself off the hook and did it.

Started smoking a little bit.

Yeah, and then I would add the beating myself up.

The shame.

On top of that.

And then beating yourself up.

Yeah, like, ah, I keep doing this. And so it was this cycle of beating myself up and then feeling bad about myself. Feeling bad about myself is actually why I wanted to smoke. So I would then be like, Don't smoke, you know it's bad for you. And then, oh, this is too hard. I don't want to face this discomfort, so smoke, then beat myself up. And it's just like this cycle. And the thing that cuts through all of it, first of all, is love. So I'm going to keep bringing that up as corny as it might sound to some people.

-Oh, that's great.

-Is just love yourself through this whole process. Like, I am feeling bad about myself or stress or anxiety. Could I bring love to that feeling in the body? and I want to let myself off the hook, nothing wrong with that desire, but could I stay in that discomfort for a little bit longer, give myself love, find another more loving act than a cigarette, you know, do I want.

To- Meditation or a hike or whatever.

Yeah, get a hug from my kid, you know, yeah, just do something, massage my neck, have a hot cup of tea, take a bath, yeah, do some kind of, I would go out for runs and I started meditating, those are my two of my big go-to's, but you find an arsenal of things that we can do too, arsenals too harmful, but a tool, toolkit is something that we can do that's more loving than that cigarette, but that we need at that point.

And how long did it take you to, I guess, feel like you weren't suffering from developing that new habit, something that's really addictive, as smoking, that gives you relief or whatever it might be, and that you've been doing for a certain amount of years. You know, how long did it take you? Was this weeks, was this months? Was this a year until you finally felt like, oh, I'm not feeling the suffering feeling of not having a cigarette.

It's hard because it's more of a spectrum than like a, okay, now I'm done, right?

Sure, sure.

Yeah.

But the thing that I learned is, first of all, again, that choosing into empowered kind of relationship to the discomfort, I'm like, you know what? I'm going to face this discomfort. So first of all, that felt really good. I felt more empowered than I ever had. Before it was more like, I'm a victim to my own discomfort.

And it also sounds like you probably had a vision of why you wanted to, you know, why it was better to not be doing that habit for your life.

It was for my life and it was for my loved ones.

Right.

Yeah, my wife was going to start smoking again after her pregnancy. So she had quit, but I knew she was going to start again.

Especially if you're out there in the.

Front porch, you know? Yeah, she'll feel completely justified to do it. And then my kids, I know that kids of smokers are much more likely to grow up as smokers, so I'm like, that's not the model I want. And I also knew that for myself that wasn't good, but at that time, you know, doing it for them was much more powerful for me.

Right, right.

Which it still is a pretty powerful thing to do.

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How long did it take for you then until it was like, okay, the first wave of suffering to end where it was now a second wave of like, okay, I still have the feeling, but it's not as strong.

Well, the transformation that came for me there was pretty early on, probably within the first couple of weeks. And the thing that happened was I realized that there was this internal thing that was arising. I thought of it as an urge, but it's really just discomfort or like, I can't do this. Anxiety, discomfort, stress, and urge, right? So it's the urge to go do the thing, you know, eat the donut, watch Netflix, go on Instagram, right? It's that urge to go do the thing and it's just a discomfort or an anxiety or stress. And the transformation came when I not only took on an empowered relationship to it but learned that I could soothe that and take care of it and give it love. And as soon as I could like, okay, some deep breaths, some meditation, like I could actually take care of that. It was a transformative thing because then any other habit that I was avoiding, like I was deeply in debt at the time. I transformed my whole life one at a time based on that one thing.

What was that thing again?

Learning that I could soothe that discomfort. Learning that I could actually turn towards it, take it on, and actually like relieve it by not doing anything, not having to do something external, but actually be with it, take some breaths, calm it down. Like a little kid that's anxious, you're like, you know, if you're a parent, you know, like if a kid's anxious, you could get anxious too and you're just like running around with the kid like, ah, you know, like we're and the kid only gets more anxious when you're doing that. And so you can hear my voice like, this is the kind of the way that we relate. We're like, we're yelling at the kid, the kid's yelling at us and we're like doing this. But if you look at this kid as like, they're anxious, how do I calm them down? You deepen your breath. you start to relax a little bit, you give them some space, you give them some love, some acceptance, it's okay for you to be anxious, it's okay, I got this, we got this, we can do this. It's the same kind of relationship to the discomfort and anxiety, uncertainty that rises in our body. Deepen your breath, do all of the things I just said that you would do with a little kid. The kid starts to calm down. They can be however they be. They're just being a kid. It's not wrong to feel discomfort or stress or anxiety, but as we give them this deeper, calmer space and just accept them and love them, they calm down. They're like, you know, they might start sobbing, you give them a hug, same thing with this. You might start to feel some pain at like, how I've been smoking for the last 20 years, but then you start to like, it's okay, feel your pain, feel your sadness, and you just give it the space. If you can learn that, you know, I've really kind of gone a little bit in depth here, but if it's a simple self soothing.

Because we take on the addiction or the thing that we know is not good for us to help us soothe. Like, I, you know, I'll eat the ice cream because I want to soothe myself. For you, it was cigarettes. You know, for some people, it's potato chips or binge watching Netflix or whatever it might be.

For me, it was all of those.

It's alcohol. It's like, okay, I'm feeling an anxiety, a stress, an overwhelm. Let me use something external to help me feel a little bit of relief. And what I'm hearing you say is if you can create a greater vision for your future that doesn't include those things and learn a strategy of self soothing.

That's right.

When there is anxiety, because you're going to feel it for a period of time until you learn how to get through it. That's part of the process. Learning how to self soothe, not External soothe.

Yeah, and I'll also be clear that the external soothe actually did work in the beginning. There was a way that cigarettes, of course, ice cream, could work in the short term.

But then there's shame, guilt, you know.

And it makes it worse that in.

The long term and there's side effects that hurt you. No, it's watching the alcohol, the cigarettes, the sugar, it doesn't help you long term.

Yeah.

And that temporary relief is what trains the habit. So if we get that temporary relief, it's like, oh, that actually worked. Now we know, we intellectually we know that there's a long-term cost to it. And we actually might even be able to see that the long-term costs actually increases our anxiety and discomfort. So we do more of it.

We'll do more shame.

It's a vicious cycle. We might intellectually know that, but in the moment when we've already trained ourselves to reach for that automatically, we don't know, we don't even have a choice because it's such a level that is just basically instinctual at this point. And so the only way to break that is to create choice. And so you have to create a moat where you don't have the cigarette or the ice cream, get all of it out of the house, you have to drive somewhere, and an even better moat is call your sponsor first, you know, for alcoholics or other addicts. But for me, smoking, I'm like, I'm going to tell someone first before I smoke. And that was a moat where I had to actually bring consciousness to this. And so by creating that moat, it gives you some space to notice what's there and then gives you some choice. And then you can then with an empowered choice choose to be with that and soothe it. And if you can do that every other habit that we've talked about, all the bad ones, all the avoidance, all of the good ones where you want to like turn towards your finances or exercise, or flossing or meditation, they start to become empowered or enabled because you are able to be with that one thing that is controlling your whole life.

Wow. And what would you say are the main habits of the happiest people in the world?

Oh man. Okay, now we're getting to some deep stuff. So the main ones, so let's take Dalai Lama, okay? Because that guy freaking rocks. And everyone who I've seen, you know, like Zen monks who are just like these, joyful, like little kids. You know, they're just like little kids. They're actually people, first of all, who have gotten in touch with that part of them that we've all lost. So, I'm just going to tell you a story real quick. I was out in the park on a phone call, walking just like doing a call, and I walked past this playground where these elementary school kids, six-year-olds, were out playing, and they were all playing like they were the most awesome people in the world. No one had to teach them how to play. They didn't like, what do I do next? They were just being themselves. There were these six girls who were all holding hands like they were some cool posse. They didn't think, what does this girl think of me? Is my hair good? All this stuff. They were just connected and joyful and just having so much fun. That is who we are at our core that we've all been trained out of by the world. And so the happiest people in the world, to get back to that, it's a simple act of remembering, simple but difficult act of remembering who we were before the world beat it out of us. But before the world taught us, it wasn't safe to be, you know, like you are someone who is pure connection at your core. Someone, the world taught us that we, it is not safe to just be this joyful connection. Plague, joy, like love, like be open-hearted. No, protect yourself. Don't do that. It is wrong to be so like alive in the world. Simmer down. You know what I mean? We're taught that by well-meaning people, but we're taught that. So the Dalai Lama feels like a little kid. I mean, not the kind who's going to throw things at you. So he's like tamed that part of himself. But, so he's much more in touch with his emotions than a kid is. But he's also just Joy himself.

Joy, love, play.

At home with himself in the world. So the more that we can cultivate that, remember who you were when you were six years old and you were out and you felt safe. I'm going to point to two other great teachers on this, if that's okay.

Yes.

Jeffrey Davis. He does this thing called tracking wonder. and his thing is to remember that little genius when you were six years old. So he has some great work around that. He's got a book around it called Tracking Wonder and a blog and a podcast. Another one is my personal coach. His name is Adam Khawine. He's got a book out, just an out called who Do youo Think youk Are? which is about these essences of joy, play, connection, love. And I've done a lot of my work remembering who I am around that. And what are the things that get in the way of that, all of our fears and uncertainty and discomfort that cause us to have all of these protective whole system around us, our whole lives are built up so that we can protect ourselves from feeling certain things.

Sure.

So anyway, their work are both incredibly deep around that.

Amazing.

Yeah.

Okay. What are some other habits of the happiest people?

Happiest people? Okay. So there's another one which is the view that we have of the world. I think you're gonna really, I think you're in touch with this. so you can see actually with your views, this is actually most of your podcast and newsletters, I've been really digging into them and digging them, they are all about views, like how are we viewing the world, how are we viewing our work, our health, all the stuff we've been talking about is the views. So most of us have, we look at the life through a lens of a disempowered view, I need to do the things that I have to do, these are the things I should do, this is how I I should be. I'm doing things because that's all that it's okay to have in my life. That's the lens we look at. The happiest people in the world have learned to recognize the lens, the effect that it has on them and the world around them, and then let that go. And then take on a new empowered, imaginative, creative, loving, thing that's going to create an experience of life that you want where you get to be fully yourself, fully alive, fully open-hearted, and then creates the impact that you want to have. If you have a view that not only allows you to do this, to be this, but to go out and do the things that create that impact, that view is like it's invisible. No one else knows that it's there, and yet it's probably the most important thing.

So give me an example of this view. of the world, I mean, and the two types of like a great way of perceiving the world and a way that might hurt you, make you less happy. Because there's a lot of pain and war and frustration and stress in the world, so how should we view what should our perspective be?

Okay, great. I'll give you another teacher who I think is also really happy. She's pure joy. Her name is Pema Chödrön. Do you know her?

Don't know her.

Amazing Tibetan Buddhist teacher. She studied under a master. and is now 80-something and her teachings are a gold. And she talks about uncertainty in your body. The uncertainty that we feel as we are in relationship, as we do our meaningful work, as we create impact in the world. She talks about it as a physical sensation in the body. Most of us, that's the sensation that we talked about, the self-soothing part. Most of us relate to that as bad. We need to do something about it to fix it. so I need to fix everybody around me. You need to stop being the way you are and my world needs to be set up just this way so that I don't feel this.

So I'm not triggered by the world, yeah.

We don't like this feeling and so we have to manage the world around us in some way so that we don't have to feel this anymore. And her, that's a view of that feeling. The feeling is going to be there no matter what. The view that we have is that sucks. I need to Fix the world, which good luck, right? Fixing the whole world is going to take a few lifetimes. So, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's never going to happen. So we're always going to have this and we're never going to be able to fix the world. We're never going to make everybody behave the way we want. You know, certain people are always going to be there in our lives and we can jettison them from our lives.

Yes.

So that we don't have to feel this anymore, but other people are going to come in. Or we can create a smaller and smaller world where we don't have to interact with anybody that's difficult. I'm going to interact with these two people who I really, they don't trigger me.

Yeah, I'm going to control their energy.

Yeah, until they realize that's a sucky thing for them and then now I'm all alone. So that's one way to go or I try and go out and control the world. But her empowered view of that feeling is that we could turn towards it and bring love to it and be with it and it is actually an enlightened energy. It is telling us something. And one of the signals that it tells us is that we are doing something meaningful or that there's something else to learn. There's something to learn from that. But if you are doing meaningful work, if you're out there kicking butt in the world, right? Like, you're gonna feel uncertainty because you're out into the unknown. You're beyond what you already know. And so being in the unknown will create this feeling. And that is not a problem. It's actually an amazing sign that you're doing something meaningful.

Wow. That's beautiful.

There's other reasons why we have it. It's not just that, but that's one sign. And so that view of that feeling creates a whole different shift. Could I give you one more view?

Give me one more.

Okay, Dalai Lama. This guy is amazing. He will see someone behaving what you and I might think, oh, this person isn't, you know, pull, this person is like just totally a jerk or whatever. Yeah, whatever it is. Like, he will that, you know, that's one way to look at it. Like, this person is totally wrong. They are bad. They're evil. They're whatever they are. He will look beyond that, beyond their defenses into their heart and see them with compassion. Like, what is the suffering that this person is going through? And what could I do to alleviate this kind of suffering in the world? If nothing else other than just noticing their suffering and seeing it as suffering, and feeling love towards them. Or maybe noticing my own suffering, where do I feel that and do that kind of thing? Could I connect with them, create a connection by turning towards my own and seeing the humanity in that? And so he might not put it in these words, but that's basically the view that he has towards other people's suffering, where we just relate to all the ways that they suck, which, you know, that's a valid view, but it creates more anger in me or makes me want to avoid people. and it creates less impact in the world because I'm not bringing love out into the world. I'm not actually turning towards all of that. In his way, he can create tremendous impact because he can bring love to anybody. And it's a really incredible, you can.

Have compassion through all the pain.

Yeah.

And bring an impact.

Yeah.

That's interesting, man.

Yeah, I've got a million views. So if you want more, let me know. That's great.

Is there one more habit for happiness?

One more for happiness. Okay, I'll give you a little one that's actually really profound for me. So my kids used to, when they were little, they would leave messes all over. And I would clean it up, and then I would tell them, Stop making these messes, right? Like here's what you do to put things away. And they were old enough to learn that, and yet they just didn't do it. So I wake up in the morning, I'd gone to bed, it was all clean. I wake up in the morning, it was a mess. And I would just get pissed off at them. So that was my view, was that they shouldn't be doing that. you know, they suck for not learning the lesson that I taught them. And so one day it came to me that I'm going to view them as love notes from my kids. So every mess that they made, I would wake up in the morning and I would either clean it up or show them how to do it. But the thing itself was a love note from them showing me that they're alive, that they haven't shut down their play.

Right.

You know, they don't have to control the world so that nothing is messy. like I've learned to do. You know what I mean? So that they actually can live as human beings. And I'm not saying that they don't learn some of these habits, but they are in my life. And I could have a life that is totally clean without them, but that's not the life I want. I want to be in connection with my loved ones. I want some messiness, and I want to enjoy that messiness and enjoy their messiness and really just enjoy the gift of them. And so every, it's like your red rose, everything was like their red rose.

Like, oh, that's cool.

I get to connect with who they are and love them.

The mess are the love notes.

Yeah. Yeah.

It's a reminder they're in your life. They're healthy, they're playing, they're thriving, they're interacting, they're growing up.

I just got so happy every time I saw that.

That's cool, man. It's changing your perspective and your view around these things. The way it's affecting you so much. I'm curious about, you know, we've talked about a lot of habits so far. Are there too many habits to take on at once?

Yes.

And if so, what is the best way of forming a new habit that might be very challenging to be consistent with?

Okay, great. This is some of my bread and butter. This is stuff I really love because it's overwhelming. You know, we've mentioned a bunch. People try and they're like, okay, great. I got now a list of 20 things to do. And so it's now like you already had a huge to-do list. You have too many things you're already not doing and now you have to do another list of 20 projects. So, never works. Everyone comes into my habit programs with this laundry list of things they need to change, fix about themselves. And that's not how I look at it but there are opportunities to like deepen into this stuff. But the way that you actually, if you want to be effective actually creating them is one at a time. I kind of like knock down one domino that's going to start to create that domino so what's the one habit that would start to help make the rest of them easier? So for some people, you know, it really doesn't matter. Like they'll get too caught up in that and they'll be like, I need to like start with meditation. If that is actually too hard for you at the moment, you just can't be with that, maybe it's going for a walk.

And for some people it might be like, what's their biggest pain point right now? Where they're breaking down the most in their life. I've got 10 credit cards, I'm in so much stress in this one place. I got to create a new habit with the thing that's causing me the most pain. And maybe it's like my health. I'm really out of shape. I have no energy because I'm tired all the time. Okay, that might be the place you get started with a small baby step.

I would say 100% agree if they're able to. So if finances just completely shuts you down and you're like, I'm gonna do finances first, and then you notice six months go by and you haven't done any finances and you haven't done any of the other stuff either, that's probably not the one to start with because sometimes it's just too much. We've been given all kinds of messages about finances as kids or some people have and it just brings all this kind of baggage. For others, health habits bring a ton of baggage where that's not the place to start for them. So it's really like individual and I would say what's the one that feels like it would actually make a big impact with a small effort. So for some people, that financial one might be too big of an effort.

Sure.

So I would say, don't, you know, get to that soon, but maybe it's going out for a walk. You know, like that makes me just feel like I'm doing something in my day. I feel a little bit more energetic, taking out a little bit of stress. Maybe that'll help me to be able to do the rest of it.

Right.

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Full terms@mintmobile.com youm know, it doesn't have to be that, you know, it could be, I'm gonna clean up my mess a little bit in the morning. and that makes me feel like, you know, kind of like that homework example. If I can clean up my mess a little bit, I'll be a little bit more focused. Sure. Maybe it's starting with like a short to-do list of three items, right? Like that's maybe my habit. Just like most important tasks, right? Just that'll be enough to have me be more focused during the day. So whichever one you choose, I really like simple habits that you can do in 10 minutes or less. even two minutes to start with. And do the simplest, the most, the MVP version of that, right? The simplest version. And if you want to just start with two minutes of walking, it sounds so silly. When I started running, I eventually ran an ultra marathon, but when I started, it was just like, put my shoes on, get out the door. I could keep walking if I wanted to. I could go for a little bit of a jog, but I didn't have to do anything other than get my shoes on and get out the door. So we want to focus on the start. All you got to do is get that start going. And if it's meditation, all you got to do is get to my meditation cushion, sit down.

Done.

Your success.

You did it.

And celebrate your success.

And then do it the next day. Why is celebrating a consistent, positive act on your habits so important as opposed to not celebrating them?

Well, we could get into the neuroscience of habits. I talked about how bad habits are actually rewarding because they actually do relieve the the stress a little bit. Good habits have the opposite. The reason why we don't already have them is because they have the opposite structure where they're painful.

They're not as rewarding right now.

Or at least uncomfortable, right? Like we talked about, like it actually is pushing it to discomfort a little bit. And so we need a way to actually find a reward. And so if we can incur, everything we can do to encourage ourselves, habit apps work well for a little while on that. So you like click on the thing, it gives you a little ding and a check mark. Seinfeld method was put a gold star on his calendar. Anything we can do to encourage ourselves. Those ones work until they stop being encouraging. So if you break a streak, it's like, ah, now I suck. So what we want to do is just encouragement, encouragement, encouragement, reward, reward, reward. If you go, some people like to do a hard workout and then have a smoothie and it feels really good. It's a reward, right? Others it's like share in my WhatsApp group so that I can tell people about it. Post a picture on Instagram afterwards. whatever you can do to reward yourself. If you have an accountability group, three to five people, post that you got that you didn't. Give yourself a gold star, do an emoji, pat yourself on the back, feel good, you know, give yourself a little bit of a break and just feel like there's a celebration there. It doesn't have to be like stuff yourself with, you know, candy bars afterward. Although, you know, give yourself a little bit of chocolate. It's okay. But whatever we can do to reward and encourage and make it a rewarding process, actually the whole thing should be rewarding. So from the beginning as you get your shoes on, just feel the empowerment of that. Feel how you are changing your life with this one little act. And as you do it, if you're outside walking with your shoes on, you're like, Look at this glorious nature. Feel rewarded by doing the habit. you know what I mean? If I'm meditating, could I really feel like how I'm gifting myself with some peace as opposed to like forcing myself to be with all my hard feelings?

Yes, yes.

So the more we can do that, the better.

And it sounds to me like the reason why a lot of people want to create positive habits and empowering habits in their life is for a couple reasons. One, they want to feel more healthy, you know, pleasure, let's call it, right?

Healthy peace.

They want to feel more confident about themselves. But two, it sounds to me like they want to do the things that will help them either discover or fulfill their purpose.

Yeah, that's right.

How do we start, and this is something you've been working on a lot, is how do we start to discover and lean into the purpose of this season of life? Because I feel like we have different seasons with different purposes. But this season of life, how do we start to figure out what that is through the habit-forming process? And should we start positive habits even if we have no clue what our purpose is?

Yes. So starting out with positive habits, that really helps us to get that foundation. And I say if your life is totally out of order, everything we've mentioned is totally out of order, start there. Just get some good habits under your belt. You don't have to have all of it in order. we don't set that bar, but more like I'm starting to get my life in order, starting to take care of myself and my life. Once you've gotten a little bit of solid ground under your feet, then you can start to go towards purpose. It's okay to be doing purpose before you do habits, but I find that to be a little bit more challenging.

Interesting.

Yeah.

Because if you're going on your purpose but your habits are out of whack and you have a faulty foundation, it's gonna be hard to fill it.

Yeah, it's hard to even like ask yourself what's a purpose when your life is you're feeling underwater.

Because you're in survival mode, not thrive mode.

Yeah.

Now if you already have a purpose, you're like, I know what it is. I'm gonna like work with these, you know, underprivileged children or whatever it is, right? Like I'm gonna really work with this community. If you know what that is, great, go after that and as you're doing it, you can see how that working on the positive habits actually supports that purpose. these habits now take on a new purpose. And so I actually would support that. If you know the purpose, you're going to do all of this stuff so that you can better serve those kids. They're going to see a model of someone taking care of their lives. You're going to show up with your full open heart and like full energy. You're going to be able to focus on them rather than thinking like about all this other stuff that you've got going on. So I would say if you have purpose, go after it and then work on the habits with that purpose in mind. But if you don't have that yet, if you're like, I don't know what my purpose in this season is, and my whole life is out of order, I would say get some solid ground. Get your neck above water. You don't have to be flying, but your head should be above water. A little bit of breathing space. Then once you've done that, the way that I would do it through habits is, again, first of all, asking what is it that I want? the life I want to create, but also who do I care about? Who do I want to serve? What could I, what are my gifts that I could bring?

Yeah.

Now the problem with that is people can get stuck in that place. They're just asking the question, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. And if you get stuck there, some people, they get it like, you know, an hour later. Or they start brainstorming and they put up this big wall and it's amazing and they're like, okay, got it. It's one of these two things. and they've got something to move towards. But other people they get stuck in I don't know and then they'll just stop because I don't know is like the final answer.

Yeah.

But it's actually just the start as my coach Adam says, like it's a starting point. So, I don't know means like you can really dig into that, I don't know. You're now in new territory. And so ask yourself like what could it be? And maybe you have like some, you know, vague answer like I think it's working with like, you know, former athletes or whatever it is. I think it's working with, you know, people who want to, you know, share their music online. Great. You don't know if that's true yet. And so the habit after that is once you have like the vagus inkling, start to take an action habit that will move you towards that.

So.

I would say that people want to get some certainty before they start to move towards purpose. That like self-doubt that you and I talked about before this is like I am stopped by doubt and so I'm not going to actually focus on this one thing. Maybe I'll focus on 20 things, maybe nothing. Just do what I already know how to do. And what I would say is you're never going to get that certainty until you start moving towards it. get into the action habit. Don't let your self get stuck in the I don't know. Take a shot at it. It's like somewhere in that direction. I don't know exactly what it is. And then start to build something that will actually move you towards that. And so if you want to like write a book for those about those kids or for those kids, start writing something. You know, might start it as a blog. Like me write 200 words a day towards that book. and maybe share it with people, maybe get some feedback, maybe learn through the process of creating, maybe learn what actually works and what doesn't. And maybe through this, this is actually how my blog worked, is through this process of learning, you start to like figure out what to focus on. And through this action, you're gonna be getting feedback, you're gonna be learning, it's a learning loop, and you're gonna get clarity. And then the clarity only comes after you've done all of this. you might actually get clarity. It's like, oh, it's not this, but it's something adjacent to it. Or actually, it's not that altogether, but maybe it's this over here and then you start to build towards that. So build something, get feedback, and use a learning loop.

That's beautiful. Is there anything that, you know, if we start these habits and then they don't work for us, do we lose confidence and how do we make sure that we continue to build our self-esteem and our confidence in the process of figuring out these habits, what's working, you know, starting some, stopping some. How do we make sure we keep our self-esteem high, even if they don't work out?

Yeah.

And then I'm going to say again, especially if they don't, because the thing is, they won't. They never work out. As you probably know, like, we have this idea. It's like the New Year's resolution thing, you know?

Yeah.

I'm gonna work out every day for the year. I'm gonna write 20 minutes a day every day. I'm gonna do all these things that then weeks later.

I freaking love that energy, by the way. It's like this, like you could see what you want and you're like, you're energized, you feel empowered. I say harness that, but the reality check is that you will go into that and you're gonna fall on your face and it's not gonna work out the way you want it to. It could be an hour into it, it could be three days into it, it could be two weeks into it. Somewhere probably by the three week mark in that range, you're gonna fall short. You know, and if you're doing something where you do like a hundred straight days of something, first of all, great work. Like you actually probably did a good job at like creating a habit for yourself and took on something that isn't too hard. But also challenge yourself then because you haven't gotten, if you haven't failed, you've made it too easy for yourself. Not too easy, like you want to start easy. But at some point it's just like, no, this is too easy. My success rate shouldn't be 97% or 100. It should be closer to 50 to 75 in that range. 75 would be better. But if it's 50, it's okay. What we want to do is, so if it's 50, dial down the challenge rate, the challenge level so that you can get to 75 to 80. And these numbers are or not exact, but the question that you had though is when you do, when you do fail, how do you keep that positive mindset?

How do you go back to peace and not beating yourself up?

Yeah.

Well, what I would say first of all is that framework, that view, if you can say that the learning process has to include failure, it has to, otherwise you learn nothing. then what you want to do is say, when I fail, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to, like, pat myself on the back and do a dance, you know, whatever it is. I am going to dust myself off. I'm going to acknowledge myself for doing something hard and trying, because you. Your failure means you actually tried something hard. And then I'm going to sit down and I'm going to give. Give myself some love, maybe, and soothe myself. And I'm going to write down a list of things I learned from that. what does that, what did that have to teach me? And then I'm gonna recommit myself. And if you did this every single time, it actually, falling in your face actually is like, oh great, I'm here again. Okay, get up, this is how I get stronger, this is how I get better at it. And you will actually, if you embrace that, you know, it's a, it can become like a trite kind of saying, but if you like embrace that, you're actually gonna continually get better. But it's an idea that you, you choose into the failure to start with. You're not victimized by it. And then you have a plan for when that happens. A plan for failure because if you're a boxer and you don't have a plan for when you get punched in the face and knocked down, you didn't prepare. You just plan for everything to go great, great. Your trainer just failed you.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's always in terms of that. I learned, I was never really afraid to fail. I didn't enjoy failure in terms of like the sports world. I always liked to win over losing.

Of course.

But I also understood that failure was feedback for me. It was information. Okay, you didn't win or you didn't accomplish your goal. That means there was a gap in between where you were to where you want to be. So where does that gap lie? How can I go back to practice and figure out how to master that thing that's holding me back from the next level. And so it's re having a different viewpoint of the failure. This is just an information point. This is an information to make me a better free throw shooter or catch a football better as opposed to, you know, I drop the pass. Okay, what do I need to do next time? It's really looking in or whatever it might be. So it's failure is feedback. It's not, it's not this like end all be all. You're a loser.

And the habit, yeah, that's absolutely right. And by the way, if you play football or some other kind of sport and some team beats the crap out of you, right? It's not gonna feel good, but what would it be like if you thanked that team for the lesson they just gave you? This team just showed you where your weaknesses are. They just modeled for you how to play at the next level. Sometimes there's teams that are just intimidating because they're so good and then they just crush you. and you're like, Dude, I just played against one of the best in the world and I learned something from them. What if we could all elevate ourselves by playing with the best in the world and learning from them? Like I'm doing right now, sitting here with you. I want to be at this level. And so I want to be with people who can show me what it's like to be incredible, to be masterful. So thank them. If you fall down, thank the ground, the grass up your nose. Be like, Thank you, grass, for teaching me this lesson. And I would, this is the last thing I want to say about this is that the habit process isn't so much like how to get things perfect. It's the habit process is a learning process. You're doing a habit iteration where you're taking a shot at it, learning something about yourself and the process and getting better at better at it. So if you fail, if you can take on that encouragement of like learning of how to get better at doing habits and at this particular thing and learning something about yourself you will actually get really, really good at it.

Yeah.

And what are three habits you wish you would have practiced in your 20s? Or practiced sooner that you know would have transformed your life in a bigger way.

Yeah.

Not beating yourself up for not doing it sooner. No, no. But if you could go back and give your 21 year old self only three things to do consistently every day, that would have been transformational and supported your growth. you know, not making you a perfect human, but supported you. And also the thing you recommend everyone do when they're kind of like in their late teens, early 20s, getting into that phase of life, what would those three things be?

Yeah.

I wish I had discovered meditation earlier. Like I said, this thing that I discovered of being able to be with and soothe this feeling, if I had learned that earlier, it would have changed my whole 20s. and you know, like sometimes you have to kind of go through what you go through. But meditation would be like probably number one. The other one, looking back in my 20s, if I could go back, I realized I had a much more limited view of who I was and what I could do. I lived in the island of Guam, which is an amazing place and I was a writer there for the newspaper in my 20s. And I realized, I told myself, I'm like, this is the best you could do. You can't go to the states and write, you can't ever be an author, you can't do anything. Blogging helped me to discover, I did it started in Guam, that I could actually do something bigger and enlarging my idea of who I was and what was possible. So if I could go back, it would be to listen to others who have that enlarging idea, that embiggening the quality of their lives. Like if you could If you could really surround yourself by people who actually see the world in a different way, that would be amazing. But if I could even just imagine a life beyond what I had, not that there's anything wrong with the life that I had, but realizing there could be more, what would be outside of that reality? That would be the habit that I would choose. Is either surrounding myself by others or be like, Today, what could I see that's outside of the life I already have? and could I actually imagine that could be true? Connecting with that possibility, because it's a real possibility. I've just totally told myself this is all I could have and put the blinders on. So I wish I had that habit.

Wow.

Yeah.

You asked for three, so should I challenge myself?

We got one more, maybe.

Self-reflection. At the end of the day, I recommend this for anybody, but I remember what it was like to be 20 is I didn't have a lot of self-reflection and self-awareness and if I could go back at the end of the day, what I would do is ask five minutes. Ask myself, what could I learn about myself that day? Like, where did I forget to do the habits? You know, where did I avoid things? Where did I beat myself up? Where did I not be with that feeling in my body? Like, all these things that I want to do. look back and learn from that day, deepen my learning, and that way the next day I'll actually be able to see them more. I will get better and better at the self-awareness and being able to like understand all of this stuff better if I have that five-minute self-reflection.

And that, yeah, it's powerful, man.

Yeah.

You've got some amazing content over on zenhabits.net Twitter also ZenHabits. You've got a membership community, a coaching program where you're really helping people unpack how to find a more meaningful, purposeful life and how to discover that purpose. You take people on retreats. You create experiences for people now. You're coaching people as well, which is really cool because we need more Zen coaches like yourself who've been through challenges and who've overcome them. And, you know, it's not a perfect human being, but you're on the path of being intentional. And I think it's really beautiful. So I acknowledge you for how you continue to show up over the years. I think I met you 10, 11 years ago.

Yeah.

You keep showing up consistently for yourself, for your kids, for your family, for your health, and you use your talents to be in service of others. So I really acknowledge you, Leo, for how you show up, man. It's really beautiful.

Thank you, man.

Of course. How else can we be of service to you today besides checking out the blogs and habits.net, you've got a book. you got all your stuff and your programs over there, but how else can we be of service to you?

Yeah, so I'm on a mission actually to help 100 million people change their lives through training with uncertainty. And that's that feeling that we talked about, that feeling that Pema Chödrön, that Tibetan Buddhist nun, talks about. It's a feeling in the body that basically flies under the radar and we don't see it. and it controls our whole lives. All of this habit stuff that we've talked about, all of the views that we have, it's this feeling, it's a sensation. And so my training really helps people to deal with that and so that they could do this meaningful work.

That's beautiful, man.

So if people want to join me in my mission and either read some of my stuff or contribute in some way, be a part of the work, I would love for people to reach out, contact me and do some training and then expand the mission, take this out into the world.

That's beautiful.

I really want to acknowledge you too because you are doing this as well. You are another person who is out there helping people be of service, create impact, do something meaningful. And there's a lot of struggles that come with that and you really are helping people to unlock all of that through the work you're doing. So I just, I'm blown away by the expanded human being that you've become.

Thanks, man.

You were already amazing when we first met more than a decade ago. you just continue to step into that discomfort and model for us what that's like.

Thanks, man.

It's amazing. I appreciate it.

I appreciate it. You create a lot of, I received that because the last 10 years I've had some great things happen but also made a bunch of mistakes and you've got to learn from all these things and say, okay, how can I grow and how can I deepen the practice of self-awareness, self-reflection and step into the vision of a future. something that is of service. Not as about me and what I want, but taking care of me so that I can be of service in a greater way. And it's kind of that dance. It's like, how do you do stuff for you so you're not neglecting yourself, but use the energy to be of service towards your purpose and your mission, your calling. So it's a constant journey. And every season has new challenges and opportunities, you know?

Yeah.

So it's been a fun journey, but I appreciate that, man. It's been.

Thanks for sharing. Of course, yeah. Yeah, we need to model that. This kind of work includes all of those challenges, all of those failures, a lot of struggle.

Absolutely, man. Yeah, absolutely. But that's why I think it's so important to invest in continual education. This is why I do what I do and you do what you do. You provide people with resources and content and training in a specific way. I just went to a seven-day meditation retreat. I invested in the time, the energy, the hotels, the whole thing to be there. and invest back in my growth.

That's amazing.

It's not convenient. It's not, you know, it's not like I have all this free time to leave my business and a growing team and all the content we're creating. It's like we got a lot going on. But I think that's when it's the hardest is when it matters the most to take that time. When it's hard to wake up at 6:00 a.m. or 7:00 a.m. because you've got responsibilities to do the meditation. That's when it matters the most. When it's hardest to go to the gym or go walk 20 minutes, that's when it matters the most. When it's the hardest to have the conversation with someone that you've been struggling to connect with for a while, now is the time where it matters the most, not delaying, you know what I mean? So, I love that.

That's such commitment to doing that work for yourself. It's a practice. And modeling that for others.

Yeah, it's a practice. And there's still stuff I'm trying to grow into. I don't have everything in order in my life the way the way I want it to be.

Yeah.

But it's a lot better than what it was, you know, three years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago. So it's just, it's also acknowledging what we've overcome and how far we've come as well.

So.

That's right. And not beating ourselves up and saying, why am I not farther along?

You know, it's.

Well, look how far I've come.

Yeah.

Instead of why am I not farther along? I love that you just keep doing the work because, you know, if you're gonna ask others to do And you're not doing it yourself. You're like, I'm done.

I'm a fully enlightened human being. I invest in... That's amazing. A year ago, I invested in therapy for the year in advanced. And I go about every other week, depending on travel. But even when there's nothing like I'm struggling with, I keep showing up. And for me, I'm like, okay, what's the next level then? If I'm not facing some crisis or struggling or going through a breakdown in my life, How can I prepare from this space for the next season? What are the steps I can do now so that I minimize friction in a year, three years, five years? What does that vision look like? It's an investment in me and the peace around me and feeling good in optimal ways and reminding myself what is important. It's not easy. It's not fun sometimes. but it's valuable and I'm worth it to invest in that. That's why I'm a big proponent of investing in a coach, investing in workshops, investing in just a book or listening to a podcast. Even if it's not investing money, investing time into learning and developing, it's so crucial in my mind.

I love that so much. Thanks for sharing that.

Of course, man. Couple final questions for you. This is what I ask everyone at the end. Call the three truths question.

Okay.

Hypothetical scenario. Imagine it's your last day on earth many years away. You get to live as long as you want and you get to accomplish all your wildest dreams. But for whatever reason on this last day, you've got to take all of your work with you. Everything you've written, all your blogs, this interview, your books, anything you create in the future, For whatever reason, it goes with you to the next place.

Okay. Okay.

Or it's not here in this world.

Got it.

But you get to leave behind three lessons to the world. And this is all the information we would have to remember you by.

This is a tough question.

What would be those three truths for you?

Yeah.

That you would leave behind?

Okay. Let's see. So the first one is I would want to leave a lesson that everyone can be with all of it. All of the stuff that we've talked about, all of these feelings, all of the difficulty in the world, all of the things we turn away from, all of our own inner struggles. There's a we are beings that have the capacity to be with all of humanity, all of ourselves, and all of the world. It's being with in a mindful way where you're just really opening yourself and opening your heart and able to be with all of it rather than shutting down, rather than needing to protect from or judge or attack. So that's the first one is that we are much more capable of that than we give ourselves credit for. We think we have to protect ourselves and we don't. I'm not saying we shouldn't have boundaries or any of that kind of stuff, but we are much more expanded than we believe. The second one is that if you do nothing else but give yourself love, and I mean like a real feeling of heart, not just the words or some thoughts about it, But just like the love you would pour out to the person you love most in the world, pour that out to yourself. All of your, you know, difficulties towards yourself, all of your ways that you're unhappy, all of your anxiety, all the ways you're mad at that person, just bring love to all of it. If you could just do that, if that's the only thing that you did, it would change your whole life. It would change the world. Because then you would also have an expanded capacity to be with all of it. and expanded capacity to bring love to every person you're in contact with. And there's never a time when we have done all of that work. Like, I am still expanding my capacity to bring myself love. So that would be the second one. And the third one is that we have the ability to create any experience of life in any moment, as if like We could feel and be and have any impact that we want in any moment. I'm not saying you get to be president of the United States right now, but what would it feel like to be president of the United States? Would that be powerful and feeling like you're making a difference in the world? That's always available. We get to have that and part of the way we do that is through the view that I talked about. If you could change your view, you could have any experience you want. if you want to feel completely lit up every day or in love with life or yourself or your spouse, like you could feel that. If you want to feel fully connected with every other person that you see, every person with yourself, with the universe, with nature, you can feel that. If you want to feel joy and feel like a little kid playing, you can do that in anything and we usually limit ourselves and say, I can't do that over here. I can only have play and joy over here. But over here, nope, that's just like total victimhood and burden and like, you know, slog. But we can have that anywhere in any place with any person.

Those are great truths.

All right.

I love those, man.

I get an A.

You get an A. Yes.

Yes.

Final question for you, Leo. What is your definition of greatness?

Oh my God. Greatness, well it would be combining those three truths. So if you can imagine yourself stepping every day into who you are, that like six-year-old kid who's playing and thinking they're awesome, accessing your full, like your full self, the full expression of who you are, and being that in the world, and then using that to call forward other people's greatness. That's greatness. We can do that for ourselves and sit on a mountain top or in a cave and just meditate and access all of that. But if you can do that and call forward others to sing their song, the song of their soul, or to let their hearts be expressed fully, that's a calling forward of other human beings. I believe that's what you do actually in great abundance. Just calling at the school of greatness calls forward people to be the greatest version of who they are, of finding what that means for them and then really enacting that. You're a person who stands for that in the world. All you have to do is be that and it calls us forward. I'm called forward just being here in this room with you to be a greater version of myself just by who you be. And I think that's greatness.

Leo, my man. Thank you. Appreciate you being here, man.

I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad-free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you if no one has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.

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