Episode 519 - Creating Habits
In this episode, Jeremy talks about Creating Habits, it's advantages, and why is it challenging.
Creating Habits - Episode 519
Creating a habit can be challenging for everyone but how can it be achieved can be summed into; frequency and consistency. In this episode, Jeremy talks about creating habits and shares his experience about he creates his own habits. Listen in to know what's the huge mistake that everyone makes when it comes to creating habits.
Show Transcript
You can read the transcript below or download it here.Jeremy Lesniak:What’s happening everybody, welcome to whistlekick martial arts radio Episode 519. Today, were going to talk about creating habits. It’s a martial arts topic, is a life topic, and it’s time how we talk about it. Who am I? I’m Jeremy Lesniak, I’m your host here, I’m the founder of whistlekick and I’m just a guy who really loves traditional martial arts so I made it my job. Everything we do here was kick is in support of the traditional martial arts and if you want to know what that means, go to whistlekick.com you’re gonna find so much stuff over there. All the projects, the products, the things that we do to support those of you training. One of the things over there whistlekick.com, is our store. It’s the place you buy stuff, shirts and apparel, hats, our training programs, strength, speed, there’s more in coming all the time. And if you use the code PODCAST15 you can save 15% off anything over there. You support to show, you let us know that the show leads to sales and it justifies the money that we put into this show every month. If you like the show, I hope you will check out whistlekickmartialartsradio.com. Did you know you can go there and look up shows by guest location or subject, style? Did you know we put together a collection of episodes for training at home to offer you some advice? There’s a bunch of stuff over there, we put a lot of time into that website so, go, visit, learn, interact, leave comments under the post, one of the things that I look back on that hasn’t really happened that I wish did, is people going to the website leaving comments under episodes, I would love to see more conversation there or maybe you can help make that happen. Why do we do what we do what we’re doing, because were trying to connect, educate, and entertain, traditional martial artist. We’re giving you resources and support and product and inspiration through all the things that we do here. And you want to help the show, if you want to help whistlekick and all the work that were doing, make purchase, we already talked about that, you could share in episode, you could follow us on social media, we’re @whistlekick. You could tell a friend, you could pick up a book on Amazon, you could leave a review on Amazon or Facebook or Google, or you could support the Patreon, PATREON.com/whistlekick it’s the place to go. You could support us monthly with as little as $2, 5 dollars a month you get access to more and the more you drop in, the more were going to give you. I feel very strongly about delivering value where people contribute and so it’s not just a donation, we’re gonna give you a lot of stuff back but you can check it out before you even make a commitment so go to that website patreon.com/whistlekick.Let’s talk about habits, creating habits. When we talk about creating a habit, we’re usually talking about making a positive change in our lives. I don’t know anybody was ever sought out to make a negative change in their life but even if you wanted to, the process is the same. How do we create a habit? Well let’s talk about the show and how we created a habit for this show. Here we are well over 500 episodes, well over five years of this podcast and it takes time. I was having conversation with someone yesterday and they said, how much time do you put in for the show? It’s about five hours a week for me recording and getting things ready and in dealing just with the components of this show. There’s a lot more to my life, to my day and whistlekick, in this show but if we just look at the show that five hours or so. How did I get there? I didn’t just suddenly wake up and say okay it’s time to do five hours if you go way back, you’ll see that there was one episode a week, for months, I think it was episode 39? Where we started adding a second show per week, 37, somewhere in there. So that means there were months, it was over six months of one episode a week. And I would prepare, I would schedule the guest, because back then it was just me, I don’t have anybody else helping and I had a process. I built the process. I made sure that there was time carved out my calendar and now here we are, years later in the habit it’s not a big deal. Does it take time? Yeah, it takes time but it takes less time and it’s an easier thing for me to wrap my mind around because i’ve been doing it frequently. And that’s the key to building habit it’s frequency and consistency. When you are episode’s come out same two days every week Monday and Thursday. We’ve got same frequency and were consistent with the time of day and the day of the week that these episodes come out. I’m going to guess that many of you listen to episode’s at roughly the same time, maybe the episode downloads while you’re at work on Monday and you listen to it money as you drive home maybe the same thing on Thursday. Or maybe you listen on your way to work or maybe at work.From the feedback i’ve received over the years many of you have a consistent pattern with when you listen to the show. And that’s the same thing with the podcast I listen to, there’s consistency there is a habit that goes on there. What about your training? You probably go to the same martial arts classes every week. You know if you’re a Monday, Wednesday, Friday person you almost always go to Monday-Wednesday-Friday classes. I’ve taught fitness classes, still do, i’ve taught a lot of things and people tend to come to the same class the same time because they build that frequency, that consistency, into their life. And this is the secret: it’s not really secret but it seems to be a secret for a lot of people so, let’s talk about how you bring that, how do you create that change using frequency and consistency with something else?What’s the number one change people want to make in their life? They want to get healthier. There are a lot of different specifics under that, you know maybe you want to lose weight, you want to gain strength you want to, whatever. If I was to ask 10 people on the street how you accomplish those goals, I would guess all 10 would have the knowledge, maybe not super specifics, but they would be able to tell me what to do. If you’re trying to get healthier well, you got eat right and you got to exercise and maybe some people would say drink more water. So, if we all know it, why don’t we do it? This isn’t just for these goals this is for anything you’re trying to do. It’s because creating a habit is hard. And over the years i’ve witnessed a lot of people make one huge mistake with trying to create a habit. You know what that is? If we had a drumroll… they try to do too much at one time. Think about that for second. Maybe you’re this person or if not, you know this person. Someone who comes to you and says I’m going to make this revolutionary change in my life, I’m going to start training and I’m going to go to class six days a week and insert martial art here is going to be my life and they make it 3 to 6 months. And they burnout and they don’t do it. And the same thing happens with every big lofty goal. Why? Because too much at one time.Psychologically it takes energy for us to make change. There’s a tank there’s a change tank that we have access to and it is not nearly as big as we think it is. And if we try to change everything in our lives all at once, it’s exhausting. Because our body is used to our mind is used to living in a certain way. So how do you change this? How do you get past that? You pick one small thing and you do that. I’ve read conflicting science saying change takes three weeks, it takes two weeks, it takes far longer, there’s no set time, I think a month is the right time. Let’s say you’re looking to make a change in health. If we look at what people do, what they don’t do, and we look for what’s the easiest thing that we can do to start building on some momentum. Here’s one; start your day with a big glass of water, before your coffee, before you eat, have a big glass of water. Is that on its own going to change your life? Yes. Is it going to revolutionize your life? No. Will you notice a difference, not at first. You’re not going to wake up on day three and say man, I’m so glad I’m drinking that glass of water every morning, it’s changed my life. But what happens a month later you don’t even have to think about it happens and you’ve probably noticed some very small changes. Maybe your skin looks better maybe notice hey I guess I was a little dehydrated. Maybe you don’t eat quite as much at breakfast. There a lot of things you might notice and here’s the key; after that month, it suddenly becomes easier and now you’re inspired, it doesn’t take as much energy out of the change tank, might not be the best name for that but we’re gonna run with it and you make another change. Maybe this one’s a little bit bigger and that change can be bigger because your inspired, because you’ve seen the results making the small change.Let’s apply this to martial arts, let’s apply it to training. Do any of you out there know the first training program we released? Do you know what it is? Oh wait, 2-minute martial arts. We’ve been working on that for years and shout out to Justin who administers that, as an aside there’s a book coming with 2-minute martial arts. Not going to say any more about that. Why two-minute martial arts? Because everyone has two minutes and we release a new training every day. So, it fits in your schedule and it builds the habit. Why is that two minutes important? Because it adds up. Two minutes is roughly 15 minutes a week, it’s roughly an hour a month, it’s roughly another 12 hours every year. There are a good number of martial artist to train roughly 12 hours a month. It’s like adding another month onto the year with your training. Now what happens if that two minutes is gone solidly and you say; you know, I like doing this I’m gonna use 2-minute martial arts to create this habit. I’m gonna stick around and train for a couple more minutes on my own. That two minutes to become 3 to 5. A while back we did an episode on why people have a hard time with things that don’t end and this is why. This is the heart of it. It’s because people struggled to make massive change last. Crash diets, why are they so short? Because people can’t sustain massive changes to the way they eat. Whatever you’re looking to change in your life, look for the smallest possible thing you can do and do it every day. Let’s say you want to walk more. You think walking is important, you’ve got a step counter on your wrist and it tells you, you don’t walk nearly enough and you want to walk more. There are a couple different ways you can handle that, you could say; you know it from now on after breakfast, lunch, and dinner I’m gonna go for a walk for an hour. Well, what’s the chance it you’ve got 20 hours a week to spare? That’s a lot, that’s exhausting and you’re probably gonna burn out in 2 to 3 weeks. What’s an easier thing to do? What if when you go to the grocery store you park is far away from the store as you can? You’re probably not carrying groceries; you are probably putting in a cart anyway so you get a few steps. And what if when you’re at the store, you go up and down every aisle. What if you do that for a month or two? Is it going to revolutionize your life? No. But you probably start feeling good about the numbers on your watch and you probably say hey you know, I’m digging this this works for me and what might the next change be? Maybe after lunch, may be you work at an office after lunch, you go out and you go for a walk around the parking lot maybe takes five minutes if you do that for a few weeks and you feel good about it, change has to make you feel good. Back at the top the episode, I mentioned people don’t create change for negative things the create for positive things, we need to correlate the actions were taking with positive results. And that positive result could just be you feel good. Start small and build on it.Is this stuff rocket science? Nope. Where do people fail? They fail because they’re trying to do too much at once. Whatever you’re trying to do start small. When I talk about training forms, you know what I’m working with people who are trying to learn their form, what do I tell them to do? I don’t tell them to do it an hour every day, I tell them to do it once a day. Build a habit, you’ll cultivate memory from that. This is the strategy that i’ve used to make a lot of changes in my life. There are a lot of things go on my personal life that I don’t talk about on this show. But many of them have stemmed from my recognition that something had to change and a desire to make small changes. If you want to be the best martial artist you can be, you train every day. Does that mean you go to a class every day and you burn four hours on the clock? No. I means you train a little bit every day. How much is a little? That’s up to you. It should start as small as it can be. Maybe it’s two-minute martial arts, maybe you don’t even have two minutes or you don’t want to do two minutes, maybe have a stopwatch in 60 seconds and you shadowbox for 60 seconds. Maybe you do one form once a day, anything helps move that needle forward, don’t second-guess yourself, don’t judge yourself, don’t say “I need to do more, I could do more” and turn it into a negative thing. Focus on the positive, you’re doing more than you did yesterday, you’re doing more than you could, you could do a lot less, and be thankful for that. What changes have you incorporated in your life? I would encourage you to, if not pause after this episode is done, take a few minutes think, about what you’ve done that makes you satisfied and proud over the last however many days, weeks, months, years, of your life how did you get there you probably did it in a similar way to what I’m talking about here. So, once you see that strategy, start applying it, pick one thing, make tomorrow better than today.Go to whistlekickmartialartsradio.com sign up for the newsletter leave some comments check out some episodes and then go over to whistlekick.com. Maybe make a purchase and support what we’re doing here, PODCAST15 gets you 15% off and if you want to do even more, you can support the show and what we do in so many ways. Patreon, reviews, books, programs, sharing episodes, shouting us out somewhere on social media, we’re @whistlekick. And if you see so many out there you know rocking a whistlekick hat or a shirt or maybe wearing a whistlekick belt, say hello, introduce yourself, help us grow this wonderful community of traditional martial artists. I want to thank you for your time, I appreciate your faith in me and your willingness to give your time to hear what I have to say. Until next time, train hard, smile, and have a great day.