0:01 - Intro

Hello again, I'm Shane from MATRIX. I'm back with Daily Tip #18. Yesterday, we talked a little bit about sleep. And I mentioned how that probably should have come a little bit earlier in the program because it's so important. Well, Today's Tip is another one of those situations. I'm going to talk to you today about Habit Change.

0:22 – Habit Change Is Hard

I've given you all of these great Tips. And I have mentioned here and there, along the way, about how you might be able to implement them into your life. But we really haven't spoken specifically about how to do that. And that's what's going to happen today. When it's time to change your habits, it's really, really, really hard. Probably one of the hardest things you can do. And me, sitting here telling you that, is not something that needs to happen because we all already know.

0:49 – There Are No Bad Habits

With that being said, we tend to group habits into good and bad. And that may be true, but to our brain all habits are good. The reason for that is a habit is something that takes out the need for thought. And it allows you to continue to move through your day with the least amount of energy expended as possible. So, your subconscious arranges your life around these habits to make all of them easier. Examples of that are knowing that you have to get up out of bed, you set an alarm. Where you place your toothbrush is always in the same spot so you can find it and grab it. Those might be some good habits. We do the same thing with what we call bad habits. Setting ourselves up so that it becomes the easy thing to do. Maybe that would be, plopping yourself down on the front of the TV at night. The couch is there. The remotes in the right spot. It's easy for you to do.

1:47 – Don’t Break Habits

When we want to change our habits, we often think about them as breaking habits. And honestly, that's kind of a bad way to think about it. Because not only is your environment set up in one way, but your brain has literally laid down pathways to make those habits keep going. And trying to break that is really, really hard. Instead, what you want to think about is creating new habits. New things that will replace the old things. That will overwrite those old patterns in your brain. And the easiest way to do this is to set up your environment consciously. So that it cues you into what you want to create as a new habit, rather than falling back into your old habit. Where you really see this taking place is at the end of the day. When you're tired. If we don't get our new habit started early on in the day, by the time we get to the end of the day, we no longer have the energy to do something new. Unless we have that environmental setup to make it happen. Or unless we've been doing it throughout the day. We also need this environmental setup to keep us going because, over time, if we don't keep that structure, we're going to fall back on the things that are ingrained in us versus the new things we're trying to create.

3:10 – Create An Environment For Change

So, with all that being said, let's take this back into the Daily Tips. What I've been mentioning throughout, is doing things like setting a timer for the Tips. That is one way to change your environment. Creating a trigger so that when the timer goes off, you think about doing one of the Daily Tips. Another important piece to that is to look back on all the Tips and recognize the things that actually add value to your life. I find it amazing how every day I get a different message or a different email about how this Tip helped one person this Tip helped another. Even ones that I think won't be that helpful, somebody does find them helpful. And other ones that I think are going to be amazing, I don't get quite as many responses as I might have expected. But everybody is getting value out of something. So, look back through them and pick one, two, maybe three that are really, really valuable for you. And make those the ones that you want to start to try and add into your routine. Then begin to set your environment up so that those things happen. You can set sticky notes up around your workspace. You could lay out the different tools that you might need -- like the straw -- to make it happen. You could tag these things onto the end of habits you already have. For instance, brushing your teeth is my favorite example. If you want to practice your belly breathing and make sure it happens at least a couple of times a day before you brush your teeth plan to do five rounds of belly breathing. That way, you know twice a day you'll be getting those [breaths] in. Those are just some examples of the ways that you could incorporate your environment to help you get better at creating the new habits that you want to have.

4:58 - Summary

There's a lot of other examples. I'm not going to go into them all because, honestly, just like the Tips that work for you, your environment has to be specific for you. So, what I would recommend today is take a few minutes. Sit down. Go through the Tips. Pick the ones that are most valuable for you. And then think about how you can actually set up your environment to allow those Tips to happen with an automatic trigger. You take the thought process out of it. You see it. You do it. And if you continue that from now until when things get back to normal, chances are, it will be an ingrained habit and it will have replaced the bad habit that you were trying to get rid of in the first place.

5:41 - Farewell

I hope you find that helpful. Please join me on the Q&A later today. If you have any questions, even specific things about how you might be able to set up your own environment. I'd be happy to help. Otherwise, enjoy your wonderful Wednesday. Check back in again tomorrow for our next Daily Tip.