THE HABIT INFLUENCER - 2/25/2020 - Personal Development | LIVE STREAM

Welcome to the Habit Influencer. I'm your host, TJ Walker. Thanks for joining me. Today. We are live. It is 1pm Eastern Time, February 25, Tuesday, 2020. Thanks for joining me. We almost came to you a minute ago, just speaking to my colleague and producer, Marceau. We almost started a minute early. And I said, you know what? I like to be on time, but there's no reason to start early if it's some kind of a live show and people have it on their calendar. You don't see a TV show or a radio show typically starting early. But it does bring up in me very strong feelings I have about being punctual. Now, we talk an awful lot about habits on this show. That's the whole focus of the show. But I don't really talk that much about what I believe is a cornerstone habit. It's not a habit as important as eating, exercise, getting a good night's sleep and reading, learning every day. But I do think it's a habit that doesn't get enough attention. It's the habit of showing up on time. You've heard me say this before. I realize he's not a popular person to quote these days for many reasons, but Woody Allen, the famed director, once said that 80% of success is simply showing up. And I would say it's showing up on time. So many people ruin their opportunities for new jobs, new opportunities, new clients, new relationships simply because they don't show up on time. Now, you may be a part of a culture where people aren't uptight about time and it's just a little more loosey goosey. And you think people in the West, Western Europe, United States are too anal about time. And indeed, time is a relatively modern concept. Clocks didn't really exist until about 500 years ago. Watches were not commonplace until a few hundred years after that. And the idea of everyone having the exact digital time on their wrist in their phone, that's something that's only existed for the last 20 years or so. So it's a relatively modern concept, and yet here we are. So my question to you is, how important is it to you to be on time? How strong of a habit is that for you? And how important is it for you for other people to be on time for you? Would you, for example, hire someone who seemed pretty good, but showed up 10 minutes late, 15 minutes late for a job interview and didn't really offer an excuse or didn't have a good excuse? Would you hire that person? I can tell you categorically, unless the Person says, look, this was a once in a lifetime explosion on the subway and we were on lockdown. I absolutely would not hire someone who shows up late for a job interview. Because if they can't be late when we're on our best behavior trying to impress someone, why would they ever be late on a regular basis if they were an employee? Now, certain parts of the world, I won't be specific where, but certain parts of the world are known for. People just don't care as much about timeliness. Sometimes if you're within a two hour window, it's not that big a deal. I just don't know how you get things done. I don't know how you, for example, can go see a show. If you're going to a live theater, the doors close typically once the show starts. So if you're late, you miss the entire first half of the show. I don't really see any way around that you show up on time. I am a big believer the old adage, early is on time, on time is late. Maybe not for starting a show like today. I like to start right on time at 1pm Eastern. But for most other things, I like to get there five minutes early. Part of it is I like to think I'm a polite person and it gives me pain, it gives me tremendous anxiety to think that I'm causing other people to have to wait for me. I cannot stand making other people wait for me. But I really don't like waiting for other people. To me, it's a huge sign of disrespect. The person saying essentially that their time is more important than my time. Yes, I understand they are extenuating circumstances, but some people are just always late. I have one friend in particular. I'm not going to mention his name, but he takes a part of a sporting event that I'm involved with every single week. And he's usually always 10 minutes late. And he typically mumbles something, oh, sorry I'm late. Well, you can be sorry you're late once, but if you're late every single week and can't keep 1, 2, 3 people waiting, then you're not sorry. You have made an active decision that your time is more valuable than others and that you are going to make other people wait for you. And you're perfectly comfortable with that. He's a great guy in every other respect, but it's a major, major source of irritation. How do you feel about punctuality? Is it a key habit of yours? I can tell you it's very much a part of my identity. There have been times when I practically tried to be late because I know the other person or other people are always late. I still can't make myself late. Doesn't mean I don't have other flaws, doesn't mean I can't irritate other people in other ways. But as far as making me wait for you, that's typically something rare. I think everyone's late occasionally. There's always some emergency. You could be in a taxicab and it gets a flat tire. You could be on a train, it just stops. So I don't think it's the end of the world if 1 out of 20 or 30 or 40 times friend of yours getting together and is late. But if it's repeated, it's not an accident, it's not a fluke, It's a decision. You make a decision whether to be on time or you make a decision to keep people awake. And to me, it's a pretty simple decision. I understand some people's brains are wired a little differently, and there are certainly cases of people documented with adhd and they just cannot process time and make judgments to get to places on time. And maybe there are drugs that help, maybe they don't. But for the vast majority of people who are not punctual, who are not on time, who do not have the habit of being on time, it's not because of some brain deficiency or being wired differently. I believe it is simply because they're not showing respect for other people's time. And that's a huge problem. And all of that started because we almost started the program today a minute early. Let's dive right in. Let me give you a summary of what the show is all about today. In topic A, we'll be looking at one click your habits. How can you one click your habits to make them easier? Topic B. What is the easiest way to change other people's habits? Wouldn't you like to know how to change the habits you find distasteful in family members, friends, spouses? We'll be talking about that. And in topic c, your top 10 least favorite good habits and how to figure out a simple, easy system for for fulfilling those good habits every day, even when you don't like doing them, no matter how disciplined you are. We all have certain habits we don't like doing and yet we know we still need to do it. I'll be sharing some of my One of mine is I hate to run. I just don't like to run. I don't want to go jogging for an hour or 20 minutes to get my aerobic exercise in. How do I solve that? Well, I solve it in part by running intensively 10 miles an hour for only 60 seconds a day. And then it's done. I don't have to think about it. More about that later on in the program. We have a lot of emails, comments, questions that have come in overnight. We'll be sharing those. Plus, as always, your live comments. So regardless of what platform you're on, whether it's TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, Periscope, post your comments on whatever platform you're watching and we'll have a conversation right there as well. Be looking at some of the top stories in the news that relate to habits. Several that have caught my attention, some we didn't get to yesterday that I fully intended to. One of them is about habit trackers. I've provided for you a link to 13 free habit trackers. These are ones you can download, some you could print if you wanted to. We'll talk about the best way of tracking your habits. We'll be looking at sleep techniques, techniques to help you get better sleep, including reviews, recent reviews of anti snoring devices. I happen to have some strong feelings about that and use a mouth snore guard myself, which I'm not going to show you. It's not going to be anything disgusting, but we will talk about techniques for improving your sleep by reducing snoring. Make no doubt about it, if you're snoring, you're not getting a full night's sleep. It's highly disruptive to sleep and it's actually very dangerous, not to mention incredibly annoying to other people who might be in the room with you. So we'll be talking about that. We'll be going back in history and looking at a famous philosopher's advice to young students that is even more applicable today than when it was offered. It's all advice about how it's critical that you learn how to do hard stuff. Not just learn easy things, not just fun things, not just things you have a passion for, but getting into the habit of continually testing yourself and learning hard task. We'll also be checking in with the enterprisers project and looking at some of the top time wasting habits people are indulging in in this current era. I'm TJ Walker. I want to thank you for joining me today. We have a lot of fun great topics plus interaction, plus calls, comments, your all of your feedback right here and I do want to share some fun Feedback. Marceau, you didn't see this yet. This is one of our comments coming in on TikTok in reaction to a video I posted yesterday. And the comment is simply a thousand percent, this guy is Ryan Reynolds. Oh, that sounds nice, but it continues 1000%. Talking about me. A thousand percent, this guy is Ryan Reynolds in an old man age suit and makeup. That doesn't sound very complimentary. It's nice being associated with a nice Hollywood leading man who was, I think a few years ago, the sexiest man in the world, according to People magazine. But they're saying I'm this guy, but in an old man suit with makeup. That's not very complimentary. So the reason I point this out, and this is From Shayna on TikTok, the reason I'm pointing this out is I do believe that so many of you, when I go to your TikTok channel, your YouTube channel, your Facebook page, what do I see when it comes to you putting out your own ideas, your own thoughts, your own videos for so many people, it's nothing. It's zero. You are stuck in a consumer mindset. You watch other people, you critique, but you hold back from putting forth your own ideas. And I think, and many people have told me this, my clients, my students, it's because you're afraid of comments like this saying I look like somebody. An old man suit and old man makeup. That's not very complimentary. Here is the solution to it. I look at it and I laugh. That's all you can do is laugh. But here's what else I did. I wrote back to this person and said, it's really me. Thanks for watching. Now here's the interesting part that I think everyone forgets. Everyone has heard about Internet trolls. Everyone's heard about how nasty the Internet is. In my experience, if you defend yourself and you attack back, which is the most logical way, I could have written back and said, well, you're ugly too, or I've seen your profile or where's your video? I could have said all sorts of things, negative, defensive, and escalating things into a war. But instead I try to practice the habit of diffusing situations, making everybody feel better. So I just said, thanks for watching. I really appreciate it. And I got a response back from this person. Shana writes it, you're very handsome and this is great advice. I hope my last comment didn't offend to me. This is a perfect example of how if you hear something, your initial response might be, this is criticism. You respond in some positive way you give the person an easy way out. And the person was quite gracious. Now I seriously doubt she really thinks I'm that handsome, but she, she felt the need to basically apologize, say she's teasing and to compliment me and to say she hoped she didn't offend. So Shana, I absolutely take no offense whatsoever. I think it's a great learning moment. And again, I want to stress to you, I appreciate you watching me here today. Some of you come every day and watch. But you know what would make me even happier? For you to be doing your own show or if not your own live show, then at least creating your own videos for YouTube, Facebook and TikTok. And don't let the fact that you might get criticism scare you away. It really doesn't sting, especially if you just don't take yourself that seriously. And if you have a little bit of self awareness. I know I don't look like Ryan Reynolds or certainly Ryan Reynolds at his current age. Well, he's my age. Maybe we, maybe I will look like him. So you got to have some sense of fun and self awareness. Life is too short to get all upset anytime someone says you don't look perfect. That to me is the real habit goal. Let's check in with some of our friends on Facebook. I see Brawa Mohammad has stopped in and says hello. Hi teacher. Do you have information about coronavirus? I don't have any specific information beyond what you're looking at. I can tell you regardless of what viruses are out there, you can only boost your health by boosting your immunity system. You can do that by getting a good night's sleep. You can do that by daily exercise. You can do that by getting into the habit of eating healthy food, real food, real vegetables, fruit, and not filling your body with lots of sugar, fat salts, processed carbohydrates. I hope you don't come in contact with the virus, but I can tell you if you do, you're going to be a lot better off if you're physically strong, well rested and your body has all the nutrients it needs. Yes, it is scary reading about the coronavirus, especially when you see the health minister himself of I believe it was, I can't remember. I believe Iran has come down with the virus and we don't know yet when it is going to die out, which we hope it does soon or when a vaccine is discovered. But let's not forget about the fact that there's already a pandemic in the world. It's killing millions of people a year it is spreading around the globe faster and faster. Nobody ever talks about it, nobody's worried about it. Nobody keeps their kid home from school because of this pandemic. I'm talking about the pandemic of obesity. And the obesity pandemic. It kills millions of people a year. I realize we're not used to thinking of obesity as a pandemic, but it is. And it is contagious. Because when you see everyone around you gorging their mouth and stuffing their faces with fast food, sugary products, processed food, fried food, and eating 500, 1,000, 2,000, sometimes 3,000 calories more than your body needs to sustain itself on a daily basis, it creates obesity and obesity creates diabetes and stroke and heart, heart attack and kills, according to the World Health Organization, a couple of million people a year. That's a pandemic. I mean, I certainly hope coronavirus is caught and there have been, I guess, a few thousand people who have died from it already. It is serious. But for most people watching me today and tonight, there is a far greater danger out there working. And it's already in your home, it's in your refrigerator, it's in your cupboards. It is what we put in our mouth every day. And it's not germs, it's not the virus of the coronavirus. It is in fact the food we are stuffing ourselves with and slowly killing ourselves with. So that's my thought on the coronavirus. I know that's not exactly what you were looking for, perhaps, but let's keep it in perspective. There are a lot more people die from the flu every year than all the people who've ever died. In every plane crash together, more people are killed from pigs killing them than sharks. So we as human beings often have a very fuzzy sense and an odd sense of what is risky and what isn't. I'm not suggesting ignore the coronavirus. It certainly looks to be something that could be dangerous at a level unknown to humanity. But it might be something that ends up being a lot less dangerous than a hundred other well known risks to human beings that are right in front of us every day. And we don't even pay attention to it because we're too busy stuffing our faces and slowly killing ourselves. I'm TJ Walker. Thanks for joining me today. We've got a wonderful program and it's going to be a little more uplifting than that. I won't talk about how we kill ourselves on a regular basis. Let's check in with our friends on TikTok user 5917 has joined us. And Marceau, I can't read the comment. If you could slide the bar over so I can see it. And this will take just one minute. We've got a slight. We have a bunch of screens here that I rely on, but sometimes they're a little bit hidden. So glad you're doing a live stream. And that's From Joe on TikTok. Well, Joe, thanks a lot. Part of the advantage, one reason I'm doing a live show, is to make it truly interactive. So I would ask you, if you have a specific question, a specific habit you'd like to talk about, let me know. That's the beauty of it. And there are some shows where we have too many questions to even get to, but most of the time I can answer every single question. And that's what makes it more interesting for you and for me, too. It's also, frankly, what you can't get if you just go to YouTube or Google and type in habits. There's a lot of good blogs, there's a lot of good videos out there, but there really isn't any place that I'm aware of where you can speak to someone who works full time in the field of helping people build better habits and talk to that person in a community. Live any day of the week. That's what's different about what we're doing right here. Okay, let's see. We have Matt's. Let's see. Matt's wrote in on YouTube. We have some other comments coming to us on TikTok. Manja has written in and just joined us. Picard has joined us and Picard. Marcel. We've. We need to widen it again because I'm not able to see the comments and I think Picard has written in Spanish and perdoname mi espanol es malissimo. And that's about all the Spanish I know. This is what it means. This is it right here. Oh, so we're looking at. We're looking at the translation, and sometimes translations can botch things. Are you TikTok's company? I need your help. Well, interesting that you should note that, no, I do not work for TikTok. I don't own any stock in TikTok. I'm not an investor in TikTok. But in about 24 hours, I am going to have a course on the Udemy platform of how you can use TikTok to market your business. So if you have a question about TikTok, feel free to write it, preferably in English. But we can try to translate it as well. TikTok, some of you have heard me mention it. It's a fabulous new, relatively new platform. It is the platform with the most explosive growth in the last couple of years online. And it's really the first social media platform since Snapchat about seven years ago that has really reached tremendous mass. There have been more than 1.5 billion downloads of the TikTok app and every month there are half a billion users. So it's no longer just for little kids. It's no longer just music. It's everything and everyone. So that's why every single day I do post at least one video on the TikTok platform, typically just a 15 second one where I give one habit tip. So pick up. You have any specific questions, please let me know. If I don't know. My colleague Marceau may know because he's, he's more the expert on editing and how to use music, special effects, the duets and the challenges on TikTok as well. Yu Yu has written in from Uplive and another friend has joined us, I believe from Uplive who sent me a crystal ball. Well, that would come in handy. I would love to know the future, whether it's for coronavirus or any other major situation going on in the world. Lots of friends joining us from Up Live today, zxm and more friends from Instagram as well. Matt's writes, I totally agree with you Mr. TJ about obesity and adding smoking. Sure, smoking is another one. I don't know if it's millions, but it's certainly hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people a year die prematurely because of smoking and nobody talks about it. We get upset about a thousand people dying from something and panic and stock markets crash, crash and hundreds of thousands die from smoking and it's ho hum, who cares? Let's invest more money in bats and other tobacco companies. So there is a bit of a disconnect there when it comes to habits that cause death. Again, I realize the thing that's especially scary about Corona is we don't know if there's going to be some exponential growth phase, wipe out humanity. With obesity and smoking, it is growing, it's growing quickly, but it's not quite exponential growth. So to that extent it is not quite as scary. Mats, thanks so much for checking in with us on that. I do appreciate. By the way, Mats, I'm still curious if you ever want to share with our audience more about what you do, since your name is Food Insider, assuming you have some expertise with food, diet, nutrition, perhaps. And if you create any content or have information to share with our audience, please feel free to do so. I do believe that one of the keystone habits for any human being who really wants fulfillment, it's one of my seven biggies, is creation. We need to create on a daily basis. So when you have creations and you want to share with the audience here, feel free to. I won't call it spam now. If it's just an affiliate program for something you had nothing to do with, I don't want to see that. And please, no Viagra ads or anything like that. But if you actually created a new video you're proud of, a book, a novel, a poem, and you want to share it with the community, feel free to do so because I want to put a spotlight on the habit of creating. It is such an incredibly important, important habit you create every day that is such a keystone habit. Typically, many other good habits fall into place. It's easier to go to bed early and get up early because you're excited about getting up and creating. If you create nothing in your life, if you hate your job, if you're bored out of your mind with what you do in your productive hours, it's so much easier to stay up late, maybe drink, smoke, do other drugs, watch late night TV, get a bad night's sleep, hit that alarm clock 10 times, get out of bed groggy. This whole negative spiral. So that's why you hear me come back again and again. It's one of the pillars of this show. It's what I believe is one of the second seven pillars of leading a fulfilled life is being creative on a daily basis. We have a lot in store for you today. I want to hop in right now on our first big topic of the day. And the topic is one click your habits. Amazon is a wildly successful company. They have storage. They started off in books, they have audible, they have a million different products, a million different services. But the backbone of that company, what's made it grow at exponential rates, is they have figured out a way to condition, influence, manipulate you and me to do this click. One click, and we can have anything in the world we want brought to our house within 48 hours. Sometimes within 24 hours, sometimes within a few hours. Why do they do that? Amazon is a retailer. They sell stuff. So once you factor away all the different divisions of their company and all the different services and storage and everything at the bottom line, they sell stuff. So they thought long and hard about how do we eliminate friction between someone having an interest in buying stuff and getting their money. Because if you're a conventional department store, you've got to mail someone a flyer, maybe put an ad in a newspaper, do that five times, do it TV ad, hope that it's not raining, hope that someone drives to the store, finds your store, finds the product, doesn't mind waiting in line, doesn't mind driving home, somehow brought cash or a credit card. There's a thousand and one little steps that a traditional store has to get you to do in order to get money out of your pocket. And Amazon, with its billions and billions of dollars and now nearly a trillion dollars in market cap, spent a lot of time, money, effort, genius. Simplifying this process so that when you want something, all you have to do is beep one click and that's it. You don't have to think about it again. You don't have to wonder, you don't have to look for the tracking. You just know it's going to show up. If you have their two day program, you're a prime member as I am. It's going to show up. They've eliminated the stress, they've eliminated the friction, they've eliminated the work. I don't have to go fill out my name, my address, the security code on my credit card every time. I don't have to tell them we'll leave it here, I don't have to schedule an appointment to go pick it up from a warehouse. All of that friction gone. And that's how they created new habits in me. And chances are with you and everyone else, that's why we buy so much stuff from Amazon is they said we want to create a habit in TJ and Marceau and others. We want to get their money. We want to get all of their money that they would otherwise spend on other stores throughout the whole year. And we can do that by making life easier for them to practice the habit of giving us their money and shopping with us. That's what they did. And I'm not saying that's bad. What I am saying is you need to use the exact same mentality when you're trying to design the habits of your life. Amazon's not in charge of your life. Amazon does not have the luxury of worrying about whether you have a good night's sleep or you're fulfilled or you're happy or you get along well with family members or you get a raise. That's just not Amazon's business. They only have one habit. They've got to worry about, with respect to you, getting you to give them as much money as possible, exerting the least amount of energy. And this click, it's not a lot of energy. You've got to take that same mindset and apply it to every other aspect of your life. Remove friction. And maybe it won't be as easy as one click, but in many cases it is. If you want a better night's sleep, if you want to reduce stress on your mind, less clutter in your brain, with one click, you could hit do not Disturb on your phone from 8pm to 8am or some other time you could. Now, I feel a little bit guilty about this, but yesterday after the show I received an inquiry from a government in Africa asking about my services for media training and public speaking training. Actually come in in the morning, but I was busy preparing for this show, making this video, so I didn't get to it till 5 eastern time. I figured it was a government. They left the phone number so I called at 5pm well, at this point it's maybe 3am and all of a sudden I hear now, I apologize for waking up this person, but there was a part of me thinking, why in the world would you make life so difficult for yourself by having a cell phone on next to your bed and presumably the ringer on or the vibrator on to completely destroy a night's sleep? I apologize for waking the person up, but really the fault was the person. A having the cell phone even in the room. B having it so that there's a ringer or buzzer or vibration to destroy a night's sleep. Again, there's one click that will dramatically increase your chances of getting a good night's sleep. Off. Turn your phone off is the easiest one, and if you don't do that, put it on, do not disturb. I don't turn my phone off every night, but it's not in my bedroom and there's no ringer on, so it cannot disrupt me in any way. If you want to eat more fresh fruit in your diet, have fresh fruit on your countertop so it's staring you at the face. You're hungry. You see a nice banana, nice juicy apple there. That's basically one click. You take it. If it's a banana, you peel it, throw it in your mouth, an apple, quick rinse, you're eating it. It's basically as simple as one quick if you want to eat more vegetables in your life, have vegetables out on your countertop or at least in the very front of your refrigerator where it's easy to grab those carrots. Make life easy for yourself. Now, you've heard many other habits experts say put your gym clothes out right next to your bed and your gym bag packed so you get up in the morning, one grab and you're off to the gym. Some experts go so far as to say they sleep in their gym clothes. To me, that's going a little too far. But always, always be on the lookout for anything you can do to make life easier to practice good habits. Amazon doesn't care if you give them money with one click or you got to go climb a mountaintop, as long as they get your money. They simply know that if they make it easier, easy for you, there's a much greater chance that you are going to give them your money. You need to get away from this attitude that the harder you work, the greater willpower you show, the greater motivation you show, the more pats on the back you get. No, I urge you, be lazy. But be lazy in a way that makes it easier for you you to do the good habits you want to do that will improve your life. That will make things better. It's human nature. All of us are lazy at something. I'm lazy. This is embarrassing, but I'm just going to be transparent. I am so lazy that when my wife buys strawberries, I typically don't eat them because I'm too lazy to cut off the stem and that little bit of leaf? That's lazy. I love strawberries. I just don't like doing that. I love eating cherries, but I'm too lazy to take the stem off and the pit off. So when we buy cherries, quite often they don't get eaten in time and some of them go bad. So what's the solution? Is it that I go to motivation camp and try to get psyched up, Go to an Anthony Robbins workshop for a weekend so I can get pumped up to eat those cherries and strawberries? No, the solution is I've got to look for an easy, simpler one click way for me to eat fresh fruit. And for me, it's far easier to eat raspberries, blueberries, blackberries. I take it quick, friends eat it. That's basically one click. I don't have to peel it, I don't have to take the seed out. I don't have to take any stem off. It is simple. And so every time I go to the grocery store, I buy a lot of fruit like that. I also like the taste, the flavor. But know yourself, know what works for you. Know what's going to be easy for you, so you can do it in one click. I love mangoes. I love eating mangoes. I love avocados. But they're so much harder to feel than raspberries or blueberries. So that's my challenge to you. Don't work harder. Don't get more motivated. Spend time really examining your own areas of being lazy. Then figure out ways to do good things for yourself, good habits for yourself. With one click, it's made Amazon a trillion dollar company. It can make you a healthier, happier, more fulfilled human being. Good luck. And that's the end of our topic. A for today. Thank you for giving me a little time for that meditation on one click. I do think it's an extremely important concept. I'll be talking either tomorrow or later this week. On the opposite, if you really want to get rid of bad habits, sometimes, again, the challenge isn't to become more motivated, have more willpower. The challenge is to create more roadblocks. Think of all the times you've been to a website, you wanted to buy a product, you wanted to buy a service. But no matter how many times you went through the shopping cart, it's always asking you for another security code or it said you hit this number wrong and finally you just gave up. In fact, most shopping carts in the world other than Amazon's are abandoned. It just gets too hard. I need you to think about how you can make bad habits harder to fulfill. Because if it's too hard, if it's too difficult and you give up, that's just as good as being 100% motivated to do the right thing. You still avoid that bad habit. So more on that this week. Let's check in with some of our friends writing in on YouTube. Matt's Food Insider writes in, says, yes, TJ, we have a social media accounts in LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram started to focus more on healthy food recipes after listening to you about healthy habits. So, Matt, that's fantastic. That's wonderful. And feel free to share. Maybe not all of them, but why don't you go ahead and put a link to the one you're proudest of that you'd like us to look at again. I'm not so selfish of oh, no one. Better leave my site to go check out. Anyone else go ahead and post a URL. Don't mind you doing that at all, Matt. Especially if it's going to help people build healthier eating habits. We all need that. It's virtually impossible living in the modern world. These days, unless you cook every meal from scratch, not to consume too much sugar. Our bread has sugar in it. Basically everything has sugar in it. Vitamins have sugar in it. And so we need all the help we can get on healthier eating. So, Matt, thanks for stopping by. Carol writes in your course, motivation, you can become a motivational speaker. Section four, video rehearse. You say to use a one page speech note and to do our speech and record it. The next message. I'm wondering, how long do you want the video to be? I mean, at this point, I'm not ready for my entire speech yet. So I would like more specifications on what you want us to do. So Carol is in my online course on how to be a motivational speaker. Carol, I would say, why don't you just shoot for three minutes or so, introduce one idea, tell a story that makes it come alive. People always ask me, carol, what's the best length of a speech? And there was a study done in 1974 by the United States Defense Department that concluded the optimal length of a speech was 18 minutes. Frankly, I think that's a bunch of baloney. I've seen speakers speak from 10 in the morning till midnight. The audience wanted more. And I've also seen speakers speak for two minutes and after 30 seconds, everyone had fallen asleep. Or these days they're not necessarily falling asleep, but they're doing this. They're checking email and phone and totally ignoring the speaker. So the rule of thumb is speak as long as it takes to deliver something interesting, valuable, memorable to your audience. And I think a good start if you're in the motivational speaking course is to just roughly three minutes. But I'd rather you not even focus on the time. I'd rather you focus on bring forth one idea, make it interesting, make it understandable, make it useful to someone in your target audience, and then tell a story to make it come alive to allow them to visualize what you're talking about. Do that. I don't care if it's 40 seconds long or 8 minutes long, you will be in good shape. Good luck with the course. Hope you get a lot out of it. Our friend Peggy has joined us today. Peggy, thanks for stopping by. She says, I'm having trouble thinking of topics to discuss in videos. Any suggestions on how to keep coming up with new ideas? For most people who are in business, who are consultants, experts, authors, as I know you are, the easy way, frankly, is to not be creative. Instead, just sit down one day, a blank computer screen or a blank sheet of paper and just think of what's every question people have asked me in the last month? What are the most common questions that all my clients and prospects ask me about what I do? And Peggy, I'd be surprised if after about a half an hour you didn't have a hundred questions written down. There's a hundred topics. If you're doing a video a day that is your topic until for the next three and a half months. So I would start there and then ask your audience for what topics. What would they like you to address in your next video. And Peggy, I know that you're on TikTok, as am I. You could do a video just telling people my expertise is leadership or whatever you want to say. To summarize it, what topics would you like to see me address in future videos? See what people say. That's what I do from time to time. And Peggy, the other thing you could do depending on the platform, I know that you are on the TikTok platform. So one thing I do not every day, sometimes I just have something I know I want to say. But I'll go to the TikTok platform. I will look at the word discover and that will tell me what topics are trending and popular TikTok right now. So for this morning I did it and the third most popular one was study hacks. It's trending right now. There's 239 million. I don't know if that's views or postings on that hashtag right now on TikTok. So that's what I decided I would do. My video on today is study hacks. Now I'm not primarily an expert habits for study but I do help people with habits for productivity whether they're in the work world or their students. So I positioned my habit tip of the day around that topic and I think I said something to the effect of if you want to increase your productivity when it comes to working at your office or studying most effectively, the biggest productivity tip of all to help you with studying, turn your phone off. It was something that simple but it's had either hundreds or a thousand views already in just a couple of hours that's been posted. So that's another way Peggy, you can go about trying to come up with a constant source of new topics. Peggy, thanks for stopping by. We have a lot more topics coming coming up today and issues in the news. I want to go over Marceau did I I didn't want to intentionally slight anyone. Do you. Was there anyone there? I accidentally did not give enough attention to. Okay, great. I wanted to address. This is something that I was going to go over yesterday. We ran out of time because of all the questions and comments. This is a story courtesy of National Public Radio, well known respected broadcaster here in the United States. And it's a story about technology and losing sleep over the quest for a perfect night's sleep. So they start off the story with imagine you're having a hard time falling asleep. The sleep tracker on your wrist might be to blame. Now I've done this before. I had a, I believe it was either a jawbone up or a Fitbit where you have it and it purports to track your sleep patterns. I had this about seven years ago and I'm sure the technology's improved since then. But you're strapped up with electronics on you while you're trying to sleep. And it purports to show you the quality of sleep, how many good hours of sleep you got. And it always seemed as though the nights I thought I had a great night's sleep, it told me I had a horrible night's sleep. Other nights when the tracker said I had a great night's sleep, I felt like I didn't get any sleep. So I do come at it from that bias and I understand seven years is a long time in technology. It may have gotten better. But according to this new study from npr, there's a new type of insomnia that is specific to people who are using anti insomnia devices. It's called orthosomnia. Orthosomnia, it's quote, when you really become fixated on having the perfect sleep via a tracker. This is according to Seema Khasla. She's the medical director at the North Dakota center for Sleep. And then you start worrying about it and you wind up giving yourself insomnia. Sleep trackers have become increasingly popular. If you use a sleep tracker, let me know, let me know your experiences or if someone in your family does, they can come in the form of watches, wristbands, rings and even mattresses. Now I use an Apple watch and I do not use any sleep tracker on here because I take this watch off. This watch does not come into my bedroom when I am retiring for a night's sleep. I don't want any rings, bing, bada boom, vibrations, nothing. I find that's what dramatically increases the quality of my sleep. Now these gadgets are supposed to measure how you breathe, how fast your heart is beating, how much you're tossing and turning and Then crunch the data to give you a sleep score, usually through a smartphone app. That's how it was with me. Now, the author here points out there's a certain irony of our digital lifestyle. For some people, perfecting that sleep score becomes an end in and to itself. So much so that they literally lose sleep over it. And that's frankly bizarre and sad. Kasla sees this in her own practice as a sleep doctor. Stressed out patients complain they're aiming for a sleep score of 100, but they're only getting 80. It keeps them up at night. She does offer a simple solution. I'll ask them to put their tracker away for a couple of weeks. Honestly, sometimes you can see the relief on their faces. Look, folks, I love technology. I use technology. I have iPhones, iPads, I watches, cameras. The technology is not the answer to everything. Sometimes the answer in life is the off button. That's right, the off button. One of my big themes here on this show, and forgive me to any of those you find this overly repetitive, but if you want to be healthy and have good habits in every other aspect of your life, get a good night's sleep. If you want to get a good night's sleep, go to bed earlier and eliminate any electronics, any screen from your field of vision one hour before you need to go to sleep and get enough sleep so that you do not need an alarm. Beep, beep, beep, or, or whatever sound effect you have from your cell phone. If you're using your cell phone as an alarm clock, you basically have two horrific habits that are guaranteeing horrible sleep. Number one, it means you have an alarm clock in your bedroom. Number two, you're using an alarm clock, which means you're not getting enough sleep. It just strikes me as so bizarre that people are into paleo diets and natural movement. Get back to nature. And let's look at what our ancestors did. What did our ancestors do? They woke up when they were rested. Our ancestors, 2,000 years ago, hundred thousand years ago, 50,000 years ago, a thousand years ago, a hundred years ago, didn't use alarm clocks. They got up when they were rested. Now, according to some scientists, human beings until the 19th century got as much as 11 hours of sleep a night without electricity. It got dark, you ran out of a candle or fire, you went to sleep, you woke up when the sun came up. Now I'm not ready to go to sleep. The second it gets dark here in New York in the winter, it can get dark at 5 o'. Clock. But this idea that because we have electricity. And because we could watch TV all night long and we could look at YouTube videos all night long, we just should. Big, big problem with that. So I would like to know from you, have you used a sleep tracker? If so, what was your experience? Mine was not helpful at all. And unfortunately I hopped it. I had it for about a month and I hopped into a pool for one second and tried my jawbone up. I believe it was a jawbone up and I never replaced it. So that was my experience with sleep trackers. There are a lot of other things going on when it comes to sleep that I do think are worthwhile and helpful. One of them is to do with snoring. Snoring is an incredibly common problem. We laugh at it. There's always the cartoon character going sawing wood. It's a part of pop culture where it's supposed to be funny. The problem is people actually die from snoring and from stopping breathing when they sleep. And even when they don't die, quite often, they're getting such a low quality of sleep that it's destroying their ability to think clearly. You could spend eight hours in bed, but if you're only getting functional equivalent of four hours of sleep, the way you're operating the next day is essentially the same as someone drunk. So it's an incredibly big problem. Now I'm going to try to practice what I preach. And when I'm a hypocrite, you can call me out on it. I forgot to put my own phone and turn it off. So it's coming in. I saw it on my iWatch. I hit stop. Now I'm going to do what I should have done. I try to do every day. I put the do not disturb sign on my phone and I actually put the theater. There's a little theater mask. I know I sound like I'm a spokesperson for Apple. I'm not trying to sell you anything, but they do have this nice theater mask. When you put it on that way nothing flashes up. And nothing flashes up. Even if I hold it up, it just stays dark. So forgive me for being disrespectful to you for that. The wire cutter is a section of the New York Times where they look at technology. They recently did a survey of the six most popular anti snoring devices and rated all of them. One of them is called a Smart Nora. This is a system that will move your head when it catches you snoring. And it's supposed to condition you to get to the point where your head is in a place where you don't snore. Now, according to this reviewer, this was one of the more effective devices. And for the person testing it, they said, I tried it, cutting my total snoring in half according to my snore lab sleep score. I've linked to the story in the show notes, so if you're on Facebook or YouTube, you can check this out yourself. The next one the original nose vents by Venion, $22. A set of four. These are basically tiny silicone funnels. They sit inside your nose to dilate your nostrils. And the author here, the tester said, didn't totally keep me from snoring, but they reduced me snoring by a third during one of the three nights I use them. So a little bit better, although the tester said it's a little bit gross. There's the Philips Smart Sleep snoring relief band, $200. The band straps a small electronic device to your chest. It senses when you're on your back. It vibrates, so you'll reposition yourself when you're. When you're on your back, you're more likely to snore. So that's what it's trying to get you away from. This particular person Testing said they snore on all sides, so it didn't do them any good. Next up is the REM Fit Zeeq Smart Pillow, $50 for this author. In the New York Times, it said it didn't do anything to reduce snoring. Here's one you've probably heard about. Breathe Right Nasal strips, lavender scented, $12 a pack. Those breath strips are amazing, but did that prevent you from snoring? Marceau, My colleague, Marceau I have a terrible snore. Like it's loud. And those work the absolute best. And when you're sick, they open up your passages like the top. The top patches in your nose so you don't. Your nose doesn't even feel stuffed up, but dramatically decreased my snoring. So Marceau is a big fan of the breathe right and nasal strips. According to this author, the strip was always peeling away, and therefore it didn't help that person snoring at all. The final one on this list is the Kopiki Anti snoring chin strap, $11. This author found it was uncomfortable and drenched in drool and did not stop the snow snoring at all. Now, probably the most famous way to help people snoring is the big CPAP machine, where you look like you are Darth Vader. And it's incredibly big, bulky, expensive and noisy. I went to a sleep study once and had got fitted for that. Tried it for a month. Worst possible thing ever. I can't believe people do this. Yeah, it stopped me from snoring. You know why it stopped me from snoring? I couldn't sleep all night because the second I moved my face half an inch, it created a vacuum and this loud sucking sound of came in. What I have found that works best for me and I'm convinced is far and away the best source for almost anyone who snores, is you simply go to your dentist and say, would you please make a snore guard for my mouth? So you have something that puts your upper teeth in a mouth guard, your lower teeth, and there's a hinge. The hinge brings the bottom jaw out just a tiny bit, but that opens up the hole in the back of your mouth, the air passage. Marceau, I would recommend this to you because you buy it once, you don't have to buy strips. You don't have to worry about strips falling off. It's amazingly effective. I've used this for six years. And you're not getting surgery on your throat, which is another horrible thing people do to try to stop. You're not carrying around big, bulky equipment and getting dressed up like Darth Vader. And you're not constantly buying new stuff and strapping electronics on you. It's very old school. It's plastic, It's a mouth guard. It's comfortable. And again, I'm not selling anything here, folks. I'm just telling you, if you want a good night's sleep, it's going to help. Plus, it also protects your teeth. Many people, myself included, grind our teeth when we sleep. If you wear this, you kill two birds with one stone. You're not causing any damage to your teeth from grinding because you have a mouth guard on. And it eliminates not all snoring, but it does eliminate most snoring for most people. So if you have a problem with snoring, I urge you to check it out. We will be back at four minutes past the hour. I'm TJ Walker. This is the Habit Influencer, Sam. Sa. Sam. Sa. Welcome back to the Habit Influencer. I'm your host, TJ Walker. This is the one community, the entire world, where we meet every day live right here on Facebook, YouTube, Twitch, Twitter mix, you name it, we are on the live platform. Happy you could join us wherever you are. It is Tuesday, February 25, 2020. And Marceau, please correct at some point I'm going to get the date wrong, so please correct me if I'm giving out the wrong date. Thanks so much for thanks so much for all of you joining me. And we had a couple of people who were nice enough to post comments and questions in the last hour we didn't get to so let's quickly go to them first. Appreciate all of the comments questions that come in Ajmal writes in on Facebook hi Teji, I had a presentation without PowerPoint to present and had to talk for no less than five minutes. I practiced it privately on my own. I was able to talk about it for more than 10 minutes, but when I walked up to the podium, things got messed up and I ran out of words and ideas. How do I hide my nervousness from the audience? Thank you for your time. Well Ajwal, I'm sorry that's happened to you, but I'm glad you're practicing. I'm glad you're speaking and if your next speech is better, everyone forgets the last one, so I wouldn't worry about it too much. Here's the thing. This is not uncommon when you're practicing. It's stress free. There's no one around, presumably, and you feel no stress when you get up to speak in front of people and you see eyeballs staring at you. It's human nature to feel nervousness. We are biologically programmed to feel fear when other people are looking at us, afraid they're going to attack us or eat us or shoot us or something like that. And I realize that sounds overly dramatic, but at some primal, unconscious level, that's what we're feeling. So your body is sending adrenaline out. That's why your palms get wet. The bottom of your feet are probably getting wet when this happens without realizing it because your body's preparing you to run, get out of here. Unfortunately, that just doesn't help. If you're already there speaking, you have to speak. But when adrenaline is pulsing through your body, your brain shuts down. Your ability to recall information goes way down. And that is inevitable. Here's the solution. Doesn't matter if you're using PowerPoint or not. Use a simple sheet of notes. I'm using a sheet of notes to talk to you for the last hour. I don't think it bothered you too much, but I occasionally glance down and look at the notes to let me know where I want to go to next. Now, because I'm sort of framed here and you can't see below mid chest, I am actually holding it, but Anytime I'm giving a speech, I always use notes, but nobody ever sees me. Hold the notes. I'll put them down before the speech ever starts. I'll actually have two or three copies of my notes in different places around the room. That way I can walk around, gesture, create the illusion of just speaking to people, not just for five minutes. It could be for 90 minutes and I will appear to just be speaking off the top of my head extemporaneously. But I'm not. I'm using notes. Don't put your brain in the stressful position of trying to remember stuff when you're standing in front of people and people are staring at you. Your brain doesn't like that. Your brain's trying to figure out, how can I shut down and run? So realize that. Give yourself notes. Now. The key with notes is you need to use 1, 2, 3, at most four words per line. You don't want to have like what I have, what I did in the interest of time is I have entire sentences out. I'm not going to bury my head and read entire sentences. I do this because I wrote it a few days ago. I read it once right before the show and I can sort of glance down and know I don't want to say more or less. But I do this two hours a day, every day. And I've given thousands of speeches and sometimes I've done as much as four hour live talk shows. So it's going to be easier for anyone if you're doing it that much. But if you're only giving a five minute speech here and there once a week or once a month, then you need to make it easier on yourself because it's not yet an ingrained habit. So that's why I recommend sheet. Have a single sheet of paper, bend it over, have a very large font and have it just sitting down on a table or desk or chair in front of you. You forget what to say. That's okay. Glance down, look at what you want to talk about. Talk about next, or take a sip of water. When you put it down, look at the notes right next to it. No one will have any clue. You are using notes so you will appear supremely confident, relaxed and authoritative. That's what you want every time you speak. When you build that habit, you will be a successful communicator every time. And I hope this doesn't sound in any way harsh, but I do want to stress to you, if you ever are using PowerPoint, the PowerPoint is not anything you should ever look at for your notes. The PowerPoint is 100% for your audience. I use PowerPoint frequently. You'll never see a word of text on one of my PowerPoint slides. You need to introduce the idea first, make it come alive, spell it out, define it, give examples, case studies, stories. Then and only then do you want an image to come up on the screen to reinforce that. So when I'm giving a PowerPoint slide, I still use the single sheet of notes with my outline bullet points to keep me on track. I will never use the PowerPoint slides as my guide to help me remember what to say. No good speaker will ever use a PowerPoint slide in my view to help them remember what to say. The PowerPoint slides are simply to reinforce the ideas you already talked about to the audience. Good luck with your next speech. I hope it goes really well and I appreciate your patience. Since you posted the comment in the end of the last hour, let's go to some of the other comments that have come in from students as you know, this is a live forum. Anyone anywhere in the world can participate this. There's no cost for this. You can post any question you have about habits related to personal development, communication, or anything else. But this is also a forum for my online students, people who purchase courses either on my own platform, skillshare, Go Skills, or udemy, and they post questions and then I answer their questions in more detail right here. This one comes from Susanna. She's in my complete soft skills course. How can a person have soft skills in a job they don't like or is out of their comfort zone? Well, Susanna, ideally, any job you have, it does stretch you. It forces you to learn some things out of your comfort zone. Now, there are extremes. If you are incredibly fearful and nervous and shy and you hate violence and you don't like guns, you're probably not going to be comfortable being a police officer on the streets of a major city. So you may have to figure out how to make a quick shift in career, but I'm assuming it's not that dramatic. The way you learn new soft skills is the way you learn anything else. You learn by reading for some of us, by listening, by watching videos, by thinking about it, by finding role models who are already doing it the way you want to do it. I'm a better speaker today than I was 40 years ago because I try to watch every great speaker I can. I try to read every book I could ever find on public speaking. For many years, I wrote about public speaking seven days a week, and that's how I got over my own discomfort. Speaking I was a very shy kid. I was the last person to raise his hand and try to give a report. In third grade I was the worst kid at selling, going door to door and selling magazine subscriptions or peanut brittle for the Cub Scout troupe. It's all learned skill. I learned those soft skills by thinking about it, practicing it, reading about it, looking for role models. And so when it comes to your own soft skills, that's the way to do it too. Now there's a lot of different skills that make up soft skills. One that's near and dear to my heart is the so called soft skill of public speaking and presenting. Most people are out of their comfort zone if it's their first week at work and they have to give a presentation to the board of directors or the CEO or important clients. The way to get over that is to practice your speech on video. And these days it's as simple as pulling out your cell phone, hitting record and watching it, doing it again and again and again until you love what you see. When you do that, the nervousness will melt away and everyone else will think you have that soft skill. And after a while you'll feel more and more comfortable with it. You actually will have that soft skill. So good luck. Marceau did we have. Did I miss someone's comment? I wanted to make sure we are up to date on that and it seemed like we had some more friends joining us from Uplive. So one of our good friends on TikTok has written in mocks Galaxy I never got the whole PowerPoint slide that myself. Never got the whole PowerPoint slide thing myself. So PowerPoint, there's also an Apple version of it too where it's just using technology, the power of computer to put images, graphs, pictures on a slide that you can project either on a big screen, a TV. And PowerPoint itself was created I believe in 1980 and it was quickly purchased by Microsoft. So it's been a Microsoft products now for 40 years. So in theory it's a great aid for presenters and audiences because rather than just relying on their words, they have images. So in theory PowerPoint can be a great thing. As a practical matter, people misuse and abuse PowerPoint and they just put a lot of text, bullet points, complex data and it ends up putting people to sleep. I love PowerPoint. Some of my best friends are PowerPoint, but I hate the way 99.9% of PowerPoints are created and delivered around the world because they are abused and they just put people to sleep. The most effective way to use PowerPoint is to just use images one image at a time. Do not use a single word of text, and to make every idea come alive with your words, stories and examples. If you have a whole bunch of text, email it to people afterwards, give them a handout. Do what I do sometimes. I will then give them copies of my books. But I'm not going to give a speech on public speaking and put the text from my book Secret to Foolproof Presentations up on a slide. It would be horrible. And I'm also not going to do a media training and put the text from my book on media training on a slide. It's an extraordinarily ineffective way to do it. So PowerPoint can be great, just not the way most people use it. But thanks for the comments. We've had other people writing in on YouTube today and Carol, Carol's written some and I answered her question and Carol writes, I'm wondering how long do you oh, I think we already addressed that one. Raspberry has written into us on YouTube. I'm not native speaker for English language I can't understand very well. Are you saying you can't understand me very well or that when you speak other people can't understand you? Raspberry, if you're still with us, if you could answer that question, because that would determine how I answer you. Are you talking about you have a hard time understanding people speaking English, or is it that they have a hard time understanding you? I do work with a lot of people and Marceau, please let me know monitor that if Raspberry does right. I do work with a lot of people all over the world helping them build strong communication habits. People who are speaking in a language that isn't their first language. I do a lot of work with the United nations and those people typically are 10 times smarter than I am and they speak 10 languages. English might be their second or third language, but even though they know so many languages and often have advanced degrees, many of them still feel insecure about speaking in a language that isn't their first language. Here's what I found. Having to give a speech in a language that isn't your first language can often be an advantage because chances are your vocabulary in a second or third language is smaller than someone who has it in the first language, so you're more likely to use simpler, smaller words. That's a good thing when you're giving a speech. As long as you can speak and people can understand you, it doesn't matter if your accent is a little different if you occasionally miss a word, as long as people can understand you. Now, the big problem for a lot of people if they are speaking in a language that isn't their first language is they get insecure. Nervous. When you're insecure and nervous, it's easier to start speaking faster than normal and to lower your volume. So if you speak faster than normal and you lower the volume, that's a real problem because people can't understand you. So I would recommend speak a little slower than normal, a little louder than normal, and it will be easier. Easier for people to understand you. Don't worry if you don't get the perfect word. Don't try to memorize perfect words. Focus on the idea and use the simplest words that come to you in a conversational way. In most situations, you will be better off. There's always exceptions. If you're the president of a country or a finance minister and one wrong word can cause a scandal, it's a little bit different and you may want to have your speech all written out or use a teleprompter. But for most people, most of the time, if you're speaking in a language that isn't your first language, don't try to memorize it, don't try to read it. Instead, focus on the ideas. Use the simplest words you can to convey that idea. And as with any speech, I recommend the habit of practicing your speech again and again and again on video until you love what you see. And it should be obvious to you if you are speaking too quickly or too softly. So thanks again for that question, Marceau. I want to hop into into topic B in a moment, but I didn't want to shut off anyone who was perhaps waiting for us. Okay, topic B. What is the easiest way to change other people's habits? Now, I realize you're probably great. You're fine. But you may have family members, friends, associates who have awful habits, annoying habits, habits that disgust you or bother you. How do you get them to change? Well, I've had an easy answer. I'd probably be a billionaire now. Because people would love to be able to change their kids, their spouse, their co workers. I do have an answer, but it's not an easy answer. The answer is if you want to improve other people's habits, generally the most effective way is to change your own habits. Show everyone around you how you are a good role model, how you are happier, how you are more fulfilled. That is what will motivate them. The direct Approach pretty much never works in my line of work. As someone who helps people with their communication habits, I can tell you anyone I work with who has problems communicating has probably already had family, friends, colleagues, assistants tell them things they did wrong and they didn't listen. It's human nature to not want to take advice that is offered freely. People take my advice when it comes to how to build stronger habits on public speaking because it was their decision and they spent a lot of money hiring me. Therefore, they're completely open to suggestions on how to change their habits. They may have had people tell them every single time they gave a speech that they were boring everyone to death with all the bullet points on the PowerPoint slide and they ignored it. And then I tell them, don't ever put bullet points and words and text on a PowerPoint slide. Just use images. And their reaction is sometimes, wow, T.J. you're a genius. Okay, I'm going to change my habit now. It's not that I'm a genius. It's just that I was positioned in the right place to give advice because the person actively sought me out and they paid for it. That doesn't work with family and friends. Your family and friends are not going to pay you for advice. And chances are, if they have some habit that's annoying you, they're probably not going to ask you for advice. They might not even be aware of it. There's only one way around this, unfortunately, and it is for you to improve your habits. Make them better and better and better. If your kids spend too much time on their cell phones and are on their cell phones at dinner, and you're trying to have a dinner conversation, then you need to make sure you never have your cell phone at the table. This idea of, oh, I'm just going to have an important call, and that's four nights out of every six nights you have dinners together, your kids see that, they're going to think, okay, this is the norm. This is the habit we're supposed to have here. We're supposed to say, anyone who calls us on a cell phone or text us on a cell phone is more important than are family members. They are going to learn that habit without you ever stating it directly. If you want your kids to not spend time on their cell phone at dinner or a spouse, which can be even harder, make sure your cell phone is not even visible. Don't even have it on. Don't have it near you. If you want to improve eating habits of family members, friends, co workers, start with your own Eating habits. Now, you may be perfectly healthy weight and you enjoy potato chips in the afternoon or chocolate muffins, but you have family, friends, co workers who are obese or close to being obese. You want to help them. It doesn't matter if you have washboard abs and you are your perfect weight. If you're sitting there eating potato chips and eating chocolate muffins while telling them they need to lose weight and watch what they eat, it's not going to have any impact. They're going to think, well, he gets to eat it whatever he wants. I should too. You're going to have a lot more credibility if they see you snacking on an apple. If they see you snacking on an apple, raspberries or a banana. You're going to have a lot more credibility if when it's your turn to go to the grocery store, you don't buy potato chips. If you're getting together with a big group of friends and you always watch the big game together and everyone brings a snack, you can be the one who brings the hummus and carrots instead of the Doritos and Coke. You can be the one who brings nice sparkling water rather than bringing the 32 ounce, 64 ounce jugs of Pepsi. They might not love it, but some of it might rub off. The best way you can change someone is by example. You have a spouse who isn't exercising enough. Don't wait for them to exercise. Just go out and exercise. Exercise every day. Show them that you feel better. Show them that you're healthy. Don't rub it in their face. But live your life in a way that just shows everyone who sees you that you feel good, that you're happier, that you're more fulfilled, and make people want to be like you. I have found that that is what motivates people. Now, it's one thing if you have your own show. You're writing a book, you're asked to give a lecture, then you can lecture. But our family, friends, close associates, people we work with, very rarely come up to us and say, give me a lecture on how to straighten out my life. That's not what people say. I've never had anyone say that to me. But it's human nature to want to help people, especially when you see them doing things you know are destructive of habits. You may enjoy a glass of wine from time to time, but you may have a family member who just never seems to have fewer than four glasses of wine. You're going out to a restaurant or you're having A family meal, you might want to have a glass of wine. But then it's kind of like a green light for this person to have four glasses of wine. Maybe you have sparkling water. You're not telling the other person they can't have wine or a whole bottle of wine. You're not lecturing, but you're leading by example. You're letting them see that, oh, I don't have to drink wine to fit in. The person I'm having dinner with isn't drinking wine. Believe me, I'm not anti wine. I enjoy a glass of wine. But some people, it becomes excessive. So if you want to help other people build better habits, the last thing you want to do is say, hey, stop that. That's a bad habit. Most great religions have some verse in their primary text saying something to the effect of, don't worry about that splinter in someone else's eye. When you have a moat, a giant log in your own lot, your own eye, most religions have something to that. And it's basically no one cares about you criticizing someone else. You should focus on getting your own house in order. You should focus on your own flaws first. And regardless of what you feel about anyone religion or any religion, I do think that is sound advice. Focus on yourself now. It's a little bit difficult when it's different. When it's your own child, there may be times when you have to use more pressure. But spouses, extended family, siblings, co workers, other people you work around, we don't have the same control over them that we might a young child. We also don't have the same level of responsibility over them that we have over our own child. And therefore direct contact, coercive instructions, do this, don't do that, simply won't work. You want to improve other people, you want to improve their habits, Improve your own habits first. I'm TJ Walker and that is topic B for the day. We have a lot more to come. We have a full 25% of today's program left. We'll be back in one minute with more discussion and news about good habits. Sa. Back to the habit influencer. I'm TJ Walker. We are live. It is five February 25th, Tuesday, 2020, coming to you, broadcasting from the greater New York City area. I'm in Long island, my home today. Appreciate you letting me in your home or your office, wherever you are and wherever you're watching from, whether it's YouTube, whether it's Instagram, IGTV, Twitter, Twitch mix, Periscope, we're on Every kind of platform, almost 20 different platforms now. Happy to be a part of this experiment in communicating in a live forum all over the world. So thanks so much for joining me. Let's take a look at some of the mail. This comes from Deepak over on Facebook. He was responding to a Every day I typically post three different, what we call quote cards. One of them is a sort of an aphorism, a pithy saying of the day, something philosophical that relates to habits. One of them is a more practical tip. And one of them is simply a question of the day. So these three things are things I write each day and are posted on various social media platforms. So the one from yesterday is want to be happier, Adopt the habits of a happy person. Now, is this the most profound thing in the world? Is it a truly original insight? No. But so often people walk around unhappy, grumbling and complaining and they're just making themselves more miserable. So I do think it's worthy of just thinking about it for a couple of seconds. Deepak writes, please mention those habits. Well, that's what we do try to do every single day on this show. You're happier if you're healthier. You're happier if you have a good night's sleep. You're happier if you're at your right body size and eat the right amount of food and healthy food. You're happier if you are creative and have a job you enjoy, make the money you need to provide for yourself. All of these things are part of what we discuss every day on the show. So I did invite Deepak to stop by the show because I don't think he had watched before. He was nice enough to write back and says, tj, I have watched your show. It's amazing. Well, thank you. But because of timing I can't be able to see on a regular basis. He's based in India, says his timing in India is it's 11pm to 1am which is not convenient. Well, Deepak, I understand that. And 11 o' clock at night, I'm not watching anyone else's podcast or livestream or broadcast network show. I'm in bed asleep. So. So I commend you for trying to keep your sleep time sacred. But that's also why we've started making the show available on demand. So on Facebook, on YouTube, if you missed today's show, you will see it posted as an on demand video. So Deepak, hope you can stop by. Hope you can see this since we're talking about you and appreciate the comments a lot of you do make comments on the various quotes of the day and the tips I get. And forgive me if I can't always mention it on the program. Sometimes it gets lost in the shuffle. But I do appreciate your engagement, the questions, the examples you give in your own life and sometimes just the thumbs up so I know you're there and you're getting something from it. So I do appreciate that brief moment to put a spotlight on the course of the day. As many of you know, I don't have Coca Cola, McDonald's advertising on this show and big sponsors. The show is sponsored from my online courses. I have more than 140 online courses that help people build stronger habits. So the spotlight for today, essentially our sponsor for today is is my Complete Creativity Course. There's a link to the course in the show notes you take a look at it. It's the Complete Creativity course Unleash youh Innovation. Now this is all about habits. How to have stronger habits to be a creative person in your work life, your personal life, your fun life. I think you'll enjoy the course. It's normally about $200. With the coupon I'm giving you there, you should be able to get the course for about 10 to $12 US so I urge you, take a look at that. I do think that you will enjoy it a great deal. I want to check in now with one of my favorite experts. I think of him as a personal development expert. It's not really the label he would use for himself, but it's Cal Newport. Those of you who have been regulars ever since we started doing this show and sort of the previews of the show way back in November probably remember me talking about Cal's latest book. He is a deep proponent of this concept known as deep work being in the flow. He's someone who thinks that all this time we spend answering emails and tweeting and texting and liking is destroying our brains and destroying our ability to be truly creative and productive. I would highly recommend you reading anything Cal Newport has written. He's a tenured professor at Georgetown University, believe in the computer science field, but he writes on so many different fields and he's a real expert on productivity and how to be creative and really get into the flow. I wanted to share with you. He doesn't blog a lot because he actually spends his time away from most of the digital world, but he shares someone who he wanted to put a spotlight on. This is Sir William Osler, one of the most important founding members of the whole modern medical community in 1910. In 2010, Dr. Osler wrote a book called Equanimatus, with other addresses to medical students, nurses and practitioners of medicine. This was his farewell address to the medical school at the University of Pennsylvania in 1889. So we're really going back and I'll tell you why I'm pointing this out, because I think it's so relevant. He details his thoughts on what it takes to thrive in an intellectually demanding medical field. So here's an Let each hour of the day have its allotted duty and cultivate that power of concentration which grows with its exercise so that the attention neither flags nor, nor wavers, but settles with bulldog tenacity on the subject before you. Constant repetition makes a good habit fit easily in your mind. And by the end of the session you may have gained that most precious of all knowledge, the power of work. And this is very close to what Cal Newport's first In all of his teachings and his books, he's a big believer that you need to carve out a certain amount of time for deep work every single day. Where you're concentrating, you have no cell phones, you're not trying to go on Facebook. You're focused on the most important aspect of what you do. If you write well, then carve out time to just what I try to do. As soon as I get up, I go into one deep work phase where I write 500 to 1000 words every day about habits. It's typically early in the morning, 5:36. I'm not checking email, I'm not listening to music, there's no phones. Just focus on that one thing. No one else is up in the house. The second time I try to do my deep work is from 9am to noon. So it's three good hours. Cal's theory and many other experts on productivity agree that the human brain is not capable of 16 hours, 12 hours, 10 hours, even 8 hours of really productive work. If you can go into a deep work phase where you're totally concentrating, totally trying to use all the faculties, all of your mental faculties to create new ideas, do important substantive work, three or four hours a day is about the max for most human beings. If you do that, you will be wildly productive. The problem, unfortunately, for most people in the modern work world is not that we're not spending three or four hours in deep work or they're only spending two hours. It's that we're spending zero time. We are just these whack a mole machines. Email, text report, meeting, boom, boom, boom, Boom, boom. We're bouncing all around. We never get to think at all. And what Professor Newport's theory is, is. And going back in time from this medical professor from the 1880s, is that it's actually a good habit to deeply, deeply focus, same time of the day, something strenuous, important to stretch your mind where you can concentrate on it and build on it. So my challenge to you to figure out, when can you do your deep work? Now, if you work for a big company, you may have no control over certain meetings you have to go to. I understand that. I'm sympathetic to it. I don't really understand it because I haven't been to a meeting in a long time. But I understand that may be your reality. But at some point, if you want to build, if you want to grow, if you want to increase your influence in your field, you're going to have to carve out some time. And I believe it needs to be every single day for deep work where you can concentrate. You have consistently either turned off your phone or at least put it in another room so that it can't distract you. You're not on Facebook and you're not even watching TJ Walker, the habit influencer, out of the corner of your eye because it's one to three. You're just focused on one thing. Whether it's writing, whether it's reading, whether it's computer programming, whether it's designing, whether it's painting, you're focused on that one thing. If you can do that for three hours a day and you goof off the rest of the day, you'll start still probably be more successful, more productive, happier, likely wealthier than some people that work 12 hours a day. So that's what I want you to really think about is how can you protect. Carve out some set amount of time for you to do your most important work, ideally every single day. I'm TJ Walker. There's still more fun to come in Topic C. Today we'll be going through one of my favorite topics, which is how to actually accomplish good habits that you hate to do. We all have them, so that's what we're going to talk about right now. Topic c. Your top 10 least favorite but most important habits. What are they? Everybody's lazy in some respect. I know I am. We all have certain good habits that we know we should do every single day, but we just don't like doing them. How can you get over that hump? My recommendation is you can't do everything. You can't be perfect, but try to come up with your top 10 habits of things you don't like to do but you know that you should do. And then figure out how can you do these in less than 60 seconds. Now, if you hate mowing the lawn and you don't like mowing the lawn and you need to mow the lawn, you can't do that in 60 seconds. You'll have to come up with another solution there. So it doesn't work with everything. But what I have found in life is there's so many habits you really can do in 60 seconds. The reason I like 60 seconds is it's a short amount of time. I already spend more than 60 seconds a day brushing my teeth. I already spend more than 60 seconds a day flossing my teeth. So why can't I do 60 seconds on other things I don't like as well? It's quick, it's easy. It's kind of like pulling that band aid off. You might not look forward to it, but it's so quick, it's so easy, it's not perfect. Particularly painful. Other examples I mentioned to you before, I don't like running. I ran cross country in high school because I thought I needed something on my record to get in college. I hated it and I was awful. Now I don't mind running if I'm playing tennis or doing something fun, but I can't play tennis every day. But I know that if I want my heart in tip top shape, my body in top shape, I need to run. And it would be great if I ran for an hour, a day, or a half an hour. I'm not going to do that. But something is better than nothing. And that's my challenge to you in this top 10 list of things you can do. Good habits in 60 seconds or less. I do run every single day, but I only run for 60 seconds, not an extra second. I run full blast on my treadmill for 60 seconds. It gets my heart rate up, gives me a sense of accomplishment, gets some energy going, and I feel good about it. I feel good about the fact that I do it and that I can do it at the very top speed. My treadmill goes of 10 miles per hour. So that's one of the things I do. It also gives me a sense of accomplishment. I checked off the box, I knew I could do it, I did it, I planned on doing it, I didn't want to do it, and I did it. That gives me confidence that I can accomplish other small tasks. You might not yet be in the habit of flossing your teeth every day. Do it just for 60 seconds. Stephen Geiss of the Mini Habits franchise suggests starting with flossing just one tooth. If you really want to start with a very, very small microhabit, but at least 60 seconds a day, you could floss your entire mouth. It's not that much. That's something I've been doing to the point where I don't really think about it at all. It's not even on my list. I just can't imagine going to bed without flossing my teeth. But for you, that might be one you want to work on if you don't do it every single day. Now, flossing your teeth is not particularly enjoyable, but there's a huge payoff. I floss my teeth because I don't want to get gum disease and I don't want my teeth to fall out. And when you floss your teeth every day, you dramatically increase your or decrease your chances of your teeth falling out and getting gum disease. That's why I do it. There are other things I don't like to do but I know are good for me. It's easy for me to just be lethargic and sit and a couch and read for the first three hours in the morning and do things. And I know I need more action, more activity, more movement. So I tell myself I'm going to do 20 jumping jacks every single morning. The beauty of that, not only does it not take a minute, it doesn't even take 30 seconds. Basically in 20 seconds I'm done. But it's making me move, it's getting my heart rate up, it's getting me excited about the day. So that's another specific good habit that I wouldn't want to do. But simply because I figured out a way of doing it in less than a minute, it seems painless. I want to hear from some of you of what is on your list. What's a good habit that you know you should do, you don't like to do, but simply by telling yourself you can do it in less than 60 seconds, you are more likely to do it. Another one. I do push ups. I don't enjoy push ups, but I tell myself I don't have to do push ups for more than 60 seconds and I'll do as many push ups as I can in 60 seconds. I'm up to about 50 now, so I'm pretty much about at the limit. I don't know if I even want to go beyond that. I also use the perfect push up machine where you can go deeper. I can only do 32 of those, but that if you're not familiar with the push up, that's a lot more than most people can do, certainly people my age. So I feel pretty good about that. But again, I don't enjoy push ups, but I know it's a good habit. It strengthens the torso, strengthens other muscles, helps with posture, does so many good things for you. I can do it in less than a minute and it's one of those things where I need a break. I've been at my desk, I've been in the deep work phase. I've been writing or preparing a show for you. I'll just hop up, walk to the gym in 10 seconds and do my push ups. And it's quick, it's done, it's painless, and I do it every single day. Now. Not everything is exercise or physically related. I learned one new word a day. I don't particularly enjoy it. I certainly didn't think that I would. But I have been doing this for about a year and what I found is even if it's a word I'm never going to remember or never use, it's just nice to be learning new things. Sends a signal to my brain, hey, brain, you're still learning new stuff. And sometimes it's a word that I think I know and I realize I didn't know the full nuance of it. So it gives me a fuller range. And even if it's a word I don't plan on speaking on this show or to others, it's still nice to be able to hear the word when others use it and know exactly what it means. So that's something that doesn't take 60 seconds a day. That's something that I do in 10 seconds. Typically I just go to an app, new word of the day, and boom, 10 seconds later, it's done. I've checked it off and it's helped stimulate a little more, a little more brain activity. Another thing, I read someone else's quote of the day, some famous philosopher or writer. I typically like to read full books, so. So I don't really find it that nourishing intellectually to just read a quote. But I do it in part because I'm always looking not for anything to copy, but for inspiration and structure and how to be pithy so that I can give you better quotes, since I create a new quote every day for you that I publish on my social media platform. So that's another really simple one, just reading another that doesn't take 60 seconds, that typically takes 10 seconds. Something else I do that you've heard me mention, and this one does take exactly 60 seconds. I have a bad tendency to kind of slouch. I kind of lean forward these days. See how that looks? And gives me the double chin, round shoulders. If I'm not careful, I can have bad posture. So every single day, for exactly 60 seconds, I do an exercise where I stand about 18 inches away from the wall and I lean back on the wall. I'm now leaning on my TV screen, but not too hard. I don't want to knock it down. So if the wall is like this, I'm leaning against it. What it does is it straightens out your body, realigns you, gives you much better posture. It's only 60 seconds, but when you're done, your posture is so much better, you feel 10ft tall. I do it every single day, and often it's because I just put the coffee on or I put something in the microwave and I'm waiting. So 60 seconds anyway, and I'm in the kitchen. It's something very easy to do. And now that I've done it for so long, I find that I'm looking for opportunities. Just last week, so if, you know, I was on vacation and I was in a rest stop with a couple of my friends, they were at a Starbucks getting coffee. I already had mine. I had nothing to do, and I just leaned up against the wall in the middle of the. In the middle of the store, in the middle of the rest station. Nobody noticed, nobody cared, didn't bother anyone. But it allowed me to continue this unbroken trend of the daily habit of doing my posture exercise every single day. Another habit that I don't normally do just on my own is I drink a glass of water. Now, it takes about five seconds to pour the glass of water. Now, that's cheating a little, because they don't typically drink the whole glass of water in a minute. But the habit part, the action part, isn't the drinking. It's getting the glass out, pouring the glass of water once it's poured, and sitting next to me while I'm doing reading, research, other things in the morning, then I'm going to drink it. So it's quick, it's simple, it's easy, and that's what builds it into a good and meaningful habit. Something else I do takes not 60 seconds, but sometimes just 20 seconds, sometimes less is I write down in my checklist of daily Habits. One area of my life where my habits are helping me. I'm reflecting on all the other good habits I have. This is an important thing to do because it helps motivate you to continue down this path of good habits. And I may only have two or three words. I may just say something like better sleep, feeling stronger, legs, stronger for skiing. It's not some giant essay that's going to take me four hours to think about and meditate on. It's 10, 20 seconds. Now, not every habit is something you should do or could do in 60 seconds, but a lot of habits are. And I would urge you, if you haven't done it yet, come up with your top 10 habits of things that you know you should do. You know you could do, you know it would be good for you, but you just don't do them consistently. And you can do them in 60 seconds or less. Let's get some quick wins in. Then we can focus on the bigger, more time consuming, more challenging habits to create a more fulfilling life for you. And that's topic C. Thanks so much for listening to that deep dive. I appreciate that. We're coming up towards the the end of the second hour and that unfortunately means the end of the show for today, but I know several more of you did stop by and had some comments. Let's check in. We're going to head over to YouTube right now. Carol says thank you. Hugo says sleep without a pillow also helps. Now, I have not heard that. I have a very thin pillow and it's one of those that sort of is melded to your face and design. I personally, I've tried, when I've tried to sleep without a pillow, it makes me uncomfortable. I feel like I have to have something that my hands go under. But Hugo, if it works for you, great. If you have a problem with snoring, you want to try Hugo's advice. It seems like a pretty painless experiment. You may want to go ahead and try it. If so, we'll say special thanks to Hugo. Hugo, thanks for writing. And Marceau, did we have any other comments that I missed somehow? Great. Well, I really appreciate everyone writing in, everyone sharing their own as Hugo just did their own suggestions on how to have better habits. Because I don't have a monopoly, this is something think about. All day long, I try to read every single new book that comes out about habits. I try to distill for you the very best information on habits, whether it's coming out in the form of a book, a new website, a blog, a Podcast to give you the best, but I don't have it all. So that's why I like hearing from Hugo and others, sharing their tips. I wanted to share something with you from the Develop Good Habits website, a website you've heard me mention a time or two and I provided this link. This was just posted today and the link is in the show Notes today, but it's 13 free habit tracker templates to download and print. These will help you put down your goals for eating, organizing, sleeping. Jerry Seinfeld famously talked about how he liked to have a whole calendar on his wall and he could track his habit of writing one new joke every day, which apparently he still does some 40 years into his career. But he gives credit for his success to this habit of putting a big X on the calendar each day, tracking this habit of writing a joke. And after a while, his whole focus was just on let's not break the chain. Because if you write one joke, it might not be any good, two might not be any good. But if you write 100 jokes in three months and you're practicing all of them and you're getting feedback from live audiences all the time, a dozen of them are probably going to be pretty good, and one or two of them may bring the house down. If you do that over a period of years, you're going to have material that's so fantastic you can blow away any audience. That's his theory, and I think there's a lot to that. So this particular website is giving different templates where you can write it down. I have experimented with big calendars on the wall doing something similar to that. But with my travel schedule and just where I like to sit, different places, even when I'm at home, I find the simplest thing for me is to just go to my phone, go to the notes section, and then I have my habits in two areas. I have morning habits and it's labeled as a folder. It's labeled Morning personal development and then Evening Personal development. And I then simply just go to the bottom of it. And the first one I see is question of the day. I hit it and I'm going to write a question of the day. I write that in. A lot of others are simple. I have my weight every day. I simply write my weight and it's simple, easy. Do you like using templates? Do you like using apps? I've tried all of them. I haven't found anything better than just simple notes on my phone. We can talk about that tomorrow. We're out of time. I'm TJ Walker. Thanks so much for being a part of the Habit Influencer today. May all of your habits bring you fulfillment in your life. See you tomorrow. Okay, Marcel, play in a minute. This is a chicken beef production.