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Every weekday, we're bringing you conversations about culture, the latest trends, inspiration, and so much more.
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I am so excited about this podcast, The Bright Side.
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You guys are giving people a chance to shine a light on their lives, shine a light on a little advice that they want to share.
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And with it, a new season of Bridgerton, the official podcast.
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And this season, we are bringing fans even deeper into the ton.
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Watch season three of the Shondaland series on Netflix.
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Then fall in love all over again by listening to Bridgerton, the official podcast.
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Subscribe to catch a new episode every Thursday.
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 Guess what, Will?
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What's up, Mango?
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I've been trying to write a promo for our podcast, Part-Time Genius, but even though we've done over 250 episodes, we don't really talk about murders or cults.
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I mean, we did just cover the Illuminati of cheese, so I feel like that makes us pretty edgy.
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We also solve mysteries like how Chinese is your Chinese food and how do dollar stores make money?
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And then, of course, can you game a dog show?
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So what you're saying is everyone should be listening.
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Listen to Part-Time Genius on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
0
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 Should I get out of bed?
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SPEAKER_05
Should I make this decision?
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SPEAKER_05
Should I eat this thing?
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SPEAKER_05
Should I exercise?
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SPEAKER_05
All those questions become much easier because now our goal is well-being.
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SPEAKER_05
Getting out of bed, it's not about whether getting out of bed makes you happy.
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SPEAKER_05
If you don't get out of bed, you're not gonna have a relationship with your wife.
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SPEAKER_05
You're not gonna earn money.
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SPEAKER_05
You're not gonna feel safe.
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SPEAKER_05
Your life doesn't have any meaning.
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SPEAKER_05
Now suddenly the decision to get out of bed is much, much easier because you're not chasing pleasure.
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SPEAKER_05
You're chasing well-being.
0
SPEAKER_01
 Hey everyone, welcome back to On Purpose, the number one health podcast in the world.
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Thanks to each and every single one of you that come back every week to listen, learn and grow.
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SPEAKER_01
And I'm so excited to be talking to you today.
0
SPEAKER_01
I can't believe it.
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SPEAKER_01
 My new book, Eight Rules of Love, is out, and I cannot wait to share it with you.
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SPEAKER_01
I am so, so excited for you to read this book, for you to listen to this book.
0
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I read the audiobook.
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SPEAKER_01
If you haven't got it already, make sure you go to eightrulesoflove.com.
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SPEAKER_01
It's dedicated to anyone who's trying to find, keep, or let go of love.
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SPEAKER_01
So if you've got friends that are dating, broken up, or struggling with love, make sure you grab this book.
0
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 And I'd love to invite you to come and see me for my global tour, Love Rules.
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Go to jscheddytour.com to learn more information about tickets, VIP experiences and more.
0
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I can't wait to see you this year.
0
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Now you know that I'm always on the lookout to go and find the incredible thinkers, thought leaders, authors, writers, storytellers that I believe have inspired my life and can inspire yours as well.
0
SPEAKER_01
 Now, the person I'm going to interview today, I actually read his book back in 2013, so it's been quite a while.
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SPEAKER_01
But this book had such a lasting impact on me and I was just sharing with him that the reason I love On Purpose and our community is I get the excuse to reach out to some of the people that I admire and feel inspired by so that I can help them share their work and their story and their insights that I know will transform your life.
0
SPEAKER_01
 Today's guest is none other than Charles Duhigg, journalist and New York Times best-selling author.
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SPEAKER_01
He wrote The Power of Habit and Smarter, Faster, Better, which talk about productivity, habits and the science behind it.
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SPEAKER_01
 He joined the New York Times as a staff writer in 2006 and was part of the team that won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Journalism for the iEconomy, a series that examined the global economy through the lens of Apple.
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SPEAKER_01
 Now, today's session is going to be all about habits, understanding ourselves, improving our productivity and our effectiveness.
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SPEAKER_01
Welcome to On Purpose, Charles Duhigg.
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SPEAKER_01
Charles, thank you so much for doing this.
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I'm such a fan.
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SPEAKER_01
Your books are incredibly powerful.
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And I'm just really grateful that we get to have this conversation.
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Thanks for having me, Jay.
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I feel very similarly.
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I've loved your book and loved the show.
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So really, thank you for having me on.
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SPEAKER_01
 No, absolutely.
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Let's dive straight in.
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What I'm really fascinated to know is not just about the incredible work and research you've done, but how you became fascinated by it.
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You've written a lot about productivity, smarter, better, faster, habits.
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How did you get fascinated with those things in the first place?
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And where was your journey to become attracted to human behavior?
0
SPEAKER_05
 Well, there was sort of these two experiences.
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The first one was that, um, you know, when I first came up with the idea for the power of habit and got interested in it, my wife was about, and I were about to have our first kid.
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And, and I had this, this thing that was going on where I would think to myself, like, you know, at that point I was a reporter at the New York times and felt like I was somewhat successful.
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I had gone to business school and, you know, and, and I started a company and,
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 And I thought to myself, if I'm so smart, why is it so hard for me to go running in the morning?
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Because I would always say, I'm going to go jogging tomorrow and then not do it.
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And then my son was born.
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And after six or seven months, they start eating this, a little bit older, they start eating these little chicken nuggets.
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And I'd be sitting at the dinner table with him.
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And without thinking about it, I'd just reach over and grab one of his chicken nuggets and eat it, even though I wasn't hungry.
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It was just automatic.
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 And so I was trying to figure out, like, if I'm so smart, why is it so hard for me to do the things that I want to do?
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Like, why is it so hard to form the habits that I think are healthy for me?
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And then I also had this experience, which is, I had been a reporter in Iraq during the war, and I met this army major who explained to me that the way that the military works, and this is true of all militaries, is that it's basically a giant habit change machine, right?
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Like, your instinct when you're getting shot at is to run the other direction, because that's smart.
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 But the military teaches you these habits to shoot back.
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Or now when you're overseas, you can email or call your spouse every night.
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And so if they don't teach you good communication habits, you get distracted.
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And so when you're on patrol, you can't do your job as well, and you're in danger.
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And he explained to me that the way that they teach habits is very formulaic, that they break a habit into these three components, and they teach you how to think about them.
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And as I learned that, I thought to myself, there's a real science here, and I want to understand that science.
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 And so I decided to write a book about it in part just because it would help me figure it out.
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One of the things I find that you said that's really fascinating and I'm so glad I asked you that question is because when I'm listening to you, I think a lot of people can empathize with that.
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You feel like you're a smart, organized, thoughtful individual.
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 But then you're like, but why can't I get my life together?
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Why can't I do basic things?
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And we often get really critical of ourselves and judgmental of ourselves and make ourselves feel guilty for not having it together.
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Can you tell us a bit about that?
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Because I think one of the easiest things to feel right now, when you were saying those things, I'm sure everyone's listening going,
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 Charles, I do the same thing.
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I say I'm going to work out tomorrow and I don't.
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I reach over for the carb-y, you know, fatty, calorie-based food instead of something that I know that's healthy and natural for me.
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But then we judge ourselves.
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Talk to us a bit about judgment and guilt and criticism.
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It's a great question, right?
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Because you're exactly right.
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Our instinct, particularly like America, the UK, all these kind of like
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 you know, what we consider ourselves to be developed nations.
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We are masochists.
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We love punishing ourselves, right?
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We have lifestyles that are designed to push us to work harder and faster.
0
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And to understand why that's damaging, you first of all have to understand how habits work.
0
SPEAKER_05
So we think of habits as one thing, but every habit is actually three things, right?
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There's a cue, which is like a trigger for an automatic behavior to start.
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And then the routine, which is the behavior itself.
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That's what we think of as the habit.
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 And then finally, a reward.
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And there's a part of your brain known as the basal ganglia that looks for those rewards and tries to make any pattern into a habit.
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So it'll take cues, routines, and rewards and put them together in a little chunk.
0
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Because of that reward, it'll say, I want to make that behavior easier and easier and easier.
0
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So exercise is a great example, right?
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 We know from studies that when people have an obvious cue, like they put their running shoes next to their bed so they see them first thing in the morning, or they plan on meeting their friend at the gym every Wednesday night, that they're more likely to exercise.
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But what really makes that exercise into a habit is if they give themselves a reward afterwards.
0
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 So do they give themselves like a nice long shower or do they give themselves like a smoothie?
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Do they just have a calendar that they mark off all the times that they've exercised?
0
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Are they rewarding themselves somehow?
0
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If you're rewarding yourself somehow and you have that cue, then it becomes easier and easier to do the behavior, to exercise, to make the habit become real.
0
SPEAKER_05
But you bring up the fact that we always like are blaming ourselves, right?
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We're always feeling guilty.
0
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 So think about how most people start exercising.
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They wake up in the morning, they don't have a cue, right?
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They have to go search through their closet to find their running shoes and then they go out and maybe they run and they feel like they look really dumb, they don't know what they're doing, they're not sure what route they're going to take.
0
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 They think, oh, I'll run seven blocks, and after three blocks, they can hardly even breathe, so they give up.
0
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Then they come home, and now, now they're running late, right?
0
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So they, like, jump in the shower as fast as they can.
0
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They, like, rush the kids through breakfast.
0
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They throw the kids in the car.
0
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They take the kids to school.
0
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The kids are two minutes late for school.
0
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Then they rush to their desk, and they're already 10 or 15 minutes late for their day.
0
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And they sit down, and they've got sweat streaming.
0
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In other words, all these people who start exercising, they've punished themselves for exercising, right?
0
SPEAKER_05
 And your brain, it notices rewards and punishments.
0
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If your brain notices that when you go running in the morning, the rest of the day is a nightmare, your brain says, this is a terrible idea.
0
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I don't want to make exercise any easier.
0
SPEAKER_05
And so that's what's important, is that first of all, knowing how our habits work, but second of all, to the point that you raised, when we blame ourselves, when we punish ourselves, when we feel guilty, what we're actually doing is we're making it harder to form habits.
0
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 Because our brain pays attention to that negativity.
0
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What we need to do is we need to find the rewards.
0
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We need to allow ourselves to indulge in the rewards, to enjoy those rewards.
0
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Because that's how your brain will latch on to something and say, I want to make this easier and easier and easier to do.
0
SPEAKER_01
Charles, this is why I love you and this is why everyone should read your book because everything you say is just so methodical.
0
SPEAKER_01
 Relatable, practical, genuinely I'm loving this conversation already because I can totally understand that anyone who's listening or watching right now they're thinking yes that's exactly what I'm doing, that's exactly what I'm going through, that's exactly what I'm experiencing.
0
SPEAKER_01
I want to take a bit of a quick tangent on this because I like that you said that you thought about this before you had kids.
0
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 And what's really fascinating to me, at least, is a lot of people don't really start thinking about their habits until after they have kids.
0
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Because up until before that, we're just kind of living and maybe you don't need to be as disciplined.
0
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Maybe you don't need to be as organized.
0
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I don't have children yet.
0
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And so I live a highly disciplined, high performance, productive, effective lifestyle.
0
SPEAKER_01
And what my friends will always say to me is, Jay, wait till you have kids, right?
0
SPEAKER_01
Like I hear that all the time.
0
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 And my take is, I don't have kids and so I completely understand that I have no wisdom whatsoever on what it means to be a parent and try to live a mindful lifestyle and I don't claim to know anything about that.
0
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All I know is that I'm trying my best right now to use my time really wisely.
0
SPEAKER_01
I wanted to hear from you when you started to work on your habits before and after
0
SPEAKER_01
 How does having children affect that?
0
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And which were habits that you held on to and that have been useful?
0
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And which were habits that you had to be okay with giving up?
0
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Because I think sometimes, again, as parents, I hear a lot of parents judging themselves and saying, oh, I'm not doing this, I'm not doing that.
0
SPEAKER_01
But then we forget that, of course not, you have a whole nother human or two humans or more to take care of.
0
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Walk us through that a little bit, just as a tangent.
0
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 Well, I think that there's this axiom, which I think is true, which is that, you know, if you're a good employee and then you become a parent, you will never, ever be a good employee or a good parent at the same time for the rest of your life, right?
0
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Like part of being a parent is getting at peace with the fact that you're not going to be able to excel quite as much as you did previously in every aspect of your life.
0
SPEAKER_05
And much like you, before I had kids, I just worked nonstop, right?
0
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I loved working.
0
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I loved being a reporter.
0
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I loved reporting and writing.
0
SPEAKER_05
 And then we had kids.
0
SPEAKER_05
And it actually illustrated something to me that came up a lot in the research, which is important, which is if I was to ask you to give up part of your life right now for children, it would seem at best neutral and probably negative, right?
0
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Because you don't know the love that you're going to feel about having a kid, right?
0
SPEAKER_05
You know it intellectually, but you haven't felt it yet.
0
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You haven't had that enter your life.
0
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 And one of the things we know is that it is very hard to give up anything, including habits, when the alternative is a vacuum.
0
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In fact, this is actually known in the psychology literature as the golden rule of habit change, which says you should not try and extinguish habits in your life.
0
SPEAKER_05
 Because the truth of the matter is you can do it for a while, but those habits exist in your brain.
0
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There are neural pathways of that cue, that routine, and that reward that are all put together.
0
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And it's always going to be there.
0
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And so in a moment of stress or a moment of anxiety, you're going to fall back on that habit.
0
SPEAKER_05
What you should do instead is change the habit.
0
SPEAKER_05
Find something new to fill that hole in your life, right?
0
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Some new behavior that corresponds to the old cue, that delivers something similar to the old reward.
0
SPEAKER_05
 And for me with kids, what happened was, you know, we had kids and you're right.
0
SPEAKER_05
Suddenly I had to stop working quite so much because if nothing else, my wife was like, where are you?
0
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Like, I need your help.
0
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You need to come home.
0
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And babies are wonderful.
0
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But one of the things about them is that they're exhausting and kind of boring sometimes.
0
SPEAKER_05
And so it's hard when you're a new parent, it's hard to like give up this old lifestyle you had that you spent years, years building towards.
0
SPEAKER_05
 Now suddenly you have to, you know, be up at two o'clock in the morning and look terrible and smell terrible and never get to shower.
0
SPEAKER_05
And so one of the things that I realized that I think other people realize too is instead of seeing it as giving something up, you have to see it as opting for something else, right?
0
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One of the things that, one of the habits that I found I developed once I had kids was the habit of just much more being present with my children.
0
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Because I knew that, you know, in six months or a year or 10 years,
0
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 I'm never gonna have this again.
0
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I'm never gonna have my kids sleeping on my stomach.
0
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And when they get older, I'm never gonna have them showing me the first words that they wrote.
0
SPEAKER_05
And then now my kids are 13 and 10, I'm never gonna have them showing me the new clothes that they're wearing and asking me if I think they look cool.
0
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And so this presence, this being present, this habit of mindfulness of presence, which I think you have spent a long time cultivating
0
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 That's something that's new, I think, for a lot of people.
0
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It was new for me when I had kids.
0
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And the reason why I was able to embrace that is because I was giving up other things in order to have something new.
0
SPEAKER_05
I had to change my thinking about abandoning all these habits, which I loved, which had made me successful, for a vacuum and rather saying,
0
SPEAKER_05
 Look, I'm not gonna be able to work until 10 o'clock at night anymore, right?
0
SPEAKER_05
I used to be able to sit down at my desk at nine in the morning and power for 13 hours.
0
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Now I'm gonna go home at 5.30.
0
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But it's not because I'm giving up this discipline I had before.
0
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It's because I'm opting for something else.
0
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And that's really important.
0
SPEAKER_05
When people are thinking about changing their own habits, they need to think about not just breaking a bad habit.
0
SPEAKER_05
They need to think about opting for something new that's better and healthier.
0
SPEAKER_01
 What a brilliant piece of advice.
0
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In the spiritual literature that I studied, the English translation was referred to as the higher taste.
0
SPEAKER_01
And it was the idea that you can only give up these lower tastes when you have a higher taste.
0
SPEAKER_01
And the idea of lower and higher being vibrational and energy based.
0
SPEAKER_01
That when you first start meditating,
0
SPEAKER_01
 it's boring or it doesn't work or it doesn't make you feel happy but as you develop the higher taste you start to like the vibration and the energy that you experience as opposed to this lower distraction and the same applies in a practical way.
0
SPEAKER_01
I remember when my wife
0
SPEAKER_01
 was worried about the amount of sugar I consumed.
0
SPEAKER_01
So I grew up in a home, and my community knows this well, where I ate four chocolate products a day.
0
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A chocolate biscuit, a chocolate bar, a chocolate yogurt, and a chocolate ice cream.
0
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And I ate that my whole life.
0
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And then when I was at university, I got through university by having
0
SPEAKER_01
 you know, a bottle of Sprite and a chocolate bar every single day.
0
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So I'm so used to consuming high amounts of sugar.
0
SPEAKER_01
Now, I married a nutritionist and a dietician and an Ayurvedic health practitioner.
0
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So my wife was highly worried about my, concerned, I would say, not worried, concerned about my amount of sugar intake.
0
SPEAKER_01
And so she was constantly trying to remove sugar from my life.
0
SPEAKER_01
 But I would say to her that I was like, but I rely on it for maybe energy or I rely on it for boosting my mood or performance or whatever it may be.
0
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And it took her a while and I said to her, you need to help me find a replacement.
0
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I need a replacement.
0
SPEAKER_01
 And finally, we found it in dates.
0
SPEAKER_01
So dates have become a phenomenal... I don't mean dates with her, I mean food dates.
0
SPEAKER_01
And cacao nibs, so like cacao, raw cacao or monk fruit.
0
SPEAKER_01
Monk fruit sweetened cacao has become a really natural form of sugar that gives me the same feeling and the same taste and the same comfort without a lot of the negative effects on my health that sugar has.
0
SPEAKER_01
 And so having gone through that very practically in an area where I had somewhat of an addiction, it's really interesting to see how what you're saying is actually played through in my own life as well.
0
SPEAKER_05
Well, and I think one of the important aspects of what you just said is accepting that sometimes reaching that higher taste is a journey that has steps along the way, right?
0
SPEAKER_05
One of the things that we know about habits is that, take exercise as a good example again,
0
SPEAKER_05
 When we first start developing a habit, we oftentimes need external rewards, right?
0
SPEAKER_05
So we need that smoothie after we go for a run.
0
SPEAKER_05
We need the nice long shower.
0
SPEAKER_05
Very similarly, I don't know if this is true for you, but when I started meditating, like I would meditate for three minutes and I had to give myself a reward, right?
0
SPEAKER_05
I would use one of the biofeedback bands so that I could hear the birds chirping in the background because without it, it just, it felt totally pointless.
0
SPEAKER_05
I didn't understand why I was doing this.
0
SPEAKER_05
It wasn't fun at all to meditate.
0
SPEAKER_05
 And then over time, what happens is that as your brain learns to appreciate the higher taste, as your brain learns to appreciate the higher intrinsic rewards, they begin to crowd out the need for the extrinsic reward.
0
SPEAKER_05
So again, with exercise, oftentimes when people start exercising, they need to give themselves something.
0
SPEAKER_05
In fact, oftentimes the most effective way to start exercising is to give yourself a small piece of chocolate after you exercise.
0
SPEAKER_05
 And then after a week or two or a month or two, you start to realize, like, actually, I just feel good when I exercise.
0
SPEAKER_05
Those, of course, are the endorphins and the endocannabinoids, all these neurotransmitters that are designed to make you feel good.
0
SPEAKER_05
And you start saying, actually, I'm not even craving the chocolate anymore.
0
SPEAKER_05
I just crave that feeling of healthiness I get after a run.
0
SPEAKER_05
 Or with meditation, I'm sure at some point you and I, definitely I, stopped needing these extrinsic rewards.
0
SPEAKER_05
We stopped needing someone to tell us, you did a good job because you sat still for 10 minutes today.
0
SPEAKER_05
Instead, there's a sense of calmness, right?
0
SPEAKER_05
The alpha waves that make us feel good.
0
SPEAKER_05
And that's important is because oftentimes we think that we should be able to reach enlightenment immediately.
0
SPEAKER_05
 Right?
0
SPEAKER_05
We go for a run and instead of giving ourselves a small piece of chocolate, we give ourselves a kale shake because we should be happy with this kale shake.
0
SPEAKER_05
Nobody likes a kale shake, man.
0
SPEAKER_05
That's not a reward.
0
SPEAKER_05
That's like, that's more do-gooderism.
0
SPEAKER_05
But the point is that if we are patient with ourselves, if we recognize that I need to start with extrinsic rewards and move to intrinsic rewards, we're much more likely to change.
0
SPEAKER_01
 That's so brilliant.
0
SPEAKER_01
Thank you for that addition and expansion on the idea.
0
SPEAKER_01
And as you were saying that, I was thinking about something that I've discovered more recently and it's this idea around memory and experience.
0
SPEAKER_01
So if I've had a really painful start to the day, the one that you explained,
0
SPEAKER_01
 you're rushing to get that run in, you don't get to reward yourself, you're late for work, you're scared that you're going to miss the kids class or you know an event or recital and then everything's going wrong.
0
SPEAKER_01
That memory stays very strongly with us like negative memories kind of grab a hold onto us and you'll be able to explain this better but when you have a good experience it's almost like oh yeah
0
SPEAKER_01
 That was good.
0
SPEAKER_01
That was nice.
0
SPEAKER_01
We don't hold on to it.
0
SPEAKER_01
It's the same with social media.
0
SPEAKER_01
When you are scrolling through the comments, you see all these beautifully positive comments and you just go, oh yeah, great, great, great, great.
0
SPEAKER_01
And then you see one negative one and you amplify it.
0
SPEAKER_01
So even in our memory, we retain a negative experience from working out or eating a healthy meal far stronger than we retain a positive memory.
0
SPEAKER_01
Can you tell us a bit about that, Charles?
0
SPEAKER_05
 You're exactly right.
0
SPEAKER_05
And study after study shows that's true.
0
SPEAKER_05
And from an evolutionary perspective, you can understand why, right?
0
SPEAKER_05
If I'm walking through the forest, and I hear a noise in the underbrush, it's much more important for me to remember that that noise in the underbrush is an animal waiting to attack me, rather than that noise in the underbrush is something beautiful that I want to look at.
0
SPEAKER_05
 Right?
0
SPEAKER_05
From a survival perspective, the people who remember negative memories better are going to survive longer.
0
SPEAKER_05
And so therefore, they're going to have more offspring.
0
SPEAKER_05
And that's going to get hardwired in our brain.
0
SPEAKER_05
 So now the question is, OK, so that worked great when I was living in the jungle, right, when animals might attack me at any given moment.
0
SPEAKER_05
But how do I do it now?
0
SPEAKER_05
How do I take it?
0
SPEAKER_05
Because I don't have to remember the negative comments on social media, right?
0
SPEAKER_05
It's not healthy.
0
SPEAKER_05
It's not going to help me survive.
0
SPEAKER_05
So how do I change that calculus in my head, given that there's millions of years of evolution pushing me in the other direction?
0
SPEAKER_05
 Well, the way that you do it is you push back against it by reminding yourself why the positive reward is so great.
0
SPEAKER_05
And there's kind of two ways to do this.
0
SPEAKER_05
The first is simply come up with ways to remind yourself to enjoy that positive reward, right?
0
SPEAKER_05
That's why I say
0
SPEAKER_05
 After you go for a shower, don't just, after you go for a run, after you exercise, don't just take a shower, luxuriate in the shower, right?
0
SPEAKER_05
Like let yourself relax, look forward to the shower, use some special, you know, smelly soap that makes it feel amazing.
0
SPEAKER_05
But the second thing to recognize here is that oftentimes what we're talking about when we talk about rewards that seem very short-lived is they're transactional rewards as opposed to emotional rewards.
0
SPEAKER_05
 One of the things that we know is that emotional rewards persist longer.
0
SPEAKER_05
They have a greater sense of salience within our brains.
0
SPEAKER_05
So very frequently you'll say, okay, I went for a, you know, I got a, I got a big client.
0
SPEAKER_05
I'm going to buy myself a new watch.
0
SPEAKER_05
The joy you feel from that watch, because it's a transactional reward, is much, much short lived than the joy of your boss telling you,
0
SPEAKER_05
 Look, man, you're amazing.
0
SPEAKER_05
I'm really proud of you.
0
SPEAKER_05
You did an amazing job on that.
0
SPEAKER_05
And so in order to hijack that process you're talking about, in order to make positive rewards as powerful as negative rewards, we need to not only train ourselves to remember them, we need to find positive rewards that have an emotional characteristic, because that emotion is going to persist in our brain much longer.
0
SPEAKER_05
 That's also why, for instance, when you bring up the negative rewards that are so easy to remember, they're always emotional, right?
0
SPEAKER_05
It's not someone saying that your point is a bad point or disagreeing with you logically.
0
SPEAKER_05
It's someone saying that you're an idiot or that you look stupid or making you feel bad.
0
SPEAKER_05
 So we gotta fight fire with fire.
0
SPEAKER_05
Find rewards that aren't just material.
0
SPEAKER_05
Find rewards that aren't just transactional.
0
SPEAKER_05
Find rewards that are emotional.
0
SPEAKER_05
And most of those emotions, frankly, will come from other people as opposed to things you can buy.
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1
SPEAKER_00
 Yeah, I appreciate you forming that distinction between emotional rewards and transactional rewards because you're so right.
1
SPEAKER_00
It's so natural to gravitate towards a transactional reward because that's how society has rewarded us too.
1
SPEAKER_00
You get a medal, you get a physical
1
SPEAKER_00
 depiction of your achievement, you get an award, you get a trophy and so the watch becomes a trophy or the car becomes a trophy or a house becomes the trophy but as you said it was the appreciation that you were seeking or the affection or the acknowledgement of what you've done and it's really interesting you say that so one thing that's really helped me is I discovered that the things that are actually good for me
1
SPEAKER_00
 they're hard before and they're easier afterwards.
1
SPEAKER_00
And the things that are generally unhealthy for me feel great before and feel terrible afterwards.
1
SPEAKER_00
So taking your example of going to the gym, when I wake up it's unlikely that I want to run to the gym.
1
SPEAKER_00
I've become better at it and I go to the gym four or five times a week.
1
SPEAKER_00
 but there still may be a morning when I wake up and say I think I need to take it easy today but I push myself to go and when I leave I go I'm so happy I went and I'll come home and I'll say to my wife I'll say remind me of this moment that I told you that I'm so glad that I went and every time I tell you in the morning that I don't want to go to the gym remind me of this that when I come home I'm always beaming I'm full of energy and full of vitality and life please remind me of this
1
SPEAKER_00
 And it's almost like that human reminder from her is all the emotional reward I need to remember that physical, emotional, tangible effect that going to the gym has on me or eating healthy.
1
SPEAKER_00
Absolutely.
1
SPEAKER_05
And it works the other way around too, right?
1
SPEAKER_05
Like I go to the, when I go to dinner with my wife and there's like some
1
SPEAKER_05
 creamy pasta dish on the menu.
1
SPEAKER_05
And I'm like, oh man, I'm starving.
1
SPEAKER_05
Like that sounds so good.
1
SPEAKER_05
And then I eat it and I tell my wife like, next time just remind me, I feel terrible after eating this.
1
SPEAKER_05
Like I feel so gross.
1
SPEAKER_05
And you're exactly right.
1
SPEAKER_05
And in fact, within psychology, there's a really interesting science known as implementation intentions, which basically says, look, at the moment when you have to make a decision,
1
SPEAKER_05
 Oftentimes, that's the worst time to make a decision because there's so much going on inside your head that's gonna nudge you one way or the other, right?
1
SPEAKER_05
Everyone knows this.
1
SPEAKER_05
If you go grocery shopping when you're hungry, you're gonna buy crazy, crazy things, right?
1
SPEAKER_05
You're gonna spend way too much money.
1
SPEAKER_05
So everyone has lunch before they go grocery shopping so they can make wise choices.
1
SPEAKER_05
And we can apply that policy throughout life.
1
SPEAKER_05
Like if you're gonna go out to dinner, don't wait until the last minute to decide what you're gonna order for dinner because you're gonna be starving.
1
SPEAKER_05
 Decide in the afternoon, look up the menu online so that you can make the decision when you're not hungry.
1
SPEAKER_05
And those implementation intentions, saying to yourself, I have an intention to implement a decision at a particular moment.
1
SPEAKER_05
I have an intention to try and determine ahead of time when I should make choices and what I should do when I see certain stimuli.
1
SPEAKER_05
That is how we gain control over our behavior.
1
SPEAKER_05
It's kind of unfair to ask yourself to be a saint all the time
1
SPEAKER_05
 particularly when you're surrounded by temptations.
1
SPEAKER_05
It's a lot easier to be a saint and decide to be a saint when the temptations are to remove, because then when the temptations come along, you've already made your choice.
1
SPEAKER_00
 Yes, yes, so well said, so well said.
1
SPEAKER_00
I think one of the biggest things that affects a lot of people who may be listening to this are this idea of well, especially because you brought up decision making Charles, the idea of procrastination and overthinking and that seems to be a huge
1
SPEAKER_00
 challenge in our society today because the level of information analysis and overload that we're dealing with is so high.
1
SPEAKER_00
I read a study a few years ago that said we experience through the news, social media, we experience more tragedy in 24 hours than we used to in our whole lifetime 25 years ago.
1
SPEAKER_00
And when you think about that, you're comparing 24 hours to a 70 year lifetime.
1
SPEAKER_00
 that is, you know, I mean, the brain hasn't had enough time to catch up and evolve.
1
SPEAKER_00
And so, there's glitches and there's mistakes and so that procrastination and overthinking again is very normal and understandable.
1
SPEAKER_00
What have you found to be some of the best techniques?
1
SPEAKER_00
If someone's listening right now and saying, Charles, I agree with you but I just try and put off decisions completely.
1
SPEAKER_00
Like, I just try and make no decision because that's easier for me to not think about it but then I get more scared because I haven't made one.
1
SPEAKER_00
 And then I get lost in overthinking in the cycle of procrastination.
1
SPEAKER_05
So there's been a bunch of research that's been done on procrastination and overthinking.
1
SPEAKER_05
And some of my favorite research actually comes from Dan Ariely, who's a behavioral psychologist.
1
SPEAKER_00
I love Dan.
1
SPEAKER_00
I love Dan too.
1
SPEAKER_00
Great author.
1
SPEAKER_05
And so one of the things that Dan's experiments have shown is that when people talk about procrastination, when they talk about overthinking, about avoiding making a decision, what they're really talking about is they're talking about the first step.
1
SPEAKER_05
 Once you take the first step, it's usually pretty easy.
1
SPEAKER_05
And this is true of many, many things.
1
SPEAKER_05
Once you're in the gym, it's pretty easy to work out.
1
SPEAKER_05
It's the getting to the gym part that you put off again and again and again.
1
SPEAKER_05
Once you've decided that you want to go on that vacation, it's pretty easy to figure out which flight you're going to take.
1
SPEAKER_05
It's the decision of going on the vacation.
1
SPEAKER_05
 And so the question isn't, how do I do this entire task?
1
SPEAKER_05
The question is actually, how do I make it easier for myself to take the first step?
1
SPEAKER_05
And there's basically two things that help us with this.
1
SPEAKER_05
The first is, make that first step as small as humanly possible, right?
1
SPEAKER_05
If you're talking about going to the gym, if you're talking about exercising, don't sit down ahead of time and figure out what the next three months of workouts are gonna be like.
1
SPEAKER_05
 Instead, make that first step simply to say, look, I'm going to have my gym clothes in the car.
1
SPEAKER_05
The first step is literally all I have to do is get in the car, turn on the ignition, and get out of the driveway.
1
SPEAKER_05
Because once I'm out of the driveway, I'm not going to have any place to go except for the gym.
1
SPEAKER_05
So let's make it as easy as possible and as small as possible to get in the car and literally just back out of the driveway.
1
SPEAKER_05
Number two is, how do I reward myself for that small step?
1
SPEAKER_05
Now, most of the time when we think about going to the gym,
1
SPEAKER_05
 We say like, oh, I'm going to put off the reward until I've done the whole workout.
1
SPEAKER_05
Or if you're really a masochist, you're like, look, I'm going to train for a half marathon, which is what I train for half marathons.
1
SPEAKER_05
I'm going to train for a half marathon.
1
SPEAKER_05
I'm going to put off the reward until I run the race 12 weeks from now.
1
SPEAKER_05
That's not going to work.
1
SPEAKER_05
Like what you need to do is you need to get that reward as fast and as early in the process as possible, even if it's just a small reward.
1
SPEAKER_05
So if it's a matter of backing out of the driveway, it can be as small as just feeling good about yourself.
1
SPEAKER_05
 for backing the car out of the driveway.
1
SPEAKER_05
You've accomplished what you needed to do today.
1
SPEAKER_05
If you get to the gym and you work out for four minutes, that's okay, because the entire point was just to get to the gym.
1
SPEAKER_05
The question people should ask themselves is not, how do I make procrastination less of a presence in my life?
1
SPEAKER_05
It's, how do I take a decision that I'm avoiding, make it as small as possible, and then reward myself for that first step?
1
SPEAKER_05
Because if you can teach yourself to do that,
1
SPEAKER_05
 everything else is going to take care of itself.
1
SPEAKER_00
That's brilliant.
1
SPEAKER_00
And you also talk about positive procrastination, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
Like you talk about the idea that sometimes some of our best decisions are made when we create a bit of a distance and allow ourselves to procrastinate and overthink, which I think is such a unique and powerful way to think about it because we've been taught to believe that people who make the decisions quickly and effectively and now are the most smart people.
1
SPEAKER_00
 and what you're actually saying is well no procrastination can be a really healthy positive thing and I see that in my life sometimes that there are some decisions that I allow to simmer for a month and there are some decisions that I allow to simmer I just made a decision a big decision this year I would say I was trying to make that decision for four years
1
SPEAKER_00
 the decision I made this year was the best decision I made but I honestly had been thinking about that decision for four years now I don't take four years to make every decision like what am I going to eat tonight or what am I going to eat tomorrow or but but I think some decisions demand that level of
1
SPEAKER_00
 thought because the reason why I took four years is because that is going to impact more than the next four years of my life.
1
SPEAKER_00
That's why that decision took place.
1
SPEAKER_05
So what was the decision that took you four years?
1
SPEAKER_00
So the decision that took me four years was the there was something I was working on and it was either do I do this myself
1
SPEAKER_00
 or do I partner with someone where I can create something really powerful?
1
SPEAKER_00
So it's like, do I build it from scratch or do I work with someone who's already advanced in that area and build onto and expand what they've already done?
1
SPEAKER_05
Adam Grant writes about this very eloquently, right, about positive procrastination.
1
SPEAKER_05
And one of the ways to think about it is actually to ask yourself, is this rational procrastination?
1
SPEAKER_05
 Because you're right, we have all kinds of pressures that make us want to act quickly, right?
1
SPEAKER_05
There's actually something known as the cognitive need for closure, which is, it just feels good to make a choice, right?
1
SPEAKER_05
It feels good to cross something off your to-do list.
1
SPEAKER_05
It feels good to put it behind you and say, like, I don't got to worry about that anymore.
1
SPEAKER_05
 But oftentimes there's a very rational reason not to make that choice.
1
SPEAKER_05
Sometimes it's just you need to sit with it for longer to see how you really feel.
1
SPEAKER_05
Sometimes it's that you need more information.
1
SPEAKER_05
Sometimes it's that actually making the choice right now would screw everything up because I know that there's going to be other opportunities.
1
SPEAKER_05
I know that there's going to be ways to have seen this situation in different ways.
1
SPEAKER_05
And if I'm locked into one viewpoint, it's going to be hard for me to see other opportunities.
1
SPEAKER_05
 And so one of the things that's really important is to sit with yourself and say, look, am I hesitating on this because I'm scared of making the choice, because I'm scared of doing the work?
1
SPEAKER_05
Or am I sitting with this because it just doesn't feel right yet?
1
SPEAKER_05
And that rational procrastination is one of our most powerful instinctual tools.
1
SPEAKER_05
 for knowing without knowing it deliberately or consciously when we're ready to make a choice.
1
SPEAKER_00
That's really a great extension of what I was thinking about in my decision making and that's clarified a lot for me and one of the things that I've definitely felt is really thinking about
1
SPEAKER_00
 how much of your life is going to be impacted by a decision allows me to know how much rational time to give to it.
1
SPEAKER_00
And that's kind of how I've always processed it.
1
SPEAKER_00
It's like getting married is going to impact your whole life.
1
SPEAKER_00
I think this is what we were talking about earlier, having children
1
SPEAKER_00
 is a massive life change.
1
SPEAKER_00
But what I find fascinating, and this is something that I spend a lot of time thinking about in all of these decisions.
1
SPEAKER_00
 is when you're thinking about choosing to buy a home or move city or town, you think about a lot of things like, what schools are we near?
1
SPEAKER_00
And like, is this a good area?
1
SPEAKER_00
And would this be a good investment?
1
SPEAKER_00
And is this a smart choice?
1
SPEAKER_00
But sometimes we just get married or have kids just by default, like it's an autopilot move.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I think that it's really fascinating when you take life transitions
1
SPEAKER_00
 on autopilot or what I read in psychology was known as sliding versus deciding.
1
SPEAKER_00
We slide into decisions rather than actually decide to make them.
1
SPEAKER_00
We don't consciously, intentionally process those.
1
SPEAKER_00
And when we slide into something, you're now sliding into like a ball pit of like whatever it is, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
There's no practice.
1
SPEAKER_00
Can you speak to that a little bit, Charles?
1
SPEAKER_05
Absolutely.
1
SPEAKER_05
Well, and I think the other thing that you're picking up on, which I think is really smart is
1
SPEAKER_05
 Our environment influences how we make decisions so much in ways that we don't often see, right?
1
SPEAKER_05
In fact, what happens is, and this is known in psychology as the fundamental attribution error.
1
SPEAKER_05
 is that there is something in our environment which is influencing us, but we blame ourselves or other people for something, right?
1
SPEAKER_05
If I happen to sit on the same side of the table as someone as opposed to on the other side of the table from them, I'm more likely to agree with them rather than disagree with them.
1
SPEAKER_05
And I think that's because either I agree with them or they're agreeable or I'm agreeable, but actually it just has to do with where we sat at the table.
1
SPEAKER_05
That's the thing that we fail to recognize.
1
SPEAKER_05
 And oftentimes when we're making choices, we're not aware of all the environmental influences around us, right?
1
SPEAKER_05
It's not a coincidence that most people get married after three of their other friends have gotten married, right?
1
SPEAKER_05
Because all of a sudden like marriage is contagious.
1
SPEAKER_05
You see Jim and you see Pam get married and then you're like, well, maybe that's okay for me too, right?
1
SPEAKER_05
Same thing happens with kids.
1
SPEAKER_05
And so one big question, and this is kind of the focus of my second book, Smarter, Faster, Better.
1
SPEAKER_05
One big question is how do we build the habits
1
SPEAKER_05
 that force us to slow down and think more deeply about the choices we're making when thinking deeply is hardest, right?
1
SPEAKER_05
Either because we feel like we're in a panic or we feel like there's a lot of pressure or there's things that are happening around us that are happening very quickly.
1
SPEAKER_05
How do we force ourselves to slow down and make more deliberate choices in those moments?
1
SPEAKER_05
And the answer is,
1
SPEAKER_05
 You just build habits to do it.
1
SPEAKER_05
More importantly, you build what are known as cognitive routines.
1
SPEAKER_05
You build these almost like trip wires in your life that force you to slow down.
1
SPEAKER_05
So for some people, for instance, this can be as simple as saying, before I make any big choice, I always have to call my spouse and talk it through with my spouse.
1
SPEAKER_05
Now, if you're making a big choice at work,
1
SPEAKER_05
 Your spouse doesn't know anything about the pros and the cons, right?
1
SPEAKER_05
Your spouse isn't going to actually give you any great advice.
1
SPEAKER_05
All your spouse is going to do is listen to you.
1
SPEAKER_05
But that tripwire saying, I don't make any big decisions without talking to my spouse first, that's to help you slow down, force you to explain the pros and cons to your spouse, force you to make sure that you are seeing everything from every perspective.
1
SPEAKER_05
These tripwires that we build into our lives, they are the things that let us think more deeply
1
SPEAKER_05
 particularly when thinking is hard.
1
SPEAKER_05
And they are ultimately habits.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
1
SPEAKER_00
A reminder I like to share with people is that you're not ahead or behind.
1
SPEAKER_00
You're not early or late.
1
SPEAKER_00
You're not forward or backward.
1
SPEAKER_00
You're in the right place right now where you need to be to slow down and make this decision.
1
SPEAKER_00
And when we start making decisions based on I'm missing out,
1
SPEAKER_00
 they're doing it, we're so late and behind, now all of a sudden you're completely working against what you just said which is finding that space and time and silence and stillness to say where do I want to move and how do we want to move and what decisions do we want to make and I'm so happy with the way you're explaining them through science
1
SPEAKER_00
 Because I think we hear these affirmations, we hear these ideas often, but we don't realize that they're actually based in how our brain works.
1
SPEAKER_05
Yes, exactly.
1
SPEAKER_05
And this is why, you know, this, this concept of FOMO, right?
1
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Fear of missing out.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
1
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You have to think about how do I, how do I protect my environment?
1
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 so that I know that these forces aren't influencing.
1
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And I mentioned before that the fundamental attribution error is that we mistake something in our environment for something that's internal to our character.
1
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If we take that seriously, we have to think about our environment.
1
SPEAKER_05
So for instance, take social media.
1
SPEAKER_05
I don't check social media during the day.
1
SPEAKER_05
I allow myself to check it once in the morning, and then when I get home from work and after dinner, then I check it then.
1
SPEAKER_05
But the rest of the day, I don't.
1
SPEAKER_05
And the reason why is because I don't want that influence impacting my brain.
1
SPEAKER_05
 Like, I find that it distracts me, I find that it emotionally manipulates me, right?
1
SPEAKER_05
I see something about Ukraine and then suddenly for the next 15 minutes I can't get any work done because I'm obsessing about what happened on a battlefield.
1
SPEAKER_05
Where obsessing about it at that moment does not make it better, it doesn't change the facts, right?
1
SPEAKER_05
In fact, if I put it off to thinking about it that night, maybe I can make a donation that actually helps.
1
SPEAKER_05
 But thinking about our environment, thinking about how we structure our environment so that those influences that we know that we're prone to are not present, that's really important, but it's something that we don't learn how to do as well as we should.
1
SPEAKER_00
 Yeah, yeah, so true.
1
SPEAKER_00
So beautifully and brilliantly explained again.
1
SPEAKER_00
I want to talk about your second book a bit, because I think the idea of productivity is so interesting right now.
1
SPEAKER_00
And productivity has a good and a bad reputation in different ways.
1
SPEAKER_00
So productivity, of course, and we'll dive into it and how we can become more productive and how we can become more efficient, effective.
1
SPEAKER_00
But before we do that,
1
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 I also want to address the idea of a lot of people struggle with productivity today because it became so equated to our value and worth in life.
1
SPEAKER_00
So the reason why some people are questioning whether productivity is a good metric of anything is because they say, well, you know, I don't want my value or I don't want my worth to be based on how productive I feel I am.
1
SPEAKER_00
 So I just want to address that before we dive into it now.
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The caveat to that is I consider myself a highly productive person.
1
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I consider myself a high performer.
1
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I had to make a really interesting decision a few years back and I realized something very clearly when I don't think I had all the best habits that I could potentially have.
1
SPEAKER_00
 And the question I asked myself was I either have to slow down if I want to keep doing what I'm doing at a high level or I have to improve my health habits.
1
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 those were my two choices.
1
SPEAKER_00
I was like if I want to keep doing this for a long time and I want longevity and I want to serve and I want to make an impact and I want my work for many many decades to support people and serve people and help people then I'm going to need to either slow down because otherwise I'll burn out
1
SPEAKER_00
 or I need to up my health game and I chose the latter because I was fascinated by well what can I do to perform at a higher level and maintain but still take breaks and manage and I've definitely found that with the methods I've taken where every year will stretch just a little bit and a little bit more the next year and the next year you find that your capacity is just I do more today than I've ever done in my whole life
1
SPEAKER_00
 but I'm more fulfilled and it's beautiful and then I still know when to take breaks and again I'm not perfect and I haven't figured it all out and I still get tired and I still get exhausted and I still have days where I don't want to do stuff so I'm not perfect by any means and I'm not saying I am I'm just saying that it's been interesting to see how having certain positive habits like sleep
1
SPEAKER_00
 diet, exercise, meditation like those four simple habits have expanded and extended my productivity then my productivity actually feels less and productivity feels harder when those four things were not aligned.
1
SPEAKER_00
Again I don't have kids so I'm not putting I'm not saying any of this is like advice I'm just saying stuff that I'm thinking about and working on.
1
SPEAKER_00
So
1
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 Talk to me a bit about Charles, about this idea of people getting scared about their productivity being how much they feel they're worth and how they value themselves.
1
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So I think it's a really, really good point.
1
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And I think you just illuminated the distinction here that's really essential, right?
1
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Which is productivity is bad when it's defined by other people for us.
1
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 Right?
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If I said to you, Jay, like, you are not productive unless you, you know, make a million dollars this year and you run three marathons and you write two books.
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That's not productivity, right?
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Like that doesn't feel like productivity to you.
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What productivity really is, is knowing your goals and being able to achieve them with less stress and strife.
1
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Not making yourself miserable along the way.
1
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 So what's important here is to say, I'm going to be productive based on the goals that are important to me, not the goals that are important to other people, not the goals that are important to society.
1
SPEAKER_05
 So from an outside perspective, I might say, look, Jay, if you're sleeping eight hours a night and you're meditating and you're exercising, like that is not productive, man.
1
SPEAKER_05
Like you could sleep six hours a night and that meditation, like cut that down to like just five minutes a day and you've got some extra time to get some work done, right?
1
SPEAKER_05
But what matters is not what I think is productive for you.
1
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What matters is you being able to think about what's productive for you and being able to achieve that.
1
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 So you know that a productive day includes meditation.
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It includes sleep.
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It includes feeling good about yourself.
1
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 So the first question that we have to do is we have to sit down and say, what does productivity mean to me based on what I want?
1
SPEAKER_05
And acknowledge that might be different from day to day and place to place.
1
SPEAKER_05
A productive Wednesday might be one where I get the kids out the door and I'm at my desk and I'm replying to emails.
1
SPEAKER_05
And a productive Friday might be one where I walk the kids to school and we get to talk to each other and I learn what's going on inside their life.
1
SPEAKER_05
And I don't do any emails because I spent my time with my kids.
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 The point here is that when we look at productivity as something that has a static definition, that's when it becomes negative.
1
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That's when it becomes bad.
1
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When we embrace productivity as something that is a way for me to decide what my goals are and try and figure out how to accomplish them, and it's based entirely on what I want as opposed to what other people want, then it becomes a tool for helping me decide how I live the life that I want to live.
1
SPEAKER_00
 That is such a fantastic way of defining it and I've actually never heard productivity defined as well as that.
1
SPEAKER_00
I think that's brilliant because you're so right that the decision I'm making, they make me feel productive.
1
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 and hence I choose them as a priority in my life.
1
SPEAKER_00
But you're right, I never thought of that, but someone could literally look at my life and be like, Jay, you waste a lot of time sleeping.
1
SPEAKER_00
I do sleep eight hours a night.
1
SPEAKER_00
And people could look at my life and be like, wow, Jay, you waste a lot of time doing no work.
1
SPEAKER_00
When actually, to me, I'm able to do more work and better work and deeper work because of the time I spend away from work.
1
SPEAKER_00
And as I was saying, I think
1
SPEAKER_00
 You know, one thing that's really interesting to me, someone asked me recently what I thought was the most important skill to develop and I thought about that and I thought about it again and I really reflected on it and the closest answer I've developed so far at this stage in my life is the biggest skill that I've learned or I believe that I've had to try and develop and continue to develop is to do things that are good for me even when I don't feel like them.
1
SPEAKER_00
 And because I think that a lot of what is good for you, you won't always feel like doing it, in my experience at least.
1
SPEAKER_00
I don't feel like eating healthy all the time.
1
SPEAKER_00
I don't feel like exercising all the time.
1
SPEAKER_00
I don't feel like meditating all the time.
1
SPEAKER_00
I don't feel like doing something, but I know that when I do it, it creates great joy, nourishment.
1
SPEAKER_00
And me and my friend recently,
1
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 We're talking about this idea of what makes you feel good versus what makes you feel nourished.
1
SPEAKER_00
And we were going back and forth about the idea of feeling good is great, there's nothing wrong with it.
1
SPEAKER_00
But when you feel nourished, it's wholesome, it's fulfilling, it's so powerful.
1
SPEAKER_00
And we were saying that we're trying to make more decisions in our life where we feel we're being nourished, more than just feeling good in the moment.
1
SPEAKER_00
Because feeling nourished does make you feel good.
1
SPEAKER_00
 So I would love to hear your thought process around that because I think what we often look at is people say well I don't feel motivated to do that or I don't feel inspired to do that and often I would say I don't feel motivated and inspired to do a lot of the good stuff that I do.
1
SPEAKER_00
I would be lying if I said I wake up every day motivated and inspired to do what I do.
1
SPEAKER_00
I don't.
1
SPEAKER_00
There's plenty of mornings where I wake up and I think
1
SPEAKER_00
 I don't feel like doing anything today, but I know that if I just don't do anything today, I'm probably going to feel the same way tomorrow and the same way tomorrow and that actually getting myself up out of bed and trying to do one thing may actually be better than doing completely nothing.
1
SPEAKER_00
So, can you walk us through that a little bit?
1
SPEAKER_00
I would love to hear your thoughts and your opinions about it.
1
SPEAKER_00
I'm just, I'm really just, what I love about this conversation, Charles, is the way you think
1
SPEAKER_00
 I love the way you think, like it's just, I love the way you contextualize and you break things down and the research you've done.
1
SPEAKER_00
And so I'm just throwing at you my thought process and ideas.
1
SPEAKER_00
No, I really appreciate it.
1
SPEAKER_05
And I love hearing how you think and how you approach these questions, because I think it's really fascinating.
1
SPEAKER_03
When the Taliban banned music in Afghanistan, millions were plunged into silence.
1
SPEAKER_03
 Radios were smashed.
1
SPEAKER_03
Cassettes burned.
1
SPEAKER_03
You could be beaten or jailed or killed for breaking the rules.
1
SPEAKER_03
And yet, Afghans did it anyway.
1
SPEAKER_03
This is the story of how a group of people brought music back to Afghanistan by creating their own version of American Idol.
1
SPEAKER_03
The danger they endured.
1
SPEAKER_00
They said my head should be cut off.
1
SPEAKER_03
 the joy they brought to the nation.
1
SPEAKER_01
You're free completely.
1
SPEAKER_01
No one is there to destroy you.
1
SPEAKER_03
I'm John Legend.
1
SPEAKER_03
Listen to Afghan Star on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
1
SPEAKER_02
 Hey everyone, this is Molly and Matt and we're the hosts of Grown Up Stuff How to Adult, a podcast from Ruby Studio and iHeart Podcasts.
1
SPEAKER_04
It's a show dedicated to helping you figure out the trickiest parts of adulting.
1
SPEAKER_02
Like how to start planning for retirement, creating a healthy skincare routine, understanding when and how much to tip someone, and so much more.
1
SPEAKER_04
 We're back with season two of the podcast, which means more opportunities to glow up and become a more responsible and better adult, one life lesson at a time.
1
SPEAKER_02
And let me just tell you, this show is just as much for us as it is for you.
1
SPEAKER_02
So let's figure this stuff out together.
1
SPEAKER_02
This season, we're going to talk about whether or not we're financially and emotionally ready for dog ownership.
1
SPEAKER_04
 We're going to figure out the benefits of a high yield savings account.
1
SPEAKER_02
And what exactly are the duties of being a member of the wedding party?
1
SPEAKER_04
All that plus so much more.
1
SPEAKER_02
Let's learn about all of it and then some.
1
SPEAKER_02
Listen to Grown Up Stuff How to Adult on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
2
SPEAKER_03
 Guess what, Bango?
2
SPEAKER_03
What's up, Will?
2
SPEAKER_03
So iHeart is giving us a whole minute to promote our podcast, Part-Time Genius.
2
SPEAKER_04
 I know, that's why I spent my whole week composing a haiku for the occasion.
2
SPEAKER_04
It's about my emotional journey in podcasting over the last seven years, and it's called Earthquake House.
2
SPEAKER_03
Mango, I'm going to cut you off right there.
2
SPEAKER_03
Why don't we just tell people about our show instead?
2
SPEAKER_04
Yeah, that's a better idea.
2
SPEAKER_04
So every week on Part-Time Genius, we feed our curiosity by answering the world's most important questions.
2
SPEAKER_04
Things like, when did America start dialing 911?
2
SPEAKER_04
Is William Shatner's best acting work in Esperanto?
2
SPEAKER_04
Also, what happened to Esperanto?
2
SPEAKER_03
 Plus we cover questions like how Chinese is your Chinese food?
2
SPEAKER_03
How do dollar stores stay in business?
2
SPEAKER_03
And of course, is there an Illuminati of cheese?
2
SPEAKER_03
There absolutely is.
2
SPEAKER_04
And we are risking our lives by talking about it.
2
SPEAKER_04
But if you love mind-blowing facts, incredible history, and really bad jokes, make your brains happy and tune into Part-Time Genius.
2
SPEAKER_03
Listen to Part-Time Genius on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
2
SPEAKER_05
I mean, I think one of the, this duality that you're discussing,
2
SPEAKER_05
 it reflects what has been an oversight in a lot of contemporary society.
2
SPEAKER_05
And this is just because, you know, because psychology is a relatively new field and it's developed.
2
SPEAKER_05
We became very focused on happiness, right, as a society, right?
2
SPEAKER_05
What is the highest goal?
2
SPEAKER_05
To feel happy, to feel joyful.
2
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But the thing that we've learned is that there is another emotion, another experience beyond happiness
2
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 that is actually more meaningful.
2
SPEAKER_05
And within psychology, they refer to this as a sense of well-being, right?
2
SPEAKER_05
So if I give you sugar right now, I can make you happy.
2
SPEAKER_05
If you're having sex, you will feel happy.
2
SPEAKER_05
 But we know that just eating sugar, like actually over time, it feels terrible, that having empty sex is not as great as having sex with someone you love, right?
2
SPEAKER_05
We know this.
2
SPEAKER_05
And so the question is, so if I'm not chasing happiness, what am I actually chasing?
2
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And for a long time, we built all of our psychology models around heat about the hedonic individual, right?
2
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Seeking this pleasure.
2
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But a sense of wellbeing is actually something that's more profound
2
SPEAKER_05
 It doesn't necessarily mean that you are happy, that you are feeling pleasure at that particular moment.
2
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But it does mean some other things.
2
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It means that you feel satisfied.
2
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It means that you feel safe.
2
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It means that you feel loved.
2
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And it means that you feel that your life has meaning.
2
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And if I can give you those four things, what we know is that you actually will feel much better than if you just feel pleasure or if you just feel happy.
2
SPEAKER_05
I cannot actually be happy over the long term without a sense of well-being.
2
SPEAKER_05
 But I can certainly have a sense of well-being and not feel happy all the time, and that's okay.
2
SPEAKER_05
In fact, we know that that's meaningful, right?
2
SPEAKER_05
The most meaningful thing that's happened to me in the last five years is that my father passed away.
2
SPEAKER_05
That certainly was not happy in any way, but it was deeply meaningful.
2
SPEAKER_05
It was deeply contributed to my sense of well-being, to remind myself of my family and my love for him and what he gave me.
2
SPEAKER_05
 And so if we reorient ourselves away from happiness and towards creating a sense of wellbeing, then suddenly all those questions you just asked, like, should I wake up this morning?
2
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Should I get out of bed?
2
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Should I make this decision?
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Should I eat this thing?
2
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Should I exercise?
2
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All those questions become much easier because now our goal is wellbeing, right?
2
SPEAKER_05
Made up again of a sense of safety, a sense of meaning, a sense of satisfaction, a sense of having a community with other people,
2
SPEAKER_05
 Those become much easier decisions to make because getting out of bed, it's not about whether getting out of bed makes you happy.
2
SPEAKER_05
If you don't get out of bed, you're not going to have a relationship with your wife.
2
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You're not going to earn money.
2
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You're not going to feel safe.
2
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Your life doesn't have any meaning.
2
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Now suddenly the decision to get out of bed is much, much easier because you're not chasing pleasure.
2
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 You're chasing well-being.
2
SPEAKER_00
So well reframed, especially with the idea of getting up out of bed.
2
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If you're seeking pleasure every day, it will feel almost impossible.
2
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But that idea of well-being is so strong.
2
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And one of the things that we've mentioned today, but I want to dive into, there's a couple more things.
2
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One is this idea of we try to have what I call, we try to have
2
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 long-term feelings about something based on short-term experiences.
2
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So we will say something like, I will never ever miss going to the gym ever again, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
I will never ever eat something unhealthy ever again.
2
SPEAKER_00
Like we make these really big, broad statements.
2
SPEAKER_00
 And the truth is, and this happened to me last week, so I was having a really healthy week, I was traveling.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I've been really trying to master the art of living healthy when I travel, because it's really easy when I'm back at home, but last week I gave three keynotes in three different states, I was on a plane every day, every other day, and I was really trying last week to be conscious because I've been really working on my health.
2
SPEAKER_00
 And so I was thinking, okay, I need to eat healthy.
2
SPEAKER_00
And so I was researching where I could eat and plan and all this kind of stuff.
2
SPEAKER_00
And it went great from Monday to Friday.
2
SPEAKER_00
Now on Friday, my flight was delayed by two hours.
2
SPEAKER_00
And then when we got on the flight, we were about to take off, but then they brought us back to the gate because they said there was something wrong with the cabin pressure.
2
SPEAKER_00
We then waited another two hours in the plane.
2
SPEAKER_00
 And then they said, all right, we're going to take off again.
2
SPEAKER_00
We're about to take off.
2
SPEAKER_00
And then they said, no, no, no, the cabin pressure is still an issue.
2
SPEAKER_00
So we went back to the gate and waited another two hours.
2
SPEAKER_00
So now it's been six hours in total.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I'm sitting there.
2
SPEAKER_00
And now we get
2
SPEAKER_00
 Two hours later, they take us off the plane because they can't fix it.
2
SPEAKER_00
And then it takes another two hours for them to onboard us to another flight.
2
SPEAKER_00
So it's been around 10 hours at this point.
2
SPEAKER_00
I've now missed my next three connecting flights.
2
SPEAKER_00
Now, when we go back into the terminal for those two hours, I go and buy Sour Patch Kids, a bag of chips, like every single thing at this point.
2
SPEAKER_00
 that I've been trying to avoid the whole week.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I eat my bag of Sour Patch Kids very happily.
2
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I eat my bag of chips.
2
SPEAKER_00
I'm about to go and buy myself a burger and fries as well at the airport.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I do.
2
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And I loved it.
2
SPEAKER_00
It was great.
2
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I wasn't sad about any of it.
2
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I was like, this is great.
2
SPEAKER_00
This is what I needed to deal with the last 10, 12 hours.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I feel lucky and privileged enough that I could eat, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
Because that was a privilege in and of itself.
2
SPEAKER_00
 Now here's the thing, if I had said to myself, Jay, you can never ever eat Sour Patch Kids ever again in your life, and then that happens,
2
SPEAKER_00
 I feel like such a failure and I did that to myself for a long time where I made these big bold statements and then I felt like a failure again and again and again.
2
SPEAKER_00
So how do we plan for failure because it is actually more inevitable than it is avoidable.
2
SPEAKER_00
 I don't think there's anyone who's ever set a resolution, set a new plan, set a new schedule that has ever kept to it word for word.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yet we still hope and we pray and we assume that we are going to stick to our plan exactly as it is.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I don't even think the most disciplined people in the world do that.
2
SPEAKER_00
No!
2
SPEAKER_00
No, of course not, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
 How do we accept that we will inevitably fail and that's okay and that's part of the journey?
2
SPEAKER_05
So this is another question that comes from how our brain evolved and how it's working in today's world, right?
2
SPEAKER_05
We tend to remember things episodically, right?
2
SPEAKER_05
So if I ask you, Jay, who are you?
2
SPEAKER_05
You would answer this by telling me three or four big values that you live your life by.
2
SPEAKER_05
 If I tell you, if I ask you, tell me about your wife, you're going to tell me what her job is, or you're going to tell me about the time you met, or you're going to tell me about what your wedding was like.
2
SPEAKER_05
We tend to remember things and describe things in terms of stories.
2
SPEAKER_05
And because stories always have pivot points, right?
2
SPEAKER_05
There's a beginning, a middle, and an end.
2
SPEAKER_05
There's where the plot twists.
2
SPEAKER_05
There's a character.
2
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And that's, that's great.
2
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That helps us remember things.
2
SPEAKER_05
But we don't live stories.
2
SPEAKER_05
 We live day to day.
2
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We live waking up and 90% of our time is spent taking a shower and going to the office and doing these things that we don't really remember at all because we don't have to remember them.
2
SPEAKER_05
Because again, in a state of nature, when the boar is charging at you, it's a lot more important to remember what the path looks like where the boar lives than to remember all the paths where boars don't live.
2
SPEAKER_05
So as a result, because we
2
SPEAKER_05
 think this way, because we think of stories, we need to recognize that we need to say, like, my instinct is to say these grand things, to say, I'm never going to eat again, I run half marathons, I work out three times a week, because that's a story I can tell myself that helps me remember who I am.
2
SPEAKER_05
But the way I actually live
2
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 is day to day and minute to minute.
2
SPEAKER_05
And sometimes I get off track from that story.
2
SPEAKER_05
And that doesn't mean that that story isn't true.
2
SPEAKER_05
That doesn't mean that that story doesn't work anymore.
2
SPEAKER_05
That doesn't mean that I've changed.
2
SPEAKER_05
It just means that the story of my life is much bigger than the story I tell myself and others.
2
SPEAKER_05
And once we acknowledge that, once we accept that, it's enormously empowering, right?
2
SPEAKER_05
If you go back to Aristotle, Aristotle once said,
2
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 Excellent, that our habits are our lives.
2
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What we do every day is how we ought to be judged.
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So excellence then is not an act.
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Excellence is a habit.
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And this is important because what he was saying is one moment of bravery, one great decision, that's the thing that we're going to write in the histories.
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That's the thing that we're going to remember.
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But that is not excellence.
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 Excellence is more often than not waking up in the morning and doing the right thing.
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And that doesn't mean that you do the right thing every single morning.
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It just means that for four days, you resist the Sour Patch Kids.
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And in fact, on the fifth day, you probably would have resisted Sour Patch Kids until you have to spend 10 hours in an airplane in an airport.
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 At which point, it's just fine to have some Sour Patch Kids and not have to say to yourself, by the way, I'm a bad person now.
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My whole story in my head about who I am has just been exploded.
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No, it's just one moment.
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What matters is what we do on average every day.
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That's how we should judge ourselves.
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 Yes, yes.
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Thank you for giving me the permission to eat Sour Patch Kids whenever I like.
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But no, it's so useful to hear you walk us through that as an exercise almost in our head and I think a lot of what you've shared with us today is really exercises, reflections, questions.
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I hope everyone's making notes as you're listening and watching and if you're not, this is definitely one of those episodes to go back through because
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 You know, I've asked Charles questions not based on, you know, it would have been easy for me to ask Charles, how do you create good habits and how do you end bad habits?
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And I think we've talked about all those things in, hopefully for all of you who are listening and watching, really interesting, personal, practical ways so that you can actually apply it to reality rather than a set of to-dos.
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Now, I do want to talk to you about to-do lists, Charles.
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Do you believe that to-do lists work?
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 What's the best way to structure our day to actually feel like we're creating momentum and movement?
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And I think that's the difference.
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I look at each day and each week not by how much I achieved but by how much I moved the needle.
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It's how much momentum have I gathered is more interesting to me than how much have I done.
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 Because I think sometimes some things take four years to get done and sometimes things take four months and sometimes things take four days or four hours.
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But if every day I ask myself, what did I do today?
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Sometimes I can feel, so how do we use to-do lists effectively?
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Because we all have things to do.
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 I love the metaphor you just brought up about momentum, because I think it's really important.
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One of the ways I think about it is an analogy someone once used with me.
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They said, like, look, think of your life as a series of pole vaults, right?
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The faster and longer you run, the higher you're going to be able to vault over that pole.
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But if you look at the actual event, that person could be running for three minutes before they spend 10 seconds flying into the air.
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 And so at any point along there, you could say, why the heck are you running so long?
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Like, this doesn't seem like it's a good use of time.
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But if you think about your life in terms of these pole vaults, so to-do list is a great question.
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And I'm curious how you organize your day.
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This is what we know about to-do lists.
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We use this word to-do list sometimes incorrectly.
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 There are things which are memory lists, and those are great, right?
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Your brain is a terrible place to try and remember the 30 things that you want to get done in the next 12 months.
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You're going to forget some of them.
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So what you should do is you should have a pad of paper, and as soon as you think of something you might want to get done, you should write it down on that list.
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But that's a memory list.
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That's not a to-do list.
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That's a memory list to remind you of things that in the past seem important to you.
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 A to-do list should be much different.
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A to-do list should be something that you write every morning or every night before that you leave work, which is when I do it.
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I sit down, the last thing I do every day is I write on an index card what my to-do list is for the next day.
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And that to-do list, optimally, should only contain like one thing.
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The most important thing that you can get done tomorrow.
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The thing that if you do it, it will move that needle.
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It will change your life in a better way.
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 Now, sometimes you can get that thing done.
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So oftentimes what I'll do is I write down three things.
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This is kind of crazy, right?
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I write down the thing I want to get done tomorrow.
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If I get that thing done, the second thing I want to get done.
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And then I sometimes will guess what ought to be my top priority for the next day.
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And sometimes I'm right and sometimes I'm wrong.
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But at most, my to-do list has three things on it.
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And what's really clear is I'm not looking at two and three until number one is done.
2
SPEAKER_05
 Now, of course, every day is filled with more than one thing, right?
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So I also have a calendar where I have these meetings I have to go to and I have these phone calls I have to make.
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And sometimes the path to getting that one thing done involves 10 or 12 different steps.
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And I might jot down those steps just to remind me what they are.
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But the point is that whenever I look at that index card, I am reminding myself there is one thing that if I get it done today, it will change the trajectory.
2
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It will make my life better.
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 It is so easy to continue putting that thing off, to put off writing that memo that you're scared of, but once you write it, you're going to know what to do next, to put off having that tough phone call, to put off doing your taxes, to put off doing something that matters.
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And if you put it at the top of the list and that's your to-do list, not the memory list, but the to-do list, then you're going to do the most important things because everyone only has 24 hours, right?
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And some people get amazing things done and some people don't.
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 The difference is not how many more hours they have or how many employees they have.
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The difference is how much time they spend prioritizing what they're working on.
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So let me ask you, how do you organize your days?
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How do you remain focused on what's important and not get distracted?
2
SPEAKER_00
 Yeah, that's it's a great question.
2
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So a few things that I've used is I read a study that said you can't be effectively creative and logical at the same time, or back to back.
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SPEAKER_00
So I avoid scheduling a creative and then a data or numbers meeting back to back.
2
SPEAKER_00
 So I'll try and have creative mornings and data afternoons or creative days and data days and that to me makes it easier for my brain to be in the zone and focus and get absorbed and obsessed with what we're dealing with rather than going back and forth, back and forth and stressing my mind to be brainstorm and be really creative and now go off and be really structured and I don't enjoy that.
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I found it exhausting actually and I used to find that a lot of my fatigue
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 came because I was demanding my brain to be really creative and artistic and then to be really structured and focused and those two things are opposite when I'm being creative sometimes I'm not focused at all and that's what's good about being creative and when I'm trying to be focused my creative mind is not useful I just want to be able to get something done so
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 I use what I call efficient and effective days as well.
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I'm like okay this is an efficiency day which means doing lots of meetings, getting lots of stuff checked off and then I have an effective day where it's like all I need to do is come up with one idea for the next chapter of my book.
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All I need to do
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 is come up with a new vision or a new strategy that I want to create for one of our companies.
2
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And so those are effective days where I don't have to do a lot.
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I don't have to achieve a lot.
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I just have to do one thing, as you said, and the efficient days are, oh yeah, I had like seven phone calls, I checked that meeting off, I did those reviews, like stuff that just I can do easily and they're back to back to back.
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And so I've tried as much as I can.
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By the way, again, not perfect.
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We get this wrong all the time.
2
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 But that's what I'm pushing towards to is always pivoting my schedule to be creative and logical days, efficiency and effective days.
2
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And the final one is giving myself a sense of, you know, I always plan everything from rest to lunch to dinner to breakfast.
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 So everything exists in my schedule.
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I believe if it's not in my schedule it won't happen.
2
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So even lunch is in my schedule every day and I will try as much as I can to pause and break and actually eat at that time because I found that I used to miss meals and then I would feel bloated and then I would feel gas and then I would feel inflamed and then I would feel exhausted and then I couldn't do it the next day and so I started realizing that a lot of structure at least five days a week, I would say this is a Monday to Friday thing,
2
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 was really powerful for me.
2
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And it's stuff that I'm still tinkering with and playing with.
2
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What I love about that is that one of the things I hear you saying is you're deliberating your goals, right?
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And we know that this is a big part of creating that space and those cognitive routines to allow ourselves to think more deeply, which is to basically to take a step back and ask yourself, what is the goal that I'm pursuing right now?
2
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 There's very often when we're in a situation and because we don't understand the goal, we end up feeling frustrated and at a loss.
2
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If I'm with my kids and I'm thinking about work, then I don't know what my goal is.
2
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Is my goal to have a moment with my children and really bond with them?
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Or is my goal to think through a problem that I'm confronting at work?
2
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I end up being terrible at both of them, right?
2
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Because I'm distracted with my kids, but my kids are so distracting that I can't really think about work.
2
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And so very,
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 I think, and you know better than I do, but my understanding is that part of mindfulness is actually just being clear about your goals.
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Being clear about what is my goal at this moment?
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How do I be present, aware of what I want to accomplish or experience or feel or what I want to do with my life right now?
2
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 And the more we force ourselves to think about our goals, the more we're on that path to doing the deep thinking that makes us more genuinely productive, more genuinely happy, more genuinely a sense of well-being.
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Charles, what brings me joy is that this type of conversation is the reason I started On Purpose.
2
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 This conversation has just been so deeply joyful for me because this is the reason why I started this podcast, was to be able to pick someone's brain, pick someone like you and pick your brain.
2
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And I'm genuinely convinced that everyone who listens to this episode and watches this episode will feel like they can restart and reframe how they view habit formation,
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 habit application, habit failure, and then habit longevity based on what you've said.
2
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And of course, I highly recommend everyone go and grab the book, The Power of Habit, because it's been such a powerful book in my own personal life for the last, you know, eight years since I read it or nine years now since I read it.
2
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 And anything that Charles does, not just that book, any book he's written, any work that he's done, I highly recommend following Charles.
2
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Because as you can see today, you're just a wealth of wisdom, phenomenal at breaking ideas down, making sense of things, making things really simple.
2
SPEAKER_00
 and easy to apply and understand and retain.
2
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And I couldn't thank you more.
2
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So Charles, we end every episode of On Purpose with a final five or a fast five, where you have to answer each question in one word to one sentence maximum.
2
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So you have a one word to one sentence, like 140 character, 280 character limit.
2
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So Charles, these are your final five.
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Are you ready?
2
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 I'm ready.
2
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Great.
2
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What is the best piece of advice you've ever received?
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I think the best advice I've ever received is just do the thing that seems passionate to you.
2
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Beautiful.
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I love that.
2
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Worst piece of advice you've ever received?
2
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 Worst piece of advice I've ever received.
2
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My dad told me to go to the University of New Mexico because I grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
2
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I'm really glad I didn't.
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I love that.
2
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I love that.
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Third question.
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What's the first thing you do when you wake up in the morning?
2
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The first thing I do when I wake up in the morning is I get a glass of water and then I like just like
2
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 flip through nonsense on my phone to let my brain just settle down.
2
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And it works pretty well for me.
2
SPEAKER_00
Cool.
2
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And question number four, what's the last thing you do before you go to bed?
2
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 I read every single night.
2
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Nice.
2
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I love to read.
2
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Anything specific?
2
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I'm a writer for the New Yorker now, so I read the New Yorker very often.
2
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Or I always try to have some novel that I'm reading.
2
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Nice.
2
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And it's just fun.
2
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I love that.
2
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And fifth and final question.
2
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If you had to choose one habit that everyone in the world had to practice every single day, what would that habit be?
2
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Okay, so let me caveat this because every single day is hard, right?
2
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 some type of exercise.
2
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And this seems cliche, but I will say I've talked to researcher after researcher, and one guy said to me, if you could take what exercise did to your body and put it in a pill, every single person would take it every single day.
2
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And everyone listening knows this.
2
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And it doesn't have to be big.
2
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It doesn't have to be running a half marathon.
2
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It doesn't even have to be running.
2
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If you do five pushups, you will feel better.
2
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 So that's the habit that I wish I could give people.
2
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I love that.
2
SPEAKER_00
Charles, thank you so much for your time, your energy, for being so gracious with it and giving so much incredible thought.
2
SPEAKER_00
I mean, your energy just flowed through the screen.
2
SPEAKER_00
I always love sitting with guests and often I struggle with interviews that have to be done digitally, but you brought the best energy.
2
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So thank you so much for being so present.
2
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Thank you for the show.
2
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 I'm a huge fan of the show and I really do think that your conversations and your ability to draw out of people insights and the warmth that you bring to it, it makes it so much fun to listen to but also so useful.
2
SPEAKER_05
So thank you for all the stuff you're doing.
2
SPEAKER_00
 Well, no, thank you, Charles.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I'm excited to have you back on.
2
SPEAKER_00
So I know you're working on a new book.
2
SPEAKER_00
We won't say anything.
2
SPEAKER_00
But when that comes out, we'd love to have you back on and stay in touch.
2
SPEAKER_00
If you're ever in L.A., come and say hello.
2
SPEAKER_00
I'd love to meet you and love to connect and hang out for lunch or dinner or something.
2
SPEAKER_00
But genuinely, thank you so much, Charles.
2
SPEAKER_00
And for everyone who's been listening and watching, make sure you tag me and Charles on Instagram, on Twitter, on Facebook, on TikTok, whatever platform you're using to share with us what resonated with you.
2
SPEAKER_00
What's a new habit that you're going to work on?
2
SPEAKER_00
 Maybe your newest resolutions didn't work out and you're going to use this episode as a reset or a restart as well.
2
SPEAKER_00
So please, please, please do tag us because I love to see what connected with you, what resonated with you and what you're going to put into practice.
2
SPEAKER_00
Thank you so much for listening.
2
SPEAKER_00
Make sure you pass this along to a friend or family member who may need it.
2
SPEAKER_00
And thank you, Charles, for doing this.
2
SPEAKER_00
I appreciate you.
2
SPEAKER_00
We'll see you again next time on On Purpose.
2
SPEAKER_06
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