Your Guide To Better Habits (ft. Stephen Box) | Ep 44

FREEBIE: The Ultimate Dating App Guide to Attracting High-Quality Men

THIS EPISODE IS FULL OF GEMS 💎 Stephen shares all of his secrets on how to implement new habits. 

What You'll Learn:
»  Understanding key principles in creating habits
» How to break down big goals into manageable steps
» Practical strategies for building new habits
» Making your habits sustainable and long lasting 

Meet Stephen Box, a dedicated National Board Certified Health & Wellness Coach, the visionary founder of Unshakable Habits, and the captivating host of the Unshakable Habits Podcast. Stephen's transformative journey began in 2009 while working as a retail store manager, where a glimpse of himself in security footage sparked a profound realization. This pivotal moment led to an astonishing 80 lb weight loss in just 10 months, marking the beginning of a passionate mission to help others achieve their health and wellness goals. With over a decade of experience and a multitude of certifications, including Elite Fitness Trainer, PN Level 2 Master Health Coach, Online Fitness Trainer, Sports Nutritionist, and Sleep, Stress Management, and Recovery Coach, Stephen is a beacon of expertise and inspiration. He empowers individuals to turn daily habits into manageable victories, resulting in lasting improvements in health, relationships, and productivity. 

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Transcript

Welcome back everyone to becoming the one I am really excited for today because I am here with Steven box and he's going to talk to us all about habits and this is something I know I've read a lot of books on but I feel like I'm always overwhelmed when I You know, just like, I'm like, I need to implement all these habits and I then make a schedule and put all these things on it.

And today he's going to help us to just like, get focused, give us some tips about how we can actually implement some new things in our life and hopefully not be overwhelmed by doing so. And actually I did an episode on his podcast, which just came out and this will be coming out a little bit after that you should definitely go check it out.

It's all about attachment styles and it was really, really good. And he is the habit King. Like he knows all the things about habits and he helps men to prioritize their physical and mental,  you swallow physical and mental wellbeing. And he's a board certified health and wellness coach. So Stephen, say hi.

Hello. Welcome. I'm thinking I'm hosting here. What am I talking about? Welcome. Thank you for having me.  I love it.  That's what happens when you have a podcast. You just like to stay with your stuff. You just go into host mode automatically. Exactly. Exactly.  Well, I'm so excited to talk to you about this. I would just love to hear like how you even got started.

I mean, you have a podcast called Unshakeable Habits. So that's why you are the expert at this. Tell us how you even got into like learning about habits and what that was like for you. Yeah. So I will rewind the clock here about 13 years. I was 245 pounds.  And for, for reference, I'm only five foot seven.

So that meant I was wider than I was taller. And  I was someone who was always like into sports, very active growing up. So for me to be that big was, it was, it was a shift for me, right? It was something I wasn't really happy with. And like most guys, you know, I was really focused on work and that kind of stuff.

So it was something I didn't. I wasn't happy with, but I didn't really know what to do about it. And I tried different diets and different exercise programs and all this stuff. And I would lose like 20 pounds and then I'd regain it. And I was like 25 pounds, how to regain it. And so it kind of went through this whole cycle. 

And then one day I was just like, you know what,  clearly what I'm doing is not sustainable.  So I wanted to go out, improve. And this is just me being stubborn and hardheaded, honestly, I wanted to go out and prove that you could lose weight without crazy diets, without spending lots of time in the gym and without doing tons of cardio, because honestly, I hate cardio.

And so, when I started making these small changes in my life, I ended up losing 80 pounds over 10 months.  And I've kept that way off ever since and at the kind of the end of that time period I was at the time working in retail management, which I absolutely hated  and  this like light bulb went off like, you know, the only part of your job you enjoy doing is coaching  and you now have this new passion for health and fitness.

And so I just put the two together. I became certified as a personal trainer first off, and then a couple of years into it, I was like, Oh, I need to add nutrition to the equation. And then I got to the point. I was like, all right, people are getting good results, but I want to get better results for people.

So I started really studying behavior change and stuff like that. But what I noticed was my clients would do really well for short periods of time.  And then as soon as life got crazy, they would start ghosting me, they're missing sessions, they'd fall off, they'd lose all their results. And I got so irritated by it, right?

Not because I was mad at them, I was mad at myself, because I felt like I failed them. And so, I started looking into other things. I'm looking at sleep and stress management and recovery and all these different things.  And what I started realizing was the entire approach that most people were taking to health was completely backwards.

This idea like we have to get fast results and focus on, on these things and do it really strict, difficult to stick with stuff. 

And I was like, you know what, this is the perfect time everyone right now is super stressed out because something happened that year. I don't know if you guys remember that or not. I don't know. I can't remember it. Yeah.  Everyone was like super stressed out and it was, you know, a really rough time for people.

And I was like, you know what, what's the best time to help people develop great habits. Thanks. It's when life is crazy, because if you try to develop habits only when things are good, well, you're not going to be able to stick with those habits when things get crazy. But if you develop them when things are crazy, sticking with them when things slow down is super easy to do.

So  that's where Unshakable Habits was born.  That's amazing. Yeah. I mean, I think that's so relatable. Like just being in a situation where you're unhappy with something and then, you know, you, you try a bunch of things and it just doesn't work. And I think what it really comes down to is like, everything is just a habit that you're doing, right?

Like everything we do, you know, like brushing our teeth or showering or going to work. Like it's just a habit, you know, you know, how to get to work and all of those things. And when we're unhappy with something, we want to change it. But  And I guess maybe this is a question is like, why do you think that it's so difficult to implement new things when we already do habits every day? 

So this is a psychology thing. The way our brains work is your brain basically is one function and one function only, and that's to keep you alive.  Okay? And one of the best ways for your brain to keep you alive is by anticipating things that might happen. Therefore, our brain loves patterns and predictability. 

So when you are doing something,  a behavior, and by the way, all behaviors are really just attempts to solve a problem.  So when you have a behavior, even if that behavior is not the best solution for your problem, your brain understands that pattern, it knows what's going to happen, it can predict things, it can keep you alive, and keep you from doing stupid stuff.

And so, therefore, it becomes very difficult to let go of this pattern that your body sees as so safe, even if that pattern itself is killing you, because at least it's killing you slower than whatever stupid thing you're about to go do.  Totally. Why do you think, like, especially in the realm of, I want to say, like, maybe wellness, you know, when it comes to losing weight or even just general, like, body changes, or  You know, like meditating, or I don't know.

We just always have these things that we feel like we're supposed to do, right? To like, feel better. Yeah. Why do you feel like those ones are so hard?  So I think there's a couple things here. One is It's different.  One thing that I talk about is the 10 80 10 principle.  And you're not going to find this anywhere because this is my own made up thing.

But the first 10 percent of any new skill that you're learning  is always going to be the area where you can have the greatest amount of growth quickly, but it's also the hardest because it's the most awkward stage. And most people fall off in that first 10 percent because it's hard. Now, once you get past the first 10%, you actually get the largest amount of growth between the next, you know, percents there.

So from 10 percent all the way up to 90%,  that's where you have the greatest amount of growth. And once you get to the last 10%, we're now talking about mastery. We're not talking like 1 percent or less improvements. What things that you're going to do, right? So this is like professional athletes trying to take milliseconds off of a time or whatever. 

But that first 10 percent is so hard. It's so awkward that most people quit. So even though we see evidence of these things being helpful, we know people have done it, that it helped them. We've read all the research. We know that it would be helpful. It's something that we haven't developed a skill set for. 

And most people don't really want to continue to put in the work and develop the skills to get good at it. And so they just quit.  That makes so much sense to me. I was thinking when you were saying that my mind went immediately to the beginning of the year when everyone wants to lose weight, right? And they get in the gym.

And if you broke that down, okay, let's just even say like, In 12 months,  right? That 10%, you could even say that's like the first month or whatever month, month and a half. Like,  you're right, because everyone falls off by the end of that first month because they're like, oh, I can't actually stay in this.

This is so hard. And probably they're going at like A hundred miles an hour to try to like see the changes super quick versus like being in it for the long haul so that that makes a lot of sense. I really like that. Yeah, it's funny you mentioned like New Year's resolutions because you know the statistics tell us that most people quit three weeks in.

Yeah.  I actually argue that most people quit the first week.  They just don't officially throw in the towel into three weeks in,  but most of us decide by the second or third workout. This crap is too hard.  I've been there. I'm guilty. This hurts. I'm sore. I don't want to do this.  I'm so guilty of that. So I agree.

Yeah, absolutely. It's totally understandable because what did most of us do? We overdo it. We do too much. We start too fast.  Yeah. That's what I was saying at the beginning. I'm like, I'm over here. Like, okay, I need to fix this and this, and I'm gonna change everything about my life right now. Yeah. And I think that's Tomorrow morning, I'm going to wake up three hours early.

I'm going to drink raw A's. I'm going to go chase a chicken around the yard. Like I'm Rocky. I'm going to, you know, go to the gym. I'm going to do three hours on the treadmill followed by 45 minutes of weight training. I'm going to come home and drink a smoothie and. No, you're not going to do any of that.

Stop.  I, yeah, I totally agree. And I think that's coming from a place of, yeah, it's coming from a place of feeling like you just want to change right now. Like almost like a place of like self hatred or dislike for yourself, you know, because it's like, okay, I need to do this thing because I'm not good enough right now.

And I think it's about, like, really changing your identity. I think that's a huge piece of this, is like, you can't keep operating like that old person, and it can't be from a place of hating where you are. Like, it has to be a true identity shift, and knowing that, like, this identity is going to be you for, like, the entirety of your life, versus just until you lose that weight.

Well, here's the thing. So I actually just did a podcast episode on this very topic of why is it that most of us want fast results? Why do we feel like we need to get that instantaneous result? And honestly, it's not about the result, right? Like no one actually wants to, we'll just use weight loss as an example.

No one actually wants to lose weight quickly. What they want is for their knees to stop hurting.  What they want is to not be winded going up the stairs. What they want is to be able to play with their children without, you know, being out of breath or being sore. Or what they want is to feel more attracted to their spouse.

What they believe is that losing weight Is the way to get there. And what else they believe is that they can't start seeing any benefits until all of the weight is gone, which is not true, but that's what we have been taught to perceive. And so when you think about it from that perspective, it makes sense.

We want to get the weight off as quickly as possible because we want our problems to go away as quickly as possible.  I'm so glad that you said that, because it is like,  especially for women, it's like they just want to like what they see in the mirror, they want to have love for themselves, and they're like, I need to look this certain way, whatever that is for them, in order for me to be lovable, for me to be attractive, for me to like what I see, but that's not really what you want, like, I mean, yes, like, those things you can have and are cool, but like, what you really want is that you want to love yourself, like, you want to have the end result, and it's not  It is like external, but it's way deeper than that.

It's what you really want is the feeling. It's the way you feel when you get there to whatever it habit habit it is. It doesn't matter if it's weight loss or maybe you just want to like, you know,  do some other habits in the morning or whatever. It's all the same. You just want the result of probably generally like feeling good.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, most, like I said, all behaviors are an attempt to solve a problem. I  mean, that, so what are behaviors or what are habits? They're, they're just behaviors. That's all they are. And so  therefore we can also say that all habits are an attempt to solve a problem.  Yeah, absolutely. So let's jump into some tips for creating better habits.

So what would be like the biggest tip you would give to people? Let's start there. Biggest tip you would give to people for  creating better habits in their life. So the irony here is the word biggest, because my biggest tip would be to not, not do too big. We need to start small. I love this.  So I already have terminology there.

And look, I know there's a lot of stuff out there already, like the book Atomic Habits and Tiny Habits. They talk about this idea of small habits. And the problem I've always had with books like this, and you alluded to this earlier is  they're like, we're going to give you 7, 000 strategies for building habits and you're left like, okay, I don't know where to start.

I'm overwhelmed. Like, this is like, where do I even start with this?  And it's ironic to me that you're telling people to build small habits. And then overwhelming them with information, right? Like, Super true.  Like, that's, that's contradictory, guys. I mean, I get that you have to sell books, but come on. Yeah, I do like those books, but I agree.

And like, you know, I was, when I was saying that too, I, I had in the back of my mind that when I read those books, I actually never really implemented a whole lot of habits, to be honest, right? Because I was too overwhelmed by, oh shoot, now I have to change everything about myself. And, and it is a lot. So I, Agree with your biggest tip is really starting small  and this is what I oftentimes do with my clients. 

So, first of all, I always get my clients to kind of come up with their own ideas. I never tell people what to do. I help guide them to get there. But ultimately, I believe in letting people kind of make their own decision because I'm the expert on health and habits and all that. You're the expert on you.

You know, what's going to work for your life. But I also know that people overestimate what they can handle and it's, it's natural. We all do it.  And so what I would tell people is whatever you think you can handle,  probably go like a quarter of that.  So if you go, I can work out five days a week. How about we just aim for two? 

Maybe just, we can do like two workouts this week.  Right. And when you can consistently show up and work out twice a week, Then maybe we go to three,  and then when you consistently show up for three, maybe we go to four, right? Like, that's what I'm talking about when I say small, right? It's not about, oh, let me just jump in and do five days a week.

Because even if you think you can,  prove it. Like, challenge yourself to always have to prove that you can do what you think you can do. Before you go try to take the next step because if you try to do too much, and you're not able to do it. Now what pops in all that self doubt all that negativity that you've had all that negative self talk is now going to come up and you're going to say, Oh, I'm a failure.

I don't have any willpower. I can't stick with this. I just don't know what's wrong with me. What's wrong with you is you tried to do too much. You put too much on your plate. You're not broken. You just put too much on your plate.   It's people trying to be perfectionists  and feel like they need to change because they're so unhappy or, you know, just feeling stuck and It is overwhelming.

You know, I get it because I've been there and I do think though that starting small is so much better because then that makes total sense to me, you know, whatever it is, like sometimes I'll, I'll have clients journal. Right. And  I used to, this is funny because I used to tell them like whatever it was that we were talking about journaling or whatever they wanted to do.

I'd be like, okay, yeah, let's do it.  Five days a week or whatever, not the whole week, right? I give a little bit there, but then I realized that that's even too much. So I would like chunk it down to, okay, just like two times this week. And that feels so much more manageable. And then I always add in, well, sure, you can do more if you feel like it, but just start there.

Let that be your goal. Because  when we don't actually meet that, like if we're like, okay, we're going to do five days a week workout. And then if you don't do it, then you feel like shit, you just beat yourself up. Like, Oh, like I'm. I'm shitty. Like I'm not gonna be able to do it. And that's just not the case.

It's that you just overwhelmed yourself with stuff. Yeah. I actually have an example and I've done this actually with a client, someone who told me, I hate working out. I know I need to do it, but I absolutely hate doing it.  And this is the process that we literally went through  their responsibility every single day,  starting off was just to get workout clothes out of the closet and lay them out on the bed.

Just to look at them. Didn't even matter if they put them on or not. Just, you just had to get them out and start telling your brain. At some point, we're going to work out, right? And then it was, okay, now you have to actually put the clothes on. Now you have to get dressed.  And then it's like, now you have to get in the car and go to the gym.

Doesn't matter if you just sit in the parking lot. But you have to go. You have to actually look at the building. And then at some point, you have to go into the building. Doesn't even matter if you just walk in, look around, and walk right back out. Just go into the building.  And it took this person about a month of just, like, these little tiny steps that they were taking.

And But then one day a light bulb just went off. There was like, I might as well just work out.  Like I'm here. I might as well just do something. But even that, we started really small. Like, okay, your first workout do like 10 minutes,  right? Just don't even do anything big. And so they did, they did like a really short workout.

And then within a few weeks, you know, they were doing a little bit more consistently. And by the time we hit like three months, they were working out four days a week. And like, people might go, why don't I can't wait four months to start getting results.  In the grand scheme of your life, four months is such a small period of time. 

It is. And think about this. It's like you can either take the four months and really, again, you're like changing my identity. Like you're, you're doing it, you're doing it nice and slow. So it becomes part of your life. You're getting comfortable with it. It's either start slow or you're never going to do it. 

And that's the thing. People are, they want it so fast, but if it's not working, like what you're doing is not working right now, you really have to scale it back. And, you know, I would say for most people, that's probably not the case where you just need to take out the clothes. But I love that example because it doesn't have to be, you need to go work out yet.

If you're not there, let's just start where you are and get comfortable with whatever it is that you're trying to implement in your life and, and chunk it down. Yeah, and that's where it becomes important to kind of know where you are right and and where you want to get to. And that's why one of the big pillars of what I teach on is everything always starts with having a vision  and visions aren't about goals, visions aren't A vision is not, I want to lose 20 pounds or whatever.

A vision is literally thinking about the person you want to become, the behaviors that that person has, the way that they feel, the way they interact with people, the relationships that are involved in the places that they associate or go to all those things. That's part of your vision.  And you need to get super clear on what you want your life to ultimately look like in order to know where to start. 

Yeah.  And when you are able to just be where you are, it's, I feel like that's just such a better place, because it's almost like you can start to accept that, okay, I'm here, like, I see where I'm at, and this is where I want to be, and just having the self compassion, maybe that's like a sub tip for me, like, show yourself compassion, because you're not going to be perfect, there are going to be times that you Fall off.

And, you know, you're not going to be able to get in whatever it is that you wanted to, because life and just being okay with that, knowing that it's okay, because you're changing who you are. So it doesn't matter if you miss a day, you can just come right back to it. I find it interesting because self compassion is I think so huge.

And I have this conversation with men, especially because I think men are even more hard on themselves and women are. Women tend to be very hard on themselves from an external point of view, thinking that they have to live up to some other standard, whereas men, it's more of an internal thing. And not only do a lot of guys think that they shouldn't have compassion on themselves.

They think that it's a weakness. They think that they're actually motivated themselves by being negative and saying things negatively about themselves. And I'm like.  If you were motivated by that, then we wouldn't still be sitting here talking about you trying to achieve your goals.  Because clearly it's not working.

It's not working. And it doesn't feel good. No. Like, it doesn't feel good when you're beating yourself up because you didn't do something that you said you would.  So, I just find with a lot, especially with a lot of guys, like I said, it's an internal thing.  And it's even at backwards thinking of like, well, I don't need to be self compassion.

I'm motivated when I, you know, tell myself I'm a fat piece of crap.  No one has ever been motivated. Like maybe that gets you to do a few extra sets that day, but long term that didn't fix anything.  Yeah, I totally agree with that.  All right. What's your next tip?  So the next thing, like I said, for me, it's, it's about that vision is really where I would is until you have a clear idea of what you want life to look like. 

Where are you going? Right? So often I see people that just have this vague goal of like, I want to lose weight, I want to have more energy, you know, I want to be more attractive, whatever, right?  I want to make more money, whatever the thing is. And they have no idea how to get there. They have no idea how to measure when they get there.

They don't know what anything is going to really look like. It's just this vague goal.  And so, of course, the moment anything gets hard, what's going to happen? You're going to stop because you have nothing that you're working toward like there's no there's no milestones along the way. There's no reward points.

There's no nothing that you can kind of say like, hey, this is, you know, something that's going to work for me if you look at  I'll just give you a, an easy analogy of why visions are important. So let's just take like a, a restaurant that has a rewards point system.  What do they do? Most of them either like on the app or they give you a card or something like that.

They actually have little numbers. So like, let's say like after your 10th visit, you get something free or whatever, right? What do they do? They'll show you how many visits you have left. Why? Because they're giving you a roadmap. for where you need to be. So it's motivation for you to be like, Oh, I've already got four things towards my free visit.

So now I'm going to go and now I'm halfway there. And Oh, now I'm 75%, right? So  if you don't have a vision for your life and how you want your habits to impact that,  then How do you know if you're on the right track? You don't. And if you don't know if you're on the right track, the moment you think it's difficult, you're going to quit. 

How do you manage when someone comes in, or even like anyone listening, when they're like, okay, so I have this idea about who I want to be. Like, what do you do with that? Because  I think sometimes people just, like, it's not, like, top of mind. Do you suggest people, like, write it down or create a vision board?

Where should they hold that vision so that they can come back to it?  I think the answer varies for different people.  Some people, writing things down is very effective for them.  Some people, having something they can look at every day is very effective for them.  And then there's some people like me that We'll just start ignoring the vision board or we'll never look at something after I write it down. 

And so for me, I like to close my eyes.  And imagine my future self and literally take myself through an entire day of what is going to happen from the time I wake up to the time I go back to bed.  What are the interactions I'm going to have? How am I communicating? How am I talking? What activities am I doing?

What am I eating? All that stuff. I want to think literally every moment of my day,  ideal situation, what would it look like?  And once I've committed that in my brain, like once I've actually walked through that and visualize that activity, it's like I've lived it.  So I don't need it on a board. I don't need it in writing.

It's there. I know what it felt like. And you earlier talked about the importance of  most of the time what we want to do is feel a certain way.  And so when I go through that experience, I get to feel it. And once I feel it, it's locked in.  I love visualization,  and it is and there are so many ways that you can can lock in that vision.

I hadn't even thought of it when I was asking the question about visualization, you know but I do think it's powerful yeah like finding what works for you and maybe it's multiple things like I know for me I like to write things down. And I like vision boards and I like to visualize it. So I like all of it.

And then what about when, okay, let's say like you create this vision, right? So you have this clear vision of where you want your life to be.  How do we break this down? Because I know in the past when I've created especially vision boards, I've created them in the past. I felt almost like I was so disconnected from where I wanted to be.

It was overwhelming and I didn't even want to move forward. So how do you bring people or what should people do to? Get back to you like where they are and how they can move towards that vision and without feeling super overwhelmed and like they're never going to get there. Yeah. So I'll give you this  slightly broader answer that's going to kind of tie back into your question. 

So what I teach people is this concept of connected health.  And what this does is it looks at your physical, your mental, your emotional health, along with your relationships, your environment, and your sense of purpose, or what some people might call existential health.  And.  When you start looking at all these different components of life or of health, and you start to kind of understand the way they interconnected with each other, the way they have an impact on each other.

For one, that's going to help you get more clarity on what your vision needs to look like because now you can break your vision into those six areas. Okay. And then once we have that, so.  From there. We have our three pillars. The first is your vision. The second is to strategize. And the third pillar is mastery. 

So most people what ends up happening is they don't start with the vision at all. They just kind of go into some kind of plan or strategy.  And then some people even make the mistake of they start getting into the weeds with stuff and they go It's trying to go straight to mastery and you can't go straight to mastery like you have mastery is is there for a reason it's the last 10 percent like we talked about earlier.

So if you're trying to do master at the beginning, you're setting yourself up for failure.  So the first thing I'm going to do when I go to plan that second phase is I want to look at what my strengths and weaknesses are.  I want to see like, how can I use a strength that I have? So for example,  let's say that one of the habits that I want to create is I want to exercise more consistently. 

What I'm going to do is I'm going to look at what are other areas in my life that I'm already consistent at something  and what makes me consistent in those areas. What behaviors do I have that allow me to be consistent? How can I then take those same behaviors and apply them to my desire to exercise more?

And then, again, going back to what we said earlier, I'm going to scale back the behavior to something small enough to start with, because this is a totally new thing for me, and I'm going to develop those skills, and I'm going to have a strategy for improving those skills. Right? Because that's another big thing I think people miss out on is skills.

You want to eat better? Let's, let's actually just think about this for a second.  Something as simple as I want to eat better. Well, first of all, you have to know what eat better means,  right? So you have to have education around what foods are actually better for you,  which might mean specifically figure out which foods are best for your goal.

Not necessarily which foods are healthier.  So let's say that you're like, okay, I know I need to eat more fruits and vegetables.  Well,  What fruits and vegetables do you want to eat?  How do you pick them out?  When are they in season?  How do you prepare them? How do you like, you know, peel them, cut them, whatever.

How do you cook them? Do you eat them raw? Like you have to know all these things.  That's a lot of stuff, right? There's a lot of stuff, but both will service just go. I just need to eat more fruits and vegetables. That's this is why you fail, right? Because you're not thinking about all the different skills that you need to develop just to eat vegetables. 

That makes so much sense to me  because I've totally done that just with like random things even that I'm like, oh, I'm gonna eat better and whatever that means. I don't even know. And then, yeah, it doesn't go very well for very long because  ultimately I had no vision and I hadn't really thought about all the steps that it would take.

Like, when am I gonna go grocery shopping for that? And how am I gonna prepare that? Because maybe I don't like, you know, cooked carrots, but I like raw carrots and yeah. That makes so much sense. So what if instead, if you said, okay, my goal is to eat more vegetables? Well, first of all, let's figure out where are you at now?

Is this a strength or weakness?  If you're eating zero vegetables now, you're not going to go eat eight vegetables or eight servings of vegetables a day, right? Like that's not going to happen. You maybe eat one and then eventually you might get to eight, but it's not going to happen this week. So you have to go, okay, the first thing I have to do is figure out a vegetable I will eat. 

Now, I, now that I know a vegetable that I might eat and maybe you don't know yet, maybe you don't even know what that vegetable is. And maybe you work with a coach to figure that out, or, or maybe you go to the internet and you search and you just try to find something, or maybe you just randomly go to the store and pick something.

I don't know, whatever. Right. Like whatever, however you decide to start, but you, you figure out all those steps. Okay. How do I pick this out? How do I make sure that I get something that's ripe and you know, how do I prepare it? And you come up with it, you find a recipe for it. And literally you just do all this work with one vegetable. 

And then you see if you like it or not,  and then maybe you didn't like it, but maybe you tried a different way. Maybe you try a couple different ways to eat this vegetable. I mean, listen, I gave brussels sprouts like seven or eight tries. I just decided they're not for me. But  that aside, they're not for me either. 

Listen, people, it's okay. If you decide something's not for you. Nope. Nope. Yeah, it is okay. But yeah, so like, if we do this with all of a sudden, what happens now we have a vegetable. So now we have a serving of vegetables.  instead of zero. And then we go out and pick a second vegetable and now all of a sudden we can have two servings of vegetables. 

And yeah, it might take you six months to get to the point where you're eating eight servings of vegetables a day. But if you never took any of these steps, guess how many vegetables you're going to be eating six months from now? Zero. Zero. Nada.  So would you rather take six months to develop your way there or would you rather just still not be there?

I'm guessing if you're listening to a podcast like this, you probably want to take the six months.  Yeah, definitely. And Like having that vision of what it is is your end goal and like, why, you know, like having, I think the why behind it is also really important. Like, what is your actual motivation to do that?

So you can fall back on it, you know, for some people it's like, yeah, I want to  feel really good in my body. And or maybe it's That they want to feel more calm and less in their head. Right. And they want to implement meditation to having that clear vision and just building up, you know, cause it goes back to your first one of like starting small, like chunking it down, but having the vision for what it is that you actually want.

So you can go into those small things and build up to that place. Yeah. And I mean, if we take something like meditation is an example.  If you just go, I'm just going to go sit down in a room  and close my eyes and try to meditate for 30 minutes. It's probably not going to happen.  Yeah. I wouldn't do that.

Yeah. I mean, you may, you may start off with like 10 seconds, right? It might be all you can do. And over time. Maybe you meditate longer, or maybe you started going, Hey, you know what? I really use a good pair of like noise canceling headphones, or maybe you like play some white noise or something in the background and maybe you get a comfortable pillow to sit on.

Right? Like these are all little things you can start doing, but what did most of us do? Oh, I need to go out and buy like some nice, like sitting pillows and I need to create this environment. I need to do all this.  And then we wonder why it didn't work. Well, you didn't develop the skills. You haven't developed the, that ability to shut the outside world out and really pay attention to your body and let your body communicate with you.

Because that's what meditation really is. Meditation is allowing your body and your mind to communicate with you and tell you what's going on. If you have all this outside noise, it doesn't matter. What clothes you're wearing or what your environment set of is those things can have an impact for sure,  but they're not where you start right it's like if you were going to be if you're going to go take a golf. 

It just, you go by the best clubs in the world. If you don't know how to swing a golf club, it's not going to do you any good, right?  It's not.  People have tried and just, it doesn't work, especially with golf.  All right. What is your last and final tip for creating better habits?  I think the thing for people to really stop and look at, and I think you touched on this earlier with the idea of the purpose, the why behind it is.

We have to focus on our behaviors. If we're focused on an outcome, it's important to recognize that we have very limited control over that outcome, and getting focused on that leads to sometimes negative behaviors.  So again, I just, I like to use weight loss because it's such an easy thing for people to visualize, but you can apply this to anything. 

But if I set a goal to lose 20 pounds,  let's say my body really only has 18 pounds to lose,  what happens Is I get to 18 pounds and those last two pounds won't come off, I'm gonna start starving myself. I'm gonna start doing things that aren't healthy  because I want to lose these last two pounds instead of just being happy that my body lost 18 pounds.

And the reality is, it's your behaviors that matter,  regardless of what it is you're trying to do. The behaviors matter. If you go back to the example earlier that I used about the client trying to get into the gym and taking those small steps. It was about their behaviors.  They didn't suddenly start going to the gym consistently because the gym just magically became fun one day because they suddenly liked it one day.

It was those consistent behaviors. It was showing up every single day, doing things that moved them in that direction because that's all we really have control over, is moving ourselves towards something.  And then once they started doing it,  They started getting in the gym, they started working out, they actually started enjoying it a little bit, they started seeing some of the benefits, they started feeling better, and then that gave them the motivation to keep going.

Had they just tried to just go to the gym,  then it wouldn't have worked out, then they would have just fell off, because they didn't take the appropriate behavior. So, that would be the big thing I would tell people is,  you have to figure out what are the actual behaviors you want, that's going back to that vision.

It's not about goals. It's about behaviors. It's about the person you want to become. What's the identity that you're going to have? Because until you know that,  you don't know what to do.  That's so good.  Yes. Thank you so much for sharing all of this. This was even helpful for me. I'm always trying to implement new things.

So it's so great to just be thinking too, like, okay, how can I, like, implement new habits? But, you know, I think for me too, the biggest thing that I took away was the vision. Because I do think that's something that It's usually pretty vague. I know when I'm thinking about things like, I want to do this thing, but I don't really break it down and think about what that means.

And I'm not very specific. So I really appreciate you sharing all of this. Where can my audience find you at? The best place to find me is my website. Just it's unshakablehabits. com. And that has links to all my social media as well as my podcast. Love it. Well, I'll definitely be linking your podcast. You guys should definitely go check it out.

It's really good.  And thank you so much again. Thank you for having me