New Year Habits & Mindset

Hi everyone, my name is Matt Ragland and welcome to the very first episode of the Connect the Dots podcast. I've been wanting to do this for a really long time and one of the things that we're going to tackle in this first episode is how do you get over the hump with something that you've wanted to do for a long time. Maybe you are a little scared about, maybe you can't quite think about how you would put everything together and maybe you've made some initial plans But especially, you're probably going to be hearing this, it's going to be coming out right around Christmas and the New Year's. And so habits are really a big part of how a lot of people like to start the new year. And when I think about how to connect the dots, to give you a little bit of show intro as well, is the reason that I chose this name is I'm always super curious about how we connect the dots on different disciplines and topics to think about how they intersect, how they converge, how they play off one another. Like, for example, I've just started my own business or gone all in full-time on the side hustle that I've been building for a couple of years, and now it's my full-time business. And one of the most interesting things about how I made that transition from side hustle to full-time creator is the convergence of how important my mindset was to the changes that I had to make personally. Yes, there were financial implications. Yes, I realized time and time again like how big of an impact my lack mindset had. And so like seeing how those things intersect, what you can expect on these Connect the Dots podcasts is me sharing 3 or 4 different topics and how I see them converging together. And what we're going to talk about in the show today, as actually as a quick little meta thing, I don't even know if this will make it in the actual like audio podcast, but because it's much more of a visual thing. So if you're listening to this, make sure that you check out the YouTube video for this episode at the Connect the Dots YouTube channel. And what I'm doing for all of this I've been talking about this a ton on my YouTube channel as well the last few months, is this like durable note-taking. And so I'm going through, I have I think 10 note cards here right now, and the way that I organize my shows is I go through these categories of notes that I've been taking about creativity, about work, about self-care, about mindset, about habits and notes and productivity, all of those things I have like lots of notes about. And so what I do when I want to start setting up a Connect the Dots show is I just start reviewing my notes. I'm like, ah, this is interesting, and I could talk about this. And as I'm going through, I'm like, that connects to the dot that I pre— like the note that I previously did. And so I just have these, I have these notes, I put them in order of what I think is going to make sense the most for us in this show here today. So let's go ahead and get started with that. As you're going into the new year, a lot of people are thinking about habits. You want to build a new habit, or maybe you want to kind of get back to a habit that you had built in the past. And whether it's just over the holidays or for much longer than that, it's kind of gone by the wayside. That's totally okay. And one of the things that I believe is most important for starting good habits, starting habits that you can sustain, is to be as consistent as you can with them. And one of the ways to build consistency most effectively is just by starting small. Okay. And so when you're thinking about, do I want to create a fitness habit? Well, okay, that sounds, that sounds really great. Instead of going out, as many people do, and like, I'm going to run 5 miles every day, or I'm going to run 3 miles every day, and that's how I'm going to start my fitness habit. Start really slow, really small with it. Maybe just go out and run for 5 minutes, especially if you've had trouble with like a habit like this sticking in the past. Now, if you're an experienced runner and you just haven't, you know, run for like a month or two, then just get back into your habit. You probably have the confidence to know that that's something that you can just go out and do. But if this is something pretty new for you, then I I would encourage you to start pretty small with it. Just run for 10 minutes instead of trying to say I'm going to run 1 mile and just be as consistent as you can. Because what you want to do in the new year, whenever you're trying to build a new habit, is develop consistency, confidence, and momentum that this is actually something that you can do long-term. And a critical part of any habit is enjoyment. You have to get out, you have to get some enjoyment out of the habit or you're just not going to do it anymore. It's not going to stick. And so a lot of times what I— when I used to be a fitness trainer and a coach, whenever people wanted to get into that fitness habit, I just used to tell them like, well, is there anything that you enjoy doing physically? And people might say like, well, I hate running. Like, great, we're never going to run. Well, I don't really like lifting weights. Great, you don't have to lift any weights because we're not training usually for some specific thing. You just want to stay fit and healthy. So find that, like, bit of fitness that you enjoy. If you want to build a reading habit, just read the books that you enjoy. I don't care what they are, just read the books that you enjoy. If you want to build a journaling habit, write about something that is really interesting to you, or maybe just make a really simple list. Something that is fun and/or something that is easy and small small doses is an excellent, excellent way to build any kind of habit into the new year. Okay? Because what's happening when you're doing that, and it is fun or it's simple, it's easy, it's enjoyable, is that's when you're getting that dopamine hit. You're kind of like that almost healthy kind of addiction to the habit that you want to be forming. And without that, it's really tough to get it to stick over time because We don't want our habits to necessarily rely on the willpower that we have to like conjure up every single time. One of my favorite examples of this is Jerry Seinfeld. You may have heard of Jerry Seinfeld, very famous comedian and actor. And one of the things that Seinfeld is famous for is that for years he wrote one joke a day. And so his rule, as attributed to him. His rule is to never break the chain. And you might think to yourself, like, Seinfeld— I mean, Jerry Seinfeld, arguably the most prolific comedian of the last 50 years. Surely he writes just a ton of jokes all day, every day. And I'm sure there are days where Seinfeld wrote a lot of jokes, but his goal, his habit, the system that he had was to write one joke a day. So I would, I would really encourage you on that same kind of like, what is something small that I can do every day or multiple days per week that will help propel me forward in the habit that I want to be building and creating? Another really good example about staying focused on one thing comes from the songwriter Jeff Tweedy. He was part of the band named Wilco. Amazing band. And one of the things that I was reading about in Jeff Tweedy's latest book, How to Write One Song, is that the creative and productivity struggle is that when I focus on the plural rather than the singular, that is like I want to be writing essays, I want to write songs, I want to make videos, I want to write blog posts, the plural makes it sound like kind of difficult in the moment. And I think that can be really challenging whenever you're trying to start something. So instead of focusing on the plural, whether it be songs or essays or blog posts or emails or making videos, recording podcasts like for me, this was something that I had to use literally to just make this podcast right now. Because I kept getting myself thinking like, oh, I got to make 10 podcasts. Whoo, making 10 podcasts kind of sounds like a lot. But when I just sat down, I was like, okay, I need to put my notes together and I just need to record one podcast. Can I record one podcast? Yeah, I think I could record one podcast. Because again, we want to be building a consistent chain of success. Of motivation, of momentum, so that we know we're building that confidence in ourselves. That's like, ah, I'm a person that records podcasts. I'm a person that makes YouTube videos. Now, I feel confident that I'm a person who makes YouTube videos now because I just published my 201st video on YouTube. But early on, I didn't have a lot of that initial confidence. I just had to think about making the next video. And just as an encouragement to you, and maybe it won't sound as much like an encouragement, but here I am, video number 200, 201, 202, and I'm still like, okay, I got to make the next video. I'm planning a little bit more for the future than I have in the past, but it's still coming back to, okay, let's make this video. Let's focus on the singular, this video right here. You know, this can be applied to workouts. Let's just do one workout. Let's make one journal entry. And even reading books, like, just let's just think about making and reading one book. Yeah, and a book that you enjoy. And maybe you just read a page a night, but then you're creating that consistency, you're creating that momentum for yourself. The reason that we want to think about how important, like, the basics, how starting small is, how important that is, is time after time finding and committing to that disciplined application of basics is going to be really terrible, but the dab of what you want to be doing. It doesn't matter the field. It doesn't matter the market that you're in. It doesn't matter what you're doing. If you can consistently, consistently and effectively apply like basic principles, chances are you're going to be successful. Like how often are you watching your favorite sports team play and you're just like, Yeah, it's football season while we're— while I'm recording this right now. How often do you— maybe you watch your favorite football team and think to yourself, like, why can't they just block and tackle? Why can't they just complete the pass? If that was that disciplined application of basics of like, let's just hold on to the ball. Let's just complete the passes, run the routes, like basic things. When I was a lacrosse coach, I used to talk about this with my players. I'd say like, look, if all we do is possess the ball, don't turn it over, complete our passes, and move properly, like all these basic things, we're going to be so successful. And you're going to feel so confident because you will— while you start, might, you might start considering your basics, your, your actions pretty basic, people will be watching you and they'll be thinking to themselves, oh my gosh, that person is operating at such a high level. And you might still be thinking like, it's just kind of basic stuff. This is actually the, the more of an expert you become, this actually kind of becomes a problem. Because to you, your level of like, this is what I believe the basics are, is so much higher than what like a beginner's actual challenges are, that you kind of have to start retraining yourself and be like, oh yeah, these are the basics. I thought the basics were up here, but actually they're way down here. I saw this all the time working with creators at Podia and ConvertKit. We would have product meetings, we would talk about new features, be like, oh well, this is a pretty basic thing. And then we— I would go talk to customers and they'd be like, yeah, yeah, that's like step 5 and step 1 is this. And we're like, oh, okay. So this disciplined application of basics, that DAB, kind of, you can keep that in your mind and have like a stupid GIF of me doing this. But that disciplined application of basics for what you want to be doing is so important, will always pay off. It will always pay off. So I want to come back— so I want to come back to this idea of the habit streaks, about creating a system that you can stay consistent with, that you can build your basic level of competency for any of this. Another way to think about this is what if you just just try to set your own personal record every single time you started with a new system or a new habit or a new thing that you wanted to be doing. Like, for example, let's move away from the exercise examples and just think about something that a lot of people want to be doing, which is maybe like writing more. Journaling more comes up a lot. Just consistency with my journaling habit or my bullet journaling habit. When I do a webinar and ask people like, hey, what are your biggest challenges? With, with bullet journaling or with doing like this creative thing that you want to be doing. And consistency, consistency, consistency comes back time and time again. And I recently did— we're actually right in the middle of a 90-day note-taking challenge, and I saw a comment that I thought was really emblematic of how a lot of people kind of go into these. Is like someone had maybe had done like the first week, so the first 7 to 10 days, then missed a couple of days and commented on one of my Instagram posts saying, I missed a couple of days, can I, can I start again? And I was like, oh, of course you can start again. There are no like real rules for this. Even if you were going through a 90-day challenge, a 60-day challenge, a 30-day challenge, whatever it is, and you got through 20 of those days, 30 of those days, 50 of those days, then most likely those are 50 additional notes that you probably wouldn't have taken anyway, which is pretty wild to think about. That even if you think about like, okay, it's a 90-day challenge, I only did 50 days. So you're kind of like half-assing it, but at the same time, your new half-assing it is like so much better than what you were doing before. And this is like, we can't— we need to switch our minds around for how we actually think about progress and how we think about our own personal progress. So to get back into sports for just a moment, the idea of a PR is something that like, especially in like weightlifting and track and whatever it might be, you know, like what's my personal record for run distance, for run time, for weights lifted. And that's something that you definitely celebrate. You're like, I ran my fastest mile ever, it's a PR, personal record. And what if we applied more of that thinking to the way that we went after how we measured our habit streaks? And so maybe you don't hit your goal or like your system outcome of I want to I want to write 3 days a week for the next month or for next year. Okay, so if you wanted to write 3 days a week for all of next year, you would write for about 150 days. So let's just say that's your, that's your hope, that's your aspirational goal. So you keep going after that. And no matter like how many weeks you might have only written 1 or 2 or none, 0 days, what if at the end of the year, you had written for 100 days. So you're off your goal, but that's still a PR for you. What if you wanted to have a habit streak and you did like 4 days in a row? That's a new PR. And you're like, okay, well, I want to get to 10, but you actually end up getting to 6. Okay. I mean, you didn't do what you wanted to, but you can look back at it and say like, hey, I just made a new PR. I mean, that happens with like weightlifting all the time. I've started doing CrossFit again, and like, I wanted to back squat 300 pounds, and I got to, I think, like 290. So, so close, so close. And I was a little disappointed, but I was like, hey, new PR. Previously, I think I had done like 255, so that's still a big PR. That's something to think about when you're creating these habit streaks. And maybe your PR is, I want to write 1,000 words a day. All right, great. That's amazing. And what actually ends up happening initially is you do try and write every day or, you know, 3 days a week, whatever you have. And instead you write 200 words one day. All right, that's your new PR. Then the next day you write 250 words. Okay, still not 1,000, but new PR. Then it's 500, 700, it's 1,000. Then you write 1,500 words one day and that's awesome. New PR. So I want you to think about how you can apply this kind of PR, personal record thinking, to your— to the way that you're building habits, to the way that you're building consistency. Because the way this works a lot of the times is that there is like a very up and down, kind of like rolling hills effect when it comes to habits. You know, you have some momentum and you're like, great, this is going to be awesome. Then you hit a bit of a roadblock, a little bit of a challenge. It's like, ah, sucks again. But then you're like, okay, I'm going to do it. You get some more motivation going in. It's like up, up, up. I'm doing great. This is awesome. And then it's going to go down again. So initially for a really long time, sometimes you will go through these peaks and valleys of your habits. And if you recognize that and it's like, ah, kind of in the valley, Right now, that's okay. Let's just start again. And maybe you don't get all the way to the top of the next peak within a couple of days. Maybe it's kind of a slog again, but you start going uphill again. And then eventually, I don't even know if you can see this. No, it's not autofocus. There we go. Eventually, you do hit that momentum to where it feels a little easier. And really what's happened is not only have maybe you optimize your environment, you have a good routine that's helping you get started with that habit or, you know, kick a bad one. But the other thing is that you will build this confidence in yourself. And I think it is one of the most important, awesome things about habit formation, and especially positive habits, is that you build a sense of confidence and belief in yourself that even if you miss a couple of days of writing, of journaling, a couple of weeks of missing, of not making videos, you are confident enough because you have put in the work previously. You've hit some new PRs. Like, there were a lot— I probably went like 3 or 4 years without doing like weightlifting and like CrossFit-style stuff. But when it— when I joined a box again, I never doubted that I could start doing it. The things that I wanted to, I never doubted that I could do them again. I had a confidence that was built up over years and years of exercising and lifting weights and just being fit. So even when I went back into it, I was like, it's just a matter of time before I get back to that level, before I get back to my PR. And so this confidence that you can build internally, I believe, is just so important and so critical for how habits form and stick with us over time. Okay, here's another aspect of the mental side of habit formation that I want to touch on. Because I think it's so important and it's something that I ignored for years. And that is the mental side, like the visualization piece of what you want to be doing, even who you want to become. And you may think like, okay, well, that manifestation stuff is a little too woo-woo for me. And trust me, any internal debate you've had about the validity or efficacy, if I'm using that term properly, of something like this. These are internal dialogues I have had with myself. And I do believe now, after practicing it for much of this year, that even in small doses, if you take the time to literally visualize yourself doing the thing that you want to be doing, becoming the type of person that you want to become, then it helps create these mental grooves in your mind that when the moment of truth comes, when it's time to wake up early, when it's time to go to the gym, when it's time to write, when it's time to make a video, when it's time to create a course or make a sale or record a podcast, you have gone over it in your mind. And I would literally go through it and like as exact of detail as you can possibly think of. Again, you may think like, "Matt, that's a little silly, just got to go out there and do it." And yeah, I think if you are the kind of person that maybe has visualized yourself unknowingly going out there and just doing it, then yeah, that can, that can definitely work as well. But if you've found yourself stuck and kind of unable to get over the hump, a little trick you can play with your— play on your own mind is just to kind of sit and like just imagine yourself sitting down and writing 1,000 words. Like, be as literal, literal in your like mental movie about this as you can, because I'm telling you, you form these images in your mind and your mind is kind of tricked a little bit in a really good way that when it is time to start the habit that you want to do, your mind is like, "Oh, we've done this before." Like literally your mind is like, "Oh, we've done this before. We got this. Let's go." And you probably have to build up those images, those visualizations of you doing the thing and becoming the person. But I'm telling you, combined with action, combined with actually doing the thing, you still have to do it, but it helps your mind, like your internal resistance it'll lower it a little bit so that you can step into that action a little bit easier. And we want every advantage that we can take, get, and trick ourselves into when it comes to these things that we want to be doing more of and becoming the person that we, we intend on becoming. Because here's another secret about the mental side of the internal— because here's another secret about the internal resistance that many of us face when it comes to doing something new. Doing something that's uncomfortable, doing something that doesn't feel normal to us, is realizing and kind of disassociating any negative self-talk that you have about this thing with your actual aspirational person, who you really are and the person that you want to become. So disassociate, like kind of personalize your negative self-talk And that may seem a little weird to do. But if you think of your inner critic as just a bad roommate, then you would look at this person and be like, how dare— like if you had a person living with you that just sat on the couch or whatever, or maybe they're like super, super crazy workaholic, and they're just walking around saying, you're not good enough, you don't do these things well, why would you even try this? Maybe it is sometimes actually personalized as a person who critiques you, you early on in life. But personalizing that inner critic and even like looking at it as like the bad roommate version of yourself, I hope that if you actually had a person like that, like sitting next to you on your couch, talking trash to you and talking down to you all day, every day, you would finally give up and be like, enough, you need to leave, you need to get out of here. No one should talk to me like that. Or even think about like if there was a person, you could even like disassociate further, but maybe you're not quite there and you think like, "Oh, people talk mean to me all the time and I can't stand up to them." Think about it this way instead. It's totally okay if that's where you're at. Think about it this way instead. Think about someone that you love. Someone that you love so deeply, and imagine like a critic talking trash to them, talking down to them, and you just having to sit there and watch this person that you love be treated badly. How angry would that make you? And if you could, like, just getting that critic out of that loved one's life, absolutely I think you would do that. Absolutely. Visualize yourself doing that, and then turn it back, turn it back towards you and think, "Ugh, I could never let someone talk to me that way." When you externalize and kind of almost personalize your inner critic, you see how crazy it is how we talk to each other, how we talk to ourselves sometimes. And so be willing, like sometimes literally I will say out loud, like if my inner critic is really going at me, I will take some deep breaths and I will say out loud, you know, maybe like a crazy person. I am in my office, but I'll just say out loud, it's time for you to leave. You need to get out of here. I don't need any of that attitude. This is what I'm doing. I'm going forward with it. I can do this in small doses. I can take the risk. I can do the thing. I'm a person who does these things, removing your negative self-talk, like personalizing it and treating it like a bad roommate. I want you to try that. Like, if you're listening, of all the things that we've talked about in this episode today, I want you to try that. I want you to try externalizing your negative self-talk, your inner critic, just saying like, yeah, you can leave now. I don't need this. Not helpful. And just like, you can literally say that out loud. The other thing that you should totally do is like start small with your habits so that you can be consistent and increase momentum as you're moving forward in the new year. Because this inner critic, a lot of time— and just remember that this inner critic, a lot of times, it's the result of a lot of different external forces and impressions that we get, things from childhood, things when we were growing up, things in first jobs and first relationships, things that have been like pitched and promoted and marketed to us about how we should feel and the way that we should think about things. That is not entirely true. And when you can disassociate from that and be like, ah, what would I like actually do if it was just me? If it was just me in this moment, How would I observe what I'm doing? How would I observe the decision that I'm making? How could I report back to myself on it? And being able to, I'm telling you, being able to disassociate yourself from the moment and from the emotion of the moment, that's a superpower. It's a superpower. And so the way that we can connect the dots on all of these things is when you're going into the new year, and you're trying to build new habits, please, please, please start small, be consistent, try and set personal PRs so that you can see the progress that you're making personally, not measuring it against anyone else or like just measuring against yourself. And even if like you used to be way better at it in the past, than just looking at like, okay, well, this is the person that I am now. This is the place that I'm in now. Maybe it's time to set a new PR. Like for me, my, my back squat PR in like high school, college was 365 pounds. And I'm probably not going to get back to that again because I'm just never going to be working out as much as I was then. But I can say like, okay, well, Matt right now, it'd be really awesome if Matt right now at 37 was able to back squat over 300 pounds. That'd be awesome. So maybe resetting a new PR for yourself. And then as you're going through this, if you're having a little bit of trouble getting started, literally visualize yourself doing the thing. And maybe it's just the first part of doing the thing. Maybe you're just visualizing this version of you that's going to get up, that's going to get dressed, it's going to have some water and a banana, and then go to go to the gym, go, or just do, do a workout at the house. Lots of people working out at home these days, and that's awesome. Just visualize that part of it. Visualize yourself all the way through the workout. I'm telling you that the mental side of this for habit formation and for consistency, when you go into that moment, your brain is going to be like, oh yeah, we've done this before, and they totally haven't. But you've trained yourself to know, to trust that, okay, this is This is what I'm supposed to be doing. I'm going to do this. And then as you feel or as you hear that inner critic, like, personalize it, but like externalize it as well. And just look at your inner critic as a bad roommate, someone that you wouldn't put up with the sass that they're giving you. You'd be like, I don't want anyone talking to me this way. And the crazy thing is that you were talking to yourself this way. So take a step back, disassociate from the negative self-talk. Be like, you don't need to be here anymore. I'm, I'm doing what I want to do. I know that like this is fun and interesting. Don't forget that part when you're putting your like habits together. Try and do them in a way that is fun and interesting, maybe even a little easy for you, just so we can build that momentum. Because we know that habits can go up and down, especially early on until you build that momentum. You'll have a good couple of days, it'll be like have a bad couple of days, but it's just important to stay consistent. And that's why starting small is so helpful. And what we want to be doing is building that consistency over time so that you build that confidence in yourself. So in the future, you have done enough reps, you've set enough PRs, you've done enough of the work that even when you are in a valley with the habit that you want to be developing, that you are developing, that you're in the middle of. Like, oh, I'm a person who has worked out a bunch before. I've written hundreds of entries in my journal, so it doesn't— it's okay if I haven't written in my journal for a month, or even if I haven't journaled for a year. I know what that's like. You've kind of programmed yourself in a positive way and your self-talk is like, oh yeah, well, we know how to do this. Because you would want a friend like that. You'd want a roommate like that. It'd be like, hey, high five, we got this. And like, heck yeah, we do got this. So thank you for watching and listening to this first episode of Connect the Dots. I think it's going to be the first episode. I'm really excited for this. You can find it in all the places. However you're getting this, look in the show notes or in the description, but there is going to be a normal podcast feed. There is also going to be a YouTube channel. Which for those of you watching this, you're already there. There's going to be a YouTube channel for Connect the Dots. There's even going to be a like top clips, top moments YouTube channel as well. So I encourage you to check all of those out. I would love for you to subscribe, rate, review, like, comment, all the different ways, share. You can just, you can email me at matt@mattragland.com. If you're listening to this or watching this, I would love to hear from you because this is a fun new thing that I'm going to be doing for at least 10 episodes. Why 10 episodes, Matt? Well, we're gonna talk about that in the next episode of Connect the Dots. Thank you so much everyone, and I'll see you next time. Bye.