Turn Your NEW YEARS RESOLUTIONS Into New Habits! | TJ WALKER | THE HABIT INFLUENCER™️

Where the magnitude of danger to your health is. It will be obese within 10 years unless habits change, a study says the source. That time dramatically more significant than simply being overweight. Within 10 years, more than half of all Americans will be obese. According to this study, the United States will hit an unprecedented level of obesity in the next decade and one in four will be severely obese. So it's not have to be obese anymore if American lifestyle habits don't change soon, according to a new study. Half of Americans to really stand out, you have to be severely obese, meaning they will be more than 100 pounds overweight, the study found. The projections were published in the New England Journal of Medicine and we're based on data from more than 6 million U.S. adults. Now, those of you who follow medical news know the New England Journal of Medicine is considered the gold standard of medical research. It's not just something someone found and made up on the National Enquirer. This is legitimate. The study found that the south and Midwest will be hardest hit, but no state will be spared. The lead author said severe obesity will become the most common body mass index, BMI category. I mean, that is just bizarre saying the single most common body category, someone will have severe obesity. I mean, that is just catastrophic. It's going to be devastating for the United States health care system. I mean, there's so many problems that happen to someone once they're 100 pounds overweight, obviously diabetes, heart attacks, stroke, there's so many diseases that happen. Here are a couple of the solutions. Taxing sugar sweetened beverages is one way to address the problem. Certainly there are some public policy issues to be addressed here. But you know what? You and I can't wait for government legislators to save our lives. We have to take control ourselves. And I am by no means trying to push some libertarian message and saying, oh, the government can't do anything. It's just up to you. My point is we can't wait for the government to solve our problem. If you want to reduce your own chances of obesity or severe obesity or helping other people in your family, there are specific habits you can start with right away. And that's a lot of what we're going to be talking about on this show. Because this idea that, you know, there's nothing I can do, I hear people say that all the time in some of my circle of friends. Oh, what can I do? My kids a little bit chubby and their kid is drinking nothing but Cokes and juices and eating fried food. Oh, they don't like healthy vegetables. Why do we have to only feed kids what they like? You know, when I was a kid, I liked ice cream and cookies, but I didn't get to eat that as the only staple just because I said I like that. So there's going to be a reckoning here. We'll be following this. I am by no means fat shaming. I don't think this is a moral issue. I think it's just an issue of how we design our lives. And we've got to ask ourselves the issue, the question of how can we design our lifestyle to increase maximum happiness? And yes, it does give you some short term happiness to eat a chocolate sundae. But if you can't pick up your kids, if you can't get out of bed in the morning, if you can't ever exercise or go for a bike ride, there's a lot of loss of happiness there. And obesity results in all of those things. I want to say a special hello to some of our friends who've joined us on TikTok. Alexander Jurley has joined us, Irena has joined us, Miguel Costa, six has joined us. And thanks so much for joining us. Forgive me for looking away from you. It's a technical explanation I won't bore you with, but you are very important to me and Alex, Irina, Miguel, if you have any questions that relate to personal development, habit acquisition, how to improve some aspect of your health or life or professional skills, post it right here. And if I can't answer it, maybe one of our other colleagues will too. We wanted to say hello and goodbye to our friends on Instagram. We've come up on the top of the hour so we'll have to sign back in for them. We are going to be taking a break in just a moment and please don't go away though. We'll be taking a couple minute break. Coming back, we have a whole second hour of the show. Lots more fun, lots of prepared content, plus your questions and answers. So Marceau, let's go ahead and go to the break right now. We'll be back in just a few minutes. More fun, more good information to come. Sam. Sa. Sam. Sa. Welcome back to hour two of TJ Walker Show Habit Influencer. A lot of great content left to share with you in this hour, plus your comments and questions. Special hello to our friends joining us on Facebook, on YouTube and many other platforms. And special apologies to our friends on Instagram. Instagram signs people off automatically after an hour when you're live, so we didn't get to Say goodbye. I wasn't hanging up on you. That's just the unique system they have on Instagram. If you do want to watch us uninterrupted each day, it's probably easier to watch on YouTube or Facebook and you can just search my name, TJ Walker. Should be pretty easy to find there. And special thanks. And again, hello to my friends on TikTok. Thanks for joining us. Ingles Vlog says thanks for your content, man. Thanks. And Ingles, I am curious, what of my content do you remember or find helpful on TikTok? For those of you watching on YouTube and Instagram, TikTok is a relatively new social media platform. It's the fastest growing one in the world right now. They went from almost nothing to half a billion users. That was a month or two ago. They may have hit a billion by now. The standard length of time for a video is 15 seconds. When I first heard about it, I thought, well, that's a waste of time. But you know what, I figured, let me practice what I preach, go outside of my comfort zone. Try a habit of doing things new that take you outside of your comfort zone. And I started experimenting with TikTok only about 10 weeks ago. And what I found just the last month, a couple hundred thousand people have viewed my videos there. I've had literally thousands upon thousands of comments, questions, likes there. So it's turned out to be a very interesting way of communicating with people who are interested in personal development all over the world. So I do appreciate Ingles Vlog, your comments that you like the content. If there's any particular one that you like or that you want more of, let me know because I do come up with new videos every single day for TikTok, and they're a little bit different than the ones that are on YouTube and Facebook and Twitter and other. Each platform is a little bit different. It takes a little more work coming up with more content, but it's a way of reaching out and connecting with more people. And hey, with TikTok, it's only 15 seconds, so it's not like writing some new 30 minute speech. So get your questions ready, your comments ready. I see Masmita has joined us on Instagram. Thanks for joining us. And I see that Raman Saab has also joined us on Instagram. Thank you. If you have any questions related to personal development or how to build stronger, healthier habits in 2020, post your comments and I will answer them here. Same with Facebook and YouTube as all the other platforms. If I miss your comment, you can always post it again tomorrow or send me an email TJ Walker.com and I will most assuredly answer you in the next live program. Now if you send it to me Friday afternoon after the show, then I'll get to it Monday. But typically it's going to be the very next day. In this program, I share with you my tips and techniques on how to build stronger habits, how to have a sense of personal development that brings more meaning to your life. I share with you the same techniques that I use with my private clients all over the world, and content from my online courses as well. The show also includes you your comments, your opinions, your perspective. Sometimes we can disagree. In fact, some of you may be huge fans of the Keto Diet and want to disagree with something I said earlier today when I was basically highly critical of the Keto diet. Now here's something maybe we can find some agreement on. This is another story that jumped out at me. This is from a European newspaper, the sun, and the title of this is Diet joke. Drinking Diet Coke means you're more likely to put weight on doctors warn. Again, I've linked to this story in the show notes. So if you think I've messed up something or you want clarification or you want to check the sources, I urge you go to my show notes and those of you on Instagram and TikTok. You can find those show notes on my Facebook page or my YouTube page just by typing my name in. But here is the significant thing they found. Drinking artificially sweetened drinks like Diet Coke could make you more likely to put weight on this is what doctors are warning Researchers from the University of South Australia found that people who consume low calorie sweeteners don't reduce their overall sugar intake. I remember the first time I heard this is not a particularly new finding, but this is additional research. The first time I heard that seemed a little confusing. It seems like if you go from drinking 10 regular Cokes with tons of sugar every day to 10 Diet Cokes with no sugar, seems like your sugar intake would go way down, doesn't it? That's not what happens, apparently. The study was published in the journal Current Erythroscoliosis Reports, and forgive me if I botched that medical term, also warned that these diet drinks may be contributing to type 2 diabetes. Professor Peter Clinton led the research. Here's what he told the media. There has been a 200% increase in LCS that stands for low calorie sweeteners usage among children and a 54 increase among adults in the past 20 years. Of course, at the same time, we've seen obesity skyrocket. Now, it doesn't prove causation, but there's tremendous correlation there, which has to be of concern. Now, the team reviewed research from the United States, a study that included 5,158 adults over a seven year period. Period. Here's what other theorists contend, and I find this compelling. If you are drinking artificial sugars and fake sugars, you're trying to trick your brain, trick your stomach, and your brain and your stomach are thinking, Ah, TJ's trying to trick me, I'll trick him, okay, he's giving me a bunch of fake sugar now, but when he's walking by the candy store later or when someone puts cookies in front of them, I'm going to trick him and tell him, hey, you're a good boy. You had all those diet drinks with no sugar. You deserve this cookie. Now, at the end of the day, literally at the end of the day, I'm consuming more sugar and certainly more calories because of these artificial sweeteners. Now, the easiest way to find artificial sweetener these days is any soft drink. But unfortunately there are artificial sweeteners now in everything. Bread, ketchup, it's go through your cabinet, go through everything in your refrigerator. Unless it is from the produce aisle and it is just carrot, carrots have some sugar, but it's good, healthy, natural sugar. But unless it's from the produce aisle, chances are there are artificial sugars added to your food and these low calorie ones are not helping. Now, I went to stevia a couple of years ago. I thought, wow, I'm being so good, I'm putting stevia in. And about a year ago I said, what evidence do I have that this is making me thinner? I hadn't lost any weight, didn't feel any healthier. So about a year ago, I eliminated stevia and any sugar, low calorie or anything else. When it comes to my coffee in the morning things that I typically have liked it. And I have to tell you, I do feel healthier. My weight has dropped considerably and I feel like I'm now at my ideal weight in part because I'm not using these low calorie sugars. I urge you to take a look at the story. There's an increasingly school of, increasingly growing school of thought, and I happen to be a proponent of this school that says the number one problem we have with this obesity epidemic is just the massive, massive, massive quantities of processed food and Chemicals we're putting in our body every day now. And I'm not someone who's anti gmo and I'm not anti pesticides and fertilizers. I'm talking about the artificial sugars and the trans fats and all the other processing and bleaching the flour. All of this processed food is what is making us consume more calories, and that's what's making us have all the health problems, problems associated with obesity. So if we could focus on just one habit to dramatically improve our health, it would be to focus on eating real food. By real food, I mean something that doesn't come in any package. You go to the store, you can buy an apple, and it doesn't have to be a package on it. You can buy bananas. There's no package other than the skin. The more we can eat things that are not packaged and processed, the better off we will be. It's tasty food, it's healthier food. We're much less likely to have obesity, diabetes, and all the other ailments that are associated with excessive weight. I'm TJ Walker. I want to thank you for joining me today. If this is your first time stumbling across this show, well, you're not alone. This is only the second day of what I hope is to be a regular show Monday through Friday, every week of the year, other than an occasional holiday when I'm traveling to give a speech or a workshop or a vacation. So this is a regular show and a regular communication for people who want to get together as a community to talk about ways of building healthier habits for every aspect of life. Now, today, we've spent a fair amount of our time talking about health, but I'm just as interested in habits that will help you become more creative in your career, habits that will help you become a better communicator, habits that will help you form better relationships with family and friends. So this is all encompassing about habits for every important aspect of your life. June has joined us on TikTok. Thanks for joining us. Mona has joined. Mona, your trade, has joined us on Instagram. And Joanne is with us on Instagram. Thank you for joining us. And we have some friends on Facebook and YouTube as well. If you have any questions, comments, post them. If you have criticisms, post them. If you have suggestions on what you like and don't like. In my backdrop, I would love to hear from you. So live questions do take precedence, but I also have students of mine and community members of mine email questions. And I wanted to share with you some other questions that have come in from my online students recently. These are from the platform of Udemy and this is an online platform. I have about 140 courses on every aspect of personal development, habit acquisition and communication there. So here's a question that comes from Sanjay. How do you find your purpose in life if you don't have one strong passion? Now, this is a common question I do hear from people, family members, friends for that matter. I do have a course on udemy, the complete course on finding your purpose in life that I think could help you on that. But my main bit of advice is it's okay not to have one overriding passion. The main challenge for you is to keep dabbling, keep experimenting, keep trying as many things as possible and when you find something that you're good at and you don't hate it. I'm not a particular fan of baking cakes, but if at an early age I had baked cakes and everyone told me how beautiful they were and how wonderful they were and how it was a great work of artistry, I probably would have baked more cakes. And if I kept doing that and people said, wow, this is the greatest cake ever. I want you to make a cake for my wedding and I'll pay you $10,000. I'm pretty sure I would have developed a very strong passion in life for baking cakes. Now, that's not the turn my life took and I still have no interest in baking cakes, but I do know people who make a very nice living making specialized cakes for weddings and they charge a fortune for it. They found their purpose in life, but it's very unlikely that at age 10 or even age 20, they told to the world, my passion life is baking expensive cakes. That's not how it works. In my own life, I spent dozens of years, decades of my life doing professional media training and presentation skills. I still do that, but for many years I did that exclusively. It wasn't something I just knew at age 15 or 20 I wanted to do. Now at 15 and 20, I did have a passion for media, for politics, for communicating. And it morphed into coming up with a training business where I taught people public speaking and media training because I had a whole bunch of other things I tried that failed. I got some success here and when you get success, it makes you more excited to do it. Then you learn more and you can go deeper and deeper and deeper. So, Sanjay, that's my main piece of advice for you, is don't stop sampling, don't stop trying things and always Be on the lookout for what is it you do that gives you some joy and interest? Maybe it's not as much fun as a day at the beach or playing baseball with your friends, but something where you enjoy that other people find rewarding. And when you put those two together, what quite often happens is your passion grows. You might not have a passion for making design. Let's say it's a type of cabinet, metal cabinets. You might not initially think you have a passion for that. But if you're getting more and more feedback from people in your community who love your cabinets, and all of a sudden they're telling everyone how great it is, and there's a waiting list and you can double and triple your fees. Not that money means everything, but that's quite often what happens to people who you think of as really successful who have their passion in life is they just try different things. One thing worked better than others. They found something that they were good at. A lot of other people respected it, liked it and wanted it. And it grew from there. It expanded from there. The one thing I don't want you to do, Sanjay, is just stay in one boring job. Check out as soon as you go home, pop a beer, watch Netflix or Hulu or whatever the top show is in Bollywood, and live all of your life for watching cricket matches, football matches and sports as a passive consumer of other people's content. Unfortunately, that is what happens to so many people who go through life saying, I don't have a passion in life. It's not something that just you wake up one day and boom, it hits you on the head. It's more of a process. And if you are continually trying new things, continually keeping your eyes open to new options, you will, in fact, find a lot of things that could be your passion in life and could lead to a rewarding life. A life where you feel like you are serving a purpose, helping people, meeting the financial needs you want, getting the respect you want, and doing interesting things with your life in a fulfilling way, that's what it's all about. But, Sanjay, thanks for your question. We'll get more questions in one minute. I've got a little bit of technical issue here. I've just got to click a screen so my colleague Marceau can access. Marceau, are you able to access the screen now? I was getting TeamViewer popping up saying, there's a problem. My producer today is working from Brooklyn. I'm here in Long Island, New York, so we're only about 30 miles apart, but we're working Together virtually. Okay, so you're back in. All right, Marceau, Great. Yeah. Well, we'll figure out a solution to that. Cyrano has joined us and ex Mason Unique has joined us on TikTok. Thanks so much. If you're just joining us, we're here talking about personal development issues, habit acquisition, how to build stronger, healthier habits, not just in fitness, but career, all aspects of life, especially as this new year begins. If you're here on Instagram, also happy you're joining us. Tenocle is with us. Ali Salumi is with us on Instagram. Thank you for joining us. If you have any questions at all, please feel free to join them. I've got to switch back right now to other questions from students who've written to me from my online courses on Udemy this week. What can I do if I feel my colleagues aren't listening to me in a meeting? Now, this is a common, common problem. I know many people around the world feel this. They're speaking at a meeting and it could be a Monday morning staff meeting, it could be just three people, but you're speaking and what do you see? Your colleague next to you is playing on a cell phone and they're not paying any attention. Or they may be looking at you, but you can tell they're looking at you with a look of what is this person talking about? Or why is she boring me? So if you feel this way, you're not alone. Sari, let me tell you, many hundreds of millions of people are in your shoes where they feel like they're in a meeting, could be talking to a client prospect, colleagues, co workers, bosses, and they just feel like the other people, people are not paying attention. The first thing I need you to really think about is are you saying something interesting? It may be all your colleagues are rude. I don't want to discount that. But the problem most people have in meetings is their expectations are so low because they're thinking everyone else in my company or my organization is boring. So I'm going to kind of tune out and sleep. My eyes might be open, but I'll kind of go to sleep or I'll act like I'm doing business emails, but I'm really checking sports scores because they think that nothing important is being said, because they think that the speaker is just dumping data to cover their you know what, and burying people in data. It's a boring data dump. So the first thing you need to do for any meeting is make sure you have something interesting to say right out of the gate. Don't warm up to it. Don't tell people what you're gonna say. Don't talk about your outline, don't talk about how many minutes you're gonna. Just say something interesting. I try to do that at the beginning of every one of my shows. Yesterday within the first 30 seconds, I hopped right into sharing information about a device I use to make really healthy omelet. I wasn't selling it, but it's a little device I use to make microwave eggs. You might not want to ever, ever buy that or use it, but I didn't spend any time talking about myself and me and my show. I tried to give a specific tip to be interesting to you. I did the same today. Within the first 20, 20 seconds, I went right into a quick tip on how to start your day with a little more energy. Just the habit of doing 20 jumping jacks. And I said, you know, I realize it sounds silly, it may feel silly, but I do it every day and it feels good. Gets my blood going. It's only 20, it only takes about 20 seconds. But I hopped right into it because I wanted to send a message to you that, hey, you should listen to me because I'm going to say something interesting right out of the gate. So Siri, that's really my advice to you is you've got to give more thought to how you can say something that's going to get people's attention. I don't mean in a provocative way or a jokey way or anything that is out of your character. I don't mean saying an off colored joke. Well, that would get people's attention, but it might get you fired. I don't want you to say something politically incorrect or damaging. Just say something interesting. That is the number one way of getting people's attention. The other problem many people have is because they are nervous they're speaking too softly. Now some of you might like the information I give you in my online courses and in this live stream show, but I could give the very same information. If I spoke like this the whole time, you would tune out instantly because I'm speaking too softly. So make sure your volume doesn't go way down. My recommendation is if you're going to be speaking at a meeting, practice what you're going to say in advance. Record it on your cell phone, listen to it. Ideally have a friend record it five feet away or so because that will be more like the distance someone might be to you in a real meeting. What you'll find quite often when you listen to your video. And your voice is that you're speaking so softly you can't even hear yourself. So practice. Keep practicing again and again and again to make sure your volume is at the right level. I don't mean yell at people. Don't do that. That can be off putting. Is it possible to speak too loudly and yell? Yeah, it's possible, but I live in the real world. In the real world, for every person who yells too loudly, There are about 500 people in the workplace who, when they are speaking, speak too softly. And it's just easy for people to tune out. They can just fall asleep because your voice is so soft. And when you speak with a really low tone and low volume, you're sending a message to people. I'm a little bit nervous. I'm uncertain with myself. I'm not completely confident. I'm not quite certain what I'm saying is credible. So maybe you should doubt me too. If you're not certain of what you're saying, then why should anyone else believe you? Why should they give you their attention? We live in an attention economy. Everyone is fighting for attention. Mark Zuckerberg is a billionaire many times over because he figured out a way of getting attention of a couple billion people in the world. The founders of Netflix have become quite wealthy because they figured out a way of capturing attention. Jeff Bezos knows how to capture your attention when you want to buy something. So everyone is trying to capture the attention of every eyeball and ear on the planet. When you are in a business meeting, it's no different. And the only difference is you don't have the resources to put together a slick advertising campaign the way the CEO of Apple does, or of Netflix or McDonald's or Coca Cola. But what you do have is somebody right there in the room. They can see you, hear you, get a sense of who you are if you say something interesting. So don't squander it. It's very easy to say, well, people in my company are rude or my organization, they're rude. It's not a functional organization. I got to get out of here. Maybe. Maybe the problem is you, and it's a lot easier to fix you than it is other people. I think we can all agree on that. It's easier to fix yourself than everyone else in the world. So that's why I recommend start off by rehearsing to make sure what you're saying is in fact interesting and coming across in a compelling way. You want to take it up a notch. Find one colleague you trust and rehearse with them before a meeting. Also ask them how they think you're coming across. Your colleague may think you're coming across really well and you're just imagining that people are ignoring you. Or you might think you're doing really well and they're telling you, no, everyone was doodling in the back. It's good to get feedback. You can't ask everyone in the company, but if you feel like there's one person and you already have a friendship there, you may want to ask for feedback. Now here's an advanced tip I recommend for anytime you're giving a business presentation, a meeting, a briefing, a talk, take your cell phone, hit the audio memo record and just put it flat. Record yourself, speak, and then as soon as the meeting is over, listen to what you said. Now be careful, don't do this. If it's confidential trade secrets being discussed and there is a very firm policy of no recordings. But if it's just you speaking, certainly if it's a prepared presentation in a meeting, no one's going to be offended at you recording yourself. Just be sure to stop it when you're done talking, then you can go back and listen to it and really dissect it for yourself to figure out what did you like? What did you not like? And it's a highly effective tool. Special hello to Timothy Rose who's joined us on TikTok. And by the way, Timothy. I'm also with Timothy. I'm a Timothy John. The TJ is short for Timothy John and Sire Clifton has joined us. That's a very impressive name, Sire, if I'm pronouncing it correctly. Saul Adams, 68, has joined us as well as Abdul, all on TikTok. My good friends at TikTok. By the way, if you're just joining us, if you have any questions dealing with personal development, habit acquisition, how to have good habits, how to get rid of bad habits, or how to communicate more effectively, how to build strong communication habits. Post your comments right there. And I see Gen X guy has just joined us. Post your comments and questions and I'm happy to answer them. And we can have a community discussion here as well. And I see that Tanakali has joined us on Instagram and to any of our friends on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, joining us today, I want to give you a very special welcome as well. Happy you're here. And if you're watching this on demand later, let me know. Whether you're watching this live or on demand. Let me know you saw this. Let me Know where you saw it. And let me know if there's any other place you would like to watch. As we've already experienced today, if you're watching on Instagram, Instagram's algorithm automatically shuts off a live feed after 60 minutes. So we lose you without saying goodbye. And then I have to come connect again. So I appreciate those of you who came back to us for the second hour. If I am broadcasting on TikTok, I can't connect easily through the main. The main technology service that allows us to go live through my main broadcast camera mounted on my wall. So that's why you're seeing me at this odd angle. If you would prefer to watch on any other platform, whether it's YouTube, Facebook, you may get a better angle. But you're more than welcome to stay with me here as well. Okay, a word about our sponsor. As you can probably tell, there are not a lot of advertisements interrupting this show every five minutes for McDonald's and Coca Cola. And truthfully, if this show gets to the point where we have 10 million live viewers, I doubt you're going to see ads like that because of the content of this show, because I'm basically telling you, don't eat McDonald's, don't drink Coke, because it's going to kill you. But I do have to make a living. We have bills to pay. So we do have a sponsor. And the sponsor today is an online course, a course called Decluttering Complete Organizing Home Office Life Course. And I am the instructor for this course. This is one of my courses on the Udemy platform. You may have heard of Marie Kondo. She's extraordinarily famous for her books on tidying. She has her own Netflix show and fantastic books. I do recommend her books. She has a whole philosophy as you pick up everything in your house, look at and say, is this giving me joy? If not, give it away or throw it away. I think that's a great philosophy. I go a step further, though. I try to get people to look at every single thing in their life through that lens. Your home, your office, not just your stuff, but what you're reading, what you are consuming, what you put your eyeballs on. How do you declutter your life now? This course is very popular this time of year, as you would imagine. People have all the clutter from new holiday presents. They're getting rid of old packages, boxes everywhere. So this course is selling. You'll see a special discount link in the course or, excuse me, in the show notes for today. So if you're looking around at your house and you see clutter everywhere and you think, how can I get out of this? This course can save you time. In a nutshell, my single biggest tip, and this is where I am different from Marie Kondo, is I believe it's great to just throw one thing away each day. Give it away or throw it away. If you're actively looking for one thing in your house, one thing in your office every single day to throw away, your house is going to be pretty clean in just a few months and you don't have to spend three whole weekends doing it. Let's go to some of the questions and comments on Facebook. Happy to see Ajmal has joined us. Folger, one of our longtime regulars, has joined us. Folger, good to see you. Today, Matthews says hello. And Peggy, always happy to see Peggy with her insights. And Peggy writes about the background. Your background looks cozy and great. Well, that's what I was hoping for. And truthfully, it is very cozy. This is the great room in my house. I do love my house. Fortunate enough to have sort of my dream house that my wife, my daughter and I live in, that we've kind of created. So this is a great big room. It's got a very large dining room. The whole kitchen is there. So if it's evening time and we're about to have dinner, we're basically in this room for the rest of the night. So the fire is typically going. Now, what you're seeing here is a video loop. We couldn't figure out how do I do this show every single day from my living room without annoying my wife and my daughter to death with the clutter and the extra time it takes. So what you're now seeing is a video of what's just, you know, 50ft away on the other side of the house upstairs. But what happens occasionally is it can freeze. So that's what makes it look a little odd. And you could probably see the dimensions. It doesn't look a hundred percent real with how I am in relation to the backdrop. So that's. So if you think, well, is he trying to trick us? Yes and no. I'm being transparent. I am telling you exactly what I'm doing. Here I am in my studio where I've made all of my online courses. I do TV interviews from here, Skype interviews all over the world. I am in a 6 foot by 9 foot closet in the first floor of my home. And then this is simply a television behind me, a television screen, and we are replaying the video link, a 15 minute video link that we shot just yesterday. A nice fire. I suppose we'll use a different background spring and summer because it would look odd to have a fire going on in July in New York. But Peggy, thanks so much for your comments. And Peggy, if you have any particular topics you would like me to address, then please let me know. I am here for you. I am responsive. There's a fine line in every show and I try not to go too far one way or the other. I don't want to come at you and just Bombard you with 50 different topics and it'd be me, me, me all the time. And I don't want to just come unprepared and wait for questions. I try to have a mix and that's what I do today. So while you're thinking of any other questions, you have. One feature I do like to have in every single show is to just pull things off my own reading list, off my own bookshelf. So every day I typically share with you some excerpt from a book that meant something to me that was significant to me. Typically one from the classics, a classic from the genre of personal development or philosophy, and then typically from a new book that I also think has something particularly useful and helpful. So the first book I want to share with you is Man's Search for Meaning. Viktor Frankl. This is an extraordinarily famous book. Many of you probably heard of it, even if you've never read it. This was written by someone who was a victim and he was held in a concentration camp in World War II and barely escaped death and execution numerous times. His central thesis is man, and he says man's search for meaning. It was written in the 1940s, but he means human beings. The search for meaning comes from this. You can strip away every other power someone has. You can stick take away every dignity, every scrap of clothing, food, decency, and a human being can still decide how they are going to react to tortures and other atrocities put upon them. That that's the ultimate thing you cannot take away from human beings and humanity. That's one of his huge central insights that's been so meaningful to people over the years. I wanted to share with you a brief excerpt. The intensification of inner life helped the prisoner find a refuge from the emptiness, desolation and spiritual poverty of his existence by letting him escape into the past. He talks a great deal about just having a more active fantasy life when he was in the concentration camp, fantasizing about his Happy life as a child, fantasizing about what he assumed and projected would be his life once he got out. Now it turned out he was able to enact that, went on to a full rich life, a successful author. He was a doctor, his own practice. So he went on to have tremendous success, happiness and accomplishment in life. But he got through this time and his first wife was killed, most of his family was killed. Everyone around him was tortured, murdered. Just the most horrific aspects of life. And when you see someone like that who can come through it and not be destroyed, it is something that gives you more faith in humankind. I would recommend that book and it's certainly one that is referenced in virtually every other well known, well read personal development book. So if you're like me and you don't want to just take other people's words for it, you want to go to the primary source. I would reference that Now. I think I forgot to put the link to this, but I mean you can find it very easily on Amazon. That's all I'm doing is typing the name of the book. Man's Search for Meaning Viktor Frankl and Amazon providing links. I'm not trying to sell you anything. I'm not getting an affiliate's commission. Not that there's anything wrong with that. It's just not my business model right now. There's one other book I want to share with you, but I do want to take a moment to go to some of your questions. Gen X guy writes, how do people tap into their best growth potential to perform your best mentally, to do great feats and Gen X. First of all, thanks for a Gen X person listening to a baby boomer. I am a baby boomer. I was born in 1962. The baby boomer ends in 64. And it's nice to have someone not just saying, okay, boomer. So thanks first of all for listening and watching. But I do want to address this question of how do you perform at your peak? Figure out what it takes for you to be at your peak. For most people, it requires about eight hours of sleep. Now, yes, there are variations, but if you're using an alarm clock to get up out of bed, you've already destroyed a good percentage of your mental effectiveness. You're using an alarm clock, you are not getting enough sleep. And this is controversial personal development circles because there's this whole school of thought that says get up at 5am and get up an hour earlier and you'll have all this extra time. You cannot think properly if your brain doesn't have time to restore itself. So that's the first really big thing I would say Gen X to you is make sure physically you have enough sleep. And it's very easy to find out if you're getting enough sleep. Go to bed, see what time you wake up when there's no alarm clock. And what happens to so many people is they get into a habit of staying up late, chatting with friends, YouTube videos, watching TV, video games until one in the morning. And then you got to set the alarm clock for 7am you got six hours sleep, your body needs eight. And at the end of the week you've got a deficit of 14 hours and your brain is sluggish. You're not going to be mentally at your peak if you are not rested. So that's number one. Number two, you need to eat proper food. You need proper nourishment. I won't get into the whole debate about whether breakfast is the most important meal or you can skip it. I know if I skip breakfast, my stomach is like this. I'm in pain and agony. I can't think about anything. So you've got to know your own body. But the more real food you can eat that doesn't come from a box or a package and have lots of artificial sugars added, the better off you will be. The next thing is you need to exercise. Numerous studies show that you're mentally at your peak when your body is physically at its peak. You don't have to run marathons every day, but you do need some exercise. I've had a really busy day now. Haven't been able to go for my hour long walk yet, which I hope to after the show. But I've still done almost 50 push ups. I've already done pull ups today. I've already done running on the treadmill only for 60 seconds. I've already lifted weights today, only for five minutes. I've already done stretching exercises, I've done some posture exercises. Add it all up. It doesn't add up to more than and I've done jumping jacks. It doesn't add up to more than 15 minutes of exercise. But most people don't even do that. Give yourself some form of exercise goal every single day. I give myself a goal of walking 12,500 steps every day. You may choose 10,000. There's no one perfect number. But give yourself a goal. So that's part of priming you to be mentally at your peak. But you need more than a good healthy body. That's a part of it. But there are plenty of people who have good, healthy bodies, but they spend all their day just reading cartoons and comic books and tabloid trash news. If all that goes into your brain through your eyes and ears is trivial nonsense, ideas and news about this person harming this person and celebrity tabloid news, your brain is going to shrink, certainly not going to grow. So you've got to figure out what is it you care about the most and how can you fine tune that? I care about personal development and I care about having the absolute best ideas in the world on helping people acquire better habits, whether it's in their business life, their personal life, their health life, their communications life. Because of that, I read a book every single day. Now, it's not always a long book. Sometimes it's an Amazon short, sometimes it's an abridged book on Insta reads or blinks. But every single day I try to read at least an hour of a traditional paper book. And this is one. If I don't get to talk to you about it today, I'll talk to you about it tomorrow. This is Atomic Habits by James Clear, which is a great book, but I read every single day from serious books about my area of expertise. And I also read digital books part of every day. And I also consume a book through an audio digital book every single day. So sometimes I consume three books in three different ways. That's how I keep mentally sharp. The final piece of this is you've got to figure out a way of taking your knowledge, your insights and turning it into something. You have to create something. Could be a new software design, could be a new song, but if you want to really keep your brain, tip top, highly productive, I believe you need to create every single debt, even if it's just for two minutes. Jerry Seinfeld famously said he just gave himself a goal early in his career. He would write one joke per day. Didn't have to be a great joke, but he was going to write a joke every single day and he was going to make a note of it on his calendar on his wall. I give myself a quota every day, single day. Yesterday was an incredibly busy day with members of my team here in my home launching a show, 10 other things, family commitments. But first thing in the morning, I still wrote 500 words about habits that will serve as a blog post, will serve as a portion of a book on habits. So I write every single day. So that's what I think is really important, is to be physically healthy, consume great content, and also create content. So it's Really a three pronged approach that I think is essential every single day. So thank you so much for that question, Gen X guy. I hope you found that useful. Let me know. Or if you think not, give me a thumbs down or something. We've had some other people I want has joined us. User 508 has joined us. Grandma has joined us and says, are you a pasted. I don't know if you mean is my skin pasty. I hope not. Oh, I see you've added it. Pastor, I think you're asking, are you a pastor? Definitively not a pastor, but depends on how you define pastor. I do see myself as an evangelist of sorts. I'm not associated with any organization larger than myself. I'm certainly not associated with any particular branch of any religion. But I am an evangelist for the idea of personal development, for the idea that every single human being on this planet can improve their own life by impression, improving their daily habits. So that's what this show is about. This is my ministry of sorts, if you are comfortable with that metaphor. So I appreciate the question. I do train people in all aspects of public life, including pastors from time to time, believe it or not, on how to communicate more effectively, how to speak more effectively. And so I am somewhat involved and I've worked with imams and I've worked with people of all different faiths when it comes to how to communicate more effectively and people who have no faith how to communicate their ideals more effectively too. So Grandma, thanks so much for joining me today. Please let me know if you have any other questions. I think we are back live again with our colleagues on Instagram. We lost you there for a little while and if you're joining us on Facebook or YouTube or any other platform again, feel free to post your comments. We are running out of time, but I did want to share with you one of the more recent books that I thought was extremely, extremely valuable. And I realized in this platform it reverses the text. So me holding this up isn't necessarily helpful to you all the time, but this is Atomic Habits by James Clear. And James Clear is a, to me, a fascinating guy because I can sort of relate to him. He's not a full time journalist, he's not a full time researcher scientist. He's kind of a guy who just read everything else out there about the habits, did a lot of his own reflection, thought synthesis, analysis, and came up with just a fantastic book. And it is, I believe at this publication the number one book on habits in the world. It was A New York Times bestseller. There are a lot of bad books about habits out there and I don't like to name names. This is not one of them. This is a great book. If you can only read one book in the next year on habits, this is the book I would recommend. When mine comes out next year, I'll recommend mine. But for right now, I would highly recommend this book. Tiny changes. Remarkable results. Atomic habits. An easy and proven way to build good habits and break old ones. I want to share with you a brief excerpt. It is so easy to overestimate the importance of what one defining moment and underestimate the value of making small improvements on a daily basis. Too often we convince ourselves that massive success requires massive action. And I think here he's kind of taking a shot at the Anthony Robbins of the world. Take massive action, he says. Go small, look for small little changes. He says, continuing the quote. Meanwhile, improving by 1% isn't particularly notable. Sometimes it isn't even noticeable. But it can be far more meaningful in the long run. My thinking is very much in alignment with James Clear is you focus on daily habits you can do don't make a big difference initially in any one day, but long term they make a huge difference. He has a great knack for the metaphor and the analogy that really clears things up. He said, when you're changing your habits and making improvements in your life, a lot of times it's like trying to melt ice. If the Temperature starts at 22 and you take the temp, you increase the temperature in the room to 28, you've made progress. Nothing visible has changed. The ice block is still ice, but you've made some progress. No one knows it, no one can see it at 31. Still no one noticed it. It looks like nothing has accomplished, nothing has happened. Good. But once you hit like 33, things start melting. But you don't get to 33 without going from 22 to 28 to 30 to 31 and on up. So much of life is like that with your habits, about your health, your diet, your work habits, your creation habits. It's small incremental things you do behaviors on a daily basis that makes a huge impact in the long run. Everything I look at, every piece of advice I give you is looked at through the lens of is this particular habit sustainable? That's why things like milkshake diets I can't advocate because I've just never been to a senior center and seen a healthy 95 year old or 100 year old, perfect weight and had them say, oh yeah, my secret is I drink milkshakes once or twice a day. It's not sustainable. So James Clear book is excellent. I will. I'll try to add a link to that as well, but you can find it easily if you just Google Habits or go to Amazon Habits. You will see his book Atomic Habits and clever use of the name of atomic it's all about getting things down to the smallest particle imaginable that isn't even visible. It's a beautiful, beautiful metaphor for how our lives are constructed with so many habits that we don't even see or think about. Just the way an atom is composed. I'm TJ Walker. I've really enjoyed spending our time together today, as always. If you have any questions and I didn't get to yours, post them in the comments. I'll answer your questions tomorrow. Please join me again tomorrow, same time, 1pm eastern to 3pm eastern, Monday through Friday on your platform of choice. Thanks a lot. See you tomorrow.