THE HABIT INFLUENCER - 2/26/2020 - Personal Development | LIVE STREAM

I come prepare with topics for you every day. But also it's a free forum. You can post your comments, your thoughts, your questions, and you can help set the agenda too. So wherever you are, if you're watching us on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram TV, you name it, post your comments and I would be more than happy to respond. Coming up on the show today, we have a lot of interesting, exciting topics. In topic A will be looking at how to make your bad habits as difficult as a bad shopping cart. In topic B, why you can't be a slave master to yourself. In topic C, simple everyday habits that could ruin your health. Some of them may surprise you. And in topic D, Lifelong learning Does not have to Mean Lifelong Debt this issue very applicable these days. We'll be talking about a New York Times story just out about people in their 60s, retirement age, 70s, paying off college loans. As much as I love learning, I'm a big believer in lifelong learning. I think that is an absolute abomination that people are being saddled with such massive, massive debt. We'll be looking at some comments that have come in over the night on various social media platforms, plus your questions, plus questions from some of my online students. So all that and more, plus your comments, your calls, if you choose to make a video and post it on our Facebook page, and your text comments as well. So thanks so much for joining. I wanted to hop right in with something a little on the sillier side, but still appropriate to what we talk about here regarding habits. This is from GQ Gentleman's Quarterly, something I started reading in the 70s, although I'm not a regular reader anymore. This is in GQ India, and this is a story about some of the weirdest habits of wildly successful CEOs. Some of these you may have heard of before, but Mark Zuckerberg allegedly blow dries his armpits. He's known for having some peculiar habits, and according to gq, the Facebook CEO gets his team to blow dry his armpits before a stage appearance. Apparently he has a tremendous amount of anxiety sweat. I wondered why the people at Saturday Night Live when they're doing a skit about him, do that. Now I know why. Apparently he actually does have assistants blow dry his armpits. Now, I don't know if he does that every time or if he did it once 10 years ago, but it is the kind of thing that's comical if it's not you. If you are nervous before giving a speech, whether you're Mark Zuckerberg and a billionaire or a 10 year old about to give a report in fourth grade. It is normal. The secret, I think is not to spend time blow drying your armpits. The secret is to practice on video until you like what you see. Something tells me Mark Zuckerberg was not doing that. Now since this GQ is based in India, they have some Indian examples and we have a lot of regular viewers and community members here from India. This is from Indra Noi. Forgive me if I'm mispronouncing this. This is Pepsi's former CEO Indra Noyi and it's regarding table etiquette. While most of us are asked to wash our hands before eating, chew our food properly and all these other demands, Pepsi's former CEO Indra Nooya's parents had slightly different demands. The parents would ask all the children in the family to write a speech and then narrate it at the dinner table. Then the parents would vote for the one with the best speech. I love this idea. I may even try this tonight at my own dinner table. See if I can get my daughter to do that. The only thing I have a slight quibble with is I don't believe most speeches are better off if they're written first. I think speech is for most people. Most of the time you're better off with just a simple outline, a few bullet points and then speaking from that. But something tells me that Indra's rise to huge success in the corporate world was due in part because of this speech training at home. And it brings back a reminder from the great Seth Godin, someone we reference here from time to time, who points out no matter where your kid goes to school, every kid is homeschooled from 4pm to 10pm so you can talk all you want about the quality of your school. Public school, private school, home school. Every kid in the world is homeschooled from the time they get home from school until they go to bed. Plus weekend. So there's a tremendous amount of time to teach good habits to your kids. And it sounds like Indra's family did a great job of teaching Indra how to speak articulately, successfully, forcefully and with confidence. Now this next one you may have seen reference before too. Bill Gates. He likes to rock when he thinks he has a rocking chair. According to this, Bill Gates loves rocking his chair while thinking. He says it helps him think better and he's proud of it. Imagine the former richest man in the world just in a rocking chair, thinking of some brilliant new innovation. Now the reason I think of Bill Gates rocking is famously when he was giving a deposition to the United States government during the antitrust era, Microsoft, this is now, probably 15, maybe 20 years ago, he, he was seen hunching forward rocking the whole time in his videotape deposition. Many people made fun of it and it just, it looked silly, it looked ridiculous, it looked absurd. But if he's doing it and there's no camera on him and it makes him think better, well, good for him. Power to him. Number four on the list of odd, peculiar habits Elon Musk. You've heard of micromanaging? He's well known for Nano managing. Here's what GQ says. Let's face it, if there's anything we do not fancy much at work, it's being micromanaged. Well, the employees at Tesla have to deal with this every single day. The founder CEO Elon Musk has admitted to the habit of not just micromanaging, but nano managing every single activity of his employees. Now, GQ does not go into great detail. I don't know if that means he's scheduling the bathroom breaks or what they can eat at lunch, but that does seem like it would be less than pleasant having a boss like that, even if it is an inspirational figure like Elon Musk. Number five on the list Shigeru Miyamoto. Measuring things if you look at a table or a chair, would you think about how long it is? Let's take it a step further. Would you be tempted to measure its length? Probably not, but former Nintendo director Shigeru Miyamoto has a habit of doing so. And on a regular basis. He loves taking a guess of the size of an inanimate object and then measures to see how close he was. If he is, he pats himself the back and marks his achievement. Kind of an odd habit, but I guess it keeps your brain sharp for thinking about how to make calculations. So these are some of the odd habits. Now, just because these folks are really successful, I don't think most of these habits are the reason why they are successful. Although I do like the habit of the former Pepsi CEO having to give a written prepared speech at dinner every single night. That sounds like a fantastic habit if you can get your family members to do it. So that is if you want to check it out. I've linked to it the site gqindia.com I've linked to the story. If you want to take a look at the show notes on the Facebook page, YouTube page. It's not on every platform we're on, but it is on some of them. If you don't see it on yours, easiest thing to do is go to Facebook, type in TJ Walker Personal Development or TJ Walker Habit Influencer. You'll see my main business page and you'll see the show going live there right now. And you can see the show notes in it. So hope you check that out. A couple of interesting, quirky text messages I received or messages on social media I want to share. I'm not going to mention his name. I think fundamentally, deep down he's probably a good kid. But I had made a post with one of my quotes of the day, as I do every single day, and the quote was simply, happiness is not a luxury. It is a requirement for having good habits. And the point of that is if you're unhappy and you're depressed, you're much more likely to not eat right, not exercise, not go to bed on time. We've talked about it before on this show. It's not a unique concept of mine, but I think it does bear repeating. Well, here's what this and he's been a regular follower of mine now for several years through my public speaking channel and other things. He says, hi buddy. For your information, this is apropos of nothing in my comment. He says, hi buddy. FYI, Muslims interfere with innocent people's lives like mine and harass culturally. They are all evil people. Don't trust them. Now this is also someone who lives in a country that's not mine. He lives on the other side of the world and he's been asking me for quite some time to help him get a job in America. Help him get a job in America. Unfortunately, he's made other comments like this before. I folks, I of course find his comment appalling and my initial instinct was to just delete the comment. I don't want things that are racist, sexist, religious bigotry on anything I deal with in social media that relate to helping people with good habits or anything else I do for that matter. So I was trying to delete. This was on the Instagram platform and to be honest with you, I couldn't find the delete button. So I said, well, I'll respond to it. Here's what I said. Please tried to be polite, but I said, please do yourself a favor and never, never post anything related to religion or race. This is why you're not getting jobs. Nobody wants to hear your opinions on these issues. Please keep them to yourself. I suppose I could have denounced him in more strenuous terms I certainly don't endorse his views, but this is from a young man who is trying to get ahead, trying to get new jobs, trying to emigrate to America. That is not going to help. Regardless of whatever you think of the current administration's view on the same subject, it simply isn't going to help. I do want to point out though, 99.999% of the comments from you and everyone else in this community when you talk about things I've posted related to good habits, are all positive. They're all upbeat. They're done in the spirit of being helpful, inclusive, looking for commonalities among people, not ways of dividing us. So I don't want to make it sound like I'm complaining about, you know, you, you awful people on the Internet, you awful trolls. No, I think most people are good and I think virtually everyone who's a part of this habit influencer community is here for the right reasons and is trying to do good things. So I just wanted to share that with you. Maybe you have a better opinion on how I should have reacted to that. I don't know that it was the perfect reaction. Perhaps a stronger denunciation, perhaps banning him from my page or following me would have been more appropriate. Let me hear from you. I don't have all the answers. What I try to do here is immerse myself in as much information as I can on habits. And since you probably don't have the time to do it, I try to read virtually every blog on habits, listen to podcasts on habits, read every new book out on habits, distill for you the best, come up with systems that I think make it even better to have good habits and to be transparent with you as I experiment on my own body, my own life, my own career, my own time on good habits. That's what this is all about. And that's what I'm here for. Okay, we have other comments and questions from students. I'm going to get to that later in the show. But first I want to go into our first big topic of the day. You heard me yesterday talking about the idea of making one click habits for your good habits. You want to make it as easy as possible the way Amazon has become a near trillion dollar company by making it so easy with one click to get our money, they created a habit in me, perhaps in you, to get money from us by removing all friction and making the one habit. Well, today is the opposite. That brings us to topic A. The abandoned shopping cart method for dealing with your bad Habits, Self discipline, overrated. Motivation, overrated. Inspiration, overrated. Those things can come and go. Human beings often do the easiest thing possible, possible. If you're really hungry, it's three in the afternoon, you're tired, you're hungry, and someone puts a warm chocolate muffin in front of you. It says, here, this is for you. Would you like to eat it now? It's human nature to start eating it. There's no friction. You don't have to go buy it, you don't have to shop for it, you don't have to find money for it. It's right in front of you. There's no friction. And sometimes it can be hard to control that. But there are numerous ways when you can control your habits by creating more friction. You may have had a good experience, as I have with Amazon, because their shopping cart, once you've set it up one time, give them your credit card, your address. There's no friction. That one click, you buy it. But we've all been to other websites and you're trying to buy something, perhaps tickets to a show, perhaps a specialty product that isn't available on Amazon. You found the product, you've done the research, you know what you want, you've clicked buy. You think you're almost home, but now you've got this long list of things to fill out. You fill out the credit card, your address, your phone number, your email, all these things. It seems like you've been there forever. It's been at least 10 minutes. You hit click to buy and all of a sudden it comes back, the whole page is empty and it says you forgot your security code or you forgot your zip code and they want you to fill in everything from scratch. It's a shopping cart from the devil. What happens to most of us in those situations? I don't really want the thing you give up. You abandon the shopping cart. Regardless of whether the thing you were trying to buy is healthy for you, good for you, or a complete waste of money. There was too much friction. That's why so many e commerce businesses go out of business. They didn't figure out a way of eliminating that friction. Here's how you can use that knowledge to benefit yourself. You need to look at all of your daily habits that aren't helping you and then figure out how to create friction between them, between yourself and that bad habit. If you have a bad tendency to eat cookies, and you have cookies on your kitchen counter or your kitchen table, hide the cookies. If nothing else, if they were in a clear bag or out on a plate, Put them in something that is not transparent. Put them in something that's covered dark so you can't see it. A canister. The next best step, put it away in a cabinet. If you want to go even better, put it up either really high or really low, forcing you to bend down. You don't want something right at eye level. If you want to make it even harder to reach more friction, put it in some drawer where you don't normally go because you're storing things that you don't use on a daily basis. And of course, the best friction for some food you don't want to eat is don't bring it in your house if you know you can't resist a good chocolate chip cookie. And I love chocolate chip cookies. If you put a nice warm, fresh one in front of me, I'd probably eat it right now out of your hand. So have you heard me talk about in the past? My mother used to bake me homemade chocolate chip cookies virtually every day when I came home from school as a kid. So I have fond memories of chocolate chip cookies. But did I eat a chocolate chip cookie today? No. Did I eat one yesterday? No. Did I eat one the day before? No. Is it because I have any more self discipline or motivation than the past? No. It's because I've created friction. I've created an old bad shopping cart. I don't have any cookies in my house and I'm too lazy, especially in rainy weather like we've had today, to get in the car, drive 10 minutes to a grocery store or a bakery, park the car, get out, go in, find cookies, take, take them to a cash register, have them wrapped, pull out my wallet, pay for it, drive home and eat it on the. I'm too lazy to do that, which is great. That's exactly what I want. I want to use my laziness to benefit me. That is the power of friction. Now the key is you've got to do this system automatically. We've talked about making it really easy. The one click way of eating healthy food, even fresh vegetables. Put them right in the front of your refrigerator, already washed, cleaned. The noted habits expert and behavioral researcher BJ Fogg talks about how his entire refrigerator is structured so that he can just put his hand and grab it, eat it. It's not nothing but fresh cut vegetables and fruit all laid out, color coded. I believe in a way that the second he opens it, anything is available. To eat easy and healthy, no junk food around. You've got to do the opposite. With the bad food, stick it in the back of your refrigerator, hide it, stick it in a cupboard that is so high. This works not just to what you eat, it can work to anything else. If you have a habit of watching too much television, you might want to experiment with removing the batteries from your remote control. Yes, you could still get up, walk over to the TV and change the channel. But there's so much friction, you may decide, why bother? Some habits experts suggest you put the whole Internet in your house on a Timer. So that 9 o' clock at night, you know the Internet's going off. If you're in the middle of Netflix or you've just finished a show, it can't just automatically go to the next one and the next one and the next one till 2am it shuts it off. Then you'd have to get up, figure out how to turn it on, override the blocker so that you could watch more tv. But that requires work. So again, the friction makes it easier for you to do the thing you want to do. The good habit. That's the beauty of certain apps. I use Freedom 2, which is an app you can put on your computer and it allows you to block any website, email, app on any computer, any cell phone you have. You set it up and you can put it on a timer. You can also block some sites forever. Now, if you want to go to that site, you can, but you have to go to the trouble of deactivating the Freedom to app. And it's not impossible to do, but you have to actively think about it. You have to punch some things in. You have to say, yes, I want to take it off. You basically have to admit failure, that you don't have enough self control to stay away from that Netflix page or the Amazon prime page on your computer or your iPad. It's creating additional friction. It's a beautiful thing. Fiction is a beautiful thing when it keeps you away from bad habits. It might be a bad thing in a shopping cart when you are really in a hurry to buy some face masks or other things that are quite popular now. But it can be a great thing when it comes to helping you live a healthier lifestyle. I know in the past sometimes I felt like not just me but other members of my family were watching too much TV and Internet TV and something happened with the Internet connection. I might just wait a day or two before fixing just creates more friction. Yeah, I could still watch TV by connecting to the WI Fi, my iPad and then mirroring my iPad or my Cell phone to the big tv. I could still watch tv, but it was a lot more work. In fact, I've done that for a month or so, and it did, in fact, result in less TV consumption, less video consumption. That's what makes it nice. You've heard me mention it before, I'll mention it again. But if you are trying to walk more, get more exercise, look for that friction. Think about all the people who are bunched up trying to park right next to the door. Park further away. It's harder to get to. But while you're doing that, you're getting more exercise. So that can be a great habit as well. Don't rely on willpower. Don't rely on self discipline. Instead, rely on something that's a lot more reliable. Your laziness. My laziness. If you can create friction to make it harder for you to do a bad habit, you'll be in much, much better shape. And that's the habit tip for the day. All right, that's our first big topic of the day. I want to thank you for indulging me with that. And again, special to our friends joining us, those of you just joining us, if you signed on at the top of the hour looking for us and you saw nothing, it wasn't your Internet. You're not crazy. That was me. That one's on me. We had some technical difficulties, and we didn't get connected until about 26 minutes after our start time. I apologize for that. I especially apologize considering yesterday I went on this long diatribe about what a good habit it is to be on time. And here I was not on time. So I apologize for that. Let's say hello to some of our friends who checked in with us on social media. Roger Matthews says hello. One of your courses, you discuss how you had info on all the things you do on your website. You found increased success by removing all but one thing. Can you explain, Explain how that worked and why you focused on only one thing? How did you pick the one to focus on? Roger is talking about. I believe it's my course on how to start your own business, how to be a freelancer, how to be a consultant and a trainer. And I talked about a long time ago, more than 20 years ago, when I was first starting my business. I had all these different things I could do. I could make Internet video press releases. This is, you know, back in 1999, roughly 2000, how to make Internet audio press releases. I can help you raise money. I had, like, 20 different things I could do. And I was capable of doing all the things. What I wasn't capable of doing was marketing all of these things to the world. So each month, this was sort of my first year in serious business, of the training business. I took one of those things off each month until finally I basically got down to one thing. I teach people how to speak more effectively now. I teach them how to speak to live audiences and to the media. But once I narrowed it down to one thing, that's when my business took off. I went in basically one year. First year I made $10,000 the whole year. Second year a couple hundred thousand. This was a long time ago, but it was a pretty big jump. And I think it was primarily because I narrowed the focus. And the big problem I see so many entrepreneurs and young freelancers, consultants, trainers, is they try to be all things to all people. If you try to do that, you'll be nothing to everyone. Focus on one thing. You asked how I did it. It's what I like to do. I was good at doing. And it's what people paid the most for and what I found myself learning more about anyway, so it all fit together. Roger, we'll talk more about that from time to time and perhaps in the second hour. But I definitely want to thank you for the question. Thanks for being a good student and following up there. Jason writes in and says hello and yes, I guess responding to Roger. Jason, thanks for joining us today. Peggy, our good friend and a fellow trainer and colleague writes in. You handled the comments correctly in my opinion. He sounds deep in his conviction, so I doubt anything you could have said would have changed his mind. Peggy is referencing some comments that one of my regulars wrote that was, let's say, disparaging of a particular religion in my response. I don't really want to spend a lot more time on that topic. But Peggy, I do appreciate your feedback. Thanks so much for sharing there. So also want to say hello to our special friends checking in on Instagram TikTok. So many other platforms Sued has joined us. Isalia has joined us as well from TikTok Ruslani official on Instagram Adam on TikTok Bill Clemens gives the thumbs up. Well, thumbs up back to you. Bill Chaudhry, 147 right since how are you? I am fantastic. I did stay up late, later than usual last night watching a major political debate here in the United States. But I'm proud to say, happy to say I still got eight hours of sleep and got my six miles of exercise walking yesterday. And we'll be Doing that later this afternoon after the show too. Ban has joined us. Banmeto and Mona as well. We have a lot more coming up for you in hour two today. Keep our fingers crossed. We won't have any technical difficulties in hour two. So we will start on time and end on time. Hours, I hope. All that and more, plus your comments, your questions, and more prepared topics, including why you don't want to be a slave master to yourself. You're not going to want to miss that segment. I'm TJ Walker. See you at three minutes past the hour. Everything's working smoothly. So what do you, what do you think was the cause of our technical problems? So did some settings, did some, So did some settings change or what? What's that? Welcome back to the Habit Influencer. I'm TJ Walker, your host. Thanks for joining me. This is the community on the Internet where people get together every single day live across every major live streaming platform. And we have a conversation and a meeting of the minds about habits, how to build stronger habits, better habits, healthier habits to empower you to lead a more fulfilled life. We take your questions, your comments. I come prepared with a few thoughts as well. But let's just dive right into some of you who've written to me. And anyone can write in. Everyone is on equal ground here. I do have a number of my online students, students in my online courses who use this as kind of the teacher hours to ask questions. This question's coming in from Zaheed Mushtaq. He is a student in my complete focus mastery course. Says, hi sir, and thanks for calling me sir, but we can just be a little more informal here. Call me T.J. i want to ask you something. My problem is I can't cannot focus on one thing for more than one day. The next day I cannot focus on that material. Please, sir, give me some solution. I will be thankful to you. So, a couple of things. Number one, you may need some psychological testing, neurological testing. There are various forms of attention deficit syndrome. I am completely not equipped to diagnose that or to treat that. So let me be very clear. If you have some clinical problem, you may need to seek medical guidance. One thing did jump out at me though. If you're able to focus on something for a full day that does suggest you have the ability to focus, it may be you're focusing on the wrong things and you're just not interested. I know for me, even though I should be profoundly interested in the technology aspects of what's the best camera and the aspect ratio and filter. I'm just not interested in that stuff. So I have to rely on Marceau and other experts because I just can't get myself interested. I'm not averse to technology. I bought one of the very first laptops back in the mid-1980s. I've had computers a long time and technology for a long time. But I just, I don't know what a RAM is versus a mag or any of that. And yet I could focus with tremendous laser like attention on subjects that do interest me and read entire books in complete sittings. So it may be that you're focusing on things that are just inherently uninteresting to you. Now, if you're a young student, you may have to focus on a biology curriculum for a whole semester to pass. Otherwise you can't do things you do really care about, like become an engineer. You're going to have to somehow figure out a system for doing that. Excuse me one second. Excuse me. I was that close to a huge sneeze. Now this happened one other time on the show. You may be thinking you've never seen anyone sneeze doing a live broadcast or live show. It's typically because when people are doing a broadcast, there's this little bit of adrenaline flowing. Same reason why you don't see people sneeze when they're riding a motorcycle. They would crash. There's a certain tension in the body. But since you're so nice to be with and I'm so comfortable talking to you, I feel as relaxed as if I'm just talking to one friend. Because of that, when there is an urge to sneeze, then it still happens in my body. So I'm not. I don't have that adrenaline keeping it out. Speaking of sneezes, that's the perfect segue to the next news topic that relates to habits. This is a story from MD Links that caught my eye. And it's about simple everyday habits that could be ruining your health. And number one on the list, believe it or not, holding sneezes in. I didn't hold my sneeze in there. It was one of those sneezes that was 99% there and it didn't quite come out. But according to MD Links, holding sneezes in people do. It seems polite. Seems like they're trying to control the spread of germs. But according to a recently published report in bmj, a medical research outfit, there have been cases where people have perforated their pharynx, other organs in their head in their brain by stifling a sneeze. And if you're pinching your nose during a sneeze, it causes real can cause real damage and you're better off letting the sneeze happen. Ideally, grab a Kleenex, a cloth, something. If there's no Kleenex around, don't sneeze into your hands because your hands are what shake other people and spreads the germs. You're better off sneezing into your arm. But apparently it is not a good thing to hold back a sneeze. Now, you may have heard that before. I know I had. This next habit is intriguing. Keeping your wallet in your back pocket, according to this report on MD Links, is a habit that can be harming your health. They say believe it or not, putting your wallet in your back pocket, sitting on it can cause your buttocks to be uneven. This chronic habit can lead to a lot of complications down the road, including low back pain and hip pain, or even pain in the upper back or shoulders. And so it's a real problem because it's initiating cramping and extra pressure on certain nerves in your lower back and your lower leg. There's even a name for it. It's called fat wallet syndrome and wallet sciatica. I had heard that before, but I have noticed that. And during the typical day, especially since I work from home, I don't have a wallet in my back pocket. If I am in a training, giving a speech somewhere, doing a workshop, I typically don't have my wallet in my back pocket. I keep it in my briefcase. But for me, I sometimes forget if I'm driving in a car or a passenger in a car, I will have my wallet and I'll notice a little bit of discomfort. This is an excellent reminder that I shouldn't do that. I should take my wallet out. Now, this next one is a bit counterintuitive. It caught my attention. Using a hand dryer, according to these medical experts, is not a healthy thing to do. Now, we've been told they're so much better for the environment, and it probably is because you're not using all the paper towels. But that doesn't mean there can't be some unintended consequences over here that do have a negative impact on your health. Here's the theory. Hand dryers in public restrooms actually can blow fecal germs on your hands. In one study, researchers confirmed that many kinds of bacteria, including pathogens and spores, can be deposited on hands exposed to bathroom hand dryers. What's more they can also blow pathogenic bacteria between rooms, spreading infection. Bad news all around. Using these blowers means that you washed your hands for nothing. If you had a hand dryer in your office, consider switching to paper towels. So that is one of those things, I think. Wow, aren't I being great for the environment? I'm not using all these paper towels, but looks like there's other problems coming from it as well. This next habit judged damaging to your health A bad habit to have Eating before bedtime. Now this does seem intuitive for many reasons, because why are you eating? You probably aren't hungry. You had dinner a few hours earlier. But here's what the author said. Eating too close to bedtime can cause acid reflux and disrupt your sleep. That's never been my problem. The problem is if I eat at bedtime, I'm basically eating a fourth meal of the day that puts on extra calories and extra weight. That's a bad habit and resulting in poor health. Lying in bed with a full stomach is not good for you, at least according to one study in which researchers found that a shorter dinner to bed time frame was associated with symptoms of gastroesophageal reflux disease. Recommendations are to avoid eating anything within three or four hours of sleeping. That's what I try. I try to eat dinner myself around 6pm and to be asleep, not heading to bed but asleep at 10pm that's my normal pattern. So for me that would that would be about a good three and a half window between last food consumption till dinner. You might not want to eat until 8. Go to bed at 1 or 2. I'm not prescribing my sleep schedule for you, but this basic outline of three to four hours after eating before going to sleep does seem to be a good recommendation. If you're prone to reflux, try propping yourself up with a few pillows. Doing so will prevent reflux or minimize it thanks to gravity. Now this next one to me sounds profoundly obvious. It's only happened to me for a few times and it's been more than 25 years since I've even worn contact lenses. But this next habit wearing your contacts to bed, sleeping without removing your contact lenses is a risky habit that 33% of contact lens wearing US adults are guilty of. That's according to the center for Disease Control. According to the American Optometric Association. This dangerous habit can increase your risk of corneal infections. Specifically, it stresses your corneas by reducing the amount of oxygen that gets to the eye no matter how tired you are or always remove your contact lenses before you turn in for the night. Now this next one is near and dear to my heart. Sadly, I have not convinced some of my own family members of this bad habit. You've heard me mention it before. I think it is frankly a disease, a habit that's reaching the point of epidemic proportions destroying people's health. And it is the habit of taking your smartphone to bed with you. Here's what the researchers found. It seems silly to think that your smartphone could be hurting your health, but researchers have shown that it is. Blue light from your phone throws off your circadian rhythms and keeps you from falling asleep or getting restful sleep. Here's the part people don't understand. They say, well, I have no problem falling asleep. Yeah, but you're waking up at midnight and 2 and 4 and 5, so you may have no trouble falling asleep, even though you were looking at your emails and texts right before you fell asleep. But the blue light messes up your circadian rhythms and you're much more likely to not get a full night's sleep and not get a restful sleep. It's a huge, huge problem. The blue light can suppress your body's production of melatonin, the master controlling hormone of your sleep wake cycle. Insufficient melatonin can cause insomnia, irritability and daytime sleepiness. In addition, did you know that checking your smartphone before you go to sleep actually stimulates your brain and can keep your mind psychologically engaged? Obvious. And I used to be guilty of that. I haven't looked at a cell phone before going to bed in a couple of years. I try to have an hour window, turn off the phone, get it away from me an hour before I go to sleep. But certainly if you get an angry email from a customer complaining about something and you think you are in the right, if that's what you look at right before you're trying to go to sleep, you could be thinking about it, ruminating about it for the next two hours. Why not just wait until tomorrow morning? Get the good night's sleep. There's nothing you can do to placate an angry customer at 11 o' clock at night, but you could get a good night sleep. So that is a big, big problem. Try cutting off screen time at least one hour before you turn in for the night. The recommendations of this site even 30 minutes will help. And this warning extends to tablets and TVs too, which can emit blue light as well. So great recommendation on habits that could be harming your health. Let's go now to some other questions from some of the students. This is from Pierre. Pierre is a student in my listening skill course. Here's a question regarding fight or flight. Since you brought up the subject of fight or flight, I have a question. I've made talks in the past where so I felt I was in front of a 100% hostile crowd. That is the mindset was completely opposed to mine. We're talking about politics. When questions arise, I get an adrenaline rush and I feel overwhelmed that everyone is hostile. It happens even in very small group settings, even one on ones. Any advice on how to calm down? So I'm not going to kid you, Pierre. There are going to be times, especially if you're talking about politics. People may be against you. If you know that going in, lower your expectations. There's 100 people. They're all on the opposite side of an issue. You know you're not going to convince every one of them. If you convince even one of them you've accomplished something. And if nothing else, people will give you credit for having the courage to show up in the lion's den. Relatively speaking, you've always got to make judgments on whether any speaking venue is worth your time. But if you've already made the judgment that you're going to speak there, make the most out of it. Realize that even though it feels tense, it's very unlikely when you speak that people are going to start throwing rocks and rotten vegetables and coming at you with sticks. Although once, 25 years ago, I did have someone who literally called himself a Nazi start shaking a stick at me and threatening me at a public venue where I was giving a speech. I hope that never happens to you. Politics is different. Depending on your level, people are assassinated. I've had clients where many members of their families were assassinated because they were in the business of politics. So I hope that's not the case for you. If you're talking about politics and you realize your audience might not agree with you or might be hostile, then just know that going in and realize if you could even change one mind, you've accomplished something. It's better than not speaking out at all. The other bit of advice I have for you, and it's similar to what you've heard me say before for any speech, practice on video, until you come across the way you want to, just because people are frowning at you and looking mad and angry, you don't have to look defensive, you don't have to look scared. Because then they win. The best speakers in the world look like they're having a great time, like they're happy to be there. It doesn't matter if the audience is a hundred percent on their side. It doesn't matter if everyone in the audience hates them, their smile, their attitude, how they hold themselves. It's going to exude confidence and comfort. That is my advice to you. Thanks for writing. Another student writes in and this is a student in my public speaking class. My goal is to become a public speaking coach similar to what you're currently doing. Well, great. I'm glad I've been able to motivate you and serve as a role model. For this reason, I also attended your course the Complete Train the Trainer Boot Camp Beginners to Advanced. I would like to find out more about creating the workshop program. Can you explain deeper your typical agenda for one on one and group public speaking workshops? I'm aware that most of your time you spend on video recording of your participants. However, do you usually do anything else except this? So when it comes to a one on one workshop, if I'm teaching someone public speaking or media training or how to have better habits, the beauty of a one on one workshop is nothing is generic, nothing is boilerplate, nothing is off the rack. Everything is unique to the specific needs of that one person. Now that's not unique to me. Any good trainer is going to do that in a one on one situation you can tailor. That's why people pay more. It's a lot more one on one training than as a group participant. So it's always specific. The first part is you really have to listen to what is the trainee trying to learn. What do they want to get out of it. Now typically this is done in advance in either the sales process or a pre training call. I'm not using the valuable time when I'm working with someone in a training to ask what their goals are. I've already figured that out. But let's say as you mentioned, you're interested in public speaking. If I'm teaching someone public speaking, I have them speak. I may Talk for just 30 seconds at the beginning of the day and I have them get up and speak. I record it, play it back, critique it. So the vast bulk of a one on one training, and for that matter a group training, is having people speak, being video recorded, critiquing it again and again and again. Now I have thousands and thousands of tips, tricks, tactics, suggestions, strategies, processes, best practices. I like to share about public speaking and presentation skills. Here's the thing, I don't do it in the training workshop. You may be scratching your head, so what are you talking about? Tj, that sounds crazy. You have all these insights, all this information. Don't people want that? They do sometimes. But what they want more than that is to become a better speaker. And what I have found in my practice over the last 35 years of teaching people how to become better speakers is human beings don't learn how to be a better speaker by having someone else talk down to them and give them advice. They learn by doing, they learn by watching themselves. They learn by getting a critique and then by doing it again. So my lecturing, my insights, my tips, I do that in advance. Someone signs up for a one on one public speaking workshop with me, here's what I do. A couple weeks in advance, I will email them a copy of my Secret to foolproof presentations, tell them to read it. If it's media training, I'll send them a couple of books of my media training tips, ask them to read it. I also give them a 25, 30 hour online video based course on public speaking and tell them watch as much as they can. But then what I do is I ask them to create a short speech on video, send it to me, I look at it, critique it, I make a video and send it back to them. This is before we've ever even met. This is before we step foot in the room together for the in person training, whether it's one on one or a group. This way by the time we finally get together, the person has already immersed themselves in my theories, my tips, my tricks, my tactics. They've already practiced, they've already seen improvement and we can really work at higher level issues critiquing them. Now here's the real magic and I'm totally transparent. I share this. No one else ever does it, the technique I'm about to suggest to you. But it is the single biggest difference in my practice in making a meaningful impact on the people I work with. And here it is. I don't just get people on camera once or two times or three times, the way most trainers do. That's what happens in most trainings. I speak to people routinely who go to a public speaking course for a whole semester in college and they get one or two times on camera to speak, if that. When someone works with me, I get them on camera not one or two or three times, but at least this many times. Often this many times, plus two more. That's right, a dozen times on camera. Here's why. The real magic moment for people trying to learn the habit of how to be a great speaker and how to have the habits of great communicators. The magic moment is when they can see a video of themselves giving a great speech and they were doing it without even having to think about it because they'd done it so many times, it had become a habit. That's the real magic moment. And that is why I've been hope this doesn't seem insufficiently modest, but that's one reason why I become one of the most successful public speaking coaches in the world is I have the discipline to not stand up and tell war stories and tell people all my brilliant theories, but instead put the spotlight on them again and again and again until they see that they have become a great speaker. And that is how you really do high level public speaking workshop, whether it's one on one or a group workshop. And I'll tell you what I tell any prospect who calls me, which is, I used to do things the wrong way, the bad way, the way most other people do. At the end of a day of public speaking training 15 years ago, people would walk out saying, wow, that was the greatest training ever. Tj, you're a great trainer. I learned so much. You're fantastic. You demonstrate everything perfectly. You're a real inspiration. That's what people used to say about me. After a day of public speaking training. Nobody says that anymore. Do you know what they say when they're walking out of the room and when they're still in the room, they're pointing to the screen saying, wow, tj, if I can be half as good as he is, if I can be half as good as she is, I'm going to be the star of my industry. That's. Thank you. And they're pointing to a video of themselves. They're not talking about me, they're talking about themselves. They now see that they're a great speaker. So my challenge to you is if you want to be a great public speaking trainer, a presentation skills trainer, your clients, your training shouldn't be talking about you at the end of the day, they should be talking, talking about themselves. Their eyes need to light up with passion and excitement about how great they are. They should get to the point where they can't wait to give the next speech. That's when you know you had a real impact. So good luck with your training career. It's half past the hour. We have a half hour left. Time for your questions, your comments, social media engagement, plus a few more prepared segments. I'll be back in one minute. Thanks. Okay, I got that. Any comments anywhere? Yeah, we have a couple on YouTube and let's see. Yeah, nowhere else. Okay. It. This program is brought to you today by the Complete Creativity course, Unleash youh Creativity. Now you get a special link and a discount if you go to the show Notes. You'll see that on Facebook, YouTube and a number of the other platforms you're watching on. This is my course and it's a course where I teach you the habits of how to be more creative. Creativity is one of the seven habit spheres I think are so important for anyone who wants a fulfilled life. So it's something we talk about a great deal on this show. This course goes in much, much greater detail. Many, many hours of instruction to help you become even more creative. So take a look at that course. I think you'll enjoy it. Let's check in with some of our friends on YouTube today. I see that Mats is saying hello. Mr. TJ, Bea's Primetime Network has joined us. Bea, great to see you. Bea is someone who I have connected with, I want to say, for a decade on YouTube. We've watched and admired each other's videos. Always good to hear from B. I think this is your first time at least saying hello as we do the live show. So be good to see you and let us know what you're up to. VN Video Game News Network says that is definitely the truth. Big food before dinner causes acid reflux and sometimes bad dreams. Now, I hadn't thought of the bad dreams aspect. I don't know if there's any scientific correlation there, but if you're noticing it in your own life, all the better reason. Vid is referencing an article we discussed earlier in the program where one of the seven bad habits people have that gives them poor health is eating right before bedtime. So, Vid, thanks for sharing there and thanks for all of our friends on every social media platform. Always happy to see our good friends on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Uplive and so many other platforms as we grow and grow. So thanks a lot. Next, I want to dive into our topic B for the day. And this is important because it gets lost in the the whole discussion about habits. A lot of people like to talk about habits. They want better habits, but they think of it is just, you know, eating your spinach. They think of it purely in negative terms of something I know I'm supposed to do, but it's not good for me. It's good for me, but it's not going to be any fun. And that's why I want to go to today's topic B. You can't be a slave master to yourself. Too many people, when they think of habits, they think of a whole bunch of don'ts. Don't eat chocolate chip cookies. Don't drink soft foods. Don't watch too much tv. Don't sleep too late. It's don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't. And any one of these habit goals might be great. Certainly it's a good idea not to drink soft drinks or not to drink too much of them. Certainly it's a good idea to not watch three hours of TV every night. But when you are constructing your habits, it is absolutely, positively crucial that you focus on positive habits that make you feel good. Because if everything you do is structured about handcuffs. Now let me handcuff myself so I can't grab this candy. Let me handcuff myself so I can't grab the remote control for my tv, you are going to feel like a slave sooner or later. What happens in slavery situations? The slaves rebel. You are going to rebel against your slave master. And in this case, the slave master is you. So I want to caution you, when you're all excited about building new positive good habits, you can't just look at it in negative terms. Don't do this. No fun here. Don't stay out late drinking with friends. You can't look at things from a negative context because you're just sowing the seeds for a rebellion. And then there's the backlash. Then things get even worse. So this is why I believe it is crucial that you focus not 100% of the time, but most of the time on positive habits that make you feel good, not simply avoiding negative habits that can form harm. You need to focus on good habits that empower you, make you feel creative. So, for example, I have a lot of habits you've heard me talk about that are simple, silly, easy to do. Like I have a habit of I read one joke a day, makes me feel good. I have a habit I write one joke a day, makes me laugh just for myself. They're not good enough to even share with you. I have one habit where I do a little doodle on my iPad every single day. It takes less than a minute, but it's a simple little doodle. Here's what I did of my daughter's not trike, but little scooter. And she didn't like it. She actually added the color to it. It's a simple little thing. It took me less than a minute to do it, but it brings a little joy to me. It puts a smile on my face. I want you to have fun with your habits because it's human nature to avoid things that are not fun. So look at the proportion if your habits are just things about I don't really want to do it, but I know I'm supposed to because it's good for me. You're going to get sick of leading a life filled with good habits. Your habits have to be filled with things that make you enjoy life more. It can't all be My habit says I don't eat ice cream. My habit says I don't watch Netflix. It cannot be like that. Find habits that are simple, easy to do, and they create joy. I get a little joy starting my day doing 20 jumping jacks. It's not some horrible drudgery. If I told myself I had to go to the gym every day, that would be horrible drudgery. It's cold out, rainy this morning. The nearest gym is 15 minutes away. I would hate that. But being able to just do 20 jumping jacks in my living room or kitchen, it was kind of fun. You've got to make a tremendous percentage of your daily habits simple and fun so that you associate good habits with. With fun, with joy. Now something that gives me a positive sense of self esteem is reading more. I try to read parts of or all of one, two or three books every single day in different formats. I listen to audiobooks, I read digital abridged books. And I also read paper books, parts or all of those every single day. I enjoy reading. I enjoy reading new concepts, learning new concepts. It's fun for me. I focus on that now. The reason I'm able to read five times as many books in a year now compared to several years ago, is I also have the habit of not watching more than one hour of video entertainment a night. The two go hand in hand. But if all I did was focus on I don't get to watch another movie tonight. I don't get to watch four episodes of Breaking Bad tonight. Well, I've already seen that whole series. But if I fixated on what I can't do, it would be a downer, it would be a psychological downer. And it's human nature to rebel, to look for fun. And I want you to have fun. With a little thought, with a little tweaking, you can figure out how to make your life fun by fixating on habits that create joy for you. That's what's absolutely essential. So don't tell yourself how awful it is that you can't eat the M&Ms. And the Reese's Peanut Butter Cups because they are tasty. Focus on the fact that, wow, you get to really enjoy this fresh strawberry, these tasty raspberries, this perfectly delicious mango. Focus on what you actually enjoy. Life, I believe, should be about abundance, about more fun, more enrichment, more fulfillment, more experiences. It's about more. It can't be about less. Less ice cream, less tv, less junk food. Certainly if we reduce the bad stuff, we'll have more time, opportunity, resources for the good things. So when you're designing your habits for life, never forget, focus on the positives. Focus on the yes habits, not the no habits. I'm TJ Walker and that was our deep dive in Topic B today. So I hope you got something from that. Please feel free to share your opinions, your analysis there's still a lot of interesting topics we have to go over today that I wanted to discuss with you. One of them is a topic that I think starting to get more attention in our culture, but still is not getting enough. As you know, I'm a big believer in lifelong learning. To me, it's one of the seven pillars. If you want to be a fulfilled person, if you want to have a meaningful life, I think you have to have a habit of daily learning. Not just daily work, not just daily entertainment, not just talking with friends and family, but actually learning something new every day, whether it's from reading a book, listening to an educational podcast. So I'm a big fan of daily learning. Unfortunately, many people misconstrue that. They twist that into thinking learn. It's not real learning unless you go to a respected, well known name brand university that should charges you 40, 50, 60, $80,000 a year. And it is bankrupting people. I say bankrupting. Bankruptcy doesn't even help you when it comes to education loans in the United States of America. Your debts are not discharged in bankruptcy court. You cannot get away from it. And that's what brought my attention to this article today in the New York Times Times. And it's a shocking headline. It's Retired or hoping to be and saddled with student Loans. Americans older than 60 are the fastest growing group of college loan debtors. Now the vast majority of them are borrowing for others, their children typically, or their grandchildren. Now there's some sad stories here. They focus on a gentleman. Patrick Donahue, retired in May after a 20 year career in customer service at AT&T and his wife Kay. They didn't celebrate when there was retirement. Instead they argued over which pension option was better, obtaining a large portion right away or scheduling small monthly payments. At issue was whether the lump sum might free them from paying further interest on the $97,932 they borrowed from the federal government so their four daughters could attend college, or if doing so would mean sacrificing their long term financial stability. So the person's retired, he's 64 years old and he's talking about having basically six figures of college debt. Folks, that is crazy. The college debt in America is astronomical. And it's because for so many years there's been a bubble when it comes to education. People just blindly say, if it's education, it's good. If education costs double every year and three or four or five times inflation, don't question it because education always pays off. Newsflash, Paying lots of money and going into debt just so you have a piece of paper does not necessarily pay off. Sure, if you go into a couple hundred thousand dollars of debt to get an MBA from Stanford or a law degree from Harvard, or a medical degree from Duke University, yes, it's going to pay off. If you're in those fields from those schools, you'll probably end up rich no matter what, even if you go into $300,000 of debt. But that's a teeny tiny less than 1% of people going into debt. There's an absolute obscenity going on with American education where more and more schools pop up, some public, some private, some just in a strip mall where the Saul Goodman's of the world see an area for quick quick buck they can make. And they get the government to give people loans without question or scrutiny. And students then get the government backed loans which they then have to pay for themselves. So many times they end up not with a degree, no ability to make money. But the bigger problem, frankly, is people end up with a degree and they're not skilled for anything because there's so many horrible colleges out there and horrible teachers and so many schools with gigantic bloated bureaucracies with deans and administrators with six, sometimes seven figure salaries. And no one questions it. I'm urging you, I'm begging you, do not mindlessly go into debt for your lifelong learning. We live in a golden opportunity where it has never in the history of the world been easier to learn every single day for nothing. Accept your time and the cost of a cell phone and an Internet connection. Is there still some value in the traditional four year college? It can be. I was a beneficiary of that. I had a wonderful sort of relaxing four years going to Duke University at the time. By those standards, an expensive school. But today it would be considered practically free. Free. What I had to pay to go back then, when I graduated from college, I did have debt and I paid, I believe, $295 a month for 10 years. And that was it. It was not particularly onerous. But now we're talking about people who just without thinking, go to some second tier private school, get a degree in business, rack up 100, 150, $200,000 in debt, and they graduate from a school and they have no job or they have a job that pays them just enough to live on and they can never get out of that debt and they don't really learn any business skills. School makes a lot of sense for certain fields. If your child says, I have my heart set on becoming a Supreme Court justice, well, they need to go to a good law school. If your child says, I have my heart set on becoming a world famous heart surgeon and saving lives, well, they need to go to a good medical school. But if your child wants to be an artist, a designer, a creator, an author, an expert, a consultant, a business person, an entrepreneur, they may be far better off simply using the money they could have spent on college to fund a business or to fund their living expenses for two years until they get their business to the point of profitability. We've got to use some judgment here. This habit of just blindly saying, well, any money spent on education is always a good investment. No, that's the very same mindset that created the housing meltdown that nearly destroyed capitalism as we know it across the world. This mindset that a particular asset is always great and it only goes up in value. That's what people thought about the housing market for decade after decade after decade. And it was true. Until all of a sudden it wasn't. People realized, oh, that house I just paid $2 million for, really only worth 500,000. That $500,000 house I just paid for, really only worth 99,000. That's what happens. Well, the day of reckoning is coming for higher education too, and it's a lot closer than people think. And now when people's parents and grandparents are going to their grave with college debt, it is an absolute, absolute travesty. So I'm urging you, embrace the concept of lifelong learning. I think that is central to being A successful, happy, and fulfilled human being. But understand there's a huge difference between lifelong learning and getting a piece of paper to brag to people. Oh, I graduated from this college and I have this piece of paper. We live in an era where increasingly nobody cares what your diploma says. 35 years ago, I graduated from, and I think fair to say, still is, one of the most prestigious universities in the country and by most accords, one of the most prestigious universities in the entire world. I can tell you exactly one time in the last 35 years has anyone asked to see my diploma. Nobody cares. In my field of personal development and communications. What a degree. Do I regret going to college? No. But I went to college and came out with virtually no debt, and it was extremely inexpensive to go when I did. Far different situation today. So please, I urge you, I beg of you, look for ways of learning right now, every day. There are more than a million books available for free online right now. There are webcasts, podcasts like this one every day where you can learn for free. You can become an expert on almost any subject in the world by spending hour after hour after hour of watching YouTube videos. Now, you have to have the discipline, because if you're on YouTube and you watch a video on nuclear physics, they might suggest to you to watch the next video of your favorite comedian, and then you get well. So you have to have more discipline. But we live in a world where increasingly there are no gatekeepers. You're not going to have a boss standing over you, so you better learn how to discipline yourself. Now, one of the most important skills, if not the single most important skill, I think is essential for anyone who is ambitious, who wants to be successful in the world, cannot be taught in a traditional college. That skill is you have to learn how to teach yourself new stuff. Earlier today, Marceau had to teach himself how to get us back online to broadcast this show on 20 different platforms. He didn't learn that in college. He learned it by trial and error and quickly researching what everyone else is doing on YouTube and on tech blogs. That's the skill that's going to take you to success, learning skills in real time on a daily basis, forever. I didn't go to college or get a PhD in habits and psychology, and yet I'm coming to you every day with new insights, new techniques on how to build better habits. Because I learn every single day. I watch other people's videos, I podcast, I read books. Every day on the subject. I learn and I take that knowledge and I turn it into online courses that are used by hundreds of thousands of students from 190 some countries around the world. And that I think is a model that's going to work increasingly for people everywhere in the world because it doesn't require you sitting down writing checks for 100, 200, 300, half a million dollars a year. We've got to put some sanity into this concept of higher education and we've got to have people refocus on what's truly important. What's truly important is education, is learning, is daily learning, is lifelong learning. What is not important? Pieces of paper to put on a wall. Come to my home office, you're not going to see any diplomas on the wall. I think I have it in a box in the garage because as I mentioned, I had one client, a government client, that said they actually had to see my diploma or I couldn't be hired as a consultant. This is one time in 35 years. So that's why I have that diploma. Otherwise it's sitting in box because that shows its relative importance to me. Are you willing to value not education, formal education, but actual lifelong learning? That is my challenge to you. I'm TJ Walker. This is the Habit Influencer. Appreciate you spending time with us today on this abbreviated edition of our program. We did lose about a half an hour at the beginning of the show because of some technical problems, so we'll try to make up for that later this week with even more great programming. I wanted to share with you an article that jumped out at me that relates to habits of communication which is near and dear to my heart. This is from a website, themotionmachine.com and the title of the article is the Power of Simple Communication. Why Plain Language is Better than Complex Jargon. If you wanted to build one habit to become a better speaker communicator today, my recommendation is use small words. Use simple words. Words use the first word that comes to you. One of the big problems so many communicators have is they want to look smart, sound smart, and dress up simple concepts with fancy words. And it just does not help. Here's this is According to Daniel Kenneman, if you care about being thought credible and intelligent, do not use complex language where speakers simpler language will do. I agree wholeheartedly. Simple communication is often better than using complex language, especially if you are trying to reach out to the biggest audience possible. A new study published by the Journal of Language and Social Psychology discovered that the use of complex jargon can often turn people off from learning topics like science and politics, even when specialized words are defined. In a study of 650 adults, these are people who participated online. They read a paragraph about each of the three science and technology topics. Self driving cars, surgical robots, and 3D bioprinting. About half of them read versions of the paragraphs with no jargon and half read versions with jargon. For example, one of the sentences in the high jargon version of the surgical robots paragraph read, the system works because of AI integration through motion scaling and tremor reduction. What does that mean? The no jargon version of the same sentence read. This system works because of programming that makes the robot's movements more precise and less shaky. Well, that's very easy to understand. Use the simplest, easiest words possible. There's an old phrase, I'm not the first to say this. Never utilize, utilize, always use, use. Perfect example. People like to dress up their words and sound fancy by saying utilize. Use is better than utilize. One of them. Utilize three syllables. Use one syllable. Use one syllable when it means the same thing or virtually the same thing as three syllables. When I ask people around the globe who is their favorite speaker in the English speaking language, quite often people will say, former U.S. president Bill Clinton. Now he's known as a serious intellect, someone who was a straight A student basically his whole life. Yale Law School, Rhodes scholar, huge vocabulary. But when he is giving a speech, he. He uses the simplest language possible. One and two syllable words. Whether you agree with him politically or not is a separate issue. Nobody thinks he's stupid because of the words he uses. He is admired and respected around the world because of his ability to communicate effectively. If it works for Bill Clinton, it can work for you. I confess I occasionally, without thinking, will try to dress things up, maybe sound a little fancier by using some bigger word that I remembered from an SAT test many decades ago. I apologize for that. I try to practice what I preach. Use the simplest words possible. People think. Well, I don't want to talk down to people and speak at an eighth grade level. I'm a serious, intelligent person. No one's going to think you're talking down to them. It's not about how big the words are, it's about how big the ideas are. If you're talking about big important ideas to really help people, help their lives, help their businesses, help something or entertain them, then use the simplest words possible. People's respect for you will go up if you use big words. Respect for you will often go down because they'll think, I don't even know what this person's talking about or they will think, oh, this person thinks he's so smart, trying to dazzle me with fancy words. It doesn't work. You know what does work? Improving your habits by spending a little time each day thinking about them, questioning them, looking for new ways of doing it a little better. That's what we do right here. And I appreciate you spending today with me right here on the Habit Influencer. We're here every day for you when we get our technical act in gear. Starting at 1pm Each day to 3pm Eastern Time, new York time, Monday through Friday. Thanks so much for being with me here today. I'll see you tomorrow. Okay. I'll show our play in a few minutes. This is a Chicky Bee production.