TJ WALKER - THE HABIT INFLUENCER - Personal Development | LIVE STREAM

Welcome to the Habit Influencer. I'm TJ Walker. This is the program where we talk about your habits, how to build stronger habits, good habits and reduce bad habits. We're here with you every single day, 1 to 3pm Monday through Friday, live forum. We're coming to you live from Facebook, YouTube, Periscope, you name it, and a dozen other online platforms. Go. Quick program note, I'll be off tomorrow. I'll be conducting a media training in Manhattan tomorrow, so there won't be any live show, but every single day there are new training videos, habit tips videos posted on every major social media forum. So fear not, there's going to be plenty of TJ around tomorrow. It just won't be in the live platform. A lot to go over today. One of the topics that we're going to look at is from a very prominent self development expert and wildly prolific blogger, Mark Manson, why you should quit the news. Now, I'm not advocating you completely quit the news, but he does bring up a number of excellent points. We'll be talking about that later in the program. I have a couple of prepared segments for you that I want to talk about and top news stories as well. Some harshly, harshly negative stories out about American sleeping habits, many people going down to less than six hours a day, profound negative implications for people's health, creativity, career, relationships and everything else. So we will be talking about how to build better health habits later on this program as well. As always, your comments are welcome, your questions are welcome, the topics you want to suggest are welcome. I've come prepared with a lot to talk about. But this isn't just a guru pontificating down to you. This is a conversation, this is a community and this is a place for you to share your own insights, your own perspectives. We're all in this together. We're all trying to get better habits so we can live better, happier, healthier, more fulfilled lives. That's why I'm here and I hope and I assume that's why you're here as well. Hello to my colleague and producer, Marceau. Marceau, thanks for joining us. Marceau has added some nice little scrolls at the bottom. Would love to know your opinion of whether you like the scrolls, the text at the bottom of the screen, or do you find it distracting? We were experimenting earlier today with the scrolls at the top as well and it does convey more information in and yet it kind of makes me feel like a hypocrite because I always tell people, don't multitask, don't ask people to Multitask. There's nothing worse than having a conversation with someone and they're staring at their cell phone. And am I guilty of doing the same thing, asking you to listen to me and look at scrolls down here and up there. So weigh in on that regardless of whether you're watching on TikTok. And I see several other of our friends have joined us on TikTok. Nice, nice. Email has joined us. Kanye, not applicable. Unorthodox. All of our friends on TikTok joining us today way and you can't see the scroll so far. Forgive me for that, but I hope by next week you'll be taking the main feed as all of our other views on different platforms are. So thank you so much for indulging us with this side view. We're also frankly, experimenting on what we like, don't like. As far as backdrops, this is a video backdrop of my actual living room, but I'm in my TV studio, so we've thought about going to a plain white backdrop. Others have said that's too sterile. So if you have an opinion on what would make the show more inviting, what would be easier on the eye for you to look at, then let me. And please don't say get a new host. Let us know because we're open to your suggestions on what will make for a better backdrop. We're trying to improve the show all the time to make it more interesting for you, more compelling, more engaging, and frankly, more helpful. So get ready. We are on. We're in for some fun. Let's move right on to topic A. You must listen to yourself today. The biggest asset you have is your attention. And we live in a modern economy where our digital overlords are making fortunes out of us by controlling our attention, by selling our attention, our eyeballs, our ears, marketers at Amazon and I love Amazon at Facebook and I love Facebook and YouTube and Google and Instagram and Netflix. Everyone is going after your eyeballs, your attention. And it's extraordinarily easy to go through every waking moment surrounded by other people's ideas, other people's content, other people's information, what other people want you to look at. The problem is if you do that, you can't really listen to yourself. You cannot listen to other people's ideas, other people's content, and listen to your own brain foam in ideas, gestate ideas, play with ideas. All you can do is react and absorb other people's ideas. So it is critical. It is absolutely critical. I believe if you want to be a Successful person, an intelligent person, a well rounded person, a well adjusted person and a fulfilled person to carve out certain sections of your time each and every day so that you can only listen to yourself. And what I mean by that is time when you're not looking at any screen. And I do realize there's a certain irony here because I'm asking you to look at this screen right now and listen to me. But I do want you to figure out you can put it on your schedule, set times every single day when you can just listen to yourself, that own voice, your head, telling you what you think about the world, ideas, your profession, your personal listen to yourself. So many people get obsessed with the idea. I can't possibly be bored for even one second. The second I get up, I have to look at email. The second I get up, I have to check social media. The second before I go to sleep, I have to see how many likes my most recent post got on Instagram. And what that does is it just destroys your ability for your own brain to communicate with you, for your own brain to even create new ideas. And it makes you and me willing pawns in other people's games, in other people's life success stories. Now, I have no problem with other people being successful. And yes, Mark Zuckerberg deserves to be a billionaire. But I don't just want to help other people. I want to help you and I want to help me live our own lives. We can't do that if we don't sit down and fundamentally listen to what's going on in our own brain, listen to our own ideas percolating up. So let me give you some very practical tips of how I do this. And so much of it just revolves around carving out time where, you know, you're not going to be looking at a computer, at a cell phone, a screen, an iPad, or even listening to music. You're going to be listening to yourself. That is key. So I'll just walk you through a typical day of mine. For starters, early in the morning after I get up to have one cup of coffee, no sugar, I will meditate. Now, this is slight aberration from the other things I'll tell you about because I do have headphones on. I am plugged into my cell phone, but I'm listening to a meditation tape that I made in my own voice, where all I'm doing is telling myself to breathe in, breathe out, to relax, think of nothing and just focus on my breathing. It's just 10 minutes long, but it's a Classic meditation technique where I'm trying to just clear my mind, not think of anything. Do other thoughts pop in? Sure. It's about trying to push them away and to just focus on the breathing in and breathing out. So that is one part of my day, right at the beginning where I'm not looking at any other screens. I'm not letting anyone else's ideas in my brain. I am just meditating. Absolutely. An important way to kick off my day. Now, typically, after I do this show with you, I try to do a one hour walk without a cell phone. Seeing nature. Some people could call this a meditative walk. I don't know if it's that intense, but the whole point is I'm in my own thoughts. And I take a little pad, I think I have one right here. I just take an old fashioned piece of paper, a pad and a tiny little pen and when I have ideas, I write them down. Now you could say, well, T.J. wouldn't it be more efficient to just write things down in your cell phone or dictate? Yes and no. The problem is if I have my cell phone and I start to dictate something, I'll see a text came in or a call came in. I'll just check for a second. Boom. I'm no longer listening to myself. I'm listening to other people. So that's one of the most important parts of my day, is going for that walk. Hour, hour and 15 minutes a day. It's great exercise too, but this is where I can listen to myself come up with creative ideas. Absolutely critical. Now, you might not have the time or interest in walking for an hour and a half a day. For you, it could be just sitting in a chair, closing your eyes and not listening to any kind of music or sound, or looking at any screens. There's different ways of doing it. The next thing I do. And again, everyone's different. I'm not telling you to follow my techniques. I relax in a hot tub with the bubbles on full blast. I try to do that for 15 minutes a day. This, I have found, helps me sleep a lot better. I used to when I'm in the hot tub, check iPads and cell phones and make calls and all sorts of things. Now I don't do that. I give this time to myself to just think, relax, focus on big picture issues, reflect, and listen to myself. Now, moving towards the end of the day. You've heard me mention this before. In order to foster good sleep and sleep patterns, I do not look at any cell phone, any screen any electronics one hour before going to bed, typically 9 o' clock at night. I then read a book. Now that's not completely listening to myself because I am looking at the ideas that someone has put forth in a book. But at least I'm getting away from screens. And it's a more contemplative experience to look at a book. You can stop, think, write down a note, and then the final act. In many ways the most important act once I go to sleep. Absolutely no electronics in the bedroom. I don't have a cell phone, I don't have an iPad. Well, TJ, how are you possibly going to wake up if you don't have your iPhone alarm right there? Well, guess what? I go to bed in time so that I can wake up naturally. I'm not short changing my body's natural rhythm of when it needs to sleep and wake up. So you don't need an alarm clock if you actually go to bed at the right time. Are there medical exceptions? Sure. But the vast majority of the world, I would venture 99% of the world, if you just went to bed when you should, you won't ever need an alarm clock. Therefore you won't need that cell phone in your bedroom. Electronics free. No screens in the bedroom. So that's really nine hours because this the hour before I go to sleep and then eight hours of sleep. So when you add it all up, there's a lot of time every single day when my brain has the luxury of not being bombarded by other people's ideas. From cell phones, from laptops, from ipods, from iPad. I'm dating myself. Ipod, iPads and TV screens. This allows me to listen to myself, to come up with my own ideas, to figure out what's important to me, to try to plan my own lifestyle, to design my own lifestyle, to figure out what habits do I want to keep, what do I want to get rid of? What do I want to create new for you so that you've got new courses and books that I have to offer to help you, which also helps me. That's why I believe it's critical for everyone, for me, for you and anyone who wants some semblance of sanity in this world to carve out time where they can listen, where you can listen just to yourself. You cannot listen to yourself and be listening to other voices coming from the black mirror, from your cell phone, from any other electronic device. I'm TJ Walker. Thanks for joining me. What do you think of my monologue? You agree? You disagree? Think it's trite. Obvious. You think it's nonsense. I want to hear from you. I'd love to get feedback from you in this show. What I'm trying to do is come to you every day with a few longer prepared pieces where I've given a lot of thought, also have time for Q and A interaction and also go over top news stories of the day. So we're going to try to have a continual mix. I want to say a special hello to our friends on TikTok. Looks like we have Danny has joined us. Menactive, Leah, Jordan and Vitamin has joined us. If you have any questions about habits, good habits, bad habits, please let me know. Danica writes, isn't it true your goals become their goals? You don't even remember what you're working for. Well, Danica, that is the problem. If you spend all of your time just looking at other people's ideas. Yeah, your goals can become their goals. Facebook again. I love Facebook. We're on Facebook today. But if you let Facebook's goals, which is you spending 24 hours a day on it, become your goals and then you just end up posting pictures of yourself and then going back 50 times an hour to see how many people liked your picture, that's great for Facebook because they can sell your eyeballs to advertisers. But how did that really help you if 25 of your friends looked at your pictures? I'm not saying don't post pictures of yourself or your family. I post pictures occasionally. But Danica, you are absolutely on to something that if you're not careful, if you never really listen to yourself, if you don't really focus on what you want, what is important to you, then your goals just become the goals of the people marketing to you. Amazon's goal is to get you to buy more stuff that's similar to the stuff you bought before. That's similar to the stuff other people who bought your stuff then bought. So and I love Amazon and I buy stuff from them all the time, mostly books. But you can't let Amazon set your agenda or you're in big, big trouble. Let's switch over to Facebook. Marceau, do we have a couple of friends joining us on Facebook today? Peggy's back. Peggy, glad you're here. We missed you yesterday, but thanks so much for hopping in today. Peggy says, I like the real time look of the background. It seems more personal and relaxed. The font on the crawler seems a little big. It's a little distracting. And folks, we want to hear from you. Good, bad, ugly. Don't hold back. Don't worry about hurting my feelings or Marceau's feelings. We want to know what you like of backgrounds, font, everything else. So Peggy seems to think the font on the crawler is a little big and a little distracting from your message. But then I talk about not multitasking as well, so maybe it's me. Well, Peggy, I think you and I are kind of alike. We will revisit that. And maybe what we'll do is just use the crawl every so often or to augment a particular point or to demonstrate we're coming up to a new point or for a segue. So we're not. We are not ironclad and bound to use a crawl for the rest of time. Okay, so Peggy and Marceau has responded. Muhammad says hello. Muhammad, glad you've joined us. And Muhammad, forgive me if you've told me, what country are you in today? Always nice to know about our eclectic audience, where they're from and what their particular concerns are. I happen to believe culture can be different everywhere. Norms can be different everywhere. What's common sense in one culture is crazy in another. But at a fundamental level, I do believe all human beings are the same. All human beings do want to be healthy. All human beings do want a sense of security. All human beings, I think, are happier when they can create something. All human beings are happier when they have financial security. Doesn't mean everyone wants to be a billionaire. For some people, having a net worth of $1,000 is enough to be comfortable. Other people feel poor at 1 billion because they are comparing themselves to people worth 2 billion. But fundamentally, all human beings desire financial security. They desire a sense of purpose. They are happier when they can be creative. And they are happier, I believe, when they are learning, when they become lifelong learners, and when they feel like they're doing something that uses their talents, that gives them a purpose in life beyond themselves. That's what I believe makes for a fulfilled life. And it's something we all share as human beings. But sure, there may be habits. I suggest that in other countries, people would think that's crazy or might get you fired from a job because it is alien to the culture. So always listen to everything I say. Filter it through the prism of your own culture. But also, it's good to try new things sometimes. I should perhaps be trying some things from your cultures. In fact, when I do go to other cultures, I make a point to eat local food from the local culture, even if it's things I've never eaten before. Things that A lot of people in my own culture might think is weird, but whether it's scorpions or spiders or snakes or or snails or egg larvae or crickets, I've eaten them all. And a few things I won't even mention because I don't want to offend certain people. So I think it's good to try other habits from other cultures. That's the beauty of us all being here together from cultures all across the globe. Okay, so Mohammed is from Pakistan. Yes, we have so many great followers and community members from Pakistan. I have not yet been Pakistan. I do get inquiries from corporations and governments there occasionally regarding personal development communication skills workshops, but I've not been. I have been to your neighbor in the south many times, but hoping to get to Pakistan one of these days. Let's check in with our friends on Instagram. Sai writes, Can I and good to see you again Sai. Sai, one of our regulars here. And before I get to Sai, Java has written in today as well. Fortune Tribes, one of our regulars, Fortune, thanks so much for joining with us today. Cy writes, Can I work as a full time trainer at a new startup company? And it's a new developing company. So I love startup companies and I love entrepreneurs. But in my experience training takes a back seat for startups. They're so scrambling and so desperate to just get off the ground to show some signs of success. Whether it's raising money, getting the first few customers in, showing legitimacy, staffing, trying to keep the lights on. It's a mad dash scramble. So typically startups sink or thrive or swim based on the existing skill set of the founders. So in my experience, most startups don't spend a lot of time, money or effort on training. Now if it is a startup that is specifically focused in the training space, that may be different. But si, my number one piece of advice for you, and it's a piece of advice I give to a lot of people, which is if you have a passion for a subject, if you know something and you can help someone, if you've helped a neighborhood kid, if you've helped your own child or one friend at work, learn some skill that they found useful, make an online course today. You don't have to create a startup. You don't have to go get venture capital. Just make a course, say grab your cell phone and speak to it. Make a video as if you were talking to one person. Help them create those videos and put it on an online platform. There are hundreds and hundreds of online class classroom platforms for online courses around the globe I'm on about 60 of them myself. If you want to make things easy for yourself, what I would recommend is just go to the one that has the largest number of students. That makes it the easiest. At this moment, it's a platform called Udemy. Letter U D E M y dot com. You've heard me mention that before. I have a number of courses there. In fact, our sponsor today is a Udemy course. And this particular Udemy course is the Complete Daily Positive Habits Building course by yours truly. There's a special discount, it's normally $200 and it's available to you now for about $10. So check the link in the course notes and for our friends on TikTok. Well, Marceau, let's post the link to that course on TikTok for our friends to see there as well. But that, that's my biggest advice. If you want to be a trainer in a startup, become your own startup. Because these days, anyone in the world, if you have a cell phone and some Internet connection, wi fi from your local library, you already have all the tools, all the infrastructure you need to be your own online education startup. You don't have to hire a cto, a Chief Technology officer. You don't have to have a chief Marketing officer. You don't have to raise $10 million in venture capital. Just start making the course and post it on udemy or Skillshare or dozens of other hundreds of other websites. Am I guaranteeing you're going to get rich right off the bat? No. But you can make money. I can tell you that from a personal fact. You could definitely make money. So selling online courses, and it's comparatively much, much easier than writing a book and making money from a book because there's less competition. Most people have never mastered the habit of feeling confident in their public speaking because most people have received zero training on how to speak. People would rather write book. Because most people went to school every day for 6 years, 12 years, 18 or 20 years writing or typing, getting feedback from a teacher or a professor on how to write. Therefore, they feel more comfortable writing about stuff they know. Well, I'm here to tell you the whole premise of this show and what I'm about and what we do here is helping you build new habits to get out of your comfort zone and to get more comfortable doing things that you thought were harder but often are not. It's not hard to speak. You speak every day. If nothing else, you speak to one friend or one family member if you've ever had one. Interesting conversation with one friend or one family member in your entire life. You already have all the skills you need to become a great public speaker and a great online trainer. You just don't realize it yet, but it's exactly the same skill set. So so much of it is just you got to hold up your cell phone, speak, and you've got to look at it and figure out what works and what doesn't work. Let's take a few comments from our community here. I missed a couple. Sorry about that. Scroach writes on TikTok. Is it Udomey? No, it's letter u d e m-y.com it's just one of many. And I'm not an investor. I own no stake in Udemy, although I do have 143 courses hosted by Udemy and Marceau. If you could put the Udemy link for today's sponsoring course on TikTok. Some of our friends are trying to figure out where that is and I see you posted the URL. Go ahead and post the link to that particular course. Danica writes in hi, it's Danny Kael. It's really crucial to not morph to other people's goals in sales. Yes, Unfortunately, a lot of times people get hooked up in a whole game of sales and oh, this person did 50,000. I'm worthless if I don't do 60,000 or they're doing 100,000. I'm not really successful unless I do a million. You've got to set your own goals. Now, I certainly am not the least materialistic person in the world. I am in the West. I do live in New York City area. I do have a home that's bigger than 500 square feet than I might need. But I have found that the older I get, the more I realize what I value isn't more stuff. Now, if you don't have enough stuff, certainly if you don't have food or you feel like you're really wanting. Hearing me say that just seems like who cares what that guy thinks. But what I have found most people, when you really get down to it, if they have a home they're comfortable in, if they have meals they enjoy, if they can occasionally go on a nice vacation, have a mode of transportation that isn't worse than their neighbors, and can be in good health. You do that, you'll feel relatively whether you call it wealthy, affluent, comfortable, and the game about, oh, I have to have a net worth of $10 million or $100 million, you're buying into someone else's goal, Danica, I think you've put your finger on it. Exactly. You've got to figure out what's going to make you happy. And certainly if I'm a yacht manufacturer and you know, full disclosure, I have some clients who manufacture yachts. If you're a yacht manufacturer, you want everyone to aspire to be a billionaire because then you can afford the $300 million. But unless you want the headaches and hassles of a 300 million dollar yacht and managing the captain and crew, it's probably not going to give you any pleasure. That shouldn't be your goal. So Danica, I very much appreciate your thoughts on there and I think it is right on. And Scroach writes out, yes, Udemy. Great. I hope you like it. I am interested if any of you are regular students on Udemy or other platforms. What personal development courses and trainers have you enjoyed them and I'm not. Let's leave me out of the equation. I don't need you to butter me up. I'm interested though. What other personal development online instructors have you used that you enjoy, where you feel like they've really delivered some insights? I would love to hear from you on that. Let us know. And again, feel free if you want to communicate by posting on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter. We are on a dozen platforms today. Forgive me if we are somehow missing you. If you feel like you posted a comment and I'm ignoring you, it's not an intentional slight. I would ask simply that if we miss it, go to my Facebook page. I guarantee you will see the comment there and you go to Facebook and just type in TJ Walker, personal development trainer. And that will take you to sort of my main public page. We'll be sure to see it there, no doubt. I'm T.J. walker. You're watching and listening to the Habit Influencer. This is the one place as far as I know on the entire Internet where on a daily basis it's a live forum for people to talk about habits, how to build stronger habits, better habits, whether it's in communication, whether it is for your health, regardless of the area. How can you have stronger habits on a daily basis in your life? That's what we're about here. And the reason I started this show is there were just so many great books on habits and I love reading books on habits. There are a lot of good online courses, but I just couldn't find any place where there could be real communication, live, real time between people who are working in the field full time. Such as myself and others looking for information and a community. So that's why I created this show and I very much appreciate you being here with me today. Let's switch over to some top news stories. Why you should quit the news. This is a blog post by Mark Manson. Many of you may be familiar with his name. He's written a number of New York Times best selling books. He is a blogger with millions of followers and he had an intriguing post in the last couple of days and that's the title of it, why you should quit the news. If you're interested in the link, it's in the show notes. If you don't see it, just type wherever you are and we'll be happy to repost that link. Now, Mark Manson is a provocative writer. He likes to toss the F word around a great deal in his writings and I'm not opposed to that at all. I kind of keep a G rated, PG rated vocabulary here on this show just because I don't want to automatically lose audience in India. On YouTube and on LinkedIn, there's various places where if you use any sort of profanity, you can't play there. And I like to play everywhere. So it's not because I'm puritanical or I'm opposed to so called naughty words, but I don't use naughty words here just because I don't even buy the concept of a word being naughty. But I use what would be described as clean language here just because I want to reach the widest possible audience. Well, that's not Mark's attitude. And you know what, it works for him. He drops F bombs all the time in his writings, in his books, in his titles. He's fabulously successful. So he has a provocative, provocative story on his blog, which I wanted to point out to you for several reasons, where he talks about how horrible news is and why you really shouldn't spend any time. Now there's a continuum. I'm not as far away as he is on the continuum of no news consumption. He's kind of gone almost to an extreme where he has tried to cut out all contact with news in his life. He gives a number of great examples. He talks about all the tabloid news. He pulls up old tabloid stories like, you know, here's one of Princess Diana being alive hours after she was killed. And it's just complete nonsense, tabloid trash. But here's some of his main reasons for why he believes it's harmful to the individual. And it is in fact a bad habit to spend time Consuming news. Most people in the past would say, well it's a good thing to be well informed. Democracies need a well informed citizenry. Unfortunately a lot of problems with that now because oftentimes the more news you read, the less informed you have, the more likely you are to be ill informed and be running around with a bunch of false notions in your brain and be ignorant frankly. So here are some of the things he talks about. Recurring trauma studies find that many people who view catastrophic events, terrorist attacks, mass shootings, natural disasters, repeatedly over and again on TV can develop PTSD like symptoms even though they had no direct relationship with the catastrophe. I'm here in New YORK Certainly after 9 11, so many people saw so many images on TV they weren't outside that day and they were a safe distance, the twin towers going down, that there is a school of thought. Many of them did get this PTSD like syndromes from watching the trauma again and again and again. Number two, agenda setting. When the news media becomes obsessed with a topic and shows it repeatedly, people begin to believe the topic is important, whether it actually is or not. And then he gives as an example, hello, Monica Lewinsky. Similarly, negative news coverage causes people to overestimate problems, believing they're far more widespread than they actually are. What's worse, this seems to be only true for negative news. Positive news does not cause the same biases in our thinking. That's absolutely true. In the last 30, 40 years in the United States, the country I'm most familiar with, the rates of violent crime has dropped almost every year. And it's almost just a straight downward line. And yet news coverage of crime has gone up because when I was a kid, there was one local newscast on each network affiliate. So you had three stations doing local news for basically a half an hour in the evening. And you had to do weather and sports and commercials. So negative news had at most about 10 minutes. And then you had the national news for 22 minutes. So you were watching at most a half an hour of news about stuff that wasn't weather and sports. And that's if you were a news junkie. Well nowadays 24 hour cable networks, international ones, national ones, some cities like New York City, they're 24 hour news channels just for the city and obviously websites, blogs. So what's happened here in the United States is people believe crime is higher than ever before. I mean I have people my age, younger than my age, say, oh yeah, when we were kids we ran around, it was safer times. But you can't possibly Let your kid ever be unattended outside your house for five minutes. Because the times we live in. What are you talking about? It's never been safer than it is right now in the United States in the last 60 years. And yet this is, as Mark points out, a very, very valid problem of if you just keep harping on a subject, people believe it has outsized importance and is getting worse, even if it's getting better. Number three on his list, cultivation theory. Studies report that people who watch more news tend to over. And this relates to number two, over. Estimate the amount of crime and violence that happens in the real world. And here's where it leads. They are generally distrusting their fellow citizens, more often becoming paranoid and everyone is out to get them. I definitely see that in citizens in my own community. This idea that it would be crazy to let your kids walk down the street and go play in a park by themselves because of this Cultivation theory. Issue number four, he points out misinformation and propaganda. To me, this is far and away the biggest problem of all. People who watch partisan cable news in the United States are actually worse informed than someone who watches no news. Large swaths of the news industry are actively misinforming people. That is 100% true. I think there's always been a partisan news ever since the beginnings of the news media. And when you look at the first newspapers here in the United States hundreds of years ago they were run by political parties, they were actively giving partisan news. But now there's something completely different. The power of TV and primetime host who can just push a narrative that is completely. Not cherry picking facts, just making up facts, just saying things that are factually untrue is a big, big problem and is one reason why Mark Manson is advocating to his readers tune out completely. Now, when it comes to cable news, I made a decision three years ago. I'm not going to watch any cable TV news. And you know what? I have not regretted it for one second. Issue number five For Mark, stress and anxiety. News consumption harms our mental health. Consuming news generates a greater sense of pessimism about not just the world but your own life. It also increases stress and symptoms of generalized anxiety. It's quite a provocative read and like most of Mark's writings, it's quite lengthy. It's tens of thousands of words. So when he writes, he's not posting every five minutes the way some bloggers do, he really goes deep. And to me, this is what's fascinating about the new media world. There's the perception and there's the reality. The perception is everything's got to be quick, short, soundbites, TikTok length. The reality is there's a huge range, there's a giant spectrum. And if you're interesting and provocative, it doesn't matter how long or short you are, you can find an audience. Mark Manson has put together quite a career for himself based on what I see. Millions of viewers, huge audience, best selling books. And he doesn't worry about, oh, I've got to get this in in 500 words. Oh, I have to post every five minutes. No, he takes as much time as he wants and he writes major, major in depth pieces. So he is one of the personal development experts I would recommend to you if you're looking for more information and his website is just markmanson.net markmanson.net I believe I posted it in the show notes for you as well, but you can take a look at that. He's got some. He's great at using images, which I should be better at. Here's an image he has talking about how lacking in nutrition so much news is. He likens it to a bacon cheeseburger with two donuts for buns. It's a great analogy, but he actually shows a picture of a bacon cheeseburger where the buns are donuts to show what he thinks of news. I think that's that is a great sandwich in the history of the world called the Luther Marceau says it is a great sandwich. I'm sure it's quite tasty, but I also think if you have more than one a year, you're probably shortening your lifespan. I've only ever had two in my life, in case you didn't hear that clearly. Marceau, my colleague and producer, said he's had two of these hamburger cheeseburger with donut buns in his life. Only two in his whole life, but they were the 30 best minutes of his entire life. And Marcel, we have to get you a better, more enjoyable life coming up soon. If that's the highlight, I'm not sure if there are worse ways to go than that. So what Marceau just said, hey, you got to go somewhere now he's joking. He's someone who clearly believes in improvement and bettering himself and this idea of expansive mindset, an open mindset of the world. Unfortunately, too many people, probably not you since you're watching, and not our TikTok friends, but too many people in the world have this closed mindset, a fixed mindset. As psychologist Carol DWICK. Would call it where people think, okay, you can't really control things. You're born with this set iq. You're born with this set skills. You're born with this lifespan. Nothing you could do. It's a fatalistic way of going through the life. And many people have that because, hey, if you're gonna get. When you're gonna go, why not eat bacon and cheeseburgers and cheese and never exercise at all and drink five bottles of wine a night? If you're gonna go and you're gonna go. Fate, central premise to this show and the whole personal development movement, frankly, is that you control your own fate. Not everything. A meteor could come fall on me right now. An airplane could fall in the sky and kill me. You can't control everything, but you have more control than you think. You do control the vast, vast majority of what happens in your life. You do control how long you live. In many cases, yeah. Sometimes there's the bad luck of the genetic lottery. Sometimes you get run over by a bus. But for so many of us, our life, our length of our life is determined by do we smoke? Do we not smoke? Do we go to the doctor and get immunizations, or do we not. Do we try to get eight hours of sleep, or do we stay up all times of night? Do we eat the right amount of food, real food that isn't all processed in sugar and fat and maintain a proper body weight? Or do we just eat every kind of garbage and fat and sugar and salt and processed food and become obese and get diabetes and have strokes and heart attacks and die? It's not the difference between living to 100 and living to 10, but it's very often the difference between dying at 50 versus 80, or certainly the difference between dying at 59 versus 69. All things being equal, I'd much rather live an extra 10 years, especially if they're high quality years, high health years, where your brain is functioning, where you have control of your body. That is the central premise of why we're here. How can we have healthy habits to actually control our life so we don't let some mystical, nebulous fate control our life. So that's why I won't say I'll never eat a cheeseburger with bacon and donuts as buns, but it's not on the. It's not on the top priority list. Although I've eaten, you know, I've eaten plenty of crazy things. Probably worse than that. In college, I once went to an all you can eat prime Rib buffet. This was, it was in college. It was before a big football game at Duke. And the restaurant had an all you can eat prime rib buffet. And I think I ate at least 21 prime rib steaks, which if you're counting, is a lot less healthy than a cheeseburger with donuts as buns. I had 21. I think I was mooing the next day. Now, at the time, I also was 21 years old, had a 31 inch waist and could get away with something. I wouldn't even try something. I wouldn't have an interest in eating that many. That was an egregious act of gluttony and I can't say I'm proud of it. But we can all enjoy certain moments in life. It doesn't matter what you eat on Christmas or your birthday or Hanukkah or any one big celebration. That's not what has an impact on our health. What has an impact on our health is our daily habits. You can do whatever you want 1, 2, 3, 5 days a year, for the most part, assuming you don't OD on heroin or something. It's what you do day in and day out. Those average 300, or you go on vacation or something, let's say 350 days a year, 340 days a year. If you take a lot of vacation, that's what really matters. That's what defines your health, that's what defines your diet. That is really going to make up the composition of your body. That's what defines your weight, that's what defines your energy level. So that is why on this show we really focus on the daily habits, things you do. Just an average day, there's always going to be aberrations. Big celebration, big holiday, big birthday. Live it up, have fun. I'm not a killjoy. One of the problems with a lot of personal development experts is they want to make it sound like, oh my God, you had one coffee with sugar. Wow, you might as well kill yourself. Here, take a syringe full of heroin. No, I don't think you have to be that extreme. In fact, I drink coffee and I don't feel bad about it either. I no longer put gobs and gobs and gobs of sugar in it and chocolate milk the way I did for many years. So you can have a real life. You don't have to live the life of some puritan or of a monk. But I do think it's very much possible to have habits that make you happy and healthy and that you Feel good about it on a daily basis. You're not looking at these habits of, oh, I'm forcing myself to do this thing I don't want to do because I know it's good for me. That's not a mindset that works. And that's frankly why most diets fail. Someone selling you a diet book, a pill, a potion, a milkshake, it's guaranteed to fail. Now, it will work in the short term. Every diet works in the short term. They all work. Until you realize, this is crazy. I hate this. I can't go another day on this. Whether it's Atkins, whether it is Paleo diet, whether it doesn't matter what kind of diet it is, if it's asking you to avoid all sorts of things you like and to do all sorts of extreme things, certainly if it involves drinking shakes instead of eating real meals, you will lose weight on all of those. But you can't get all back. Typically, you do more than gain it all back. You gain it all back and plus another 10. And that's the problem with, with diets that are so restrictive, that don't start off from the fundamental premise that you have to have new daily habits to positively reach out and eat real food that's tasty, real food that doesn't come in a bag, real food that doesn't come in a box, real food that's not in a bottle with lots of sugar and salt and fat crammed into it and all sorts of processing. But it's hard to sell a diet book like that that says eat real food because it doesn't take 300 pages for that. It doesn't take 200 pages. You only need a tiny paragraph. If you really want to help people with a diet, and the diet is, you've got to eat real food. Michael, I think his name is Poland, says it famously in about six words. Eat real food. Not too much, drink water, eat lots of plants, avoid processed food. And that is your way to optimum health. We are coming up towards the end of the first hour. We're here for all of our 2 Number of segments prepared. Looking forward to that with you. We do want to take a couple of comments from our fans and friends and community on Facebook. Mohammed writes, yep, we control our own faith. That's the lesson I learned many years ago when I was in my secondary school. And Marceau, I'm going to try to click down on that. Okay. It said, man architects his own destiny 100%. I do agree with that. And we'll update it for modern times and say humans, humans architect their own destiny. That is certainly the central premise of the entire self help movement of which I'm a part and certainly what I believe when it comes to trying to influence your own habits and make better habits, you're doing that obviously to affect your own destiny. We can't have complete control, but we do have a tremendous amount of control. Something I did not control today is since our friends on TikTok are joining us through my cell phone because we don't quite have the technical hookup. I did not do what I was supposed to do, which is put my phone on do not disturb because when my phone just rang a minute ago, it kicked us off the TikTok feed. We're glad you're back, so apologies for that distraction there. I'm hoping you're able to hear us and I do hope that you will be able to join us through the main feed come next week when we get those technical details ironed out. And we had another comment. I thought I missed one comment from Facebook. Marceau, if we could go back to that. So Sy is writing. Can I create a website as my own personal trainer so that I can market myself as a trainer to get clients for my training? Yes. Not just as a trainer, anything you want to. That's what is so exciting to me about living in the world in 2020. There are no gatekeepers. You are your only gatekeeper. Your imagination, your energy and your ability to show patience. Most people are too impatient to create a website. You can do it. Go to fiverr.com right now and for $5 somebody will create a website for you. If you don't want to learn how to do it yourself, you could start marketing your wares. Whether you want to be a trainer, an author, an expert, a personal coach, a personal trainer, there. There's an unlimited number of opportunities today for you to go into business. When I was growing up, you basically had to hope a very large corporation. Kids of my generation, when I was in college, the big dream was, wow. I got a job interview with IBM or Chase Manhattan bank or Morgan Stanley was one of the big ones. The dream was to have a really big, well known, famous corporation anoint you. You had to get through the gatekeepers. They can anoint you and give you that job, that credibility, that paycheck. That's not the world we live in anymore. And now we live in a world where I see 23 year olds say, forget all that. I'm going to travel the world, make online courses, maybe work for three hours a day, live in a different city and country three months at a time, and continue to learn, continue to grow, continue to make money. And they do very well. I'm not saying it's easy to do that. But guess what? It wasn't easy to get a job at Morgan Stanley in 1985 either. A lot of gatekeepers to keep the vast majority out. So, si, you definitely can do that. You can do whatever you want. That's the good news about being alive in 2020, but it's also the bad news because there's so many options. People become paralyzed. Oh, I could start a blog. Oh, I could start a TikTok video channel. Oh, I could do a YouTube channel. Oh, where's my Facebook page? And boom, boom, boom. And people are scattered. So my advice to you, Si, and anyone else out here, if you're not 100% in love with your current job, profession, your main means of making money, then I beg you, focus on just one thing that you enjoy doing, that you like doing, that you're good at doing, that other people value and tell the world about what you do and try to make your expertise so that other people can buy it. There are a lot of ways people like to buy expertise. For most of my career, people bought my expertise by hiring me for a day to come to their company, their corporation, their government. I'd bring my video cameras and I'd conduct public speaking training, media training, and I still do that, and it's a great way. And then halfway through my career, I started selling my expertise through books and then through online video courses, and then sometimes through membership sites, and then sometimes through Skype conference call, training and time PDF. There's so many ways you can sell your expertise these days. It's the golden age to be a consultant, a trainer, an author, an expert in anything. I do believe that you I'm talking to, you are an expert in something you at least know couple of things more than what other people do on a certain subject that they might benefit from. Why not market your expertise, help more people and make more money. If you want more money, you may have a job you love and you just want to cultivate more strengths and skills in your hobbies. That's okay, too. I'm TJ Walker. Thanks for joining me for hour one, the Habit Influencer. We'll be back at three minutes past the hour for hour two of the program. See you then. Welcome back to the Habit Influencer, hour two. I'm TJ Walker. We are live. It is Tuesday January 21st, 2020. So happy you're here. We've got a lot of exciting news, other topics and discussion right here in hour two. We'll be going with you all the way to the top of the hour, 3pm Eastern time here on the East Coast. I'm based right outside of the New York City in the New York City area in Long Island, New York. We're happy you're here regardless of whether you've heard from people from Pakistan today, from Egypt, Africa, Texas, India, all over the world. And we are glad you are joining us. Special hello to Courtney today. Courtney, thanks for joining us. We are very fond of your brother. He does excellent work and glad that he told you about what he's doing and glad you're here today as well. Special hello also to our friend sunshine on TikTok who's joined us and Julia or JG Hano has joined us on TikTok and I see several of our other friends have joined us on Facebook, Instagram as well. Regardless of where you are, we are platform agnostic, meaning we're just open to all platforms. I don't Favor Facebook over YouTube over LinkedIn over Twitter over any of them. I favor you. I just want to reach as many people as possible, have as big a conversation as possible with people around the world who are trying to better themselves, who are not just obsessing about the end of the world and how awful politics are in London or in Moscow or in Washington D.C. it's about how can we make things better. I wanted to point out to you a writer I admire. He's sort of the complete opposite of the one I mentioned in the previous hour. Mark Manson is a fantastic personal development expert, writer, blogger. He'll often write posts of 40,000 words. Quite prolific. Let's go the other extreme, a name many of you may be familiar with, Seth Godin. Seth Godin has written about 20 best selling books and wildly influential in the field of marketing business. He has been blogging now, I think for about 20 years and his blog posts are very short. I want to read it's so short. I want to share this with you. Long term versus short term. There's always someone who's willing to play the short game. There's always someone who is more willing to play the short game than you are. Someone who is willing to cut more corners, send a more urgent text, borrow against the future, ignore the side effects, abuse trust and corrupt the system somehow justifying that short term hustle with a rationalization, usually a selfish one, about how Urgent it is. On the other hand, there's plenty of room to win. As someone who takes a longer view than than the others. That's it? That's the whole blog post? You might say, well, it's not that much. There's a wisdom that comes through Seth's writings. Is every single day a home run? No. And forgive me using baseball analogies when most of you in the world don't watch baseball. Is every single one of his blog posts wonderful? No, but they add up. There's a cumulative positive impact. And his blog has new content seven days a week, year after year after year, decade after decade. If you just type in Seth's blog on Google, it'll take you right there. It's that well known. Does he put ads on that? No. Is he selling it as a subscription service? No, but this blog has made him so wildly famous that if you want to hire him as a speaker. I know a few years ago his speaking fee was $120,000 US to give a 60 minute speech. His books are best sellers. He is wildly influential. And the reason I want to especially like to point him out to you is, is that anyone can write a couple paragraphs a day. Sometimes it's one paragraph, sometimes he writes three sentences. But he gives thought to it. He doesn't publish anything unless he's convinced it is an interesting idea to help other people. But it's not about length. He often has blog posts of less than or 100 words. So to me, this is. In some ways, he's much less intimidating and someone you can emulate more than Mark Manson. Mark Manson's doing 40,000 word blog posts. For many people, it's. It's too high a mountain to get over. Which is one reason why Mark Manson is wildly successful. Because he's not competing against other blog posts 40,000 words long. For people who really want depth, Mark gives it to them. But Seth is still competing and doing very well because he blows away almost every other blog. Millions of people go to his blog every single month, and many of them have for years and decades. I typically get his column through an RSS feed or through email, but some people can go right to the blog. But just type in Seth's blog, and that's really all you need. I'm TJ Walker. Thanks for joining me today. This is an open forum. If you have questions, comments, thoughts, please let me know. Marceau, I see our screen went blank. Are we back? Okay. We just want to make sure we didn't lose our connection. Okay. I do See our good friends on TikTok with us. We've had more Join us. Elite Opulence has joined us. Gavin Yiyi has joined us as well as Mark on TikTok. And I gotta say, I love TikTok. Of all the social media platforms, I just find it the most engaging. And it's not because teenagers love hearing my stuff. I find interesting comments, questions, feedback from people 30, 40, 50, 60 years old on TikTok. So the idea that it's just a bunch of teenagers simply is not true. So I'm happy to have you regardless of your age. This is a program geared towards adults, not because we talk about adult themes but because we're on at least in the US at a time when most kids are in school and we're talking about issues that affect human beings and really at every age of their life, but not because we're talking about any X rated subjects. Let's switch over to Instagram a moment and see who has checked in there. Sakuran has joined us and says hello, Azina A has joined us and Sai has said hello again as well. Do you have any courses on fitness training, nutrition, wellness on Udemy? Well, I have not mentioned this to anyone but I'm actually working on courses right now on those very subjects of nutrition and fitness. Again, some of you may be thinking, well Tito, you're not a medical doctor, you're not a PhD in nutrition. Why would you do that? What I'm an expert on is influencing audiences and helping you specifically influence an audience of one yourself. Think about it. Do you really need more information and facts and knowledge about nutrition and fitness or do you need to figure out a way to influence yourself so that you eat healthy real foods and don't go get that hamburger with cheese and bacon and donuts on it. You know the hamburgers and cheese and donuts, that's not good nutrition. So it's not a matter of knowledge, it's a matter of how to influence yourself. So yes, Si, I am working on a course on that probably will come out most likely in February or March. I'll keep you updated on that. The course I'm most excited about right now, that is the sponsor of our show today is my Complete Habits course. This is a course on complete way of learning positive habits in your Life. It's normally $200. It's available today for about $10 with the coupon link in the show notes and Marceau has posted that on TikTok if you are interested and you don't see it just post a message and we're happy to repost that as well. And Marcel, do we have another comment on Instagram? Did I miss that? It seemed like I missed one. Miguel writes, hola y saludime and I believe that's hello and healthy. Salutations to you. My Spanish is malissimo mi espanol no excelente. But I do understand a few words and certainly enjoy my time in Spanish speaking countries, whether it's Spain, where both of my sisters live for a number of years, or Mexico where I've been three or four times in the last few years, or Ecuador where I had the privilege of conducting some trainings for the United nations down there just a few years ago. Plus there's a lot of Spanish speaking people here in the United States and I find that one of my few regrets in life is not really becoming fluent in Spanish as a youngster. And then I should have learned later too. I lived in Miami in the early 90s and got to practice some of my Spanish there. But still not to the point. Certainly not to the point where I can host a show in sports Spanish and come across in a way that seems very coherent, but very much appreciate you saying hello in any language whatsoever. Valencia writes in and says, hi, tj, Nice to see you here. Well, good to see you, Valencia. You're right, we are all overwhelmed by nutrition info and not so much about behavior. By the way, your Spanish is not so bad. Gracias. Thank you very much. So this whole idea of behavior is important because yes, of course there's some people who've never been told basic nutritional information and really have no idea that a Coca Cola is not as healthy as a glass of water. And certainly there's some things, like people who know a little nutrition who might think, oh, orange juice, apple juice. That's not Coke, it's fruit. That must be healthy. Well, no Coca Cola and an orange juice and grape juice all about the same. There's so much sugar, so many calories you don't need. What I try to do is drink water. Now you've heard that before. People talk about, and this is water here, by the way. The other thing I like to put in my body and put in my mouth in a liquid form, tea. I'm drinking tea now. What I try to do, and I think most healthy people do, is avoid soft drinks like the plague. Now, once a year, if I'm out of movies and with my daughter, I'm reliving childhood. Will I have a Coke? Sure. I'm not some absolute puritanical fanatic who says, oh gosh, one sip of a Coke and you're dead. No, it's not that extreme. It's about what you do on a daily basis. And what I do on a daily basis is I drink a lot of water. I'm not going to tell you you must drink eight eight ounce glasses of water a day. I'm not going to tell you that because even though it's in a lot of books, it turns out there's no actual evidence that humans need eight glasses of 8 ounces or 64 ounces of water a day. I can't tell you you how much water you need. What I do know is if I'm drinking water, I'm not drinking Coke. There's the displacement value of it. If I'm drinking water, I'm not drinking a Maccachino Frappuccino Copacino from Starbucks that has 892 calories from all the sugar and fat and cream. So that is so much the beauty of water. It also keeps my throat lubricated while I'm speaking to you. And the body does need water. Dehydration is a real thing. Sometimes people make too much of it and act like if you're not tethered to a bottle of water all day long, you're basically committing suicide. No, that's, that's too much. But I do think drinking water is a good thing. How do I drink water? I'll tell you. One thing I do is in my selfie speak program, many of you have heard me talk about that. It's simply an audio recording I listen to of myself talking to myself every morning. I tell myself, tj, you drink a large glass of water as soon as you get up every day and you sip water all day long. I don't say, you must have ten glasses of water. So I tell myself that in an audio format every single day. I also have an item on my checklist on my cell phone. TJ, did you drink a large glass of water first thing in the morning? And I have to put a W for when or N for no. Well, that's a pretty easy one to do because if I haven't done it yet, I just go get a glass of water. This is one of these things that for me, it's not quite a true habit in the sense of just unconsciously doing it. I brush my teeth before I go to bed. I don't really have to think about it. It's just no matter how tired I am or what I'm doing. I just don't get into bed until I brush my teeth. That's what I would put in the category of a true habit, where my brain is not thinking about it at all. Drinking a large glass of water first thing in the morning is not a habit at that level for me, but it's is something I do every day. But I need that extra nudge, that extra tweak, and I get it by the audio recording I've made of myself, which you can do yourself, or you just tell yourself you drink a large glass of water every day. And I need to hold myself accountable with that list. It's not on paper, but it's a list that I have right on my phone of what I'm going to do that day. And the two things together dramatically increase the amount of water I consume. Water is critical to your health. And if you have headaches, again, I'm not a medical doctor, but this is really. There's really no controversy here. A lot of headaches do come from dehydration, and a lot of obesity comes from. From drinking soft drinks all day long. You put the two together, drink more water, there's just no downside. Now, is it possible to OD on water? It's possible to OD on anything. If you ate 50 pounds of broccoli a day, you might die after a couple of days. It is possible to so overwhelm your body by drinking too many gallons of water that you overwhelm your kidneys. Now, practical matter, how many people a year die from that? Virtually zero. So I wouldn't worry about drinking too much water. I would worry about drinking too little water. Now, there's something else when it comes to too little, that should be a concern for those of you. And I think it's all of us who want better health. That issue is too little sleep. Which leads me to one of the top stories of the day. This is a story that just came out. It's an annual survey of people's sleep patterns coming out of New York. Now, this was sponsored by a mattress firm, and so they're trying to encourage people to sleep on their mattresses. So you can factor that in as you want. But here's what they found somewhat shocking. That many Americans now average less than six hours of sleep per night. Most people, most doctors, most experts would say the average person needs about eight hours of sleep. As much as I love to think I'm so superior and so many different things and intellect and all that, I am completely average when it comes to Sleep. I need eight hours of sleep. And if you're telling yourself you only need four or five or six, but you use an alarm clock, guess what? You're lying to yourself. If you want to know how much sleep you need, go a week without using an alarm clock and then add up how many hours you slept and divide by seven. That will tell you how many hours of sleep you really need to function well. So here's what this survey found of the response. This was a nationwide survey. Respondents had 105 terrible nights of sleep sleeping on average in 2019. This is up from 99 horrible nights in 2018. The survey consisted of 2000 adults across the United States. They were asked about their sleeping habits, satisfaction and frequency. But look at this. This jumped out at me. In 2018, the average respondent reported about six, six hours and 17 minutes of sleep per night. By 2019, however, the average shrunk to only five and a half hours each night. Five and a half hours. Now, I've certainly read some medical experts that says if you're below 6 hours, your brain capacity is functioning no different than if you were drunk out of your mind. You think you're there. You think you have all of your faculties. You really don't. You are operating under severely impaired condition. That's shocking. I don't know if they skewed this directly towards people who were shopping for mattresses because they couldn't sleep well. I don't know that it's entirely representative of the general public, but it is representative of the 2,000 people they surveyed. Five and a half hours is the average amount. If the Trend continues in 2020, will be even worse for many when it comes to the same amount of shuteye. Here's the other thing they found. In 2019, the average respondent said they would pay $316 for just one night of perfect sleep. And the year before, they claimed $290. I guess that's the marketing data. The mattress firm was interested. How can we get that money? And I think it's an interesting survey. I will say from what I do, what little I do know about the mattress industry is there's a lot of chicanery involved and that just a few companies dominate the whole industry and they repackage by different brands, and it's the same product, and you can pay wildly different prices for getting essentially the same mattress. So I do think it's important to have a mattress that makes you comfortable. But the difference between a $600 or $800 mattress versus a $6,000 mattress is often very, very little. We're going to come to our comments on Facebook in just a moment, but just finishing out this segment. This is According to Dr. Sujay Kansara, that is the sleep expert at this mattress firm. He says, I recommend practicing a bedtime routine, even something as simple as putting on a sleep mask each night, reading in bed for 20 minutes, or practicing the same shower routine at the same time every night signals to the brain it's time to hit the hay. Creating a bedtime routine that lasts for 20 to 30 minutes and sticking to that routine can make all the difference in your energy, productivity, and mood. I agree with that completely. That's a lot of what I espouse on this program on a daily basis. And of course, he puts in, don't bring your smartphones to bed. We've talked about that. It's a hard habit to break. I guarantee you you will not regret not bringing your smartphone to bed. I understand. If you're the only surgeon in a small town and if you don't get that phone call, some little kid in a car crash is gonna die. That's an exception. But if you're not a brain surgeon, chances are you can get by without someone being able to call you and wake you up in the middle of night. So leave your phone in another room and hey, if you're in a studio apartment, turn your phone off and go put it in the bathroom. It won't kill you, I promise. Promise you. So sleep is something that I think is such a bedrock issue for someone's health. And health is a bedrock issue when it comes to leading a fulfilled life. If you don't have good health, you can't be productive. You can't be creative, you can't help other people. You can't really live your purpose. And if you don't have good sleep, it's very hard to have the energy to exercise. It's very hard to have the discipline to say no to that donut with cheese and hamburger on it. That's why sleep is so crucial. So it's not going to be all we talk about, but we will be talking about sleep here from time to time. Let's check in with our friends on Facebook. Valencia says she agrees a sister of mine had to disengage from Coke because Coca Cola, I should state, although, interestingly, the first Coca Cola did have cocaine in it, but they haven't had that in a hundred years because at one point she needed eight or more cans on a daily basis. Nonetheless, One shot of Coke from time to time is not. I think that's it. An occasional drink, an occasional bite of anything is fine. An occasional candy bar is not going to give you diabetes or make you obese. Eating five candy bars before lunch every day will make you obese. It is a problem. It is about proportion. Now, do we need to ever drink a Coke? No. But we are in a society around other people, and we do have to go to birthday parties and other things. And if you say no, most of the time, you know, one Coke every six months, I don't think is going to be the end of your health. Well, Valencia, I'm sorry to hear that your sister had that problem, but I hope she's now gotten to the point where she's got it under control and it's measurable because Coke is addictive. First of all, it's got caffeine. That's a drug. You can get addicted to that. And it's got sugar. And it does taste good. I'm not going to lie to you and tell you, oh, Coke tastes awful. It tastes great. But you know what else tastes great? Water. If you're thirsty, water tastes great. If you want a little more flavor, put a piece of fruit in it. Give it a little color. That can taste great, too. My tea tastes perfectly great because I put a little cinnamon and a little nutmeg in it, and there's nothing bad in there for me. I'm not putting putting sugar. I'm not putting cream in it. Mohammad writes. TJ Believe me, mattresses matter a lot. The study is great. Thanks for sharing again. I do think it's important to have a good mattress. If you have a really old mattress and it's completely, you know, the springs are coming through and it's lumpy, that's horrific. So I didn't mean to suggest that mattresses don't matter. What I have read in various industry exposes is there's. There's a tremendous amount of hype. There's hype in every industry. There's hype in the personal development industry, but there's a tremendous amount of hype in the mattress world. And there's so many brands, and they're all coming from, like, two manufacturers. And it's apparently easier to get the very same product for wildly different prices in the mattress world than there is in a lot of other consumer products. You could make the case about cars. They are very, you know, certain Jaguars look exactly like certain Fords, and they may have the same parts. And I'm Not a car person, so don't hold me to this, but there, there are certain luxury brands and low end brands that are basically the same car. You give someone a nice logo on an emblem and they pay an extra $30,000. It's kind of the same way with mattresses too, so be careful. I have a foam mattress. Some people don't like them. They claim they get too hot. I have a foam mattress. My wife and I love it and it's a fantastic, fantastic sleep. And it was, it was many, many thousands of dollars less than others we saw on the market. So that is something where I don't think you necessarily get what you pay for. Now, if you're buying a used mattress from a yard sale and there's springs coming through, well, yeah, you're pretty much guaranteed to have an awful night sleep. So I certainly hope that you can afford to have some kind of a decent mattress. Let's take another comment from our friends on Facebook. Psy has written in again and Sai is showing tremendous interest in training, which is a passion of mine. I have been in the training world for 30 years, so I have to be careful. Someone wants to ask me a question about training, I'll spend whole two hours on it. And that's not the whole focus of this show. This show is really about how to train you, how to create habits that help you have a fulfilling life. I do think that one of the core pillars of leading a fulfilled life is feeling like you're helping other people, being creative, being a lifelong learner, sharing your expertise with others. You put all those things together. So all of us are trainers at some level. If you're a parent, you had to train your child how to walk, how to ride a bike, other things. So it's inherent to being a human being. Some of you want to be full time trainers and maybe be a personal development trainer. Others of you are really, really happy being an electrical engineer or being a surgeon. But you still may have to train other people who work for you. You don't consider yourself a trainer. You're not a professional trainer, but you are training other people who work for you. You're training junior surgeons, you're training medical residents. So it's important to know how to train people in what you do because that's, it's just helping someone know how to learn how to do something that you already know how to do. Sai asked the question, how do you select your niche when it comes to training? This really deals with the fundamental issue of how do you find your purpose in life. For those of you who want to explore even deeper than what we can do in the remaining time on our show today, I I have an entire course on finding your life purpose. But briefly, what I think is important to do is to try dabble in as many different things as possible. Experiment. Try something new every day. Some things you'll be good at, some things you'll be awful at, some things you'll really enjoy. Some things you can't stand. You may find something you're really, really good at, but you hate. My advice, don't try to be a trainer in that niche for the the rest of your life. You'll be miserable. You might be highly paid, but life is too short to do something that makes you miserable for the vast majority of your waking time. So in a nutshell, the 32nd version of my 20 hour course is you need to figure out what is something you really enjoy doing, what is something you're doing good at doing, and what is something that the marketplace wants, respects and is willing to pay for. And look at the intersection. You may love talking about World cup soccer and you may love knowing all the statistics about certain players. You may be good at it, but it may be the world simply doesn't value your insights about soccer because, because there's millions of soccer experts and soccer analysts and TV network analysts and Pele and other famous soccer stars giving their commentary and nobody wants to hear from you in that case. That's not a good niche for you. So you got to look at something where you're good at it, you're interested in it, you have some kind of passion for it. And there is a market place for and it's not a market that's so cluttered up with competition. That's what I think you should think of. And that's how I came up with my initial training niche of public speaking and media training. I was good at it, I did like it, and there was a need for it. And I was able to package myself and sell my Services more than 30 years ago on that. And it's turned out quite nicely. I'm T.J. walker. I want to thank you for joining me here today. This is the Habit Influencer. This is the program where we talk about how to build good habits, strengthen habits, how to change our own behavior to end up with the habits that we actually want to give us fulfilled lives. I come with an agenda every day of news stories, insights, reflections on habits, sharing with you, techniques that I'm working on with my own students around the world and techniques that I have practiced with on myself. I don't give you any advice typically unless I've tested it on myself. I've made myself the human guinea pig and then I share with you information, insights, tips, techniques, tricks, hacks to make your life better. That's what the show is all about. Plus you your comments, your questions, your thoughts, your reflections and your agenda as well. Happy to be joined today by folks on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn as well as TikTok. Let's check in some of our friends on TikTok have joined us. Henry Rabbit, thanks for joining us today. Abigail has joined us. Gavin Yiyi has joined us as well. Plus Jorgen if any of you have any questions specific to habits, personal development or communication, go ahead and post them there. I am happy to talk about your concerns, your issues, your questions as well. We are coming into the final half an hour of our show today and there were a couple of things I did not get to yet, but that I really did want to get to to. And this next one is topic B. What came first, your values or your habits? For many people, it's a chicken and egg issue. It's hard to really tell. I would contend it's almost impossible to have great habits unless you have good, solid values. But it's also very difficult to have good values if you have lousy habits. The two have tremendous influence. They intertwine each other in a profound way. And unfortunately, too many people like to look at habits in isolation. Oh, I just need to get up five minutes earlier. I just need to eat one less donut this week. And they don't really step back and analyze. What is their real value? The value can't be, oh, I just need to lose five pounds. You need to step back and ask yourself, what are your fundamental health values? I don't mean as a good person. You're not a bad person if you're five pounds overweight. But you could, for example, have a value where you tell yourself, my image of myself is someone who is healthy, who is full of energy, who leads a life devoid of sickness, who maintains a proper body weight. And I'm someone who values daily exercise, daily healthy living, daily eating. If you focus on that as a value, if you remind yourself that that is your value, it's so much easier to then instill a habit of I'm going to eat a salad with oil and vinegar on it for lunch today. Not a salad with tons and tons of fried chicken and tons and tons of Caesar dressing. Where the caesar dressing is 10,000 calories of fat and sugar and salt and oil added. It stems from fundamental values. It does no good to just say, I'm going to eat fewer potato chips. Because if it's just about potato chips, you can eat fried salted carrot chips, and they're just as bad for you. You got to step back further and say, what do I value actually putting in my body? Do I value my body as something that should be respected? You buy $100,000, $500,000 Maserati or whatever your dream car is. You don't want to put water in the gas tank and the wrong type of gas in your gas. You'd be, oh my gosh, it's worth half a million dollars. I don't want to ruin the insides by putting water and sand and diesel in my car. When it takes regular, unleaded or premium, you'd go crazy if someone put that in your car, your $500,000 car. Well, isn't your body worth more than $500,000, at least to you? I would certainly hope so. When you take that attitude, it's so much easier not to put those potato chips in. So that's why I think if you really want the strongest habits, you make it a lot easier on yourself by stepping back from time to time and realizing how your habits fit into your identity. Your values are about your identity. Who are you as a human being? If you are someone who deserves to be healthy and fit and vigorous and energetic, if you are someone who is there to pick up your kids and play with your kids and play catch with your kids and take your grandkids the park, if that's your image for yourself. It's much easier to go for a bike ride, to exercise every day, to lift weight, because that's your identity. People can do almost anything with a certain identity. People will quit their jobs, leave home, go to war and die because their identity is tied in to their particular country, not passing judgment if that's good or bad. I'm just saying that's true. If your identity is one thing, it will motivate you to do almost any other habit. It will motivate you to change any habit. Certainly in times of war, issues like patriotism go right to the core of your identity. And that's what I want you to reflect on. If you're beginning a quest of trying to improve your habits. Once you truly paint a vivid picture of your self identity, habits will flow from that. If your self identity is just sort of an average schmo, doesn't deserve better than anyone else and I should be out of weight or out of shape and overweight and unattractive and a bad job. Your habits are going to reflect that. Your self identity is the rudder. It steers you. And if your self identity is saying I deserve mediocrity and nothing, you can try all sorts of habits over here. You're still going to head in this direction. If your self identity is you deserve the best. You deserve a great life, you deserve great health, you deserve great relationships. Your habits will cluster around that. They will follow that. Now I realize I'm starting to sound a little touchy feely. Like the secret. It's not as simple as the secret. I'm not saying just visualize the four million dollar mansion and it's yours. I'm not suggesting that. I am suggesting you do do have to really give thought to your self identity because habits flow from that. Habits really are a function of supporting your self identity. If you have negative self identity, then the habits will support that. If you fundamentally view yourself as someone unlovable who doesn't deserve to be in a wonderful loving relationship, then you're going to be in relationships where the habits are all about fighting and arguing and being unpleasant. Doesn't mean that anytime something bad happens in a relationship it's your fault because you have low self esteem. But you're so much more likely to have strong relationships when you have a strong core self identity of someone who deserves to have that beautiful, loving, warm relationships. You then look for the habits to back that up. If you tell yourself you are someone who is a lifelong learner, if that's your self identity, if you think of yourself as I'm someone who's going to grow and grow and learn more and more and gain more wisdom throughout my life. If that is your self identity, it's gonna be really easy not to just come home from work every day and turn on Netflix and look at the latest Adam Sandler movie every night. And yes, I've watched an Adam Sandler movie or two and he's occasionally funny. But it's about proportion. If you spend every waking moment just giving yourself mindless entertainment, you're not going to be a life learner, long learner. If your core identity as if someone who is a lifelong learner, it's going to be very easy when you're at the doctor's office waiting to be reading a Kindle ebook or an electronic book off of Google or watching a TED talk. It will come naturally to you because it fits with your identity, it's going to be natural to you to read a book at night, an hour before you go to sleep, instead of falling asleep in front of the TV or watching the local news that tells you about the weather, which you already know because it's on your phone, or your watch the sports which you can see in two seconds online, and local car crashes, which if you're not in it, doesn't really affect you. There's so many ways of rotting your brain. If your core identity is of someone who is a thinker, I don't mean an intellectual who has to have a PhD from a prestigious university, you can have a second grade education and be a great lifelong learner. But the starting point has got to be you have to see yourself as a lifelong learner. If you don't do that, all the opportunities for learning, reading books, watching videos, attending live stream shows like this, you won't even see them. So it's important to really identify that if you tell yourself that you deserve to be financially secure and that you deserve to have all the things you need to have, you're going to spend money differently, you're going to use your time differently, you're going to not necessarily pick a career just to make money, but you're going to invest in things that help you make more money. Before I knew with 100% certainty I would make money from my online courses, I invested in professional cameras in a studio and lights. You need to invest in yourself throughout your whole life to make yourself increasingly financially secure. You can't do that if you don't buy in to the fundamental idea. If you don't have an identity as someone who says I am a financially secure person, I deserve to be financially secure secure. If you tell yourself you know it's all about luck and money, it either falls in your lap or it doesn't. Or life is unfair, you're going to make very different financial decisions. Why bother saving, why bother investing, why bother creating a retirement fund if that is your attitude? But if your attitude is I want to live to be 100, I want to be financially secure, it affects your daily habits on spending, it affects your daily habits on saving, and it affects your daily habits on investing, all of these things fit together your habits. It doesn't matter if we're talking about your financial life, your professional life, your personal life, all of these things flow from your self identity. And that's why I want you to spend some time. You don't have to navel gaze every single day. Who am I, who am I? But you do need to think about who are you? What are your fundamental values about yourself? And I don't mean religious values or notions of when the universe will end or about deities. I just mean about you as a human being. What is your identity? Because I've seen it time and time again that if you have a muddled self image, the habits will be muddled. If you tell yourself, well, I'm not really creative, never been a creative person, I wasn't good in art, that's going to affect your habits. And if you tell yourself you're not creative, you're going to be much less likely to ever self publish a book and sell it on Amazon, which could hurt you because you may have a lot of great ideas to share with people. If you tell yourself I'm not creative, you may never make an online video course to help people in your area of expertise. So I think that all human beings have creative potential now. Some end up creating more interesting things, more meaningful things, bigger sellers than others. But inherent to being a human being is the ability to see the relationship between two things that are not always seen together. That's creativity. All human beings have that. The people who are the most successful in the world often create the most. And no, I'm not making a political message that there are makers and takers. Yes, some people are born into wealth and just confiscate and steal. But in general, the most successful people in any economy have created the most. Should we have more progressive taxation? Sure, that's an issue for another day. But by creating more, you help more people, you help yourself more. It doesn't happen if you tell yourself, I'm here to just follow orders. I'm here to just show up and do as I'm told. It's a mindset difference. It's about your identity. One of the things that the wealthy do to help ensure that their kids also become wealthy is they try to really give them this self identity as a wealthy person who is in charge of things, who has control of things, who isn't a passive pawn in other people's dramas. When I grew up in Charlotte, North Carolina, I went to a school that was in middle to lower middle class. I was fortunate enough. Both my parents were college educated, my father an engineer. But most of the kids in my neighborhood were not in those situations. And in my school it was very much geared towards how can we help these kids make the transition to working in a factory somewhere. So the emphasis was not on being creative. The emphasis was control. Don't talk. Don't talk. You're being punished. Don't talk. Don't talk in the lunchroom. Don't talk in the bathroom. Don't talk in the halls. Don't talk in the classroom. That's how we were judged. That's how we were controlled. We were told that was a high level skill. Show up on time, do as you're told. Shut up. Which makes perfect sense if you're trying to help people get jobs. To show up at a factory, completely worthless skill for 2020 or for that matter, most of my career. Thankfully I rebelled against that. A little teacher once caught me talking. All I was doing was telling a kid next to me, hey, we're doing something else. Time to put your book away. My punishment was writing 50 every word in the spelling book 50 times, which would have taken me forever. Thankfully, the sentence was commuted. But your values that you have that affect your self identity have such an impact on your habits. So if you're having trouble just cutting back on a coke or just getting up early or just finishing that project at work, I'd ask you to step back, spend a little time and really try to nail down your self identity. What is it? Write it down. I have mine written down right in my phone. Give it clarity and the habits work flow much easier. I'm TJ Walker and that was topic B for the day. I'm having fun today. I hope you are too. Some days I like to talk a lot. Some days I turn it over to you. Some days it is a mix. Regardless, it's always a forum that I think is a safe place to get away from hard news of the day, the geopolitical news of the day. Not talking about a bunch of downers. I don't spend my time criticizing and trashing other self help books or other habits, people I might not agree with. I try to put a focus on the positive because I do believe that's the best way to motivate people to make positive changes in their own life. Let's take a look at the comments and check in on Facebook. Mohammed writes, excellent talk, excellent coaching. Thanks for these golden words. Well, thanks a lot Muhammad. I do appreciate that. Let me share with you my late father's advice. He once told me, young man, do you know who is the free man in the crazy world? I said, no father, I don't know. Please guide me. He then said, my son, a person who has no financial liability is the free man. And there's more. Marceau, can you click down so I can see the rest of that comment and scroll up please. We're doing things when different computers and Marceau is directing me from another city today and I didn't catch the last I think there's just one, one sentence left. He said, my son, a person who has no financial liability is the free man. It's true when I see myself without him. His words helped me to remain financially capable and have we cut off any. It seems like it's cut off just a little bit. So Muhammad, forgive me if I didn't get the full gist of that. If we could scratch scroll down. We're having a slight minor technical problem. Is that the bottom of it? And I just don't. It looks half of the sentence is cut down. I guess that is okay. So Muhammad, I think you're right. I'm not here to tell you that all dead is bad. If you get into your dream medical school and your dream is to become a surgeon, you're probably going to have to go into debt to go to that medical school. If you are young and starting a family and you want a home and you don't want to live in an apartment in many parts of the world, it's just hard to find something unless you buy a home. I would certainly argue we could spend a whole days on why it's better to rent than to buy. But I don't want to be a hypocrite. I do own a home and it does in fact give me a lot of joy most of the time. So it's hard in most places to save all the money you need to buy a house outright. So I'm not suggesting you should never have any debt, but the less debt the better. Now I think I can see the rest of your words. But before that, His words helped me to remain Muhammad's talking about his father. His words helped me to remain financially capable since my adolescence. That's great. Your talk is great. Today habits really shape financial freedom. So I am a fan of being as debt free as possible in my own life. I do have some mortgage on my house and my wife and I have some investment properties to too. But beyond that and that's a, you know, income producing debt. Beyond that I have zero debt. Now I'm not here to tell you I'm holier than thou. When I was as old as 39, I was in financially horrible conditions. I had in fact gone into debt because the Internet didn't exist yet and I was producing and hosting and syndicating TV shows and radio shows. Back when that was incredibly expensive and I made some poor decisions. Credit card debt, all kinds of debt. My net worth when I was 39 years of age was probably about $400. The only reason I didn't go bankrupt is I didn't have any assets worth protecting. So I am very sympathetic to people who chase a dream, don't pay as much attention to their finances. You hear all these stories in pop culture. Spike Lee, Roger Moore became rich and famous by running up credit card debt to make their first movies. It is possible, but most of the time people just ruin their lives with massive debt. I was fortunate I was able to get out of that and go on to debt living, which does make me sleep much, much better at night. To me, the bigger challenge for most people is figuring out am I really going to live my life for me or to impress other people? Because if your life is about, oh, I have to have a picture on Instagram to be better than my buddies from high school or college. And since they have one Porsche, I have to have two Maserati. If that's your attitude, you can make $10 million a year, but spend $11 million a year and then you'll be in debt and then you will not sleep well at night. It's very easy to feel poor making $100 million a year, as crazy as that sounds. And it's also possible to feel rich making 10 or $20,000 a year in certain cities of the world, in certain countries of the world. Do you have enough money to pay your bills, to help you live the lifestyle you want, to pay for your medical care? If you can do that, then you're financially comfortable. To me, that's your goal. That should be your goal. We'll be talking about. We haven't talked about it as much in this show the last two, two and a half weeks that we've since we've launched. But to me, finance is one of the seven key pillars of life where you really need to have structured habits around it because I can tell you I personally am much happier and lead a much more stress free life. Not running up credit card. I mean, I use credit cards now, but I pay off every single credit card every month. It's nice not to have car loans. It's nice not to have consumer debt for any product in my house. It's something that you can do. It's something anyone can do. If you consistently spend less than you make. And yeah, if you're out of work, unemployed and have health problems and your income goes to zero. That's a real problem. All the more reason to to save to invest for those rainy days, because the rainy days are coming. They come for all of us at some point. Today has not been a rainy day for me. Today has been a day of sunshine, getting to spend with folks like Muhammad and Sai and Peggy and Elizabeth on TikTok and Sandra Wells and Courtney joining us. So it's been a great day of sunshine for me, being able to surround myself with other positive people who are looking to have stronger habits in their life and to have a more fulfilled life. I'm TJ Walker. Quick program note, we're off tomorrow. I have to be out doing a personal development workshop in the real world in New York City. I'll be back with you regular time on Thursday. Looking forward to seeing you then. Thanks a lot. Have a good couple of days.