Lesson 2 - building habits

What's up guys?

Hope you are.

well, so in this lesson we are going to discuss habit building and more specifically we're going to look at how we can build better habits.

But before I get started, I just want to show you this quote.

So long, long term consistency beats short term EAS intensity.

So what do I mean by that?

It's not that inherently that anything the short term and intense is going to be bad.

it has its place.

It can be really good to use to get yourself started if motivation is high based on results because if you can get some quick wins, it can be really good.

But over the long term it's been proven that this approach doesn't necessarily work.

So let me just take an example.

So, so let's say your goal of fitting 42 is fat loss.

So you decide you're going to go all in on the intensity.

So you want a massive calorie deficit.

You're going to be super, super strict.

so you're going to have no, you're going to do 100% of the time with the whole foods, you're going to have no alcohol, you're going to have no crisps, no chocolate, no sweets, no nothing.

Everything is going to be done at 100.

You're not going to miss a single day of training.

Every day you want to hit your macros bang on, right?

Yeah, of course if you do that, you are going to get really, really good results.

But a question you need to ask yourself is what happens after that has finished because you've restricted for so much.

As soon as your six weeks is over, then you are more than likely going to go and then you are going to binge on the things that you have missed and then you're going to start to undo your progress.

So obviously what would need to happen is we need something that you can stick, stick to over the longer term.

yeah.

So rather than super short intense bursts, it needs to be something that you can see yourself doing in a year, two years time from now.

And that's how you're going to get good results and also how you are going to keep those results.

So what is a habit then?

A habit is a behavior that we have on autopilot.

So it's something that we do that we just automatically do without thinking.

So you can have good habits and you can have bad habits.

Obviously what the type we are looking at here is how we can change, to improve, to make better habits and then make these habits go on autopilot.

So when it comes down to designing a habit.

there is a five step process that we like to use and what we're going to do is I'm going to walk you through that now and then we're going to create our own habit statement.

So first up it must be obvious, must have it.

So what we mean by this is it must be something where you can understand it and how it relates to your goals.

And what it needs to be is the more complicated this is and the harder it is for you to relate why doing this good habit is going to move your towards your goals, the harder it's going to become for you to make it a habit and stick to it.

So let just give you an example.

So let's say you really struggle with energy and you're always tired all the time.

So if you can realize that if you can sleep better that is going to help your energy, that becomes quite obvious.

So if you know, then I'm going to put my phone down half an hour before I go to bed.

So it helps improve my sleep quality.

So it helps me improve my energy throughout the day.

You say you can see there's quite a clear link there.

Your brain is more likely to start focusing on that and doing that as a good habit.

Whereas if you make it something really complex and obscure that you can't quite figure out how it's actually going to help you, that's going to be harder to build that habit.

The next step then is it must be something that you can do frequently.

So an almost ideal it wants to be something that you can do every day.

So habits are built by repetition.

So just doing rep and after rep after rep and just keep doing it until it does become automatic.

So let's say you decide that you want to get better at swimming and you decide that you're going to go swimming once a month.

It's going to take a really long time for that habit to stick because you're only going once a month.

You're only getting the frequency of doing it once a month.

It wants to be something that you can ideally do daily.

Right.

The next point then is it must have trigger.

So there's something that else that happens in your day that triggers you to do this habit.

And a really good way of how we can do this is we can piggyback off of existing habits that we already have.

So I'm going to give you an example here.

Let's say you want to stretch more, right?

So you want to get a little bit extra stretching and you want to get some more mobility.

So a way we can do this.

And let's say you always, you like to have coffee and you always have a coffee first thing as soon as you get up on a morning.

So what you could do to make this obvious and make it easy is you could put a little post it note at the side of your kettle or your coffee machine that just says stretch and then, well, your kettle boils.

Or while your coffee machine brews your coffee, you could then stretch for 30 seconds to a minute, piggybacking it off of another habit that you do.

So you already get up and do the coffee every single morning anywhere.

So you just adding that habit, onto the top of it and then it's going to make it obvious for you to do.

And you can also, you can do it frequently so it sticks to the other two points.

Next off then is it must be achievable.

So when I say achievable, you want to be 80, ideally 90% sure that you can achieve that habit.

So let's take for example if you were going to, going to the gym.

So, and this is one of the other reasons why we do fit in 42, as you get three sessions per week.

So you might want to get started.

I mean you're going to be really motivated right now to get going and you're eager to get going and you're like, yes, it's I can do everything.

But if you decide to say I'm going to go to the gym five days a week, you've got to ask yourself, is that actually going to be realistically achievable for you if you currently go and go to the gym at all?

So what you need to do is make sure it's something that you're 80 to 90% confident you could do.

And if one of the habits that you want to achieve you're not 80 to 90% confident that you can do, I want you to strip that back a little bit to find a version of that habit that is that you are 80 to 90% confident that you can do.

So let's say you're not going to the gym at all at the moment and your goal is you want to get there to go three times a week.

But you, when you sit down and think about, you think, well, works quite this year.

I'm going to struggle at the moment to get there three times a week.

But are, you 80 to 90% confident that you can get there twice a week?

Because if that's the case, then you set that as your initial goal and your initial habit.

I'm going to make sure I build the habit of going to the gym once a week and then once you get good at that, you can then make it more achievable so you can then strain the habit, stress the habit further.

So you're going to go twice a week and then once you know, 80 to 90, confident you can then build it up.

So you go in three times per week.

And then the last one, it must be a hundred percent within your control.

So it has to be something that you can control yourself and it's not going to rely on external factors.

So a real common one that we get is people aren't getting enough sleep so they set a goal that is I am going to get eight hours sleep every single night.

Now on paper it seems like a really good idea and it seems like a really good habit and it'd be great if you could get eight hours sleep every night.

But that's actually not always going to be under your control.

So maybe you've got kids, the kids could get sick, maybe there's an alarm that's going off outside.

Maybe you just get into bed one night and you just can't sleep.

So what's going to happen then is you're actually not going to stick to that because that's all things that are out of your control.

Whereas what a better habit is, might be for that is that I am not going to use a screen for half an hour before I go to bed.

So it improves my sleep quality.

That's 100% within your control.

You can do that every day before you go to bed, regardless of what else is going on externally.

Whereas trying to force yourself to be outcome based and you're going to get eight hours sleep every night, that's not going to be the same because sometimes that is going to be out of your control.

Right.

So now what I want you to do is every time you want to form a new habit, you need to create or use this habit statement.

So the habit statement goes as follows.

I am 90 to 100% certain that I will and then that's the action.

So that's the new habit that you want to use or you want to embed, when trigger.

So that's the existing habit or the existing thing that happens in your life, in order to, and then that's to achieve the outcome.

So if we take our example that we had earlier, so for the wanting to stretch more, I am 90 to 100 certain that I will be able to stretch my, that I will stretch more when I make my coffee in the morning in order to become more flexible and be less likely to become injured.

So you've got your action there.

you've then got your trick.

So your action, your habit of what you wanted to do, your trigger.

So what's going to trigger you to do that?

And then the reason why that's positive.

So you can do that for every single habit that you have and want to implement.

And that framework works really well.

So what I need to do now is go away and think about a couple of habits that you want to embed.

Don't go mad and try and change 10 all at once.

Because remember, back at the start, short term, long term consistency, sorry, beats short term, intensity.

So pick one to two habits that you're gonna, that you want to try and implement over the next six weeks, and drop them as a message to your coach.

If you're struggling with this and, you're kind of struggling to have some habits, let's just send you coach a message and then we can brainstorm back and forth and, we can help you come up with some habits and then come up with a habit statement.