Transcripts
1. Introduction: Habits are so important. Have you ever heard of
that one quote, that 1, first you make your habits, then your habits make you. If you were to ask
me, that is one of the most powerful
quotes out there. Because it's so simple. It's simple enough to develop
into a life philosophy. My name is or modulatory,
the founder of Vermont. He talks a media
company which helps engineers and
entrepreneurs improve their communication
skills so they can articulate their ideas with
clarity and confidence. In this class, you're going to understand what
exactly is a habit? What exactly is a
cornerstone habit? What should you optimize for? Should you try to eliminate every single bad
habit out there? Or should you try to get more good habits
than bad habits? Along with a lot of other
topics which are gonna be highly practical
in your journey. And we're going to
wrap up with a final project that will allow you to assimilate a
habit into your life. Are you ready? Are you excited? If so, I look forward
to seeing you inside.
2. What is a Habit?: Habits are softwares. Imagine this real quick. Imagine that there's a
computer that you work with every single day.
Every single day. There are certain
activities that you have to do and it requires the
use of manual labor. One day you get an idea. You're like, instead of me manually doing this
every single day, how about I get the steps? I turn it into a code. And now the code can run on the computer with or without me. This is very similar to
how human beings work. The brain searches see
that you're consistently doing the same thing
over and over again. It starts to understand that
this is pretty important. So rather than requiring
so much cognitive effort, how about we ingrain new
neural pathways for it? So it does not require as
much cognitive effort that cognitive effort that
has saved it can be allocated to something else. So just viewed like that. Habits are softwares.
3. What to Optimize For: You're watching this
class for a reason. You may be at that stage
right now where you have more bad habits
than good habits. You may be at that
stage right now where you have a
lot of good habits, but a few disruptive bad habits that are holding you
back tremendously. Now you may be thinking, Okay, in this class, I'm most likely going to
learn how to get a lot of good habits and eliminate every single bad
habit out there. Here's my warning
message to you. Trying to eliminate
every single bad habit. It may seem like a worthy goal. I get that. But oftentimes what happens is that it's
a little too drastic. It does not factor a
human being, a human. And those people that
tried to optimize their habit building program to eliminate every single
bad habit out there. Often self-employed. I believe it's much
better to optimize for having more good
habits and bad habits. And later on, you can play around with these
numbers however, you see fit for your life. But the main thing that
you want to get out of this video is do not optimize for
elimination of all bad habits. Optimized for more good
habits, then bad habits.
4. Replacing Bad Habits: Can people stop a bad
habit, cold turkey? Sure. But is that optimal? I don't really know about that. People are normally capable of stopping a bad
habit, cold turkey, when there is intense shame
associated with this habit. Or there is an intense
y to strive for more. Let's say this bad habit is
drinking too much alcohol. And let's say the person who
drinks a lot of alcohol, one day, I drink too much. The garden, the car,
they got a DUI. And other friends and family
heard about this Dui. The shame is so intense
that they develop such a negative connection with alcohol that they're
able to stop it. Cold turkey. Other times, they may be drinking so
much alcohol and they see all their friends striving
for more in their lives. They now start to
build a strong why. For more. Nowadays, they're like this alcohol
really isn't for me. This is capable of happening. But in this course, I would recommend
that people start off with replacing bad habits. The reason why I recommend
this approach is because whenever
you have a habit, what it really means
is that you have strengthened neural
pathways for this activity. When you're reducing
a bad habit, which are doing is you are weakening these neural pathways. Now as you're weakening the neural pathways
for the bad habits, it would be smarter now to strengthen the neural
pathways for the good habits. So this replacement
technique is highly powerful because it gives
your body what it wants. It wants the neural pathways. The body does not like abrupt
changes for the most part. So for the rest of this class, think about the replacement
mentality rather than dropping something
cold turkey mentality.
5. Cornerstone Habits: Now you may be thinking, Okay, I will pick up some
of the good habits. But there's so many different
good habits out there. Which one should I choose? Here's what I would recommend. Lookout for Cornerstone habits. A cornerstone habit is
a habit that you do that surprisingly begins to impact other parts of your life. One example is the gym. If you begin going to the gym, most likely what's
going to happen is that you're going to
start to eat better. If you start to eat better. What also will
start happening is that you sort to
sleep better as well to different parts of
your life have been impacted by simply
picking up one new habit. Another cornerstone
habit is writing. You began writing. What
will also happen is that you start to
speak much clearer. You start to become more
introspective to new skill sets that have been picked
up by one habit of writing. So when you're thinking about good habits that you
want to pick up, try to look for
Cornerstone habits. Those habits that often
have a domino effect.
6. Micro to Macro: What happens with
a lot of people is whenever they're
building a new habit, they feel a lot of motivation
in the beginning stages. And once you feel a lot of motivation in the
beginning stages, this energy makes you want
to do something grand. It makes you want to
take the macro approach. And it makes you scuff
at the micro approach. Let's say the cornerstone
habit that you chose was going to the gym. You may be like, Okay, well, I'm going to go to the
gym or three hours a day. Now, here's the thing. Your body does not like abrupt
changes out of nowhere. It likes gradual changes. The subconscious mind
is like a little kid. It will listen to you, but you've got to persuade
it a little bit. You got to make it gradual. And this is why I would
recommend the micro approach. Let's say the
cornerstone habit that you chose was writing, rather than trying to write
a book from the get-go. How about you get a twitter
and you write one tweet. Anytime you're thinking
about doing the bad habit, like smoking a cigarette. With this macro approach, what happens is that the body is eased into this good habit. It starts to associate positive emotions
to this good habit. And now you increase your likelihood of
executing this good habit.
7. Creating a Schedule: Whenever you're
building a new habit, what you've got to
understand is that you pretty much
programming herself. When you're programming herself, it pays dividends
to be consistent. One great way to
be consistent is by taking all the
guesswork out of it. Don't rely so much
on inspiration. Create a schedule
that you will follow. To create the schedule requires some tinkering in
the initial stages, you don't necessarily know what the right schedule is
for you or your habit. So this is when
you're tinkering, you're playing around one day, you're saying,
okay, I'm going to try to do this habit
for ten minutes. Ten minutes. This is a good
amount of time. Next day. I tried to do it for two hours. This is a little too long. Then you cut it back to 30 minutes and you're
gathering more data. As you're gathering more data, you're making more refinements. As a refinements are happening, eventually over
time, you're going to get the right
schedule for you. Let's say you want
to pick up reading. And after doing some tinkering, you see that you're capable
of reading 20 minutes a day. Well, commit to that. From here on out. You have no say in the matter. You've done the tinkering, you've done the refinements. Now you have your schedule, now you got to stick
to the schedule. Consistency is king,
especially with how the building and once
you have the schedule, keep on staying
consistent with it. And eventually,
what started off as a routine now becomes a ritual. The biggest difference between
a routine and a ritual. Narrative. A ritual is something that's highly
personal to you. You feel guilty not
doing a ritual routines every now and then when you skip out on it, you're like, No. Alright, well, at
least no one knew. The ritual is more for you. So once you have been consistent with your scheduled
for some time, eventually it will come
alive and it will take out all the guesswork and you will
continue to be consistent.
8. Bonus Tip: The bonus tip is twofold. Finding the right time to do the good habit is highly
subjective in nature. But every now and then, after
observing different people, I've noticed certain patterns. One pattern is to do
the activity early in the morning because you never know what your
schedule is going to be like for the rest of the day. You may think that the
day is gonna be pretty free and add a
knower emergencies pull your left and
right and you're like, I could have been
consistent today, but, you know, I just
got emergencies. When you do it early
in the morning, you set the tone for
the rest of the day. You feel like that anytime you're doing something
productive in the morning, the rest of your
day feels smoother. You feel more patient, you feel more confident. So try to experiment, doing the good habit
in the morning. Another tip is to do it at the same time every single day. Personally, I don t know
what I'm doing all the time, but I do know at 05:00 PM, I'm always gonna be reading. I do it at the same
time every single day, and I've done it for
plenty of days in a row. Now, this is something that
my nervous system is like. This is very important
to this guy. So either try to do
the habit first thing in the morning or do it at
the same time every day. Or combine the two.
9. Final Project: Your final project is to find one bad habit that you've
been meaning to get rid of. Find one good habit that you
can replace the bad habit. Width. I tried out for
one week, one week. Do not do the bad habit, and instead start
doing the good habit. So you can weaken the neural
pathways for the bad habit. And you could shrink and the neural pathways
for the good habit. Once one week is done, a compiler report
sharing your experience. You don't necessarily have to
say the bad habit that you decided to drop or the good habit that you
decided to pick up. But for your report, if you feel comfortable adding that on, feel free to do so. So other people can
read your report and feel inspired to
drive for change. Also, I'm going to be
reading this report, get as detailed as you
want and posted on the final project
section right below. Thank you very much for
joining this beginner's class on habit building. If you would like more content from the Armani talks brand, be sure to check out
our money talks.com. And this website, you
will see plenty of mine blogs or
videos or podcasts, books and much more
are money talks.com. Go on to check it out.
Arman Chowdhury, Confidence thru Communication
