THE HABIT INFLUENCER - 2/24/2020 - Personal Development | LIVE STREAM

I'm your host, TJ Walker. Thanks so much for joining me today. It is great to be back. Took a little vacation last week, was off sky skiing at Lake Placid, home of the 1932 and 1980 Winter Olympics here in the United States, and was doing some really fun skiing on White Face Mountains. Thanks for all the questions that came in. I typically don't like to be gone for a whole week because I miss spending time with you, our interaction, our engagement. But we're going to catch up on everything. We have a lot planned for you today. Thanks so much for joining me today and coming back. This is the Habit Influencer. We are typically live every single day, Monday through Friday, 1 to 3pm right here on YouTube, Facebook, TikTok and a gazillion other live platforms. So whatever platform you're on and you can see this, thanks so much for being a part of this today. This is a show, this is a community about building good habits, how to build stronger habits to give you a more fulfilled life, how to reduce or eliminate bad habits that are detracting from the quality of your life. One of my habits, and I try to practice what I preach. I try not to be a hypocrite, although everybody is hypocritical at some level, is following the habit of taking frequent vacations. That's why I was off last week. All the research I've read and based on my own experiences in life, I am more productive, you are more productive when vacations are planned. I realize not everybody can take vacations whenever they want to, but I do think it's time. It's a great use of time to recharge, to rest, to do something completely different. Now I've been skiing for more than 50 years, but I did something fun last week up at the Lake Placid region of New York State where I went on these toboggan high up on a ramp and you just, you race down a toboggan and then you go out on the ice right out on the lake and it's about 10 times faster than any sled ride I've ever been on. A tremendous amount of fun. If you ever get a chance to go to Lake Placid, I do recommend it. We have a lot of top stories to go over today and ground to make up since I've been off for the last week. Be taking all of your questions, comments and you can always post them whether you're on Facebook, TikTok, YouTube or any other platform. And I will be responding to you going through some of the mail that batched up in the last week? We'll be going through that plus a number of prepared topics. I always come prepared, ready to do a deep dive on subjects that relate to habits we'll be talking about. Clutter is a choice. That's the first big topic in topic A today. In topic B, we'll be talking about the perfect date to start changing habits. And really there is no perfect time to start a habit other than right now. Topic C Is it time to edit your life story? We all tell ourselves stories about our life and once we tell ourselves that story, we tend to get locked in and then it's too late. We just follow things that conform to that story. Well, guess what? It's never too late to edit the story you tell your own life. I'll be sharing a recent edit I did to my own life story. I hope you can share as well. Marceau, good to hear from you. Hope you had a great week when I wasn't around to bother you every day. Okay, great. We'll be looking at a lot of top news stories today that relate to habits as well. Some great insights coming from the New York Times about rating different tools and techniques for getting better sleep. Always an issue for anyone who cares about more productivity, more happiness, more fulfillment in life. We'll be looking at some of the top time wasting habits of the year. This according to the Enterprisers project. And we'll also be looking at devices designed to eliminate snoring. Relates to the whole issue of how to get better sleep. Now a number of you wrote to me all sorts of questions. One I wanted to hop in with. It came in right before the show started and I told Mike that I would answer him live on the show. This is from Mike Anthony. He says, TJ when you use the television set as a white screen background. So for those of you who've ever watched my online training courses, it's not my living room in the fireplace behind me, it's just a white backdrop. And that's what he's referring to. What size television are you using and about how far in front of it are you standing? So I'm guessing It's about a 42 inch television. I'm going from here to here. So I guess that's about 42 inch. Marcel, what would you say the size of this TV is? In my studio it looks to be about between 42 and 45. Yeah. So it's not a particularly big TV these days. It's extremely inexpensive to just buy an old flat screen tv. This one now is probably a dozen years old. I couldn't give them away. I still have a couple of others around the house. So TVs are inexpensive. And then you can put a video loop because behind you or just a white screen, which is what I do in my own online courses. Also, Mike wants to know, are you still using front lights to illuminate your face and a backlight to create separation between you and the back screen? So no, there is no light behind me other than the light that's emanating from the tv. So if I have a white backdrop, it's just the white pixels, I guess, coming from the tv. So I do not use a backlight the way someone who's professionally lit in a regular, larger studio uses. So the reason I wanted to address this. It sounds purely technical. I happen to believe that one of the best habits you could ever get into in life is the habit of creating. When you create your ideas and put them out to the world, it basically forces you to learn every day. It forces you to think, it forces you to reflect, it forces you to study. It does so many positive things. So I love talking about anything that can help you and Mike and anyone else be more creative. Because one of the biggest frustrations so many people have in life is that they aren't using their full creative power. So if I can do something, give you some kind of little technical piece of advice to make it easier for you to create, then I do want to do it. Even though I'm not particularly a production or a video expert, I am in this world all day long. So I do have a few tips here and there. Mike, my biggest suggestion to you though, frankly, is don't worry about the backdrop. Just start producing. Now, I make videos every single day in this studio or typically five days a week. But some of the videos, in fact, my most successful videos in the last year have been me just holding up my cell phone and speaking outdoors somewhere or sometimes just upstairs in living room. It doesn't have to be anything fancy. The main thing is you want light in front of your face, not behind you. And you want to hold the camera so that it's basically at your eye level, couple of inches above, which is how I have my camera mounted on the wall right here. So that's the main thing. Now, Mike is also a subject matter expert. He's the founder of Courage Matters and is author as well. So you may want to check out his page. So, Mike, thanks so much for joining us. I appreciate that we have tons and tons of questions that have come in over the last week because of my absence. We'll be going through all your questions as they relate to habits. Habits for being more productive in life. Better sleep, better health, better fulfillment, and better communication. We'll be going over all of those, plus some prepared topics too. One of the topics we'll be talking about in topic A has to do with cluttering and I did see a great article on the simplicity habit in the last few days about decluttering. It's a little different from what you normally think of when it comes to the Marie Kondo type of advice on cluttering and I want to just share with you some of the tips. Again, this is from the website the simplicityhabit.com and these are tips on and I've linked to it in the show notes so you can check it out if you're on my YouTube page or my Facebook page if you want to see the story. Number one mistake people make. Stop over scoping your project. When you're decluttering, be realistic with the size of the project you have time for. Author goes on to talk about People get so ambitious they want to do their whole house in a day and they start and it gets so frustrated because it can't happen. You're far better off sometimes focusing on one room at a time, one section of a room at a time. Here's another piece of advice. I love it. Stop buying storage containers. If you want to declutter your house, you typically don't need more storage containers. You need to make the hard decision of give stuff away, throw it away, or sell it. When you get more storage containers, that's a way of procrastinating. That's way of avoiding the hard decision of do I really need this? Do I really use this? Is this giving me any joy or fun or satisfaction? So I love this tip. Stop buying storage containers. One of the things I love about my own home, it's not a particularly small home, but it has no attic, it has no basement, and it has very few closets. It's a mid century modern house, kind of a Frank Lloyd Wright style house. So it's plenty spacious for me and my family. But it doesn't have a lot of storage, which is great because it forces us to make hard decisions. Do we get rid of it? We throw it away. Do we sell it? So that's the second big tip from this article. Next tip, a little bit surprising. Stop decluttering other people's stuff. So this can be a tough one. You want a decluttered home, but you live with someone who loves their stuff. The challenge here is that what's cluttered to one is not clutter to another. I found that out before. Everyone's definitions are different. If you want to keep peace in the home, do not declutter other people's things without their permission. Now, when it's kids things you want to declutter, work with them on the process. Give them guidelines to let them make the decisions. This will help them learn responsibility for their own things. That is great advice. Next Big tip Stop getting distracted. Have you ever tried to do a task you weren't too thrilled about, where anything and everything became a distraction? This is what can happen with decluttering. Phones can be a distraction during the process. Better off, leave the phone in another room. You'll have fewer distractions. Step number five Stop keeping decluttered items in your garage or trunk. Now, I've been guilty of this. Sometimes I see something. Living room, bedroom, den. I know I don't want it, but I can't quite make that emotional leap to give it away. Throw it away. Donate it. So I put it in the garage. Now, I'm proud to say that my garage is one of the few garages I know where we don't have to park outside. The car fits in the garage. So I'm certainly not as bad as most people. But that is an excellent point. Don't use your garage or your trunk as storage. You should only be storing things that you use on a regular basis. Otherwise, get rid of it. And step number seven Stop beating yourself up. Decluttering can bring up a variety of emotions. Sadness, guilt, buyer's remorse, and a variety of other things. Don't beat yourself up if you see something you spent money on. I have an air fryer that I bought. I thought it'd be such a great idea, I used it twice. Never used it again. 70, 80 bucks down the drain. You can't beat yourself up over that. Throw it away, get rid of it, donate it, and move on. And the one step I skipped in these seven tips in this article? Stop worrying about what ifs. If you're asking yourself questions as you try to determine what stays and what goes, don't let yourself get caught up on the what if, thinking, oh, I might need this, I might need that. Chances are you're not going to need it. If you do, you can replace it for $20 or less. That's quite often a great metric before throwing something away. If it's something you can replace relatively inexpensively. Get rid of it. You'll save so much mental anguish by having a clean house. By the way, if you're interested in decluttering, I do have the, by most accounts, the second most popular course in the world on decluttering, after Marie Kondo. If you're trying to declutter your house, go to Udemy and check out my course there. Okay, we're going to hop right into our first big topic of the day. This is Topic A Clutter A Choice that's right. Clutter is a choice. If you live in clutter, if your house is filled with clutter, if your office is filled with clutter, it is a choice. It is an active choice you are making. If you decide to not live in clutter, that's a choice too. It is completely up to you. A lot of habits are like that. You have a choice. You have a choice on whether to drink colas and soft drinks and juices with lots and lots and lots of artificial sugar added, or you have a choice to drink water. Tap water specifically. Unless you live in a region of the world where the tap water is not safe to drink, you have a choice either way. When you are getting to your office, your place of work, or going to a grocery store or shopping center, you have a choice of do you try to park as close as possible to that front door? You have a choice of do you take the bus or the subway that takes you right there? Or do you park a couple minutes away, where you have to walk several hundred feet? Do you perhaps get off one subway stop earlier, do you get off one bus stop earlier, five blocks away, and spend five minutes walking to your place of business, your office, that store? It is a choice. It is an active choice you make. And guess what? With those three scenarios I just gave you, it cost you nothing. Absolutely nothing. Not a penny, to make the healthier choice. In fact, in many cases, it costs less to make the better choice to have the stronger habit. It takes a lot of time, energy and money to clutter up your house and clutter up your office. Having a habit of living in a way without clutter will save you time because you're not always looking for stuff lost under all your clutter. You also don't have to buy so many knickknacks and garbage and junk, filling your house and office with stuff so you save money. The reason I bring this up is so often we like to give ourselves excuses. And I'm guilty of this too. Certainly I was in the past. Oh, it would be so easy to have good habits if I were rich. I'd have a personal chef and a maid and a butler and a personal trainer. Oh, it would be easy to have good habits if you are affluent or wealthier or richer or something. Guess what? There are so many good habits you can have that cost nothing or actually save you money. Clutter is one of them. The next habit. You've heard the argument, I've mentioned it before, where people who live in poorer communities here in the United States, for example, urban areas, inner city areas, where there simply are no good grocery stores that have lots of fresh fruit, fresh produce, everything at their local convenience store where they have to shop for food is packaged, processed, filled with sugar, carbohydrates, preservatives, nothing's natural. There's no fresh fruit, no fresh vegetables because it's not available in that poor neighborhood. You've heard that before. Yes, there is some validity to that. However, when it comes to what you drink all day, that you don't get off the hook for that. Coca Cola, Pepsi, Sprite, Mellow, Yellow, Mountain Dew, all of those cost money. Doesn't matter. If you're in the poorest block in your town, you go to a store, you go to a seven eleven, a convenience store, they're going to want money for that sugary beverage that is destroying your health, that is giving you so many calories you don't need far cheaper to drink water. If you're here in the United States, other than Flint, Michigan, it's perfectly safe to drink tap water. And guess what tap water cost you? Nothing, for the most part. Cokes, Pepsi, Sprites, Kool Aid, orange juice, it all cost money. So if you want to drastically improve your health, reduce the number of calories you consume on a daily basis, reduce the grams of sugar in your body that are messing up your system, possibly leading you down the path to diabetes. You can't use the excuse that you're not affluent enough. Simply stop spending money on Coke and Sprite and soft drink. Drink water. And I certainly hope you live in a place where you can get safe drinking water. But if you don't and you got to buy something from a bottle, buy water rather than soft drinks if you have to. You might not save money then, but at least it's a wash. You save a tremendous amount of money on your health care cost, your medical cost. Take two people and they have the exact same diet and one person is drinking four, five, six Cokes a day, the other one is drinking Water, maybe neither one of them has a great diet. But after a year, after a decade, the person who is drinking the same food as the other, but is consuming all these soft drinks a day is likely consuming another 500, 600 calories a day. That's likely to be another pound a day. That person, over the course of five years or so, could be 20, 30, could be 40 pounds heavier than the first person. The only difference, drinking those colas, drinking those sugared water. So again, here's another choice. Nothing to do with how much money you have, has nothing to do with how much time. Simply make the choice of drinking water. Make that your habit, rather than the bad habit of the sugary water. And the third example, walking a little more. It's an active choice to stand up and walk, even if it's another five minutes a day. It is so much better for you. I've been guilty of it. I know you must have friends or family who will sit around and wait five minutes for a car to back up just so they have that primo parking space two feet away from the front door of the grocery store or the shopping mall. Why are we doing that? You would have gotten to the mall, to the store so much faster if you had just parked in the very first space you saw, even if it's 300ft away. What I like to do now is I'll often consciously park the furthest spot away. A lot of advantages to that. No one's dinging up the side of my car. It's easy to get in and out, easy for family members to get in and out, and you get another couple of minutes of walking either way, so you get more exercise, you're not spending an extra penny, and you typically save time. You're not caught up in a little mini traffic jam as everyone's trying to get that perfect parking space. Those are just three examples. But I want you to start looking at every thing you select in life to do or not do through this prism. Is it actually helping you? Is it helping advance your goals of being healthier, being happier, saving time, saving money in some circumstances? Now, I'm not saying you always have to save time or money, but if you have a choice between a habit that's bad for you, that is costing you more money, and wasting time versus a good habit that is saving you time and saving you money and possibly making you healthier, you need to be aware of that. And at that point, it should be pretty easy to make the right choice. Now, I know we have a lot of People all around the world watching this show. Some of you are here in New York with me. Some of you may be wildly wealthy and affluent and have no material needs. Some of you I know are from some of the poor, poorest cities, countries and regions of the world. And I'm here to tell you, I hope all of you get all of what you want in life. But don't let the fact that you currently are in a place that is less than ideal, a place where you are not affluent, not rich, stop you from fulfilling positive, healthy habits today. Yeah, maybe you can't have your own library and pretend you're Thomas Jefferson and you have this big fancy library behind you with thousands and thousands of books. Guess what? If you have a cell phone, chances are you do or you wouldn't be watching this show. You have access to a million books already that are free from Google. So when you make a choice to look at another silly cat video versus reading an important substantive book about a real skill or a real topic of art, science, literature, you're making a choice. And it's one that isn't dependent on your economic stake. Status are where you are. It's dependent just on you choosing. I want you to choose the habits. They're going to lift you up, that will build you up, that will make you healthier, happier, wiser, more productive, and ultimately more fulfilled. So don't kid yourself. You too have have a choice. And that's topic A for today. I'm TJ Walker. Thanks so much for joining me. We have a lot of fun in store and appreciate you joining me. I know that some of our regulars here are also people who are huge fans of Kobe Bryant. His funeral is on now live streaming. So we certainly understand if you want to take today off to pay your respects and be watching that funeral. But for those of you who are here, I do appreciate your time and you are going to be well, well rewarded. We have a number of other topics in the news, plus your questions, comments, plus live commentary. Let's check in with some of our friends today on Instagram. I see that Ankara is with us. Vesna, my good friend from Belgrade, Serbia is with us. Vesna, so great to see you and hear from you. The great Vesna da Vinci, who is a fabulous journalist, author, expert and all around bon vivant in Belgrade. So happy to have worked with her and been a part of the whole Miss Serbia beauty pageant where I served as a judge consultant for several different occasions. So Vesna, great to see you. FMM has joined us on Instagram. Nadia has joined us on Instagram. And Adam, I think we missed a comment from Adam there. If you could scroll back. Marcia okay. We had some. By the way, sometimes people ask me in the online courses, tg, what do you do when people criticize you, spam you, whether it's on TikTok or Facebook. I don't recommend that you try to convince someone they're wrong on the Internet because no one has ever succeeded in that to my knowledge. What I do if someone puts forth criticism, I say, unless it's really nasty, in which case I would ignore it. I just say thanks for stopping by, thanks for sharing your view, rather than trying to tell them they are wrong and convince them I am right. I think the less you engage in some sort of heated confrontation, whether it's spam or a nasty comment, the better off you are. I see Aksha has joined us from Up Live. David as well. And Junior 2073 has sent some positive messages, some laugh out louds. We have Mohammed has joined us. And thank you from TikTok. Mohammed, good to see you today. Baberuf has joined us as well. KFC from uplife has joined us. Now. When I was a kid, I loved going to Kentucky Fried Chicken. The Manash potatoes I was a big fan of. The whole transition from the regular original recipe to extra crispy was something that excited me. I'm not a regular. I can't remember the last time I had Kentucky Fried Chicken, although they do have the rotisserie chicken, which is fairly tasty and healthy. I think I mentioned to you a couple of weeks ago when I was in China last year. I couldn't help but notice Kentucky Fried Chicken was everywhere and now, of course, known as KFC simply. And I said to my tour guide, wow, KFC seems to be popular. She said, that's right, tj. Kfc. It stands for Keep Fat Coming. Sadly, the rise of obesity in China and every place else in the world has come from the purveyors of fast food, the McDonald's, the Kentucky Fried Chickens of the world. Let's check in with our friends on YouTube. Dwayne is saying hello. He says, I'm on board. Hope you had a great ski trip. I had a fantastic ski trip. One of the things about Lake Placid is its reputation as being bitterly cold and too icy and crowded. There were no crowds. It was cool some days, but it wasn't icy. The snow conditions were fantastic. So it was wonderful. And it was during a week when every school kid in the State of New York was off, so we expected it to be very crowded, but it wasn't. It was fantastic. Duane, thanks for the comments. Matt's Food Insider says. Glad you're back. I'm glad to be here. Roger says, along with your ideas on creativity, I'd love to see some online courses, but can't really seem to get started. You've done a lot of courses. How do you get started and pick good topics? Well, Roger, there's no perfect topic. You've got to start off and ask yourself what is a topic that you have some passion for? Maybe you have no formal training. I have no formal training on public speaking training for that matter. But that's a field where anyone who's teaching public speaking typically isn't very skilled at it. Pick something that you know about, that you like, that you have a passion for. Pick a topic where you naturally read any new article, any new book you see on that topic, and pick a topic where there's some interest. Now, to go into more detail, I do have a course, for example, on how to make a successful online course on Udemy. And if you go to the Udemy platform and check on my bio, you'll see that course because there's a lot more specific things now of how you research data to figure out is this a topic worth pursuing? I'm working on a course right now that 48 hours ago I had no idea I was going to do the course. But I did some research, I had some data presented to me which shows that there is a hunger, a thirst out there for people who want to know how to create videos for the TikTok platform. And while I'm not the world's greatest expert on TikTok, I have produced a video every single day for four months other than the three days I lost my voice and I've posted those videos on TikTok. So I know a lot more than the vast, vast majority of the world. So I just shot 40 videos of that course this morning. So sometimes you just see an opportunity. There are very few courses on the subject and demand is going up and you hop in. Other times you create a course because it's a culmination of something you've studied and worked on for years. When I did my first online course, it was a course on media training, a subject where I had conducted thousands of in person workshops for 20 years before I ever made my first online course 20 years ago. So it could go either way. But my main bit of advice? Don't wait for the perfect moment, the perfect inspiration. Start making a course today Roger. Get it up. If it bobs, at least you've learned something. My first online courses all failed. For years and years and years my online courses failed. So I hope you do better than I did. But I can tell you the early failures are what created the successes I have today. Today I have more than a dozen best selling courses, online courses on the number one platform in the world. And I'm on about 50 platforms in the world. And if you add it all up, I have around a million student enrollments in my courses. So it's worked out nicely for me. But if I'd waited for that perfect moment, the perfect course, I never would have started. So Roger, I hope you can start right away. Mats writes tj, what do you think about the book Atomic Habits? Now, I've reviewed the book about three or four weeks ago and Mats, you're forgiven for not watching every single course here. I don't mean to sound snooty about that. The book Atomic Habits is written by an expert, James Clear. I think it is an outstanding book. I would heartily recommend the book Atomic Habits. As far as I can tell, it is the best selling book on habits in the world right now. And it's up there with the book the Power of Habit, which came out about seven years earlier from New York Times journalist Charles Duik. So those two books are kind of what I figure the top of the heap. The third book if you're only going to read three books on habits, I would recommend Atomic Habits. I would recommend the Power of Habit. The third one I recommend from an author by the name of Steven Guise, G U I S E is his name and the book is Many Habits. A fantastic book, a great read. He has a spin off book Many Habits for Weight Loss, which I think is the best book I've ever read on weight loss. So thanks so much for asking about that, Matt. And if you haven't read it yet, I'd urge you to pick it up if you like reading. Some people like reading. I love to read. Some people like watching videos like this and live streaming shows. Some people like watching on demand videos. There's no one perfect way. Although in my own mind I put at the top of the pantheon of learning is reading because I can read so much faster and for me the absorption is better than listening to a podcast or even I shouldn't say this since I'm coming to you on video. For me, reading a book is a more powerful way of than watching video. Even Although video has powerful elements as well. Thanks so much for your questions, your comments. I'll be coming up to those of you who wrote your questions in soon. I'm TJ Walker. This is the Habit Influencer. We have only barely begun this week and we're only a little more than 25% done in our first show of the week. All this and more for the second half of hour one. We have all of our two coming up. Please stay tuned. We'll be back in just a minute or so. Thanks. Sa. Glad to be with you today. This is a community. This isn't a show where there's just some guru lecturing down to you. This is a community of like minded people who care about their own personal daily habits. Together we look at ways of building stronger habits. Whether it's for our health, whether it's for our creativity, whether it's for our communication skills. Together we share tips on how to have better habits. Together we try to figure out how to minimize bad habits. So we're all on equal footing here. I would love to hear from you. You can post your questions, your comments, your thoughts. You can also record a video and post it right on our Facebook page. Just if you are not following me on Facebook, just go to facebook.com and type in TJ Walker, Personal Development or Habit Influencer. You will find the page and we'll show your face and you speaking on the program if you want to submit a video. So thanks so much for considering that. Let's dive right in now to questions from you. Questions. These were questions sent in. Some of the questions are from regular viewers of the program, regular community members. Other questions come from my online students. This show we do here, the Habit Influencer is basically two shows in one. It's two things in one. Number one, it's a show that goes in depth every day talking about habits, how to have stronger personal development habits. The second thing this is is these are the live office hours for me as the instructor to my hundreds of thousands or around a million online students around the globe. So all of my students have the option of writing live on the show to ask me a question or sending questions in advance. So let's go through some of the questions that have come in in the last few days. This is Moussa Adiya, a student in my communication skills course and it relates to public speaking. Hello Mr. TJ. How can I be more successful in spontaneous public speaking situations without a script? The way you do it, Mousa, is by looking for every single opportunity you can to speak. You're at a conference, you're at a large meeting, and they say, any questions for the speaker or the panel? Ask a question every single time. That's a type of public speaking. I realize it doesn't seem like it, but it is. Having to ask even one question when there's eyeballs looking at you teaches you how to speak under pressure and think on your feet. The other big suggestion? Many of you have heard me say this time and time again. It's simple, it's true, and no one ever thinks to do it. Have a simple page of notes folded over, bullet points, and you can just drop down, glance at it. No one has any idea you're using notes. I use notes every day on this show. Doesn't seem to bother you. Now, I speak extemporaneously in the sense that I'm not reading a script, but everything I'm saying to you is stuff I've thought about. I'm not just sitting here for the very first time saying, hmm, I wonder if this seems like a good idea. I am sharing with you reflections that I've given deep thought to. And that's what any great spontaneous speaker does. Winston Churchill used to famously say it took me two weeks of preparation to give that spontaneous speaker. That's not a direct quote, but his point is it takes time, thinking about it, preparing, sometimes even rehearsing. So Musa, good luck with all of your future spontaneous public presentations. Samir is a student in my Complete Personal Development course and the title of his question My biggest problem is with procrastination. Well, you're not alone, Samir. We've all procrastinated from time to time. And Samir says, tj, your course is awesome. Thank you very much. Thanks for the privilege of sharing on Q and A. It's a godsend as I'm not on Facebook. Nothing like private chat over coffee. Well, this is a type of private chat too. I hail from India. That's great. We have so many thousands of followers and community members from India. Fantastic you could join us. I grew up reading traditional self help books. This kind of stuff, Information Overload, deals with an ever increasing number of tips on what to do. So much that I began to feel snowed under. You should know what I mean as this is one of the topics you dealt with in the introduction. I have composed some songs. Pretty good if you asked me. I played the guitar and would love to cut an album. I also love oratory and leadership. Watching the US Presidential elections gives me an indescribable Thrill. I would love to become an award winning author as well. My biggest problem is with putting things off. I wish you could give us some guidelines in this course about how to overcome the habit of putting things off. The worst thing about putting things off tomorrow is that tomorrow is always more than 24 hours away. Thank you for any advice you could give you would care to share with us. And that is from Samir. Well Samir, my biggest piece of advice is stop it. Cut it out right now. Don't read another self help book, don't even watch another course of mine. Make something today. I don't care if it's a 30 second music clip, make it, finish it, share it with all of your friends, put it up on the various platforms where you can get 5 cents for it, but ship something. Seth Godin, the famed marketer always talks about real artist ship. Now I realize we're in a digital era where the concept of putting something in a box and postage isn't relevant. But what he means is you put it out there, you don't just keep it in your own brain. Creativity isn't just your thoughts, your ideas, it is putting it into something so that other people can experience your creativity, whether it's the form of a book, a journalistic article, a music download. You're going to feel so much better about yourself when you create something, even if a lot of people don't like it. I've never yet done a course, even my best selling courses with the highest ratings that don't get some one star reviews. I had a review come in or a question come in just earlier today from someone in my store. Storytelling course, which is the number one storytelling course on the number one platform in the world, sells really well, has great reviews and this person says, tj, I hate the way your video lectures are so short. Either make your lectures longer or I want out of the course. I'm not going to let that ruin my day. In fact, I'd almost forgotten it until just now. So much of what creates paralysis in people is they're worried about oh, what if people don't like this or what if I get criticized? You're going to get criticism. There's never been a great book in the world that wasn't criticized. There's never been a world class Oscar winning movie that didn't have critics who thought it was a horrible movie. You've got to create. So Samir, that is my challenge to you. Pick one thing. It almost doesn't matter whether it is a song, whether it is Just guitar playing for a minute. Whether it is a compilation of your favorite political leaders and their speech, it almost doesn't matter. Create something. Get in the game of being a creator. Most people in the world go through their life passive consumers. I'm going to eat this McDonald's, this Kentucky Fried Chicken. I'm going to watch this movie on Netflix. I'm going to look at someone else's post on Facebook. I'm going to look at this cat video on YouTube and I'll go to my job and sort of, you know, send emails or shuffle around or dig ditches, whatever it is, but not create. And so, Sameer, my hope for, and I think the whole reason you went into this personal development course is how to have more. And you're right. There's so many things you can do for any of us today. We don't have to talk a recording label into making a record for us. We don't have to talk a book publisher in New York or London to publish our book. We don't have to talk a radio network into allowing us to do a radio audio show. We can do all of those things. But that's the problem too, because we can do all of these things. We can do any of these things. Where do you start? I urge you, Pick the one project you're most excited about. Don't worry about whether it's the most profitable yet. Focus on the one thing you care for you. It might be your music. Then again, it might be writing a story about something that is completely uninteresting to anyone who doesn't live in your community of 10,000 people. If you happen to live in a small town, write an article and post it on various websites, in your own blog and on Facebook. Put it out there. Let people experience it. Give people an opportunity to give you feedback. Give people an opportunity to criticize you. That is how you will grow. That is how you will feel fulfilled. I get fulfillment not from someone saying, I hate your videos, they're too short. But I get fulfillment from people also writing, saying, hey, you changed my life because you helped me tell stories or something else. Quick program note, Marcel, that's not one of the planned segments, so I'm not sure I would use that. But I appreciate the time. Marceau gives me time when I go about nine minutes or so because I listen to you and sometimes you tell me I go on too long. I don't want to do that. Also, when we're cutting this show apart to make produced videos for Facebook and YouTube, try to make them 10 minutes or less. Because on certain platforms like LinkedIn, you can't post a video for longer than 10 minutes. So that's why you'll hear me occasionally make reference points to Marceau about how long it was. So good luck, Samir. This next question comes from Rajib, who is a student in one of my communication skills courses. I'm eager to improve my communication skill. I know I have some problem and I want to improve require your guidance on that. I'm good at English vocabulary and I have a lot of stock words to speak with. My sentences are correct and my grammar is fine. So again, this is all from Rajeeb who's writing to us. But here's the problem, tj. The problem is that I speak fast and sometimes it is difficult for others to follow. Customers may sometimes come back and say that I'm not able to understand you. As soon as this happens, I get tense and in a manner, I want to improve the communication. Because of that, I make things worse. I stammer after being tensed. I like to talk and speak, but remain filled with fear that customers could complain about me. Please guide me. This is an extraordinarily common problem. Rajeep, you're not at all alone in this. The good news is it's an easy problem to solve. You need to audio record, preferably video record your sales presentations, how you speak, but at least audio record everything you say and then listen to yourself. Chances are you don't know how quickly you are speaking. Your ideas are in your head, so you already know what you're thinking and what you want to say. So it's not hard for you to comprehend yourself when you are speaking quickly. But when you can listen to a recording of yourself or step back and watch a video of yourself, then you can experience it more like others. Especially if you wait a day or two to go by. You watch it, you might be amazed at how quickly you speak. By recording yourself frequently, you can learn how to adjust your speed. And if you're ever talking to customers or clients over the phone, there's nothing wrong with recording just your side of the conversation. You're not violating anyone's privacy, I believe, in any country in the world. So record yourself and then listen to it later the day. There's an old saying from Peter Drucker and others in the management business, that which gets measured, gets managed. You cannot measure your speaking speed unless you record the audio and or video and watch it. That is the first step. Once you do that, it'll be obvious to you that you're speaking too quickly. Slow it down. Practice what you want to say. So that when you're actually in a sales presentation, in a meeting, you can be consciously thinking about now I'm going to slow down. Now I'm going to pause more. Now I'm not going to rush. If you think about it, you can completely control your speed. If you tell yourself, I'm just going to focus on the product and my sales pitch, I'm not going to worry about the speed till later. You'll never make any improvements. So Samir, excuse me. Rajiv, good luck with that. Again, you're in good company. It's a problem that affects so many people but it's very easy to solve. If you get over the initial hump of not wanting to listen to your own voice. I understand you might not want to do it. It is the most effective way to solve the problem. Now here's a letter that really warmed my heart. This is from Natasha who is in my public Speaking for kids class. Also co taught by my own six year old daughter. She's the co instructor. My name is Natasha. I'm 10 years old, I live in New Mexico. Could you tell me how to be a good speaker in front of judges at a citywide science fair? I have so much details to tell the judges. How do I impress them in such a short time? I have a lot of graphs and a table to explain. Although this is my third science fair, I get so nervous that I stutter. Help in exclamation points. This is. This is Natasha, a student in my public Speaking for kids class. So first of all Natasha, congratulations on having a passion for science, going beyond simply the homework in class and participating in science fairs. And congratulations for even being willing to speak in front of a panel of judges. Many students your age and even older say, oh, I'm not going to do that. Let me just sit on the sidelines. So I congratulate you for being in the arena, actively seeking out opportunities to speak. That is the best way. I have absolutely no doubt in my mind you are going to be a great world class speaker. Maybe not instantly but you're on the right path. The same way one day you could be a great scientist. You might not be making earth shattering discoveries today but the fact that you're in this science process and exhibiting means you're headed down the right path. So I want to give you several very, very practical tips. Natasha, the number one tip I have for you is practice the presentation you are going to give to the judges at home in advance with a parent or family member or friend on video. And you can simply use a cell phone, record it, look at it, figure out what you like, what you don't like. Keep practicing your science presentation again and again until you like what you see. Maybe it takes one or two or three times, maybe it takes 20 times. That's okay. The biggest mistake I see people like you make, and for that matter 30 year olds and 60 year olds make, is they try to cram too much data into the presentation. They start speaking quickly, they start rushing. That's not what you want to do. So unless you have more than 10 minutes, I would really recommend you not use more than one or two charts or tables, Ltd. Instead, talk about the significance of it before you go from fact A to fact B to fact C. Explain the significance behind fact A. What does it mean? Tell a story about how it relates to something you learned in this research project. Less is more. You've maybe heard that expression. It really is true. When it comes to a presentation, whatever you do, don't read. Look at those judges. Tell them what excited you about this science experiment. That's what's going to make a connection. You're not going to win this competition because you presented the most number of facts. The world is awash with facts and tips and scientific data. What's missing is meaning, significance. So I would urge you, before you go to the second chart or the second table or the second page of facts and data you learned from your research project, really explain the most important thing you learned from your experiment that's relevant to people. Answer the question, why should anyone care? And when you're giving the presentation, look at these judges. Make it sound like a conversation. If you can walk around, don't have you have notes, but don't hold them in your hand. Have them on a table in front of you. Move your hands, be conversational. Practice in advance and you will do a great job. I can't guarantee you'll win the science competition, but I can guarantee you will be proud of yourself and you will go into this presentation knowing you did the absolute best you possibly could if you follow these tips. So, Natasha, again, so great to hear from you. Thanks so much for writing and I'm hoping you're getting a lot out of this course. Certainly sounds like you are. We have a number of other questions coming up. I don't want to shut off anyone as we go into the top of the hour. We will be taking a break at the top of the hour. Until three minutes past the hour. So if you didn't get your questions answered yet, if you want to post on any of the social media platforms, Marcia Marceau and I are constantly surveying all the platforms we're on. So I will try to get to your questions, your comments, your topics as quickly as possible. Again, I'm TJ Walker. This is the Habit Influencer. This is the program where we focus exclusively on strong daily habits. Because I believe, and most of the members of this community believe, that that is the single most important thing in having a fulfilling life. It's not about goals. Everybody has goals. Everybody who ever runs a race has the goal of coming in first place. But if there's a thousand people in the race, 999 didn't reach their goal. It's not about the goals. It's about daily habits. Typically, the person who won that race, often the person who practiced the most every single day and ate the healthiest and got the most sleep. So that's what we're trying to do here, is reach behind the curtain and look at the habits, the daily habits that help people succeed in whatever area of life they want to succeed, whether it is their health, their career, their creativity, their time management, their relationships. I'm TJ Walker. See you at three minutes past the hour. Okay, Marcel, I'm going to step away for one second. Sa. Sa. Sam. Welcome back to the Habit Influencer. I'm your host, TJ Walker. Thanks for joining me today. We have the entire hour or two ahead of us, so we've got to have a lot of time. Your questions, your comments, viewer mail, plus some prepared segments. One of the themes that we have over and over again, by the way, Marceau, I need you to hit mute. I'm getting background sound. Okay. One of the things that comes up is people often fear just getting started. Well, this isn't quite ready. I don't know the best topic. There's never going to be a time to do things where it's perfect. There's always something that could be a little bit better. Last week, my ski helmet and mask smushed my glasses. They're crooked. So if you look closely at my face, you can see they're a little crooked. I went and had a doctor's appointment, eye doctor's appointment yesterday, but the doctor was sick, so I didn't get new glasses. But am I going to cancel the show today because my glasses are crooked? No. Chances are you didn't even notice it. And I wouldn't have mentioned it other than to make that point. But realize there's never a perfect time. Never, ever, ever. So that leads us to our first deep dive of the day. This is topic B for the show. Topic B. Stop waiting for the perfect time to change your habits. There is no perfect time. If you're like a lot of people, fall is here, you're starting to put on a few pounds. It's maybe cold weather, Thanksgiving occurs, you put on some pounds and you think, well, I'll start my diet New Year's. I'll make New Year's resolutions. That gives me five weeks. Or maybe you think, okay, I'll start at the beginning of my year, meaning my birthday. Once my birthday hits, that's when I'll decide to start reading every day or exercising every day or working on my novel every day. Or maybe you're one of those who says, you know, I put on more pounds this winter, this spring. But you know what? The pool doesn't open up for two months, or it's not beach season for two months. So I'll wait another month or so and I'll still have time to get that beach body ready. Have you ever experienced something like that? I'm here to tell you, you there is no perfect time to start changing your habits in the future. Now there is a perfect time to start changing your habits, but that time is now. That time is today. If you want to be healthier, you can start today. You can do things right away, like not snack, like not drink water with all sorts of chemicals and sugars put in. Like not sitting on your, you know what, watching TV all day, but instead going out for a walk outside. Which is what I'm going to do after this show today because it's a beautiful spring type 60 degrees here in New York on February 24, 2020. So do not wait. When you say I'm going to fix my habit in the future, what you're really saying is I am going to continue my negative, destructive, unhelpful, unhealthy habits today. Today is all we have. Eckhart Tolle famously talks about the Power of Now, his seminal work. And some of that may be a little too touchy feely for you or even for me. But his point is absolutely on target that all we really have is today. Who knows if we'll be around tomorrow and tomorrow there'll be a tomorrow after that. What we do have, what we have complete control over, is today. What we do right now. I made an active choice to fill this glass with water and to drink water throughout this show every day. There was a time in my life when I was hosting talk radio shows where I might drink a Coke. I once drank a Coke this large during a live show 25 years ago. And I remember I couldn't stop hiccuping and belching. It was not my best show and I was putting garbage in my body. Now, I'm not some fanatic. I'm not saying if once in a blue moon you have a Coke, it's the end of the world and you're going to die. No. But as far as your daily habits, what do you do on a regular basis? Drink water. Starting now, you cannot snap your fingers and say, all right, I'm 40 pounds overweight. I am going to be my perfect weight by the end of today. Unless you cut your arm off or something. And I don't recommend that. But you can start right now. Adopting a healthy habit, eating healthy food, not eating junk food, eating raw and cooked fresh vegetables and fruit, and not eating highly prepared packaged food with lots of sugar and processed carbohydrates and lots and lots of chemicals and things with bizarre chemical sounding names that you don't even know what it means. You can make that choice today. So you can talk about procrastination all you want, and you can talk about strategic planning for the future. But be careful, it could be a trap. If you spend all your time planning for the future, guess what? The future is never really here. All you have is today. And today is the episode. Absolute perfect day. And I mean perfect day to go from a bad habit or no habit to a healthy habit. And you could start small. If you're feeling lethargic, low energy, haven't been to the gym in a while, and you don't even know where the nearest gym is, and you're not a member of any gym, it can be too overwhelming to say, okay, it's an hour and a half before dinner, I really should go to the gym. But I don't even know where to start. Okay, I get it. But you could do 20 quick jumping jacks. If you haven't done any exercise in the last year, 20 jumping jacks is a huge improvement. Remember folks, I'm not your physician. If you have any kind of health problems or illnesses, consult a physician before starting some new exercise routine. But if you are in normal health, and these days, unfortunately, the statistical norm across the world is increasingly obese, or at least very, very overweight. Any movement is better than no movement. Walking down one flight of stairs is dramatically better than just sitting in your chair or pushing that elevator button. So remember, today is the perfect day to start your new habits. Monday morning was today for a lot of us. You get up, you're tired, you're sluggish, didn't get enough sleep, and you tell yourself, well, next weekend I'm going to go to bed. You don't wait till next weekend. You have tonight. Tonight, break up the routine. If your routine is you have dinner, you turn on Netflix, you binge, watch three hours of shows, and then you watch the news, and then you watch a late night entertainment show, a variety show or a talk show, and you don't go to bed till 1 o' clock and you have to get up at 7, you're starting the whole process over again of getting tired, not energetic, sluggish. You can start today getting better sleep habits. And the way to do it is to look at what time do you really need to get up tomorrow? Let's backtrack nine hours, nine hours before that, turn off your tv, turn off your phone, turn off your iPad, turn off every screen and just read a book, paper book or a magazine article. I bet you'll fall asleep 1, 2, 3 hours earlier than you normally do. What's going to happen tomorrow morning? You're going to wake up well rested. You can start off a new habit today and it's going to start paying dividends for you right away. You'll be more rested, more energetic tomorrow. What happens when you're more rested? You're more energetic, you're more productive, you're more creative, you're in a better mood. People like dealing with you. Your friends, family, your kids, other associates are actually going to enjoy spending time with you more because you're not tired and cranky. So the perfect time to change a habit, to work on your habits, to set your goals in life in a meaningful way. Meaning new habits is to start, not New Year's, not your birthday, not swimming suit season, but right now, today. T.J. i'm T.J. walker. That is the end of segment B, our topic B. Every day on this program, we typically go through two to four segments where I give kind of a deep dive. I give you my reflections on a subject I've thought about, I've written about, and I share with you. And then the rest of the time, we have a lot of quick interaction, questions, thoughts, asides, and it's community conversation. Let's check in with some of our friends on TikTok. So one of my favorite platforms in the whole world, and even when I'm not with you Every day here for the live show for two hours, even when I'm on vacation, I make a TikTok video every day. I'm happy about the fact. Proud of the fact that other than three days a few weeks ago when I lost my voice and I couldn't speak at all since the day I posted my first video on TikTok about four months ago, I I've never missed a day other than those three days of lost voice. So even when I'm on vacation I'm thinking of my TikTok friends and posting these short typically 15 second videos on TikTok. But I also post them on Instagram and Snapchat, Facebook and LinkedIn too. So Pavel 2 says swimming. I guess that's what you like to do. Swimming. Swimming for good exercise. It is a great form of exercise. Lamsack has joined us as well. Man Guerano has joined us. User9937 says hello. Edit Up Live. Edit Potter has joined us. Sai, our good friend and associate and friend of the show from South India has joined us today. Says Namaste UP User and Ibiza have joined us on upla. I've never been to Ibiza, Spain, but it has a fantastic reputation of one of the most enjoyable vacation spots and nightlife spots in the world. I may be a little too old to enjoy some of the nightlife spots in Ibiza, but still hope to go there one day as well. So a lot of friends joining us across all the social media platforms. If you have questions, comments, issues you'd like for us as a community to address, then please let me know. Post. You can also email questions and you can always email me tjwalker.com we're going to go to some more of the comments written in to the show that came in over the last week. So so this next question comes from Jaskarin and Jaskarin is a student in my complete Presentation Skill course. Jaskaren writes, I have a phobia that I should know everything about the subject before presenting and I will be embarrassed if someone asks a question I don't know the answer. It may be required in case you want to come out as a knowledgeable person to your audience. Does anyone else suffer from this? And I want to know how to overcome this, how to handle questions which you cannot answer but still appear confident and not feel negative about yourself later on. Are there any tips to overcome this? Well, there absolutely are tips. You are not alone. This is a question I get all the time from my in person Clients when I'm working with them in public speaking workshops around the globe. So you're not alone if you feel like it's embarrassing. If someone asked you a question, you don't know the answer. And sometimes if I'm giving a speech to, let's say, 500 or 1,000 people, I'll ask people, how many of you have either had a situation where you were asked a question, you didn't know the answer and you felt embarrassed, or you saw a colleague who was asked a question and you didn't know and they didn't know the answer to it, and it was awkward. And sure enough, about 30% of the hands go up. So 300 hands out of a thousand will go up. So it is a real issue. It's a legitimate issue. You're not alone. But I always ask a second question when this issue comes up. Here's my second question. How many of you have seen someone get up and give a speech and they were so incredibly boring, you instantly forgot everything the person said and everyone else was bored? Guess how many hands go up when I ask that question? This time it's no longer 3 out of 10 or 30%. This time it's every hand in the room goes up every time I've ever asked that question. Here's my point. Let's focus on the bigger risk, the far bigger risk. Anytime you give a speech, anytime you give a presentation that people don't remember anything you said because it was boring, I need you to first and foremost focus on having interesting ideas useful to the audience and deliver it in a memorable way by giving examples, case studies, and stories. Do that, and you'll be considered the best speaker most people seen all day, all week, or their whole life. Even if you can't answer every question now, there are a couple of types of questions someone could ask you where you might not know the answer. If someone says, well, tj, what's going to happen if the coronavirus takes off and we're in a worldwide recession and the platforms you broadcast on every day all go bankrupt? Well, I don't know the future. So rather than me trying to be a prophet or Nostradamus or something like that? I'm going to say, I don't know. All I can tell you is whatever world we live in, people are going to have an option of having good habits or bad habits. And the more good habits people have, they're going to feel better about their situation in life. They're going to feel more empowered, they're going to be More fulfilled. And that is my focus. So I answered the question, but I started it by saying, I don't know. I don't know the future, but what I do know is. And then I focused on what I do know. Now here's where people get in trouble for questions when they don't know the answer. And this happens if your boss is there or if it's the board of directors or the most important client and you're already feeling pressure. So you're asked a question and you do something like this. If you look embarrassed, if you look scared, if you look nervous, unfortunately, that may be the most memorable moment of your entire presentation. Because the rest of your presentation is sort of straightforward, factual, so called professional. That moment of, oh no, that anguish on your face becomes the most emotional moment of your entire presentation. Because it's the most emotional, it's the most memorable. And then what happens is people leave, maybe feeling sorry for you. You don't want people feeling sorry for you. You don't want sympathy from the audience and you want them focused on the good ideas you have for them and to feel like you were really comfortable, confident and useful giving them that information. So keep that in mind. Now, sometimes someone may ask you a question and you just forgot or you know, someone else in your department knows. Again, the key is don't act embarrassed. Simply say, my colleague Smithers in accounting does know that. As soon as we're done here, I'll find out and, and I'll email you the data that by 3 o' clock today. Will that be okay? Typically, the person will say okay when you say it in a straightforward way. And you don't look embarrassed, you don't act embarrassed. No one will remember it and it will not hurt you. Remember, questions are easy. You either know the answer or you don't. If you don't know the answer, say I don't know. Then focus on what you do know that's relevant or focus on how you can find out and get back to them. If you do that, all the pressure melts away. I'm T.J. walker. This is the Habit Influencer. We have a good 35 minutes left in the program, so there's still plenty of time for your questions, your comments, your thoughts. We're working through some of our backlog of questions that have come in over the week since I was, over the last week since I've been on vacation. I hope you've had a great week, whether you were on vacation or working twice as hard. I am happy to be back. And by the way, I should say, even when I'm on vacation, I still follow my habits every day. I still listen to my selfie speak program every day. I still watch my selfie media programming of the pictures I showed you last week. Of all the different things I do each day, I'm still going through my checklist of habits every day. The habits I have are designed to help me enjoy the most and get the most out of every day of life. Not just a typical workday, not just a weekend, but every single day. Now the only difference is when I'm on vacation and I was with some college friends and just a few guys on a ski week last week. Out of my daily 100 habits I try to fulfill, I did not get to read an entire book each day. Now I did read typically at least part of an abridged electronic book and I still listened to some audiobooks early in the morning before anyone was up. So I want to stress the habits are designed to be a part of life wherever you are. So even a vacation to me is not a vacation to just pig out and start eating all sorts of garbage. Although I had more pizza than normal, I did start drinking cokes and snacking and all the sorts of things that are bad habits that could get me back to the point of my health where I don't want to be. So please keep that in mind. Let's take a look at some more questions. This one's coming from Ashley. Ashley is a student in my complete time management course, Time Wasters. Between a full time job out of my house and a total house remodel, I find myself getting lost. Phone games to relax Instead of pushing forward on some of these projects, there are so many different house projects going on at the same time that I get overwhelmed and I pull up a phone game to relax for a minute and that minute ends up turning into a much longer period. Well, actually, here's my recommendation. First of all, condolences. Going through house remodeling. I've done that before myself and it can really be overwhelming. There's sort of a psychic drag on you while your house is in chaos and dust, and it always takes longer than you thought and it can wear you down. Now, let's not feel too sorry for ourselves. A lot of people in the world are homeless would love to have the luxury of remodeling a home. So I don't mean to sound insensitive. It's a great luxury to be able to remodel a home in most situations. Here's my recommendation. Don't try to go cold turkey. Don't tell yourself I'm never, ever, ever going to play a video game again on my phone. Instead, give yourself a set amount of time, budget yourself. And maybe it's the first in the morning, first thing you do, give yourself a very, very strict time limit. Whether it could be one minute, it could be five minutes, could be 10 minutes. I don't have the problem of wasting time with video games, but I've had a problem until relatively recently. Wasting too much time reading hard news. It's one thing to be an up to date citizen and know what's going on, but if you're spending the first two or even three hours of the day reading multiple major newspapers online and going to multiple news sites, that's too much. And I was doing that. So now I let myself read early in the morning every day. But here's what I do before I start reading. I say, siri, set alarm for 30 minutes. Okay? I set your alarm. So once the 30 minutes is up, I get this pulsing vibration on my watch. You may have it on your cell phone. I'm going to turn that off so it doesn't interrupt us in a minute. And I just stop right then. Here's what I found. I've been doing this now for about four or five months. And since I know I have 30 minutes, what I find quite often is I finish reading everything I want to read in about 25 minutes if I know this is what I have. It fills up that way and I stop. I don't feel deprived because I very aggressively looked at the headlines, looked at the biggest stories I cared about, looked at the columnist I care about the most. I really went through the most important stuff. I would recommend you do the same thing with video games. And that way when you're feeling stress during the day, you're feeling stressed from the home, remodeling your full time job. You know, hey, I'm going to have some stress release tomorrow morning with the games and I already had it today. Or maybe you tell yourself it's 6pm it doesn't have to be in the morning, but give yourself the ability to do it. Don't go cold turkey. You can stop after five minutes or whatever time frame you decide if you make a firm decision to do it now. I had the opposite problem. I felt like I wasn't spending enough time playing games. When I was a kid, I played games. When I was in college, I played Pac man every single day. My first year of College, and then I played Galaga almost every day in first, second, third year of college. But then I have many, many years where I never played any games. So it's only been recently where I have gone back and told myself one of my to do items is to play a game every day. Now, a day like yesterday, Sunday is easy because I'm playing tennis every Sunday, but every other day it's often a simple game online. I like to do games that involve words, wordplay, crossword puzzle, word stacks, word scapes. Typically, I'm not spending more than about 90 seconds on it, but I like doing it. It stimulates a different part of my brain, gives me a little sense of accomplishment to win the game. And I'm not doing New York Times crossword puzzles in 90 seconds. I don't want to sound like I'm bragging, doing easier games than that. But I give myself a specific requirement. You can have a minimum, which for me is one game a day. You can also give yourself a maximum, as I do with my news consumption, of whether it's 30 minutes a day or 5 minutes a day or 1 minute a day. I read jokes every day, but I don't read more than one joke a day. And it's typically not something that takes me more than 15 seconds. So if you decide you're going to give yourself a limit and you set an alarm or something, that is a cue to tell you, okay, now it's time to get back to something else. It can happen. You can make it work. So actually, good luck with that. Veniv writes in Venev is a student in my complete communication skill course then also so happy to have so many folks from India, a great country. I have had the good pleasure and fortune of working in and traveling to India on a handful of occasions and have enjoyed it immensely. Every time. Veena writes, I find it difficult to interact with male candidates or boys, and it's very tough to approach them. I find very difficult to communicate with them. Is there any solution to that? Basically, I'm an introvert. I just talked to the person with whom I'm more comfortable. Can you give me a solution to my problem? So this is a problem. It's a real problem, Bennett. But you're not alone. You know who else was an introvert? Steve Jobs? Bill Gates. A lot of wildly successful people consider themselves introverts. Their idea of fun is not going out to a loud, noisy bar, slapping everyone in the back, telling stories in front of 20 people, making 30 new friends each night and going home with 40 business cards. So I don't want you to become someone you're not and realize you don't have to become someone fake or phony to be successful. But communication is important. If people feel that you're scared of them, they're not going to feel comfortable talking to you. And short term, it might not matter for any one person. But long term, this could have a profoundly negative impact on your career and your entire life. So no, you don't have to be a social butterfly. Go to the party, introduce yourself to 100 people and be the life of the party. But you do need to get comfortable talking to one person at a time. Now, you mentioned it's uncomfortable talking to boys. I can tell you most boys feel uncomfortable talking to girls, and men often feel uncomfortable speaking to women. There can be all sorts of things that make people uncomfortable. Speaking to someone of a different sex, speaking to someone of a different age group, speaking to someone of a different level of wealth or a different level of stature. An investor, someone approaching an investor, an entrepreneur may feel very intimidated speaking to a wealthy investor or venture capital capitalist. All of these things can take us out of our comfort zone. The main thing you need to do is focus on the other person. How can you add something to their life? How can you say something interesting to them? Now I'm going to say something I hope does not seem harsh or critical. What I'm about to say to you, I've said to myself and others too, stop being selfish. The second you tell yourself, oh, I'm not comfortable, I'm nervous, I don't want to talk to this person. I'm not feeling confident. All you're doing is saying, me, me, me, me. I care about me. I care about me more than anyone else in the world. Stop it a minute. Focus on the other person. Focus on giving them something interesting, something useful, something they might enjoy. You focus on the other person. You're not going to have the time to worry about poor little old me. We've all heard the stories, some of them apocryphal, about a mother who sees her daughter run over by a car. It's pinned under the car. She runs out in the street and lifts the car and brings the child to safety. Now, whether that's true in anyone situation, I'll let you be the judge. But the basic point is that when you're so fixated on something really important, you're not worried about, oh, is my lipstick right? Do I have the right shoes on? No, you're just running out there you're 100% fixated on trying to help that other person. And when that happens, you may even have superhuman talents and strength. Here's an example that I think you might be able to relate to even more. Imagine you saw your brother, your father, someone you care about, and they're simply not paying attention. They are 20ft in front of you and they are about to walk into the street and there is a bus barreling along at feet, 50 miles an hour that you can see will run over your brother or your family member. And you're, let's say 20, 30ft away. Are you going to say, oh gosh, I'm too shy to speak out loud? No, you're going to say, hey, move, run, get away, get away, look out, the bus is coming. At that particular moment, you're going to forget yourself. You're going to be totally focused on saving that life. Something a lot more important than you saving that life of your mother, father, family member. Now, I realize not every situation is that dramatic. You're at a school recess, for example, I don't know how old you are, what grade you're in. But if you're in a sixth grade recess and you're feeling a little uncomfortable talking to boys at recess, I understand it's not as dramatic, someone about to die. But the principle is the same. Focus on saying something interesting to them. If I'm about to walk into a street and a bus is coming by that could run me over, you telling me to watch out, don't walk, is going to be the most interesting thing I've ever heard because you just saved my life. But if you're talking to, let's say, a bunch of 12 year old boys in the lunchroom at your school, talk about something of interest to them, whether it's the cricket match, whether it's a soccer match, something that happened, the Olympics, ask them a question. Ask them if they want an extra dessert. If you're not going to eat your dessert, speak to them about something that is of interest to them. And you'll find they're going to find you interesting. They're going to want to talk to you. And sometimes it's as simple as just asking a question. Everyone likes to have their opinion valued. People think being a good communicator is all about being witty and holding court, holding forth in front of an audience and having everyone eat out of the palm of their hand. Listening to a monologue for an hour. Well, no. So much of being a good communicator is simply Asking a question, stepping back, letting the other person talk for the next five minutes and really listening and then occasionally say oh that's interesting, I didn't realize that. Does this apply? And ask a follow up question that shows you are really paying attention. And that is so much of communication. It's, it's harder to teach listening skills and I do have a course on listening skills but it is not as popular and it's not necessarily as easy as how to give an interesting speech, but it's crucial when it comes to being a good communicator. By listening to people, you're much more likely to know what is it that interests them. Then when you do say something, you feel much more confident that you're saying something that isn't going to be dismissed or ignored. So I wish you the absolute very best and luck with that Vinev and I hope your communication can improve and that you just get more comfortable with it. Also realize it's like anything else in life, the more you do it, the easier it gets. I host a live show every day for two hours. So for me, speaking and giving a speech of sorts, a presentation for two hours is really easy. But if I haven't done it in six months then doing it the first day is hard. If you speak to boys every single day and you force yourself to, even if it's just to say what time is recess over? Just a tiny little bit every day makes it easier to do it. Every day makes it harder, harder for you to get nervous. You get more comfortable with it and you will get better and better. This next question is from Yogesh says. Currently I am and this is a student in my complete presentation skill course. Currently I'm working in an IT company and I do audits on reopen cases. So I have to give a presentation on a weekly basis. My question, the question is how can I bring impressive ideas on a weekly basis about what we can do to improve our quality and other stuff. So Yogesh, the big challenge for anyone in your field is not getting lost in the sea of data. If you're looking at audits, not all audits are of equal importance. If it's a small case and someone is off by 10 cents and it's going to make no impact on their taxes or anything else. The fact that 99 out of 100 are with plus or minus a dollar range isn't that interesting. It's the thing that stands out. That's what's going to be interesting. That's what you need to put A spotlight on. So if, for example, one out of every hundred cases you audit, there's a clear cut case of people padding their expenses accounts, zoom in on that. Talk about how can we detect it earlier, Is it coming from one specific place? Do new controls need to be set in? Do you need pre approval for meals greater than $100, for example? And again, I know nothing about what you're doing, but the most important thing is to really zoom in on something of significance to make the audience think, wow, that is truly important. Knowing all the data from every single client or every single customer, plus or minus 5 cents from every store in every region. It's just mind numbingly boring and it's hard for anyone to grasp the significance. The challenge for your speech and any speaker anytime is to be speaking in a way where the audience is thinking, hmm, okay, I see why this is significant. I see why this person is talking about this. That is your challenge. Do that and you will be considered a master communicator in no time. I'm TJ Walker. There's still plenty of show left. We're going to break for a quick roughly 60 second commercial break and then I'll be right back. Thanks, Sa. Welcome back to the Habit Influencer. I'm your host, TJ Walker. Thanks for joining me. I mentioned him in the first segment as one of my top three favorite authors with respect to habits, Stephen Guise. And he had a very nice column this week that I wanted to share with you that I thought really, really puts things in perspective. He says, you know, not all habits are the same. You've heard me talk about that before too. Some habits are just of a higher priority than than others. And when you have those good habits, they take care a lot of a lot of other problems. So I wanted to just briefly go through that and I've linked in the show notes so you can see the full story. But habit number one for him is sleep. If you are not well rested, it is so easy for every other habit in your life to fall apart. If you're not well rested, if you're tired, if you're cranky, everything else falls apart. Now he goes through a whole list of his best practices when it comes to sleep and things you've heard me say before too that are not particularly controversial and yet most people don't do it. Things like don't have your cell phone in your bedroom. Things like don't look at any screens or whatsoever an hour before you're trying to go to sleep. So absolutely crucial his Second big sort of anchor habit, fundamental habit, is to eat healthy food again. You can have a lot of sleep, but if you're filling your body with lots and lots of extra fat, extra sugar, extra salt, you're creating a situation where your body isn't properly fueled and the fuel you are putting into it is instantly converted to fat. We can talk about how bad body shaming is. All day long you're going to feel worse about your body, you're going to feel worse about your health knowing that you're polluting your body, slowing it down, giving yourself higher fat cholesterol, sugar levels, doing things to destroy your health. His third big fundamental habit, he stresses, if you had to look at all your habits and narrow it down to your top three, this is the third and that is exercise. Exercise every single day, doesn't have to be a marathon, doesn't have to be a gym, but doing some exercise. Now we've covered that a lot on this program and in this community, I'll continue to do so. Everyone is different. I'm actually lazy. I don't like going to the gym. I also have a theory that if you go to a senior living facility and you see healthy 80, 90, 100 year olds, very few of them go to the gym every day. They have active lifestyles where they look for opportunities to walk, to garden, to play with children, grandchildren, in some cases great grandchildren. They're looking for opportunities to move on a daily basis. That's what I try to do is I don't have any grandchildren. Hope I don't anytime soon since my daughter's only six. But I'm looking for opportunities to move if that means taking more steps, parking further away from the grocery store or the mall front entrance so I can walk more, whatever it is, looking for more opportunities to move and to exercise. In fact, right after this show, it's a beautiful day here in New York. I'll be going on a more than one hour walk without my cell phone. I will not be multitasking and sending out emails while I walk. I won't be having detailed business calls and conversations while I walk. I will just be walking and thinking. So take a look at Stephen Gies's blog post I shared with you. The this is one from his archive. It's not one of the most recent ones, but it is, I think, a great summary. It puts things in clear cut perspective. Let's go right now to topic C. You can edit the story of your life. That's right, you have a story for your life. We all have stories. We tell ourselves about our own life and then our habits, our actions, our activities tend to follow up from that story. They tend to flow from that story. They're consistent with that story. So for example, I have had a story I've told my whole life about how I like to eat. The story is I'm someone with a very rigid, strict stomach clock. I'm someone who has never missed a meal in his life. I have to eat breakfast. If I don't have breakfast by 9am, I double over with pain. I am a complete shutdown mode. I'm not able to function. I must have lunch by 12:30 or the latest 1 o'. Clock. I must have dinner every evening, typically by six, but sometimes seven or eight. But I've never missed a meal. That's pretty much the life story I had for the last 50 plus years. I like to eat. Eating is good. I don't like my stomach to be empty. My mother was the same way. She had what she referred to as her stomach clock, which is probably where I got that. She didn't miss meals. Now she happened to be a proper weight her whole life, but she was someone who didn't skip meals. Well, you've heard me talk about how I don't like gimmicks. I don't like to try new health habits that are not sustainable. I don't want to try something that seems extreme and then you give up after a month or two months or six months. And that's frankly the problem with the Atkins diet and the caveman diet, the paleo diet, the no carbs, that's the problem with all these diets is they're not sustainable. But as I told you recently, I've heard so much about this whole concept of fasting, of limited fasting, where you limit all your calorie consumption to a six to eight hour block of time in the day and you're essentially fasting for 18 hours. It's called intermittent fasting. You're intermittently fasting throughout the day. All it really means, it's a fancy way of saying you're skipping breakfast. And I always tell myself, abs, absolutely impossible. For me, I couldn't possibly skip breakfast. I would just not literally die, but come close to it. Well, a little more than a week ago, at this point, not quite two weeks ago, I'd read yet another article from James Clear and a number of other habits experts and health experts saying in fact, intermittent fasting is excellent way of consuming the proper number of calories you need. In our modern society. It's a great way of losing weight. It's a great way of speeding up metabolism and being healthier. And I also noticed that even though I'd cut out snacks from my diet, even though I'd cut out sugar from my diet, even though I'm pretty disciplined about eating healthy food and not having more than a plate of food for meals, I noticed I still was five to seven pounds away from my target ideal weight. So I thought, okay, I'll give it a try. I'll give this intermittent fasting a try. But I'm very skeptical because I am just a human being who cannot miss a meal or I'll die. And so I tried it for the first time, I guess about nine days ago. And you know what I found out? I can miss a meal. I really wasn't even that hungry. Now, in intermittent fasting you're allowed to drink coffee, no sugar or cream, water. You just don't want to consume more than about 50 calories or so outside of that eight hour window when you are eating your two main meals. And so I did this. And you know what I found? I didn't see my energy level go down. I didn't get grumpy. I didn't feel so weak. I couldn't move at 10 in the morning. It was just a little bit different. What I did notice is that I functioned fine. What I did notice is I have a lot more time because I don't have to worry about what I'm going to fix and eat and clean up for breakfast now. I'm not doing it to save time. I'm doing it as a test to be healthier and to get even closer to my ideal weight and health. But I couldn't do it until I edited my life story of who I am. We all tell ourselves stories. For years I told myself I'm just not good with names. I'm not good with names. Well, guess what? That's a story I told myself. I started telling myself I am good with names. I do remember everyone's name. And you know what? At the age of 57, my memory has gotten a lot better with names. Your memory is not supposed to be getting better with age. And yet it can can if you tell yourself that now. For years I've told myself I'm just not good with languages. I'm not a language person. I was not a natural. I didn't grow up. All sorts of excuses. And you know what? It had an impact. I in fact have done a horrible job of learning languages. But you know what? It's just a story. It's just a story I tell myself in the same way people tell themselves. Oh, I'm not a natural public speaker. I'm not a natural entrepreneur. I'm not someone who should be out front. I'm a behind the scenes kind of person. Well, maybe, but maybe not. I'm not interested in trying to force you into becoming someone you don't want to be. What I am interested in is you becoming the person you want to be. Regardless these preconceived notions you've told yourself about who you are now. I still haven't learned a foreign language really well. I know a few words of Spanish. I'll tell you what. I am convinced that if I really wanted to learn a foreign language, I could. I've got to change that story I tell about myself. At the moment, I don't have a strong desire. It's. It's one of the unfortunate aspects of being an American in this 21st century where so many other people around the world have learned English, speak English and are happy to speak to someone with an American accented English background. So I'm spoiled there. But who knows? At some point I may need to become fluent in Mandarin or Cantonese or some other language. I'm convinced I can learn. Maybe not to the point where I speak like a native, but I can learn. But the first step, I've got to edit that story. What is the story you tell about yourself? Do you have a story that, oh, I'm not good with money. Therefore, of course, I never pay my bills on time. Therefore, of course my credit rating is too high. Therefore. Therefore I can never buy my dream house because I can't get approved for. If that's the story you're telling yourself, stop it. Take that story, lift it up and throw it away. It's not helping you, it is hurting you. You can write your own story in life. I don't mean every fantasy. I can't say at my age of 57, I'm going to be a center in an NBA basketball team. I'm going to be the star goalie for a World cup soccer team. No, I can't write that kind of a story. But as far as almost anything else I want to do in life or want to be in life, I can edit my story. The stories we have are. Are quite malleable. But we have to realize it's clay and take it and shape it the way we want. The problem most of us have is we think our story is written in stone. We tell ourselves. Our story is written in stone. I'm someone who's not good with money. I'm someone who can never have money. I'm someone who isn't good at relationships or I can never find romance. We tell ourselves stories and it becomes self perpetuating. You've got to stop the story. You've got to edit the story and create a new narrative that helps promote the goals you're really after in life. You've got to change the story so that other habits even have a potential. If you tell yourself your backyard is an absolute desert and it's nothing but sand and it hasn't rained in a hundred years, it's never going to occur to you to plant a flower or a tree or a yard. It's so crazy, why bother? But what if your backyard isn't a desert? What if it's just dirt and no one bothered to plant anything? Before you have the power to edit your life story, you need to edit the life story to conform to what you want in this life. I'm TJ Walker. That is the end of segment C for today. Thank you for listening to that deep dive. I gotta tell you, it is so much fun to be back with you. I loved my vacation last week, but I've missed our time together and our comments, our thoughts, our shared exchanges. And I apologize for any of you. We didn't get to today because we had a bit of a backlog with so many questions that have come in comments and other topics in the news. Unfortunately, we didn't even get to most of the topics in the news that I wanted to address today. We'll be talking about those tomorrow. Always try to look for the most topical issues affecting habits in the news. But the thing about habits that's great is it's evergreen things like how to eat healthy, get a good night's sleep, be productive, be happy, have a fulfilled life. There are subtle changes here and there, but these are evergreen topics where no one always has all the answers. But I am always on the quest for new solutions, new techniques to help us with these eternal issues. So tomorrow I'm going to share with you some more research I've been doing and ways of rounding out some of the other solutions I've given to you in the past. You've heard me talk about selfie speak programming where you create an audio telling yourself what habits you want. And you've heard me talk about selfie media programming where you simply take pictures of yourself demonstrating every habit you want to do on a daily basis and look at it on a photo album. And the final leg? I view it as a three legged table. The final leg is selfie text programming. STP having write on your phone the text you want in a to do list. To do lists aren't sexy. I realize that they're not glamorous. But this is the third leg of what I call selfie programming. To help you have the habits you need in life. We'll be talking about that tomorrow and later on in the week. Tj. I'm TJ Walker. This is the Habit Influencer. I'm so happy you're with me today. If you haven't done so yet, please click in the link for my latest course on creativity. I think you'll enjoy the course a great deal. It's a huge discount. It's about $190 off the normal price. Take a look at that. And I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Thanks so much. See you then. Okay, I'll call you in a couple minutes. This is a chicken beef production. Sa.