TJ Walker explains Selfie Speak, a technique where you record motivational messages to yourself on your phone and listen to them daily. He lost 35 pounds using this method and recommends it for building habits like daily push-ups or sticking to New Year's resolutions.
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Happy holidays. It's the week before Christmas.
New Year's is right around the corner.
And with that, a lot of people I know, I am, you probably are too, are thinking about New Year's resolutions. It's a clean slate, a time to make some changes, perhaps change habits for the new year. So how do you do that exactly? For years, many people around the world have hired me when they want to become motivational speakers, inspirational speakers. And I do train and still train people on how to be more effective inspirational speakers and motivational speakers. But increasingly, I help people like you figure out how to be motivational speakers, not for audiences, but for an audience of one. Yourself, myself, the people, the audience that we really care about the most that has the biggest impact on our life typically is ourself. If we can give a motivational speech to ourself to change, that can be priceless. It can sometimes change a life. So what am I talking about here? An affirmation, looking in a mirror, saying, I'm wonderful, I'm nice, everybody loves me. That sounds a bit cheesy. That's not exactly what I'm talking about. But what I am talking about is telling yourself what your goals are and what habits you want in a little speech. Now, the speech can be one minute long, but here's the magic that didn't really exist 30 years ago, 20 years ago, and throughout most of human history. Give a speech just on your own cell phone. No one else has to hear it. Use the audio memo record function and simply tell yourself your vision of how you want to live your life and what goals you have and specifically what habits you want. So let me give you an example. It was just a year ago. I was overweight. I was 35 pounds heavier than I am today. And I wasn't happy with that. I gave myself basically a little motivational speech. I went to my cell phone, hit the audio record in the memo function, and I just told myself, you may.
Laugh, this may sound cheesy, but it really did work. I'm 35 pounds later. And I said, TJ, you are healthy. And it wasn't video, it was just audio. You are healthy. You are going to live to be a hundred years old. You are your proper body weight because you are healthy and active and have full energy. You are a healthy eater. You eat three meals a day. You don't snack in between meals because you're not running marathons and you're not a construction worker. You just eat three meals a day. You drink your coffee without sugar. You don't have sweets and sugar unless it's an occasional tiny snack. Dessert after dinner. But other than that. You eat only until you're full, not until you're stuffed. You eat until you're no longer hungry. You don't eat until you can't put another bite in. You do not eat seconds. You go to a buffet, you have one plate full of food and you try to cover half the plate with vegetables. And I just went on a couple more minutes. Nothing you haven't heard a thousand times. Here's the difference. I recorded it on an audio and I just listened to that audio first thing every day. Doesn't require any great self discipline. I just hit click. Takes one second and I can listen to this while reading the news, doing other things, going for a walk. It's passive. It's this passive consumption. Kind of the same way McDonald's and Kentucky Fried Chicken gets to you through radio ads and constant bombardment with online ads. Doing it once and then subjecting myself to it again and again and again creates the repetition. And that's where there's real power. Any advertiser will tell you there's tremendous power in if you have unlimited budget to hit someone again and again and again with the same message. Well, in this case it costs nothing. I'm not hiring a recording artist or an ad agency to make the ad. I'm just talking to myself on my own cell phone, recording it once and hitting play. It's very simple to do. We're used to taking selfie pictures, but we're not really used to capturing our own voice and listening to it. Now the reason I think this is so much more effective than just affirmations is I don't know about you, I've never seen anyone who can say it the same affirmation. After about a week, it feels stupid. You forget about it. It's boring. But with listening to an audio, all you have to do is hit it once. Now I do this for other habits too, but it's very effective if you are trying to get healthier, exercise more, lose weight. One of my tips is simply every day do as many push ups as you can do in one minute. It's only one minute, but I just tell myself that every day. And then I have a little check mark on my phone. Did I do it when I started? Probably shouldn't tell you this, it's a little embarrassing. I only did one. Now I'm doing more than 40 every single day. In less than a minute I'll probably cap out around 60 that's about the most you can do in a minute. At least the most I think I'll be able to do. But simple little habits. The key is not that there's anything brilliant in those habits. The key is recording a message in your own voice, using your own name, telling yourself that's who you are, that's your identity, and that is what makes it more powerful and makes a connection with you so that you can actually do it. By the way, if you're interested in I call these things Selfie Speak programs. Selfie Speak audio programming. If you're interested in this for losing weight or any other aspect of self improvement or building new habits, I have a number of new courses that employ the use of this technology. So click below. You'll see some links to some discounts for the courses. They'll all be marked down by at least 90%, so I hope you enjoy this for the holiday. If you want to start getting ahead of your New Year's resolutions, this is the time to do it. So check out the courses on time management, on habits, on how to have.
Greater focus and greater creativity, other aspects of personal development.
