Episode 75 Podcast Transcript
Speaker 1 (00:00):
And I think that’s the difference between hacks and habits. When you think about what is a hack, it’s a shortcut, but a habit is a way of life. It’s who you are, it’s what you do, it’s how you show up. Hi everyone. Rob Kropp and Dan Stones here from Pravar Group and welcome back to another episode of The Trade Den, how are you, Dan? How’s things?
Speaker 2 (00:24):
I’m very good, thank you. Rob. Episode number 75, so really looking forward to today and excited to talk about something that’s, I know it’s a real passion of yours, this one. This is a topic you love. It’s something that you, I think it’s fair to say, have built your reputation as a coach on you do this so well. This topic of habits, and I’m looking forward to jumping in today. Not only have you built your life around these habits, but also the business we’ve got today is a big result of this, so I’m really looking forward to jumping into this topic. I think the one place I want to start though, before we go into habits and what are they and all the good stuff around that is coming back to what you were saying in the intro. I think let’s just jump in and talk a little bit around hacks for a moment and specifically breaking down some of the myths if you like, or what’s wrong with hacks.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Hacks are everywhere in today’s life, and I think that’s because we live in a world right now where people want everything now with the least amount of effort, and the reality is most people aren’t willing to do the work or pay the price to be able to obtain long-term sustainable success in whatever field that they’re chosen. Everyone wants it now and they’re just not willing to do the work unfortunately.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
And I think there’s always someone willing to sell it, right? There’s always, for everything that you can think people face, there’s always someone willing to have a hack ready to go, just in my back pocket, look, I can sell you this hack. It’s always there with our online culture.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Yeah, there’s whole industries and there’s whole businesses built on selling the dream and the fantasy of getting people something straight away, and unfortunately people buy into that shit and I think people are getting better at their BS metre, their bullshit metres is getting better, but unfortunately we live in a society today where everyone wants something now and unfortunately they’re not willing to go to do the hard work together, unfortunately.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Yeah. I think as we get into this as well, let’s be honest, we’re not saying that every hack in the world ever invented is a bad thing. Some of them do have a role to play, right?
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Yeah, correct. There’s always tools and strategies which makes us more efficient or more effective, but there’s certainly things out there that they have a place in the marketplace to be able to get people into action or get ’em off their ass and get moving. You think of things like crash diets, for example. They often get people started, you look at 12 week challenges, they get people moving and up and into starting their health and fitness journey. So there’s other things like 75 hard, they get people into gear and get them moving. So those things often get people up into action and starting to create momentum, but people look at those frameworks and those systems and those journeys as a shortcut to success and unfortunately they’re not for the majority of people anyway.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
And I think that’s where you said before that people’s bullshit metres are starting to tick off things like the biohack and you can lose all the weight in the world in 10 minutes. I think people are starting to become a lot more savvy with that, but we also see this in the business world and in money related matters, things like get rich schemes and things like that. They’re as old as the hills, but we still don’t necessarily relate our business activities and behaviours to alignment to the hacks. It’s still relatively new and they’re always changing.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
Yeah, correct. People feel like they need a shortcut to be able to make money and they get lured into schemes and Ponzi schemes and pyramid schemes and all those types of things where if you look at anyone who’s built a business over the long term, they have worked their ass off, they’ve paid the price and made sacrifices to be able to get there, and they’ve built it over a lot of years. You look at someone who’s become an Olympian, they didn’t do it by taking shortcuts. You look at someone who’s built a master vast fortune and built a lot of wealth, they haven’t done it by cutting corners and thinking short term with immediate gratification when it comes to making and managing their money. They’ve done it over a long sustained period of times. And so this is the problem with society today. When do we want it now? How much work are we willing to doing? Fuck all. And that’s the problem. People want everything now and it’s not the way to achieve long-term sustainable success.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Yeah, I love that, that Ponzi came one, it just came up for me straight away. As you were talking about the two extremes, you’ve got Bernie Madoff with the big Ponzi scheme, you’ve got Warren Buffet who’s been in the market for 70 years or whatever it is at this point in time. You’ve got that. They’re two extremes of the hack versus the long term. Correct.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
You look at the buffets of the world, his success has come from time in the market and compounding results over that sustained long period of time, which has got him to where he is. And it just shows that having that delayed gratification and long-term approach to it is what creates the results in the end of the day.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
Yeah. Let’s bring it back a bit. I know we’ve talked about big Ponzi schemes in the Warren Buffets of the world. Let’s come back to our own experiences as a coach, as yours in particular. How do you see this show up in the coaching landscape and a little bit more probably relatable than the Warren Buffetts of the world?
Speaker 1 (05:59):
Yeah, I think what we pride ourselves on here at Pravar is we run quite a holistic approach to coaching. It’s not just Hard nosed business coaching. We’re here about to build businesses and reconnect families and transform people’s lives. And this shows up a lot of people in their health and wellness journey. Just the other day I saw a guy I know he is on his third or fourth go of doing 75 hard and he’s always having to reset and have a go at it again. And he’s been doing this programme over many, many years and he’s not achieving the life that he wants from a health and wellbeing point of view because he’s dipping in and out looking for that hack to be able to get him started all the time. Whereas I look at someone like Luca, one of our clients we coach for a very long time from Aesthetic Tile and Stone on the Gold Coast.
(06:54):
That guy is someone who has got dialled in health habits where he’s big and strong and muscly and he’s healthy and fit, and that’s because that’s his life. His life is built around his training. He’s eating, he’s sleeping, he’s nutrition, his hydration and the way that he prioritises those things in his life day in, day out. He doesn’t have to keep starting 75 hard every day. It’s just because he’s got his habits so dialled in. It’s just who he is and his way of life. And so there’s an example that we see from a coaching point of view, and I know we’re not health coaches, but that’s a prime example of one guy who could never get sustainable results, always stopping and starting, yet one guy is just so dialled in and it’s just a way of life for who he’s and what he does.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
Yeah, really good example. I like that. So I think you’ve touched on it, right? And this is the key problem, I think regardless if it’s a health, a business or whatever the hack is, the biggest problem is that they’re unsustainable. Most of these hacks.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
Most people look for the quick win and rather than finding a system or a process that is enduring over a long period of time, and that’s why they are unsustainable, is it’s like the quick fix, the quick win, the quick thing that I can do to drop weight, make more money, have a better relationship. It’s the quick thing. But the thing that creates long-term success is finding the process, finding the system, the series of strategies that you can repeat over a period of time. That’s what creates the long-term sustainable results. So that’s the problem is hacks are unsustainable.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
If you want to live a short-term sort of life, you’ll go the hack grid. You want that long-term, the maintenance in long run. You’ve got to start looking at habits, which we’re going to cover off. I think the other thing is that that promise of a shortcut, it’s so alluring that sugar hit that it’s now, it’s quick. It’s just as simple as doing this one little thing and you can have everything you want.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
And when you look at the business world, if you look at a business that has the ability to endure the highs and lows and the challenges that come from internal and external factors of a business over a long period of time, that business or the business owner isn’t built on shortcuts. It’s built on good, strong, stable foundations which has the ability to endure the tests of time. And that’s why hacks don’t work is because you’re right, they’re based on shortcuts, quick fixes, easy paths around it, but anything great is not built on a shortcut.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
Yeah, they’re unstable. I mean we talk about this I think two ways. We always talk about building a wall. You wouldn’t just start stacking a couple of bricks with no mortar in them and leave a couple of bricks out of the wall the minute it gets pushed or anything happens to that wall, it’s going to fall straight over. And that’s the same thing with a lot of these hacks. They’re just shortcuts that they don’t sustain and they’re ineffective at what they’re designed to absolutely do or told to be doing.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
And I think that’s the difference between hacks and habits. When you think about what is a hack, it’s, it’s a shortcut, but a habit is a way of life. It’s who you are, it’s what you do, it’s how you show up. And that’s why I like habits over hacks because a hack is just something you’re trying and trying to find the easiest way to do that. But if when you find the series of habits that you become that is almost somewhat like a blueprint of your life that is repeatable that you can do for a long sustained period of time, it just becomes a way of life in who you are and what you get done. And that’s why habits Trump hacks all day long.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
Yeah, I’d agree. And I like that blueprints versus bullets and for the avoidance of doubt, if you’re thinking, well, I don’t do shortcuts, I’ve just got a magic bullet or I’ve been sold a magic bullet that works. Magic bullets and shortcuts are the same thing, just to avoid any sort of doubt about what we’re talking about.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
Yeah. The thing with magic bullets is it’s an avoidance of doing the work and when you want build something great and live an epic life, you’ve got to work hard for that and you’ve got to put in the work and it’s doing the boring shit over and over and over again and somewhat falling. I know it’s cliche, but you’ve got to fall in love with the process of that thing, not just being in love with the result of that thing. And that’s why you can’t have magic bullets because magic bullets are the shortcut to doing the work and paying the price required to get the very thing you’re chasing in the end of the day.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Yeah. I know our coaches love talking about guys when they finally reach that stage of having a beautifully boring business, it’s great. The habits adult in the systems are there, the foundations are in place. It’s a nice way of thinking about it in that business context. Let’s change then. I think we’ve touched on hacks, right? Unless you want to really go off on any more on hacks, I’m happy for you too because I’ll get in there with you.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
Can I just hang shit from the next 10 minutes around why hacks are, I think you can pick up from what we’re saying here is that you, they’re no good.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
We’re not about it, we’re just not. And we could talk about this all day, but if you want to go down that path, you’re probably not listening to this podcast. It’s so foundational. Even our first programmes that we run with guys, we are stressing the foundational nature. We don’t tend to chop and change what we teach, even though we get clients that tell us all the, why don’t you teach this? It’d be great. Can you do a topic on this latest thing that I read or I heard, or what’s your thoughts on this? And nine times out of 10, I’ve seen you do it where you just ignore guys who ask those questions. It’s like not even going to have the conversation. Alright, so let’s turn the corner. Let’s go into what is a habit and just start off, as I said, you are phenomenal at coaching this stuff. So you’re going to do a lot of the talking today, so be prepared to do the heavy lifting, but what do we talk about when we say what is a habit? Give us your definition of that and then we’ll start to move into the depths and principles around how we teach it or how you teach it.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Habit habits are such an important topic that we’ve got as human beings, we’ve got to get our head around. And that’s because stats tell us that somewhat of 60% or more of what we do on a daily basis is through unconscious decision making and behaviours that we demonstrate throughout the day. So what does that mean? It means that over 50% of what we do as a human being, we didn’t decide to do that. And that’s the scary thing is that it’s almost like we’re zombies, unconscious, people walking around doing things without actually being consciously in control that we’re having those thoughts, having the ideas, making the decisions and demonstrating those behaviours. It’s just pretty scary when you think about it, isn’t it?
Speaker 2 (13:53):
Absolutely. When you think about you’ve got an idea in your head about where you want to go, but you’re not really thinking about what you’re doing to get there for 60% of the time, it becomes very clear how quick you can find yourself miles away from what you had ideally thought of in your mind.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
Correct. And this is where habits come into play is because habits is something that we’ve done over a period of time where we started at once, we repeated that behaviour to the point that it just becomes a way of life of what we do and how we show up. It’s an unconscious behaviour that we do once but then gets repeated. And so the power of habits can work in two ways. We can have destructive habits which move us away, which is a bad or a negative habit, which can move us away from the very business and life that we want to live or we can have constructive or positive or empowering habits which move us closer to the business and life that we want to live. And this is why this topic is so important is because if you don’t choose at some point you’ve chosen, but if you don’t design your life and choose the habits that you want to live your life by, you will just go through life on autopilot, picking up all these behaviours along the way and never really getting to where you want to get to because you are ruled by the habits that you’ve collected along the way.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
Yeah, interestingly, when you talk about being on autopilot and choosing habits, and I’ve heard you talk about this before, but this is your brain doing the work it was designed to do. It’s not like you’ve got to inject this capability into your brain. Your brain will do habits by default. It’s a matter of being conscious around what you’re choosing. Maybe give us some examples of habits and how this happens. It’s your brain doing the work for you in that subconscious mode.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
It is, and it’s trying to be efficient as an effective as it can be. It’s like a big machine. It’s trying to, that’s its job to preserve energy. And so an example of a habit is getting up in the morning and the first thing you do is check your phone or you get out of bed and you go straight to the coffee machine and have a coffee. That’s what I do. Or it might be the way that you drive to the drive to work in the morning where you’ve jumped in the car, you’ve made 10 phone calls and you’ve arrived at your destination and you’d turn around and go, shit, I’ve just been driving for 45 minutes. How the hell did I get there? That’s because that’s your habit of the way you do things. It could be coming home in the afternoon and the way that you finish work for the day at a certain time, the way you drive home, you come home and have three beers in an afternoon. That’s another example of a habit. So if you want to look at the results you are getting in your life right now, they are a reflection of the habits that you do on a daily, weekly, monthly basis. And that’s why habits are so important is because believe it or not, you are more predictable than you realise. And that’s the scary thought.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
It is. And like you’re saying, you’re predictable. It’s almost a foregone conclusion to get this definition, this concept really through. Let’s break it down a little bit more. Not random acts, behaviours that are ingrained through repetition. You’ve done this so often. They are ingrained, they’re now part of your world and part of who you are and how you will behave. So it’s predictable in that sense. We can predict it based on the fact that they’re often kicked off by a specific trigger. Something happens, you feel a certain way, you will do a certain thing. You have got habits based as a reaction to what’s going on in your world. And then the last one is there’s also cues in your environment. There’s certain places you go to that you will do certain things based on where you are. You’ll have habits based on the second you get there. I know if I go to the gym, the first thing I do is put my bag in the thing, go to the toilet, put on my heart rate monitor. They’re just habits. I don’t think about it. It’s just like that’s what I do. It’d feel weird if I didn’t do it, I wouldn’t know what else to do.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
And this is across every area of life. I know we use health and wellness as the example, but that’s where most people relate to habits.
(18:20):
But this is across life in terms of the way that you run your business, the way that you manage your money, the way that you show up as a husband and a father, what you do on weekends, what you probably have for dinner on a Friday night when you’re tired and the first thing you do is jump into Uber Eats and order some takeaway. It’s all series of habits. Your life is just a series of habits. Now, if you want something and you’ve set goals in your life and those habits on a daily, weekly, monthly basis are not moving you closer to those goals, those goals are a fantasy not going to become a reality. And this is why it’s so important that when you’re doing goal setting and goal achievement, there’s two parts of the equation. You’ve first got to set the goal and then the achievement part is aligning who you are, how you show up the habits and the behaviours that you demonstrate on a weekly basis to ensure that they’re congruent with that goal. Otherwise it’s never going to become a reality.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
Yeah, I a hundred percent agree. I think in my mind when I think about this, it’s you don’t get what you want. You get what your habits deliver, you get your habits, you get the result of the habits, not what you want, no matter how much you want it, no matter how clear you are, just the way it works.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
Correct. And that’s the punchline out of all this thing around habits is who you are and what you’re achieving today is just a reflection of your habits. So if you are not happy with where you are in business, family relationships in life, you’ve got to go back to the source which is your habits because your habits are a blueprint that create the patterns of behaviour that create the results in your world. And so instead of being unhappy with the results, let’s get committed around changing the fundamental habits that create those rolls and results. And that’s why habits Trump hacks all day long.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
And let’s build on this now. So rather than focus, and I hope if you’re listening and you’re going, just give me the habits I need to have, then please don’t. I hope you’re not doing that. So rather than focus hack it is rather than focus on what are the good habits and what are the bad habits. If you’re sitting there going, Rob, just tell me what habits I need. You’re still in the hack mindset, but let’s camp out on how we teach this at Pravar and really walk through the similar process, right? We’re going to pull back the curtain a bit and as I said, very few people can teach it like you do. So do you want to introduce the development of coaching habits and the concepts that we do teach predominantly the Bevan.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
This framework that we introduced and is a big part of our coaching here at Pravar came from my own experiences. Many years ago I was a young guy and I was big into my endurance cycling. I was trying to build a business. I had plenty of come off the back of some big financial stresses in my world. So I had my body and my mind and my environment was just full of stress and pressure and actually went and got some help around how do I take my life out of a immense chaos and how do I get back in control and get my life in order to some degree. And a big part of that was really focusing on my habits on a day-to-day basis. I took a lot of inspiration from Michael Bevan, the cricketer, and Michael Bevan, for those who don’t remember, was the guy who won the one day game many, many years ago now by hitting the boundary on the last ball.
(22:13):
And if you look at Michael Bevan as the cricketer, he actually got dropped from the one day team because of his inconsistency. But what he did was went away and worked on his mindset and his game and he made his way back into the one day team and he became renowned for in the team as Mr. Reliable and Mr. Consistent. Now his game wasn’t built off the back of the likes of Davey Warner or those guys where they try and hit a four or a six on every ball. His game was built off, the success of his game was a strategic game and it was built off the back of hitting a one and two all day long. And it was a predictable game. It was somewhat of a boring game from a spectator’s point of view, but it was what set him up to be one of the most successful one day cricketers in his era. And that’s where we drew inspiration for what we now call the Bevan system in coaching.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
So the Bevan is the name we give to this overarching framework and what we’re going to continue to discuss just on that. I think when we talk about it, the ones and twos that we refer to in coaching now become the patterns, the processes, the priorities we put on things. It’s that beautifully boring stuff I was talking about before that we do daily, that we do weekly, we do monthly. Stacking those up is what helps us achieve our goals. And I think the next part of this is it doesn’t matter what role you’re playing, whether you’re a business owner, whatever it is, and I think you touched on this, but it goes into every facet of your life. There’s nowhere that your habits won’t touch.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
Correct. And at Pravar, we compartmentalise our life into what we call the four primary legacies, health, wealth, business and connections. And what we’re ultimately doing over a period of time through coaching is deciding and designing the habits that we want to do on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly basis, which is a reflection of Michael Bevan hitting a one, a two, a four or a six. And so it’s about over time building and designing a series of habits to build the business and life that you want off the back of really positive habits of the life that you want to be able to live
Speaker 2 (24:45):
And mastery, which is the aim of all of this in business coaching. You want to get to that point where through coaching with us, you end up having mastery of your business and mastery of the concepts that we teach. But that doesn’t come through. It’s not exciting in that sense, is it? It’s rewarding, it’s fulfilling. It does its job really, really well, but it’s not an exciting thing, but it’s not an accident either. I think the hack mentality, just to go back for one second is am I the one that this will work for? Will this work for me? Habits isn’t something of will this work for me whether or not you have them and you do them and they’re aligned the right way.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
Correct. Like injecting yourself to lose weight or getting stuck into the cold plunges and the sauna on a daily basis or the crash diets to lose a little bit of weight over the next month. They’re not built off daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly habits around what you eat, how you train your nutrition, your hydration, and how you show up on a day-to-day basis and your relationship with food and training and everything. That’s where long-term sustainable results where someone can lose a lot of weight or change their relationship with alcohol or build a strong business or improve the way they’re showing up as a husband and father is done over 3, 6, 9, 12, 18, 24 months of dialling in the way that you display and demonstrate these habits, not just something you’re trying to fix within a one month or a 75 day period.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
Yeah, really good. So I think that sets us up for what a habit is. I think we’ve now got a clarity over that. We’ve got the clarity over what the Bevan is when Rob talks about the Bevan, that’s the framework that we’re talking about. Now we’re going to dive into principles. So when it comes to building habits, again, we’re not going to tell you what the habits are. So if you’re still asking Rob, just get to the punchline and tell me what habits they are that’s hacking. What we’re going to talk about now is the principles and at Pravar we’ve got three non-negotiable ironclad principles when we do this and these, Rob, I think before you even get into them, and I sort of introduced the first one for you to go off on, these aren’t just things that we think sound cool or whatever it is. This is literally been tested with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of clients over years.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
It has and it’s from also our own personal experience.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
Yeah, true. Yeah, absolutely. And as we talk about them, it’ll ring true, but I just want us put that out there. It’s not like we’re trying to be cool or clever with these. They are just battle tested and proven time and again. And when people miss these principles, they tend not to get the results. So let’s dig into our three principles. The first one being one habit at a time over time, what the hell does that mean?
Speaker 1 (27:34):
I learned this the hard way. And for those of us type A personalities where we can think we can conquer the world. I learned this the hard way because when I first started my journey back, it would’ve been probably 12 or 13 years ago now type A personality thinking I could do a million of things at once and that’d all stick. And I remember my coach at the time saying, and his name was Dave, he’s like, Rob, don’t bite off more than you can chew. Just focus on one habit. Don’t underestimate how much willpower and discipline you need at the start to be able to get that habit embedded in your life and make it stick before you move on to the next one. And I’m like, Dave, mate, I can do more. I’ve got this, I’ve got this. So here I was just loading up habits and I was good for the first couple of weeks.
(28:30):
And I think that’s because I was energised, I was motivated. And if you’re listening to this, I’m like fist pumping at the moment and I was motivated and I was relying on a willpower to get me started. But the first thing when something knocked me off course or I hit a bit of a challenge or the motivation started to wane because I was trying to go too hard, too fast, too much too soon, it all just started to fall to pieces. I was trying to make so much change all at once and it was unsustainable. And that’s why this first principle of one habit at a time over time is critical to your success in embedding a habit into your life.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
And this can happen within what you were talking about within a legacy where you think, I’ll give you a quick example. A health one would be, I’m going to do the diet, I’m going to do the vitamins and the exercise all at once. That’s all in my health legacy. That’s what I’m going to do. That’s three different habits in our world. That’s not just one, that’s three. So that’s not one habit at a time. Over time it would be if you were going to do one habit at a time, time over time, I’m going to dial in my diet first. I’d do that, lock that away. And then you do the next one, which I’ll come to the second example of this is if you do it across all legacies, I’m going to introduce a diet, I’m going to have my connections, I’m going to go on a date night once a week, then I’m going to do some well stuff.
(29:58):
I’m going to start reading that book on trading and I’m going to do some business stuff. I’m going to introduce a brand new habit with business where I’m going to get up and review all my financial statements first thing in the morning. That would be an example of then not one habit over a time. Even though it is in one legacy, it’s across all four and now you’re trying to put all four in at once. So that’s the examples that we’re using there. Now that we’ve got that cleared up one habit at a time over time, how do we get to this point where we start building momentum and what do we do over time once that’s locked in, the thing that comes in is our second principle, which is habits stacking using maybe those contexts that I just outlined. Talk us through habit stacking.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
At Pravar, what we like to do is one habit at a time over time. So it’s one ideally one per quarter because a lot of people don’t understand that it often takes 30 to 60, sometimes up to 90 days of daily consistent development of that and embedding of that habit to make it stick. And so what you want to be able to do is over a period of time is lock that habit in no matter what. And once that’s locked in, then you have stack on top of it and you choose your next habit. Let’s keep going down. The health line is if you work on your eating or nutrition, you lock in that there, then you layer training, then you layer hydration, then you layer supplementation. If you layer one per quarter and stack them over a 12 month period, your life in that legacy of health and health in 12 months time will be chalk and cheese to who you are and how you’re showing up and your physical and mental appearance.
(31:55):
You’ll be a completely different person in 12 months if you stack habits rather than be that guy who tries to do all four habits at once and you do it for a month full off the bandwagon and you’re constantly stopping and starting. And that’s why things like crash diets and the 75 hards, they’re good to get people started, but for the majority of people, I’m going to talk the majority, it’s too much, too fast, too soon, way too much change. And that’s why those programmes are not sustainable over a 6, 12 month period for the majority of people in this world.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
It doesn’t become a way of being able to have that as the standard of your life. It’s a peak, it’s a moment in time that you might achieve it, but the sustainability is not there and you’re breaking the first two principles by default if we really went into those programmes.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
Correct?
Speaker 2 (32:50):
Yeah. Now let’s be clear. We’re not saying that you just put the habit in, you stack it, it sounds great, one at a time each quarter I can just stack ’em up. That’s cool. I’ll just do this forever and keep stacking. It doesn’t work that way. Success isn’t a straight line as we know it’ll take us all over the place. You said yourself, that shit still goes sideways. So our third principle and a big one is what do we do when shit gets sideways? I’ll let you introduce it and run with it.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
Yeah, I think perfection is dangerous and expecting yourself to be perfect all the time. You might follow people online who try to appear that there’s perfection in their life, but that’s often a facade. And I know that one thing that I’ve prided myself on is my consistency over the long term. I know that’s a trait of mine, which is I’m super proud of where I’m very consistent over time. But I look at just the last couple of months, there was a big period where there’s a habit that I was really working hard on over a good six or nine months was my nutrition. I lost a heap of weight, I’d really dialled in. My eating came east time this year. What does Rob love? Hot cross bruns and chocolate it. It’s my kryptonite. And I fell off the waggon from an eating point of view and I recognised it and I caught the drift, made the shift, got back on the horse and off I went again.
(34:23):
And so the principle number three is you got to catch the drift and make the shift. You got to know when you fall off and get back on, sometimes you fall off for a day, that’s fine. Sometimes you fall off for a week, you get back on. Sometimes it’s a month like I was in the whole of April and I get back on the horse again. But it’s not about how many times you fall off and get back on. It’s about reducing that over a period of time. But giving yourself a bit of a break if you do fall off the horse and don’t beat yourself up and just make sure you get back to what you know works so that you can keep moving on these habits over a period of time.
Speaker 2 (35:02):
Yeah, the ability to course correct and have that awareness of the habit you’re going for course correct course, correct course correct. It’s not locking in the habit. I think for me this third principle of catch the drift and make the shift is probably the most impactful one outside of the one at a time, over time as big as they are habit stacking, absolutely. But if you can’t catch the drift and make the shift, you’ll constantly be going back to day one all over again. And you have this all or nothing mentality about habits. I’m either doing it or I’m not doing it. There’s no in between. If I’m not doing it, I fucked it up, I’m going to start all over again. This is shit. What am I doing? I’ll get back to it one day or I’ll never come back to it again because the pain and the beating yourself up is too much and you never go back. But if you can learn this, catch the drift, make the shift, you actually learn to course correct as you go. And it’s all right to be off course a bit. It’s not the fact that you’re off course that’s a problem is the fact that you never catch it. You never make the course correction.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
Yeah. And I think what it enables you to do is find a series of habits that are sustainable and you don’t live in the extremes. And I think they were some of the mistakes that I made early on as I went way too hard and I went way too extreme. And so an example of that is I don’t drink early in the week, but I am happy to have a really nice red wine towards the end of the week and over a weekend. I know over the period of May was a super hectic, I’m training for Kakoda at the moment and it was a super hectic time operationally for us in business. We ran two events yet instead of going and doing big walks because I was starting in early and finishing late, I would just get up and go on the treadmill for 20 minutes.
(36:52):
And so over those couple of week periods, the amount of kms that I was getting in my legs were less, but I was still consistent. There were times where I fell off and there were times where I was consistent but just on a reduced level. And so when you working through the designing of your habits, you’ve got to think how do I create a series of habits that becomes a way of life and a sustainable and something that you want to live and breathe by and you love and enjoy? Because if you see these things as chores and they’re extreme and they’re hard to stick by, you will give up really, really quickly and you’ll just revert back to how things were. And I think that’s why catch the drift and make the shift is super important. And also making sure you don’t live in the extremes.
Speaker 2 (37:43):
Yeah. It takes away letting yourself off the hook when it gets hard, it’s still favouring doing the work. There’s work to be done regardless. It’s not just all or nothing. It’s not just if I’m not doing it, I’m not doing it. And that’s it.
Speaker 1 (37:57):
Yeah, there’s that thing around choose your hard, well, you can choose your hard, but you’ve got to make sure it’s a sustainable hard. I think that’s the punchline.
Speaker 2 (38:04):
Yeah, for sure. I like that. So there are our three principles there. One habit at a time over time habit stacking and catch the drift and make the shift. So Rob, as we wrap up this episode, we talked about, I’m going to bias this whole conversation. We talked about the problems with hacks. Let’s talk about the ultimate payoff for choosing to build solid habits over constantly chasing fleeting hacks. How would you summarise that case? Four habits if you can.
Speaker 1 (38:35):
If I could describe it in one word, it would be transformative Hacks are transactional habits are transformative. And each year in our lifestyle mastermind, we hand out the Bevan award after Michael Bevan. And it’s for that guy who has had a transformation in their business and life and is that person who has been Mr. Reliable and Mr. Consistent over a sustained period of time, not a flash in the pan over a period of time. And when I reflect on my life and those clients who have achieved the award or were runners up, they have absolutely transformed their life over a long period of time where they are a completely different person. Their business has grown, they’re making more money, they’re working less hours, their relationship is the best that it’s ever been. They’re showing up as the best husband, the best father, the best friend that they could be.
(39:38):
They’ve changed their relationship with alcohol, they’ve lost weight, they’ve become the healthiest version that they could ever become. Their life is just chalk and cheese from when we first met them to who they are today. And it, it’s a transformation. It’s a pure transformation in that person. And they haven’t done it by hacking their way there. They’ve done it by designing and building the habits and behaviours in life style that they want to live over a period of time. And that’s why I think that habits are transformative is because those people have gone on and our clients go on to live a transformed life and it becomes a new way of life. And it’s amazing to watch that transformation unfold, isn’t it?
Speaker 2 (40:24):
It really is. I love the way you summed that up. I think you can’t see that person going back. It’s not like they’ve reached a high pinnacle or a high point and it’s like they’ve had a personal best. It’s not a personal best, it’s a way of life. It’s transformed in the sense that they now live a different life and they have done for a long time. And often these Bevan award winners that you talk about, you can see it’s the result of stacking habits for many quarters in a row in many areas of their life. It’s not just that high watermark you’re trying to achieve to say, geez, I’ve smashed that out of the park. I’ve hit the six. It’s just a culmination of all the ones and twos they’ve hit over the course of a year and mainly it’s usually in two, three years.
Speaker 1 (41:07):
And you look at Anthony Rentzis who was a prior guy on this podcast, he won our Bevan award and he’s just been on holidays over in Fiji yet he still kept his habits going even though he was on holidays. And that’s the thing is when you’re going through challenging times or you’re out of your daily routine and you still do these things, that’s the point that it’s a way of life. And that’s why I love habits so much is because you don’t necessarily just set goals and they become a reality. You choose your habits and your habits create your life. And that’s why habit, I’m so passionate about it and that’s why they’re fundamental to your success as a person and not just in business as well.
Speaker 2 (41:48):
I love that. Really cool. Anything else we’ve missed? I know this is your episode, you’re loving this. I can see it through the camera. Anything else you want to add or you want to round this one out?
Speaker 1 (42:01):
We do have a bigger framework in a ava, our Bevan framework, and there are a senior series of habits that we’d recommend, but that would almost be giving away a bit of a hack. But what I do think we do is set the listeners a bit of an activity and getting them to choose one habit. What do you think?
Speaker 2 (42:20):
Alright, I think I can work with that. Okay, let’s see how we go. I’ll lay it out there. You tell me if you’re happy with the parameters of the challenge we’re about to set. Let’s
Speaker 1 (42:28):
Do it.
Speaker 2 (42:28):
Let’s focus on one habit at a time over time. Let’s get that dulled in first. All right, so the activity is for the next. Are we going to give ’em a big challenge or a short, I’m say should we say 30 days or are we going to go short?
Speaker 1 (42:41):
30 days.
Speaker 2 (42:41):
30 days. All right. So for the next 30 days, what is the one I repeat, the one habit that you can add to a daily routine and do this consistently for 30 days in a row. Just the one. Now this might mean you have to take out some of the habits you’re working on, some of the stuff you’re going to do, but really take the time to narrow it down to one thing and give yourself the gift of the one at a time over time. So the one habit over 30 days is your one at a time. Over time, if you can decide that, then the next thing we want to get you to do is how are you going to track your progress? And it could be simple, it could be hopefully not too sophisticated, but simple would be, for example, in a book, just ticking boxes.
(43:26):
Do 30 boxes on the page with your habit. Cross ’em off every day like a calendar. Even use a calendar and just mark ’em off. Just do the chain. I’ve done that habit every day to mark your progress. If you want to get a bit more sophisticated and put some stuff around it, maybe an app on your phone, there’s a million habit trackers and things like that you can use. It really doesn’t matter. And again, don’t get hung up on the tool or the thing that you think is going to help you do the work or get the work done. You just need to be able to measure how am I progressing and am I tracking my progress? And can I recognise that? Because that in itself builds momentum. So the two things we want to do is get the habit locked in for the one at a time over time, and we want to build momentum by tracking it and knowing if we’re off track, don’t dump it, catch the drift, make the shift.
(44:12):
So catch the drift, make the shift, and commit to this for 30 days for better or worse. Now we want you to get to 30 days absolutely in a row. That would be ideal, but in an less ideal world, and probably an even better lesson for you as you listen to this is if you do 27, 26, whatever it is. But if you can sit there and say, at the end of 30 days, I’m going back to my book, back to my app and I’m going to actually count up what I did over 30 days. That also is a win. And I think that’s important, Rob, that guys realise that as we set out those two steps for the activity for this week.
Speaker 1 (44:45):
Yeah, correct. Because otherwise you will beat yourself up and you’ll feel like a failure thinking you’ve got to start again. Because remember, we’re building for the long term, not building just for a short period of time.
Speaker 2 (44:56):
Absolutely. So that’s our challenge. Let’s see how we go.
Speaker 1 (44:59):
That’s awesome. I love it. One at a time over time and track it. And I think that’s the key for a great activity. Can you believe it, Dan? We’re actually up to episode 75 and gee, haven’t we had a lot of fun on the podcast.
Speaker 2 (45:15):
It has been. I think the way it gets edited, we’ve got great editors, Chris, who does this in the background, it makes us sound really good. We might sound like it’s straight down the line in one take. It certainly there’s a lot of laughs in the background, a lot of stuff that goes on that we get to see and experience and it’s been a blast so far. I’m looking forward to where we go. But yeah, it’s a hell of a lot of fun. But amazing to think where we started and what we were thinking when we started this to being 75 in. It’s a big change.
Speaker 1 (45:43):
The greatest gift that you can give us is to hit that follow button and leave us a review and let us know what you love about the podcast and share it with a couple of your mates. There are a lot of trades business owners out there that we know that this podcast would help. And if you can help us extend our reach and put us in the years as someone that you know, a friend, colleague, or someone in the industry who you know that needs some support, share it with them. We’d love to be able to talk to them through this podcast and help them on their journey. Thanks again for tuning in today and looking forward to coming back to you with another episode of The Trade Den Next Week. Take care.
Speaker 2 (46:22):
See you soon.