0050: The One Strategy To Really Make A New Habit Stick

Raw transcript:

i’ve spent the last week or so
reading every single article that’s been
forwarded my way or popped up in my
feeds or whatever
that has to do with
creating new habits and making them
stick and almost every one of them
mentioned james clear and his book
atomic habits
and i’ve got something for you that was
also a running theme in all of these
articles that i’m going to share with
you that might just help you
do what you want to do this new year and
we’ll do that in this episode of the vo
heroes podcast
[Music]
so james clear has written a book called
atomic habits which is probably one of
the most popular books
on changing your life by replacing one
habit with another
and how to do that and how to make those
habits stick
and it all goes back to a series of
articles that he wrote before he wrote
the book one of which was called how to
break a bad habit and i’ll give you a
link to that in the show notes below but
there’s one clear theme that runs
through both his articles and all the
articles that refer
to his
approach to uh
sort of correcting the things that you
want to correct making better the things
that you want to improve etc through
improving your habits
and that one thing is
instead of
beating yourself up and saying
uh i try to do this and i don’t do it
all the time i’m failing but this time i
won’t
think about
being the person that you want to be
instead of
i’m trying to quit smoking
how about i’m a non-smoker from now on
i’m a non-smoker and i know that sounds
like well just by saying it it should
you be should be able to manifest that
right no that that doesn’t that doesn’t
work but uh
thinking about the person that you want
to be rather than
the individual actions that you can’t
seem to be able to change or are really
a challenge to you
can really lead to some successful
results i mean it’s already the middle
of january as i record this and am
releasing it to everybody and over 50 of
the people who have set
uh
intentions for the new year have already
failed in some way of doing it
and his uh his statement is basically
they’re going about it the wrong way
they’re thinking about the activities
that they need to change you do need to
think about that but that’s not it it’s
the person that you want to be and
here’s the one thing that i saw running
through his article that was a surprise
to me and it also runs through all the
other articles
it doesn’t necessarily have to be the
person you want to become
it often is the person you used to be
all right now here’s a picture i hope
never escapes and gets onto the internet
or i’m gonna be in trouble this was me
in the 70s
so at one point in time in my life i was
a lot thinner than i am now
and so the question is do i want to be
that person do i want to go back to
being that person we often are trying to
create a new habit from a bad from
getting rid of a bad habit a habit that
we used to have we used to not smoke
nobody you know is born smoking
we used to be thinner we used to be in
better shape
so sometimes it’s going back to
uh the person that you were before
and the bonus in this podcast is some
language that you can use
and that is as you make statements
add the word but
and follow it with a counter statement
so
i used to eat a lot of sugar but now
i eat less sugar not i don’t eat sugar
because that’s next to impossible but i
eat less sugar or uh i used to smoke but
now i don’t
i used to
stay up really late and get up really
late but i’ve decided i’m going to go to
bed earlier and i’m going to get up
earlier whatever it is that you’re
trying to change in your habits that
language of using the word but
at the end of a statement about your
current state and the but then leading
into a statement about your future state
the state that you want to be as you
change these habits that can be really
helpful for you and there’s lots of
really great information in the article
that prompted him writing the bigger
book the bigger book is worth reading or
listening to
but just this one article alone and i
again i give you a link to it in the
show notes below makes all the
difference in the world
now i hope for you for this year
that you are as successful at everything
that you want to do
that you you can be and i want to help
you with that and i’m going to
throughout the course of of the year
my question for you is in the comments
below does this make sense to you have
you been one of those people who have
tried to do something at the beginning
of the year with a new year’s resolution
and failed and maybe
not had this advice about self-talk or
about being the person you want to be
rather than just simply changing the
actions that you are currently doing let
me know in the comments below i’d love
to know that and if you think an actor
or a voice talent
that you know would benefit from this
please feel free to forward it to them
i really appreciate you watching and
listening i’m david h lawrence the 17th
and i will see you in the next episode
of the vo heroes podcast
[Music]

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