Have you ever wondered how monumental life changes can sprout from the tiniest of seeds? I'm Sarah Hamell, and this episode is a tapestry woven from my personal story of transformation, the insights of 'Atomic Habits' and 'The Slight Edge', and the wisdom of a collective of thought leaders. Join our self-improvement book club, and embrace the magic of small, consistent actions that shape the landscape of our lives, as we uncover the profound effects of incremental gains and the harmonious dance between audacious leaps and the daily grind of habit formation.
This week's conversation steers towards the compelling interplay of massive action and the continuous pursuit of 1% improvements. Drawing inspiration from the likes of Tony Robbins and Dave Ramsey, we dissect the catalysts that propel us towards personal revolutions and the sustaining drumbeat of tiny habits that ensure victory in the long marathon of life. It's a chorus of motivation, clarity of purpose, and the fine art of balancing bold initiatives with the subtleties of daily practice.
As we put a bow on this episode, we reflect on the delicate balance between reaching for the stars and planting our feet firmly in the fertile soil of the present. We explore the notion that our most cherished achievements often lie not in the trophies we collect but in the journey we undertake and the habits we cultivate. I invite you to ponder your own path, share your experiences, and engage in a vibrant discussion that enriches us all, as we continue to navigate the thrilling odyssey of self-improvement together.
To have access to our private Facebook group and support our show ❤️ click the link below!
https://www.buzzsprout.com/2326358/support
Have you ever wondered how monumental life changes can sprout from the tiniest of seeds? I'm Sarah Hamell, and this episode is a tapestry woven from my personal story of transformation, the insights of 'Atomic Habits' and 'The Slight Edge', and the wisdom of a collective of thought leaders. Join our self-improvement book club, and embrace the magic of small, consistent actions that shape the landscape of our lives, as we uncover the profound effects of incremental gains and the harmonious dance between audacious leaps and the daily grind of habit formation.
This week's conversation steers towards the compelling interplay of massive action and the continuous pursuit of 1% improvements. Drawing inspiration from the likes of Tony Robbins and Dave Ramsey, we dissect the catalysts that propel us towards personal revolutions and the sustaining drumbeat of tiny habits that ensure victory in the long marathon of life. It's a chorus of motivation, clarity of purpose, and the fine art of balancing bold initiatives with the subtleties of daily practice.
As we put a bow on this episode, we reflect on the delicate balance between reaching for the stars and planting our feet firmly in the fertile soil of the present. We explore the notion that our most cherished achievements often lie not in the trophies we collect but in the journey we undertake and the habits we cultivate. I invite you to ponder your own path, share your experiences, and engage in a vibrant discussion that enriches us all, as we continue to navigate the thrilling odyssey of self-improvement together.
To have access to our private Facebook group and support our show ❤️ click the link below!
https://www.buzzsprout.com/2326358/support
Welcome to the Can Things Get Better podcast with Sarah Hamel. Hey y'all, my name is Sarah and welcome to Can Life Get Any Better podcast. I want to start off with just kind of introducing myself and talking about what this podcast is going to be about. So I am a mom of three kids. I also am a boutique owner of a Western clothing store and I'm a mental health clinician. I have been working in the mental health field for about oh, since 2009.
Speaker 1:So what is that? Like 14 years or so, since about 2010-2011, I came upon this like idea about how you have the power to change who you are, change yourself, improve yourself. I guess the idea of being an adult gave me that realization that who you are is all in your power, which makes sense because as kids, you know, you don't have as much power as you do to change who you are as you do as when you're an adult. So ever since then, I have been working on self-improvement. I think my first book that I read on self-improvement that I can remember was either Girl Wash your Face by Rachel Hollis or a Brown about the power of vulnerability, so both of which I think we probably will review in this podcast. So, anyways, what this podcast is going to look like. So, like I said, it's a self-improvement book club, so very similar to other book clubs that you may have been a part of. We're going to get together once a week, hopefully, assuming that schedule allows for it. I'm going to do a podcast once a week and we're gonna review a chapter every week. I'm going to be walking through these chapters. So we're gonna walk through like different details about the chapter and like key points, and then I'm also probably gonna be bringing up and I say probably, I'm definitely going to be bringing up different things that different, various self-improvement people have talked about, that are similar or different, comparing, contrast these things, how they work together, because I think that that is the power of really digging in is realizing that not only are you gonna get this from one book, but you're also gonna get it from another, and sometimes it's just how that person says it or how that person applies it. That's really gonna hit home for you. So we're going to, hopefully, at the end of each chapter it's gonna depend on the book, but my goal is going to be, at the end of each chapter, for us to have some way that we can apply this knowledge that we've learned, because without application, self-improvement isn't helpful. Reading self-improvement books just like slamming yourself with all this knowledge is not helpful if you're not applying it. So the goal will be to end each session with some kind of activity that you're going to do, so that way you can see improvement in your life from this.
Speaker 1:Right now we are going through Atomic Habits by James Clear. That's what this book looks like. I have the hard copy. I personally listened to the majority actually Not majority I listened to all of myself improvement stuff in audio. I just learned better that way. But for the purpose of this podcast I'm going to be having the paperback versions because I find that it's helpful to have Places that I can write notes and read along with the author and kind of jot down my thoughts. So You're gonna see me pulling up the book every once in a while, try to remember to reference which page it is on, so that way y'all can follow along if you want to. Not, we will just go from From what I'm reading.
Speaker 1:So first off, basically, this chapter is kind of giving you an introduction of what the idea of atomic habits are, which is explaining the power of small habits. So I really like how James the author starts off with a story about a bicyclist team that implements a number of small habits to improve their Speed and this in the end makes it so that way they can win championships in their said Field, right. So it really pushes his idea that small habits, small changes, incremental changes, can have a major impact in your life. So, and after that it kind of goes into the idea of compounding interest and how, if you you aren't familiar with compounding interest, it would be a good idea to do a little bit research, because if you're not familiar with that, you really should be. As far as trying to plan for retirement that I'm not going to go off on that bunny trail.
Speaker 1:As far as Small habits though, it we talk about in this chapter, how it's a 1% gain has a substantial improvement over time. So if you make 1% gain every day, you're going to have a substantial improvement within 30 days. That's 30%, right, and even if it is the, even if it isn't 1%, it's still going to have an impact. So, and it was really interesting to me, one book that I actually finished reading recently was the Slight Edge by Jeff Olson, and his book is it kind of comes from that same concept of Small habits making substantial changes over time. So I really liked that. So, moving into kind of the meat of the chapter was really interesting to me was how he talks about he almost At least in my opinion. It kind of started off with the idea of Minimizing, taking a massive action versus taking small action. So the idea of massive action versus small action and why you need both.
Speaker 1:You have been in the self-improvement field for a long time. You're going to be familiar with people such as Tony Robbins, dave Ramsey. Both of those two men talk about how, when you have Decided to make a change in your life, you have to take massive action initially to make that change in your life. And this is because typically, when you've decided to make a change in your life, you're sick and tired of being sick and tired. That's one of my favorite Dave Ramsey quotes. I follow a lot of different financials advisors. I'm not going to promote him, but that particular quote being sick and tired of being sick and tired. And that doesn't have to be with your finances, it doesn't have to be with work. It can be with being sick and tired of being heavier than you want to be. It can be sick and tired of not feeling taken care of. It can be sick and tired of not getting enough time with your family, whatever it is Often for people to make change and to really have a strong desire to want to change, they have to be sick and tired of that negative thing. So those two men really talk about taking massive action initially, so that way you are seeing an impact in your improvement right away and making that decision. So, whatever that may be, say you are going to Say your goal is to lose weight, so maybe that massive action Would be throwing away all the soda in your house or donating it to somebody or something like that. That could be a massive action that you decide to take.
Speaker 1:One of my favorite Tony Robbins stories that he talks about in massive action is when he was doing his smoking sensation Coaching. He talked about how he had this one gentleman that was trying to quit smoking and he kind of shocked him into Realizing that he didn't want to smoke anymore. How did he do that? By making him smoke like a whole carton of cigarettes. Don't worry, from my understanding he doesn't do this anymore. He doesn't even do smoking sensation Coaching anymore. But he found, obviously, that there were better ways to Get someone to not want to do something. But I'm sure you have seen examples of this in your life when taking massive action or having something major happen Maybe it's not even something that you chose to happen, but it's something that just happened so like. So, like Someone that smokes may be developing, like finding out they have lung cancer, that's something massive. So they have to make a massive decision of never buying cigarettes again or, like I said, throwing the soda away. Whatever it may be, massive action is helpful.
Speaker 1:Back to the atomic habit. Sorry, I kind of went off on a little tangent there, but kind of minimizes the massive action thing in this and I'm not a huge fan of that. But I will say that the you cannot take your massive action is not going to stick without Atomic habits. It's just not so. Anyways, tony Robbins has where he has what he calls MAP MAP, and you want to be asking your questions.
Speaker 1:You're going to be mapping out what you want this change to look like essentially. So you're going to ask yourself questions like how much? How much weight do I want to lose by when? When do I want to have my emergency fund saved. For what purpose? Why? Why establishing that? Why? Why do you want to reach that goal? Why do I want to have an emergency fund? So that way I feel like if there is emergency I can, I can cover it. I don't have to go into crisis.
Speaker 1:You cannot visualize, verbalize and write down why you are pursuing your goal. It is likely that you have not formed the connection to make it a reality. So that why establishing the why is very important, and I'm pretty sure that I'm jumping ahead for us in the Atomic Habits book, because I think that he does go over that a little bit. But I just want to kind of bring that up because if we're going to be starting to implement habits right away, we need to think about this why? Why do you want to implement that habit? Why do you want to get up early, before your kids are awake? Why do you want to make sure you're doing your skin routine every night, whatever it may be? So if you don't have your why, it's going to be really difficult to maintain consistency in your habits. So it's very, very important to get that why. Because if you don't have it, if you don't know why, you want an emergency fund whenever you go to the store and you see that, oh, look at that cute lip gloss or whatever it may be, you're not going to have a strong. If you don't have a strong enough, why? You're probably going to use your emergency fund money for that lip gloss or that pair of shoes or that new tool that you want. So establishing that why is extremely important for your success in the habit building. Okay. So then I really like this quote from page 15.
Speaker 1:It says too often we convince ourselves that massive success requires massive action. Whether it is losing weight, building a business or writing a book, winning a championship or achieving any other goal, we put pressure on ourselves to make some earth shattering improvement that everyone will talk about. So I think that that's what's really important here in the idea of making taking massive action. The massive action is not for anybody else, it's for you, first of all, and second of all, you can continue to make very big progress with 1% change every day as well. So if you take that massive action and then you continue to make progress at 1%, so say, you start a savings account and you put in $100, maybe that's. That's massive. Don't judge me whether that's a lot or a little for you. Okay, I'm just it's an example. Then you have after that you're going to put 1% in every single day. So let's say you're only saving $30 a month. After that You're still going to go from $100 to $130 to $160 every, you know, and so on every month. So that 1% difference is going to add to that massive action. Okay, but the massive action is going to help your psychological ability to continue to make improvements and show yourself that this decision is a big enough decision for you to take seriously. So 1% better each day for one year will end up being 37 times better than by the time that you were done.
Speaker 1:Okay, so yeah, moving on to the next section with compound interest as far as habits go. So I really love the quote. Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement. So, like, if we're going to stick with the savings account example $100 and we decide to just keep it at home in an envelope where it's not developing any interest, we all have been told that it is not wise to do that. If you, obviously you need to have some money on hand that you can access right away, but if you're looking at long-term savings goals, it's better to have this thing we like to call compound interest. Why is that? Because your money is making money for you without you doing anything right. The bank is paying you 1% interest on every dollar that you have in there, so it's building that money up without you doing anything. So habits are the compound interest of yourself. Improvement what does that mean? It means that when you develop a habit and it becomes an actual habit, it doesn't take effort to do it anymore. It's very similar to the bank paying you money on your $100. Okay, and then again it's going to continue to have that snowball effect and ripple into something more.
Speaker 1:That brings me back to the Sly Edge book. There was an example that he gave us in that book talking about how, as far as self-improvement goes, if you read 10 pages a day, every single day, for a year, you're going to end up reading about 10 books a year. 10 pages might take you, you know, 10, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, depending on how fast or slow reader you are, but it's such a small amount of your time and every day you're taking in those 10 minutes of reading and by the end of the year you have 10 books completed. Okay, what does that mean. So 10 books doesn't sound like a lot right, but if you consider the fact that, kind of on a side note, like Tony Robbins talks about when he was young, each book that you're taking in as far as self-improvement goes, you're taking in that person's life work. So what does that mean? For example, james Clear. He spent I don't even know how many years to develop this concept of the small habits. He had a blog. If you read the introduction, he had a blog about small habits and started coaching people on small habits and then went into writing a book.
Speaker 1:Okay, so it's this man's life work up into this point, this book, and or at minimum, what? 10 years of knowledge and experience. Right, you're taking this knowledge and experience and applying it to your life. Can you imagine what that looks like? As far as 10 books a year. So you're taking 10 different people's life work and applying it to your life. I don't know about you, but for me, what a time saver Like you didn't have to go through all that and learn those lessons they're teaching you. It's like a big brother coming up and trying to give you this is hey, this is the easier way, why don't you do it this way, and that is the idea of self improvement for me. You're learning from someone else. Whether you take a little nugget, or you learn so much, it's something that the knowledge you wouldn't have had otherwise unless you went through it. So we have to remember, though, that knowledge is not power. Knowledge with action is power, so it is not enough just to read the book, you have to apply it. So just keep that in mind as we're reading it.
Speaker 1:Okay, so yeah, this gets us into the positive habits table, and if you have the hard copy, this is the page that I'm talking about, it's this table here. So we have, on the left side is the positive compounding, and on the right side it's the negative compounding. I'm not going to go through these categories. If you've read the book, you already know.
Speaker 1:One of the things that really stood out to me in this section was the negative thoughts compound. So this light edge, or this habit building, or whatever you want to call it, it doesn't just have an effect on you If you're making good decisions, it also has an effect on you if you're making not so good decisions. So, each day, your curve, like they talk about in the slide edge, each day, your curve of these decisions. You're going to have a curve, regardless whether it's positive or negative, or whether it's the way that you want to go or not. It's going to curve and that is based off of every little decision that you make every single day. So, as a mental health clinician, I really liked the section about negative thoughts compounding. So this section I'm just going to read to you really quick.
Speaker 1:It says the more you think of yourself as worthless, stupid or ugly, the more you condition yourself to interpret life that way. You get trapped in a thought loop. The same is true for how you think about others. Once you fall into the habit of seeing people as angry, unjust or selfish, you see those kind of people everywhere. That can be very true For me as a mental health clinician and professional.
Speaker 1:What I really thought about when he wrote negative thoughts compound is that not only do negative thoughts compound in the way that he talks about, but they also actually develop. Your brain actually develops neural pathways. When you're having a negative thought, the neural pathways in your brain they build up. They're like little bridges. Okay, if you think about it like that little bridges in your head, and if you let yourself continue to think negatively, negatively, negatively, over and over and over. You're just building up those neural pathways slowly. Okay, just like that. Just think about little electrical things going across the little bridge and every single time it gets stronger and stronger. So that's the power of negative thoughts and, as it says, negative thoughts compound. It makes it harder to not think negatively when you're so used to thinking negatively. So it takes active choice to shut those negative thoughts off. That in itself is a very good habit for most people to develop. I myself have had to do that and focus on that. It's still a battle sometimes. So in addition to that I don't know if you guys know, but we'll go into that a little bit more in that each thought that you have releases chemicals in your body.
Speaker 1:So when I was doing my research for this portion of the podcast, there was a really interesting article about meditation and how it improves depression. If you're a person, or know somebody that struggles with depression, this is obviously not therapy. This isn't. If you are struggling with depression, it is important to seek professional help, but this article may be a good place to start in working on improving that for yourself. So, moving on to the next section, what progress actually looks like. So in this section of the chapter he talks about ice and how it only melts at a certain temperature that it doesn't appear to make any progress when it is warming up to melting until it hits 32 degrees. It's 32 degrees that it starts melting. According to this and I thought that that would be an interesting visual you got an ice cube and paid attention. How long does it take to start noticing that it is melting? I've never really thought about that before. I personally, you know.
Speaker 1:I feel like most people have weight loss as a goal and I know that a lot of times they say you know, when you're working on weight loss, people aren't going to start noticing, you're probably not even going to start seeing it until you hit a certain point. You know your first 10 pounds, no one's probably going to notice. It's not going to be until like 20 pounds that people might start noticing. But that doesn't mean that you give up, right, because if you don't lose that 10 pounds, you're not going to lose the 20. So it brings us to the point of like that's why people call it an overnight success. When you have been working so hard on yourself, on whatever goal it may be, say it's your business, and then you know you're putting your nose to the grindstone and working on that every single day. People don't see that, they don't see that regular effort and then all of a sudden you're doing good and it's successful. That is not an overnight success. That was every day nose to the grindstone, challenge, right.
Speaker 1:So one thing in this section that I thought about was there was another part Rachel Hollis podcast that she talks about her fitness goals and how her significant other had told her well, don't you know that if you want to see progress in a certain area of your body, that you have to work on it for six months before you see any difference? That's not something I had ever heard before and apparently that's not something that Rachel had ever heard before either. But six months of every day grind before you're going to see the difference. So that's where the habits come in right.
Speaker 1:Moving on to the next section, forgetting about goals and I'm not a huge fan of that title. Most self improvement people talk about goals and needing to have goals to reach your potential, to know what you're working towards. But I get kind of why he was saying forget about goals, because it's not just about the goal. It's about the implementing of the goal or the implementing of the steps that it's going to take to get you to your goal right. So this section of the chapter is really talking about systems and the importance of creating systems in your daily life to be successful. So what I have learned and I honestly forgive me because I don't remember, I'm sure that I've learned this as accumulation of reading various self-improvement books and TikToks and podcasts or whatever but what I have learned to be the most successful in implementing a goal, like planning on a goal is you have a major goal, one goal, and then you need to break that goal down into quarters.
Speaker 1:So let's say, for example, in a year for my boutique, my goal, let's say, is to have 10,000 followers in a year. So if you divide that by four I'm not a math person so we got maybe we should. Let's say, we're doing 12,000 followers. So that would be we need to have 3,000 followers every quarter, right. Then you break down how many quarters are. In a year, there's four, right. So then you break that down and then slowly you figure out okay, this is my goal overall. So now what do you do? You have to take massive action. Okay, so, in figuring out how you're going to get more followers. So what does that massive action look like? It could be self-education, if you don't know how to do it. It could be implementing a system, a habit system that is going to help you stay on track with sharing on a consistent basis. Let's say, the habit for getting more followers is going to be you posting every day, so you have to get into the habit of posting on your social media account every single day.
Speaker 1:Whatever your goal is, you need to have this massive big picture. This is where I'm going and then you break it down into some smaller, more attainable goals and then you learn what the daily habits you need to implement to reach those goals. So creating systems so that way you can reach your ultimate goals. And the counseling world or it's not even just the counseling world anymore, but I feel like, at least in my experience, it's been primarily in the counseling world we call these smart goals, so we set up smart goals and achievable. So we have an action plan, we have a set number, we have how long it's going to take me to do it, what I'm going to do to be able to accomplish it, and what is going to happen if I don't accomplish it. But we'll get to that next.
Speaker 1:Really, if you're, the big benefit of having breaking down your goals into quarterly goals, I think, is it provides an opportunity for self reflection. So if you are truly trying to reach your goals every single day and you're not reaching them, like by the end of the quarter, you're doing, you're doing. You've developed your habits, you're doing your habits every single day and you still are not reaching your quarterly goals. It may be time to do a little bit of self reflecting on what habits you're forming, because maybe it's not the right one to achieve your goal. If my goal is to lose 30 pounds and the habit that I have is start eating a donut every single morning so that way I can lose 30 pounds, obviously we all know that probably isn't going to work right, but if I keep pursuing that habit and I still keep questioning why am I not losing my weight? Why did I not meet my quarterly goal, then you're going to reach the end of the year disappointed because every single day you ate that donut but you've gained weight. So it's really important to take that time and self reflect.
Speaker 1:Are these daily habits actually getting you to your goal, and I think something that we need to think about as far as that goes is knowing when good enough is good enough. So I bring that up because I had this conversation with my daughter once about this idea of trying your best. I personally my kids like to say, oh, but I tried my best, I tried my best, and sometimes your best is it's great, it's good that you tried your best, you did the very best that you could. That's really important, right? And we want to teach our kids that that you try your best. However, sometimes your best isn't working. I like to say, sometimes your best isn't good enough because it isn't. If I am getting an F in math and I am still trying my best, like that's okay, that's great. That doesn't reflect on you and make you a bad person. You tried your best, that is good. However, an F is not good enough and it's not going to get you to pass your class. So what do you do? Well, if that was you, you're getting an F, right.
Speaker 1:Maybe you're going to get a tutor, maybe you're going to study more, maybe you're going to apply some outside knowledge that you didn't have before. So, going back to our habits and reaching our goals. If you are truly trying your best and you're not reaching your goals, you need to go back and self-reflect. Maybe you need some new knowledge why is this not working? And then go from there and try again.
Speaker 1:One of my favorite, favorite quotes from Tony Robbins and I believe it was in Unleash the Power Within is when you are failing at something, you're trying but it's not working, you try again, and then you try again, and then you try again until you find something that works. You do something different. You don't do the same thing over and over again and think it's going to get you the same result. You do something different. So applying those daily habits every single day, but remember that you still need to reflect on a regular basis to make sure that these daily habits are getting you to where you need to be or where you want to be. And sometimes maybe your ultimate goal changes, and that's okay too. But having that flexibility in there, knowing that if your ultimate goal didn't change and you're not getting where you want to be, don't let that you're not getting where you want to be make your goal change, and I think that's a different topic for a different time. But just let's leave that nugget there and move on.
Speaker 1:Another aspect of this is that if you're having a hard time being consistent with your habits, then reflecting so at your quarterly time or whatever. You decide to have that reflection time for yourself. If you have found that your habits don't seem to be making any progress, you want to reflect. But you also want to reflect if you are seeing that you're struggling with doing your habits every day. That's when you maybe need to reflect on your why again, because maybe your why is not strong, maybe isn't strong and that's why you don't have the motivation to do it every day. But I have a feeling that further in this book, we're going to have some more insight into that aspect. So we're not going to go there, but remember, we need to focus on the macro and the micro, big goal and daily habits.
Speaker 1:So, moving into this, though, the goal of this book is habits. So I'm going to flip to this last section here, which is on page 24, which started talking with saying a handful of problems arise when you spend too much time thinking about your goals and not enough time designing your systems. So that's very true. You don't want to be just sitting there thinking about your goal, like if you're just thinking about how you want to lose weight but you never take any steps to do it. It's never going to happen. So, problem number one winners and losers have the same goal. I really like that because that's so, so true. Everybody has goals. Everybody has the goal of being financially free. Everybody has that goal, but it's the people that take the actions every single day that are going to actually reach that goal Right? So we concentrate on the people who end up winning, the survivors, and mistakenly assume that ambitious goals lead to their success, while overlooking all the people who had the same objective but didn't succeed.
Speaker 1:Okay, so does that make sense? I think about how how many people will start off their New Year's resolution with I Want to Lose Weight At the beginning of the year. You go into the gym on you know, the first of the year and everybody and their dog is at the gym and no joke, by what is it February now go into the gym and it's dead. That's not even a whole month, okay, so it's only when you implement systems continuously making small improvements that you reach a different outcome every single day, or you know if it's something that you need to do every day, but very consistent, you have to do it consistently. So don't focus so much on the goal that you forget to do your daily work, your consistent work. Okay, problem number two with focusing on goals Achieving a goal is only a momentary change.
Speaker 1:So this is really interesting because and it's something that on the Rachel Hollis podcast, I believe it was, and there's a couple of other self-improvement areas that I have seen this concept talked about so when you finally reach a goal, let's say you actually do it. You get that thousand dollars in your emergency fund, but let's say it didn't take you very much Maybe it didn't take very much to do that. You had a thousand dollars and you just decided, oh, this is going to be in my emergency fund, so you get your tax refund, whatever, for whatever reason. You have a thousand dollars lying around and you just put it in your emergency fund. You didn't have to develop any savings habits or anything like that, right? So not only did you not have to develop any good spending habits, but also you reached the goal, but now it's like I mean, now what? Now, what are you gonna do?
Speaker 1:So a lot of times, the high of pursuing something and striving after a goal. The joy is found in the pursuit of the goal, it's not found in reaching the goal. Reaching the goal only lasts temporarily. That high of reaching the goal only lasts temporarily. It lasts for a day or so. Several people will talk about how you know they finally reach their goal weight, or they finally get that book published or whatever it may be. That high is going to last for like a day, two days. You know, I don't know who.
Speaker 1:Maybe see an example of that in my life would be you know, getting a master's degree. You work and you work and you work and you work. You've been going to school for who knows how long. You finally got that master's degree, that diploma that you worked so hard for, and I don't know about you anyone that's graduated from anything and it's like I did all that for a piece of paper Really. But we know that that's not all it is. But it's the habits, it's the skills that you learned along the way in that journey of getting that piece of paper that made it worth it. And being able to apply those skills throughout your life after that makes it worth it.
Speaker 1:It's not the diploma, it's not getting the book published, it's not reaching that 30 pounds of weight loss. It's the daily habits that make you successful and be able to keep pursuing and keep growing because you better believe I mean, I sure hope that after you reach your goal you set another goal, because you're never going to be growing. That's how you keep growing, how you keep living, how you keep improving. Your life is reaching a goal and then setting another one. So in achieving the goal, it only is a moment, momentary change, right? So that's where the habits come into place. If you create good habits, then you can keep improving, you can keep growing.
Speaker 1:All right, is goals restrict your happiness? So that's really interesting. To me. It's more like the idea of I'm not going to be happy until I lose that 30 pounds. I'm not going to be happy until I have a book published. I'm not going to be happy until I am debt free. That goal, if this is your mindset of I'm not good enough, I'm not going to be happy until this goal is reached it takes away your joy in your life.
Speaker 1:That's something that I learned in myself is that when I first started on the Dave Ramsey journey of the debt snowball and if you're familiar with that program at all, you will know what I'm talking about. But I learned pretty quickly that, while it is really exciting to initially take that massive action and pay off debt or cut up your credit cards, whatever you do, it is not sustainable to maintain that, especially with finances, because there's only so much you can do, right, you can, of course, you can add a side hustle, make extra money, ask for a raise, do all of those things that they tell you to do. However, it is still a marathon. It is not a sprint. Depending on how much debt you have, depending on how much money you have already saved, it can be a long journey and so, needing to find joy in the little things, the little steps, the habits of your daily life and how those habits are going to bring you to your goal closer and closer every day, that's where the joy needs to come from. Okay and I'm sure we will talk about that again in another book, another time, because that brings me into, you know, the idea of mindfulness and presence and enjoying the now and not being so focused on the future, but you still need to have those future goals to be able to reach where you're going, but focusing on the now also. So finding joy in the daily habits will increase your overall happiness and also the habit you build will keep you going to your next goal is the note that I wrote here in my margins.
Speaker 1:So problem four goals are at odds with long term progress. Hmm, that's interesting. That's a very bold statement as I read that now, but if you think about it, it is. It can be true. So long term progress what are we talking about? So this he uses the term yo-yo effect. So when I think of the yo-yo effect, I mostly think about weight loss. So you lose weight, you gain weight. You lose weight, you gain weight. You know, I can't remember where it was I heard someone said I've lost a hundred pounds. And they're like, oh yeah, good job, that's awesome. How much more do you have left to lose? And it's like, oh yeah, I've lost 100 pounds. It's because I lost the same 10 pounds, gained it back. So I lost 10 pounds, gained it back, lost 10 pounds, gained it back, and but they've lost 100 pounds, right? So goals can keep you at odds with your long-term progress and so you don't want to let that get in your way. That, once again, is why you focus on the daily habits, keeping that long-term goal in mind, but not having that be your primary focus. Your primary focus is developing those daily habits on how you get to that goal. Okay, and that's the end of the chapter. We're to the chapter summary. So remember that atomic habits are the building blocks of making remarkable results.
Speaker 1:I think this week we really did come across some good, actionable steps in this conversation. The first thing that I think that we need to do is go ask yourself this question and write it down, if you have something to write with. If you don't have anything to write with, I'll put it in the show notes. Okay, but where in your life, good or bad, have you seen the power of compounding habits? So, good or bad? Where have you seen the power of compounding habits? Because we all have seen them.
Speaker 1:Okay, and I do want, if you can, I want you to write this down, because this really is going to make it cement more in your brain. You are going to learn it better if you actually write it down, okay. So pick out a couple of things. If you can think of just one, that's okay. If you can think of a couple, then that's great. Second, I want you to write down a goal, that you have, a long-term goal and, like we talked about, I want you to break down that goal into quarterly goals and then really consider what are those daily habits that you can start working on today to start reaching your goals. Okay, so that's the challenge this week. I am so, so glad that you guys decided to join me today and I really look forward to keeping this up with you.
Speaker 1:Please check out the comments below or comment below if you want to talk more. Have an open discussion about this. Share with your friends if you think that this episode would be helpful for someone that you know. Please, please, share, if you like, and comment. Review. That's gonna help us reach more people and be able to have a bigger impact. I really want to be a service to y'all with this and I hope that you got something out of it. You have a blessed day. Bye-bye, permiteять позн. Leap into your futureCafeHamsah시.