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This is the art of charm.
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Learn everything you need to know to crush it in business, love, and life.
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Today we re talking with Steve Kam from Nerd Fitness.
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We re gonna talk about the hero s journey as a lifestyle template, using gamification and reward systems to build a better life, fitness or otherwise, getting and staying motivated by building and creating your own bat cave, and well,
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how nobody really loves kale, but last but not least, how to conquer your fear like Bruce Wayne.
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So enjoy this one with Steve Kam, and welcome to The Art of Charm.
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I m Jordan Harbinger.
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The Art of Charm brings together the best thought leaders, teachers, and exceptional individuals to teach you how to be a top performer in life, love, and at work.
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Imagine having a mix of experienced mentors teaching you their expertise, packing decades of research, testing, and tough lessons into a curriculum.
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We may not have all the answers, but we definitely have all the questions.
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Make sure to stay up to date with AOC and get some great stuff that we don t or can t share on the show.
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by signing up at theartofcharm.com.
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Then we ll email you our Fundamentals Toolkit that covers topics like body language, nonverbal communication, persuasion, business networking, public speaking, negotiation, and a whole lot more.
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I m also doing regular weekly videos with drills and exercises to help you move forward every single week.
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We ve also got our live programs running every week in Los Angeles, California.
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In fact, we ve got guys from all over the world, which shows that no matter where you are, you can make it here if you wanna learn and grow.
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We re sold out a couple months in advance, so if you re thinking about it even a little bit, you should get in touch ASAP by phone or email me, jordanattheartofcharm.com to get some info from us now so you can plan ahead, and we ll see you here at AOC.
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So, welcome.
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Tell us what you do in one sentence.
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I am the rebel leader of a worldwide community of average Joes, Jills, and desk jockeys that support each other in a quest for a healthier life, and this all takes place at nerdfitness.com.
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Great, alright, and how did you get involved in that?
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Because, first of all, why is it Nerd Fitness instead of just some kind of other fitness?
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I wanted to create a place for people that I could relate to that, you know, to provide specific health and fitness advice in a way that was really unbiased, no BS.
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And to me, it made sense.
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I was like, I like building computers and I ve, you know, read every Lord of the Rings book repeatedly and I ve spent my entire childhood and most of my adulthood playing video games like I m a nerd and I want to help
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us get fit, and I googled nerd and fitness, and nothing popped up, so I picked up nerdfitness.com and have been writing over there for like seven and a half, yeah, seven and a half years now at this point.
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Wow, that s a long time.
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Yeah, that s a long time, man.
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That s like eternity internet land.
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Yeah, I know, right?
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It s like old school, how did you even make your first website?
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Chalk and slate.
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Chalk and slate, and you had to upload that somehow, and it took forever.
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You had to mail it, right?
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Right, exactly.
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Absolutely, and I like the system because what you ve developed here is not just about get shredded for the ladies or whatever, you know, motivation people have or like lose hundreds of pounds overnight.
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It s very based in science and also very much sort of all-encompassing instead of just get fit.
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Yeah, I like to think it s a personal development website, I think for people that probably would never check out a personal development website.
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I try to ground everything in behavioral psychology and PubMed-backed research and personal experience stories from thousands of members of the community, but it s more of a lifestyle and more of a community than just, like you said, it s not just get a six-pack or
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learn how to bench more.
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It s like, here s how to live a better life, here s how to make better choices with how you spend your day-to-day, here s how do you have a better relationship with food, here s how getting stronger can help you build self-confidence, and I tie all of that into ridiculous video game and comic book movie metaphors because that s how I spend the majority of my free time.
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Got it, okay.
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And let s talk about the hero s journey a little bit, because it seems like that s kind of not only the guideline for your new book, I mean it seems like you consumed loads of fiction based on that and you almost essentially branded yourself via that path.
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So let s talk about that and why it s so important to you and your brand.
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Sure.
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Well, I stumbled across this, I want to say a few years ago, but it s this concept of the hero s journey that every great story in history, from King Arthur all the way up through to Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Hunger Games, follows a typical
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story arc and it s this character comes from humble beginnings, receives some sort of call to action, finds a mentor, enters into this extraordinary land where he finds allies and defeats a bad guy, rescues somebody in distress or, you know, uncovers a treasure and then returns home a changed person.
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I thought back to my childhood and how often I had spent imagining myself being the hero in one of those stories, be it a video game or a comic book, a regular book or a movie.
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And I think as we get older, and especially now that video games are so much more complex and beautiful and the storylines are amazing, it s very easy for us to kind of get trapped
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in living vicariously through these digital characters or spending all of our free time escaping into these other worlds when our real life kind of sucks.
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And after
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the majority of my early 20s stuck in a path and unsure of what I should be doing, I kind of shifted my focus and instead of living vicariously to these other characters, I thought about why I love them, what drew me to them, and how I could kind of redesign and reverse engineer my life around this concept of being a hero s journey and the fact that I m the hero, this life that we live in,
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is either the story or the game that we re all playing in.
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Every decision I ve made since then has kind of been a restructuring of my existence around this whole concept, and it s been an absolute blast doing so.
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Looking at life through the hero s journey, it obviously sets you up for a path of adventure, of growth, as many would claim, sort of happiness.
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That s what the hero s always looking for in the end, right?
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Recruiting his allies, defeating enemies, and things like that.
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How do you use this to plug into your system?
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It looks like you ve been using a lot of video game mechanics to get stuff done, which you mention in the book as well.
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Sure.
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Well, I thought back to the games that had kept me prisoner and from like a skeptical nerd perspective, I was like, I know what I need to be doing.
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I know I should be exercising more.
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I know I should be eating healthier, but I cannot get myself to do these things.
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I know I should be spending my free time on things that are productive and make me happy.
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But instead, I m spending all of my time buried in these video games.
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So I thought to myself, like, it s not just because they have pretty graphic, it s like there are scientists and engineers that have dug into what makes a video game addictive and use those things to kind of target like certain aspects of our brain that make us say, I want to keep playing, I need to get to the next level, I need to unlock the next achievement, I need to get 100% complete, whatever it may be.
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So in this idea of the hero s journey and looking at my life like a game, I started to apply those same behavioral psychology, those same reasons why I was addicted to these games and applied them to my life.
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And the few things that I continue to came back to is this concept of the progress principle and is that we as humans
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actually enjoy making progress more than we do the result of the treasure that we re looking to get as a result of the progress that we re making.
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So in a video game sense, that is, oh, I like going from level one to level two, from level two to level three, from whatever it may be.
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And every time we do something in a game, there is some satisfying ding, you get a new weapon, you get to explore a new part of the world.
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And in reality, unless we re kind of structuring our life this way, it s difficult.
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It s like, oh, I have to go exercise, and oh, I have to eat better, and I don t get to see any sort of results around these things, because you don t get in shape overnight.
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You don t build confidence instantly.
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All of these things take time.
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So what if you could build this concept of the progress principle into your own existence?
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And once I started making these connections in my brain and through Nerd Fitness, the community we have over there, which we call The Rebellion, encouraging other people to start applying this idea of the progress principle to their existences too, it shifted everybody s focus.
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It s not I m going to work out, but it s I m gaining plus one strength today, or I have to go for a run,
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Instead, you get to see what you re capable of that day that you weren t capable of the day before.
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And when you re tracking these things and applying some sort of reward and accountability system to it, it s literally turning your life into a video game.
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And I found that for many people that are overwhelmed with the idea of getting fit or the idea of getting started with maybe eventually running a marathon or things of that nature,
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when you take the focus off of, oh my God, what I have to do to get to where I m supposed to be a year from now, instead it s like, how can I be better specifically today, concretely, how can I be better today than I was last time?
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It might be one extra rep on a pushup, or running one second faster, or making one extra healthy decision in your meals, and when you look at life through this perspective, it makes things, I think, a lot more enjoyable and removes
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a lot of the, ugh, not again, and I don t know how I m supposed to get there, and blah, blah, blah, removes a lot of that nebulous behavior that I think is associated a lot with inaction when it comes to fitness.
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Okay, excellent.
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I like this because it seems like for what we re talking about here, well, you have to keep a little whistle or some sort of ding machine by you to keep your progress, right?
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No, but I love the idea of doing that because what I find as well when we teach at the Art of Charm is tracking, first of all, can be really hard.
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Sure, if you re losing weight, you can track five pounds lost or something like that, or I ran an extra mile today.
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That stuff is a little bit easier than, well, I feel like this relationship is improved.
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I mean, there s a lot of things that are a little bit nebulous, and I m sure it s the same way with fitness as well, trying to measure every aspect of your body without going to a trainer every day or something like that can be impossible or just very difficult.
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So if you make metrics based on something and you stick to it, even if they re somewhat, dare I say, arbitrary, they re at least something that you re going to be using consistently, and when you do that, when you do the level up, right, every time I lose five pounds, I go get a massage or something like that,
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it makes you feel like you re actually making progress because you don t necessarily remember losing the weight or, oh, I looked at the scale and I felt great today, but you ll remember, you kind of add some element of almost ceremony to it.
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It s a reward system, but it s codified somehow, almost like a rite of passage, only smaller.
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It s like a level-up structure that you re talking about is exactly there.
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and it keeps you motivated when you otherwise wouldn t be, because it s really easy to be motivated when you re crushing it.
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It s really hard to be motivated when you re blowing it, right?
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Sure.
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Well, I heard this great quote, I think it was through Ask a Question and Random People Can Answer For You, and somebody was asking a question about practicing or getting the motivation to play a musical instrument.
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And the question was, how do I get myself to stay motivated to play music?
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And the number one response was essentially,
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Dude, it s like F motivation, cultivate discipline.
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And I heard that and I was like.
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That might be the most brilliant thing I ve ever heard.
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Motivation, willpower, all these things are scientifically proven to be fleeting.
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We can t rely on those things, but if we build a system in which the default behavior is improvement and you can build this reward system that rewards you back so that, like you said, a massage, maybe it s buying a new pair of pants that are slightly smaller than you are when you get to a certain goal or if you ve accomplished a certain number of things,
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it continually reinforces this new behavior that you re trying to pull off and it almost becomes like this self-fulfilling prophecy instead of combating these previous self-limiting beliefs I think so many have.
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So I love this idea of cultivating discipline and structuring your life around the way so that your default action is improvement and all of that speaks to this concept of gamification and reward systems that reward you and continually push you further down the path.
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Perfect, and so can you give an example of how this might work?
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Because I think a lot of people are like, great, video game style motivation, all right.
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I mean, what do you recommend specifically?
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Because a lot of people are like, great, video game style motivation.
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Oh wait, how do I do that?
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Sure, there s a few different ways to do it.
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I think the one that I prefer the most when it comes to health and fitness is
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setting a very specific type of goal.
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So everybody, especially around January, they re like, oh, I m gonna get in shape.
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And they have no idea what that means, so they re like, oh, okay, that means tomorrow I m gonna wake up and every day I m gonna go to the gym for an hour and a half.
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And they get through two days, and then they get sick, or they get through two days and something happens, they sleep through their alarm, and they re screwed.
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They re never going back to the gym for another year until they wake up and say, oh, maybe I m gonna do this again.
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instead of saying I m gonna get in shape or I m gonna lose weight, I encourage people to get very specific with their goals or the mentality and things that they re trying to pull off.
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So instead of I m going to lose weight, it might be I m going to hit the gym for 30 minutes three times a week.
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And if that s too much, then it s okay, I m gonna go for a 10 minute walk every day.
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And instead of focusing on the end results, it might be more focused on the concept of building the habit.
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So let s say, okay, I m gonna go for a walk
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every morning for 10 minutes.
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I m gonna wake up, I m gonna put on my walking shoes, I m gonna sleep in exercise clothes, removing one additional step between you and this new habit you re trying to build.
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Your alarm clock is a rock across the room, you wake up, you go outside, you go for a 10 minute walk.
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If you can do this for 30 days straight, then you get to purchase a, let s say it s like a parkour training class, or a ballroom dancing class, or sign up for a personal trainer session or something.
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So there is this, kind of like this concept of the carrot and the stick.
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There is this carrot in front of you, like if I can accomplish these certain things,
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By this date, I will then have leveled up.
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When I level up, I earn this particular reward, and that reward is going to further incentivize you to continue down this path.
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So it s this rewarding yourself with things that reward you back, which I think is very different than what most people do.
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They re like, oh, if I go for a run today, then I get to eat a piece of cake.
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Or I went to the gym today, so I m gonna go chug a 500 calorie Gatorade.
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And they re taking two steps forward and then three steps backwards, when in reality, a much better practice would be to reward yourself with something that further reinforces this decision that I m living a new life, I am living this improved lifestyle, and as a result of that, the decisions that I m making are pushing me further down this path to a leveled up life.
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What do you do when this is all going well, and then suddenly, I don t know, my ankle s a little sore, so I m gonna chill out this week, which is good, and then next week you re kinda like, oh, it s so hard to get back into this.
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Maybe I need to, or it s raining, I don t wanna go run.
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I mean, there has to be a fair measure of people in your community that struggle with getting motivated and staying that way.
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Oh, absolutely.
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Everybody, everybody in particular, especially if your default action from before is to plop down on the couch and watch six hours of Netflix or play through the newest Call of Duty or, you know, something along those lines, scroll through Facebook for hours upon hours upon hours.
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So we encourage people, as you say, to kind of build your bat cave.
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And by that, I mean really building the environment around you to make your default activity
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to be the thing that you re trying to pull off.
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So like I said earlier, if you want to get up and go for a walk every morning, remove the number of steps between you and the activity that you re trying to build, and then increase the number of steps between you and the, let s say negative behavior that you re trying to get rid of.
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I used to watch hours and hours and hours of TV.
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I d come home from the gym and I d plop down on my couch and turn on my DVR and see how many shows I had recorded that I didn t need to be watching.
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So I ended up canceling cable.
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And initially I was like, oh my God, I m gonna miss out on so many things.
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And then realizing anytime I went to turn my TV on, there was no cable to watch anymore.
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It got back to reading a book, or playing music, or being more productive with my work.
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So we encourage people to take additional steps between them and the thing that they re trying to break, and decrease the number of steps between them and the thing that they re trying to build.
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And for, let s say, like I said, walking every morning, it s sleeping in those running clothes, it is building a reward system,
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to get you to do it, and then even building in an accountability system to keep you accountable.
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And there s two ways to do that.
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One is the most extreme version would be something like giving your friend 500 bucks, and then every morning that you don t check in with them for your morning walk, they donate $50 to the political cause or a organization that you truly despise.
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as you are building the habit, it is like, you know what, fine, I ll get off my ass and I ll go do the thing because the negativeness of not doing it is now so much worse than just going for the walk and improving my life.
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And then the other way is, like I said, if you re giving money to a friend, life s a multiplayer game and we are, as many people have said, the average of the people we associate the most with.
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If we can surround ourself with other people that are doing healthier things, people that we can turn to, mentors, friends, allies, that makes us more likely that our default action, even when it s raining, even when we re tired, is somebody to help kind of push us further down this path, and as those things are happening, I ve seen it thousands of times.
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People eventually come to me after a year, they ve transformed their lives, and like, I can t believe it,
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but I actually like working out now.
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They initially started just to lose weight.
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They built a reward and accountability system to keep them going for those first few months, but then they started to like how they felt after they worked out, and they liked how their clothes felt, and they liked the feeling of their nervous system shaking after picking up something really heavy and feeling like Wolverine or a badass.
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I ve seen it happen so many times that I know if I can just get people through those first few months using these game mechanics, this concept of drive and flow kind of start to kick in when it comes to activity, and it becomes their default new lifestyle.
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It s like, I m an active person that is taking care of myself, and this is just who I am now.
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Exactly, it changes their identity level opinion of who they are, or assessment of who they are, not even just opinion.
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Hey Art of Charm listeners, I m excited to share a new podcast I ve been absolutely binging.
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We talk about this a lot at Art of Charm and at our live training as well, because we have to make an identity level shift.
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If someone, say, identifies as shy or they re introverted, which is totally fine, but they think, okay, because of that, I can t do X, Y, and Z. I can t create meaningful relationships or connections or certain types of relationships.
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let s say relationships are off limits to them, you have to have that core level identity shift.
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It s actually really tough to create in a short amount of time anyway.
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It takes a lot of repetition and it takes a lot of this is who I am type of self-talk.
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And you can t just get up in the morning and look in the mirror and be like, I m special.
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Stuart s smart, right?
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Yeah, you need action to back it up or it won t make sense, right?
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So if you get up in the morning and you say, ugh, I really don t want to do this.
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Oh, well, you know, tomorrow I ll just go for twice as long and then you go back to bed, that actually becomes who you are.
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And one of the mantras here at AOC is you re building habits whether you mean to or not.
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Because people talk about breaking bad habits and building good habits, but what we don t think of as habit building is the inertia or the lack of action.
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And that whole staying in bed longer and not running or skipping the gym because I m so busy with other things that take priority, that becomes the habit.
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I find that after a while, I might even have three hours and instead of going, oh, finally I have time to go to the gym, I m just like, I m not the guy who goes to the gym.
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I fulfill the time with something else.
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Why would I go to the gym?
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That s not one of my things.
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Whereas a few months prior to that, I might have canceled a meeting to go to the gym because it was that important to me.
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Absolutely, and I know other guests that you ve had on your show, Ramit Sethi talks about quite frequently, but it s this concept of small wins and reinforcing this new identity of your behavior.
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I ll talk about it in the book too, but if you are somebody that s like, like you said, I m naturally shy, or oh, I m somebody that doesn t exercise, or oh, I m destined to fail at this particular thing, everything in your brain is telling you, I suck.
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Exactly.
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to get yourself to overcome that hurdle, like the amount of mental effort required to get yourself to say something differently.
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You said just standing in front of a mirror in the morning and saying like, gosh darn it, people like me and I m not shy anymore.
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It doesn t work that way.
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But with every teeny tiny small win, it might be talking to the person behind the counter at the cash register because they re legally obligated to talk to you to get your money from you.
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Like you can convince yourself and prove to yourself with each small win that like, hey, maybe I m not as shy as I thought I was.
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Or hey, maybe this new mentality makes sense to me and my new identity, every small win from that point shifts you away from the I suck and more closer to like the I rule.
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Like it goes from this self-limiting belief to a self-fulfilling prophecy.
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SPEAKER_03
Excellent, yeah, great, well phrased, exactly.
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It becomes a part of who you are, it becomes something you do, and it becomes something you figure out how to do, and build your entire life around.
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SPEAKER_03
And this is an extremely important and potent concept at Art of Charm as well, because what people will say, how do I become more confident in a particular situation?
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and I always try to drill things down to mindset and nonverbal communication.
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Mindset, of course, coming first.
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And what you find is in people who are struggling with this, and especially, actually, in people who think they re really good at this stuff already, what happens is they try to turn it all on when they need it.
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They ll try to stand up straight and smile and have open, positive body language and manage the way they take up space.
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manage their eye contact and their vocal tonality when they go to a networking event or something that they place as highly important in their life, but when they re just at home or when they re with their friends or when they re out to Starbucks to grab a cup of coffee, they don t pay any attention to that stuff.
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So they basically aren t building it in.
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They re trying to rise to the occasion instead of defaulting to the level of their training, to use a special forces mantra.
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SPEAKER_02
That s really interesting.
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SPEAKER_02
I like that a lot.
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SPEAKER_02
Daily practice carries over to the big event, so if you re only building up for that one big networking event or asking somebody at a date, but you re not carrying it through every other time, not only are you gonna be far more rusty, I think, during that networking event, but because it seems like such a big leap from your previous behavior to I m gonna go ask somebody out or I m gonna be social at this event, you might chicken out.
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You might not actually follow through on it, whereas if you re just spending all of your time
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consistently interacting with people and whatever, instead of jumping from level 1 to level 10, you re jumping from 1 to 2 to 3 to 4 to 5, and then if you re at level 5 before this networking event, oh, from 5 to 10, it s not nearly as bad than if you re going from 1 to 10.
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SPEAKER_03
Yeah, I think, of course, trying to rise to the occasion is setting yourself up for failure.
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Because nobody in their right mind, anyway, would ever do the following.
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SPEAKER_03
Man, wouldn t it be cool to run a marathon?
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SPEAKER_03
Yeah, man, I heard there s one next weekend, we should totally go.
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SPEAKER_03
Awesome, pass me another beer.
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SPEAKER_03
And then they show up and they try to run that marathon.
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Very few humans would be able to do that.
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Right now, everybody s thinking of the one guy they know who s like the Navy SEAL guy who got wasted the night before and then ran a marathon.
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I m not talking about that guy who s already in that shape.
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SPEAKER_03
Nobody would try to do that, but what people try to do with other parts of their life, whether or not it s fitness related or not, is they try to rise to the occasion where they re like, you know what, when it really counts, when it really matters, I m gonna be able to ask my boss for a raise.
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I m gonna be able to tell my supervisor what needs to get done.
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I m gonna be able to rally my team to come through for this really important annual goal for my company.
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And you know what happens?
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Nothing.
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There s so much pressure on it at that point.
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And what s funny is when you mentioned the marathon comment, I actually know one person that did that, and he ended up in a walking boot for six months after because he broke a bone in his foot when he went to run a marathon because he hadn t properly trained for it.
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SPEAKER_02
So I do know that one guy, and it didn t work out very well for him.
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SPEAKER_03
Yeah, I don t know why anybody would think that it would.
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SPEAKER_03
Actually, I want your opinion on this.
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I think that building habits, of course, is tougher than just showing up on game day.
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You might be able to force yourself to 20 seconds of greatness to get on the field at the end, but it s the consistency that actually matters.
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SPEAKER_03
I can eat kale one day only.
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SPEAKER_03
Sure, no problem, but eating that instead of a cupcake for breakfast every day or something like that, that s harder.
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SPEAKER_02
Yeah, absolutely.
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SPEAKER_02
Well, I think what s important in what you just said there is something that we try to talk about at Nerd Fitness, and it s, I don t like diets.
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I despise the term.
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I discourage people to go on a diet.
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People are like, oh, I have a wedding a month from now.
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It s like, okay, I m gonna go on this juicing diet, or this fasting diet, or this cleanse, or whatever, blah, blah, blah.
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And they re making a temporary change,
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to how they eat and they re treating the symptoms of a problem they re trying to solve, a.k.a.
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my waistline is too big, until they reach a certain outcome, and then they return to their default behavior, which is what got them in that problem in the first place.
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So we encourage people, it s like, don t go on a diet, like don t do something for 30 days and then return to what you were doing.
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You re making changes and you re building small habits that become who you are as a person, you know, like you re making a fundamental change to your relationship with food.
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If eating kale every day is scary for you, then okay, then don t make that the change you re going to do.
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If somebody came to me tomorrow and said, I m going to need to lose X amount of weight, I d be like, okay, this week let s cut out one soda, and the next week we re going to chop out two of them.
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Then the week after that, let s start walking for five minutes a day.
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We re not doing any of these things with a specific end goal in mind, but we re building these new habits.
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adjusting where our new default kind of set point normal everyday existence is, and that everyday existence is now further down a path towards a healthy lifestyle that you can live with permanently.
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SPEAKER_00
There was a study recently in the, I think it was like the British Journal of Medicine, something like that, and they went and studied people on diets, and over the past decade or something, it was 99% of people failed.
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It was unbelievable because every single one of them had been trying to treat the symptom of their problem rather than, as I like to say, kind of hack the source code.
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They get to the base of what s wrong and they fix it at the beginning so that they re not just putting band-aids on these problems or temporary fixes on something until they can go back to how things were.
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SPEAKER_00
You re changing who you are and how you re doing it and the best way to do that is with small changes that don t scare the crap out of you.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, this is partial genius, right?
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SPEAKER_01
Because if you don t have the outcome in mind, this is also a really popular AOC concept, it s called detachment or outcome independency.
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And I think this is really key and it s very underrated because a lot of folks, it seems very counterintuitive.
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Look, my goal is to lose 25 pounds.
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Why would I not have that outcome in mind?
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SPEAKER_01
Look, if I want to lose 25 pounds, I ve got to hit the treadmill, I ve got to do this,
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this exercise routine, I ve gotta change my diet, and I ve gotta eliminate soda, but what we are forgetting at this point is your goal may evolve, it can just seem so dang overwhelming to try to lose 25 pounds if you eliminate soda, and you hit the treadmill, and you got a trainer, and you re eating kale for breakfast, and you lose a pound a week, and you re going, what is going on here?
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SPEAKER_01
This is not working, this is terrible, I m going through all this pain for nothing, but if we sort of gradually
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boil the frog, to use a really gross metaphor here, if we sort of gradually do that, like, look, man, instead of having two Cokes at lunch, why don t you have one?
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SPEAKER_01
And then why don t you just drink sparkling water, if that s the taste that you re missing?
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SPEAKER_01
Over weeks of time, you ll eventually, and this is how I lost weight ever in my whole life, you eventually come out the other side, and you just go,
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SPEAKER_01
oh, that s weird, I lost like 15 pounds over the last couple of months.
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Because you slowly change your habits over time.
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So it doesn t require massive amounts of discipline and willpower.
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You re not setting up to the starting line of the marathon after not having trained.
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You re simply tweaking a little bit, just like you would if you were training for a marathon.
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You don t start running 27 miles a day.
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You start, I would assume, you d start with a couch to 5K plan and then go up from there.
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And I think that even having an outcome
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dependent mindset when it comes to something like that could really sabotage your results.
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Absolutely, and it s funny, some people might then think like, well, Steve, you ve built your life around a game and goals and the end goal and blah, blah, blah.
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I think these concepts are actually quite complimentary.
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Like you said, cutting out one soda a day, if your goal is to drink one less soda per day for 10 days, and at the end of those 10 days, you earn something special,
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your reward system and your day-to-day activities are built around the process and not the final outcome, I think you can still combine the two things.
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And like you said, it s kind of cool to see people or see things where the focus and the excitement is around
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something physical or something exciting, where it s like, oh, I wanna run every day, or I want to eat one less thing every day.
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And when it s not around, oh my God, what the scale says this morning.
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The scale can lie so badly, especially depending on how you ate during the weekend or whatever it may be.
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So to build it around something else and making those decisions on the activities that you re doing or the decisions that you re making on a day-to-day basis, I think you re far more likely to be
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not overwhelmed with this crazy audacious goal down the road.
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It s kind of like Frodo walking to Mordor.
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If he knew that Mordor was as many miles away as it is, he probably would have never started walking, but he just put one foot in front of the other, and his focus was every day walking one step further away from where he had been, and eventually he got to where he needed to go.
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SPEAKER_01
What s the biggest cause of burnout or failure that you see in members of your own community?
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SPEAKER_01
they choose an audacious goal and they get hell-bent on it for a little while and then fail because it s too overwhelming, or is there something else at work?
3
SPEAKER_00
No, I think it s making too giant of a declaration and trying to do too much, and as a result of that, their willpower bar just gets depleted very rapidly, and after a week or two, they ve burned out completely.
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SPEAKER_00
They would have been much better off picking one tiny goal and doing that permanently for two weeks and then building on top of that once they ve seen some success.
3
SPEAKER_00
Absolutely.
3
SPEAKER_01
All right, back to Steve Kam.
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One of the things that I love to do in my own life and that we love to teach as well at AOC that I think we have in common is building things into your life, but instead of training regimen, I m talking about having things in your home, things in your office that are setting you up to succeed.
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For example, I ve got a video studio in my home now, whereas before I had to set everything up.
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Guess how many videos I made when I had to set everything up and calibrate it?
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Zero.
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Not too many, yeah, exactly.
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And I used to have to set up the podcasting equipment too, and it was awful, and I released once a week, and I remember just looking at this box of dusty microphones and going, oh my gosh, okay, I m excited to do the show, but this is such a freaking pain.
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And then of course, you know, something goes wrong, or you forgot the cable, or whatever, something breaks, forget about it.
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Now it s all built in and now I can basically go in, switch things on if they re not on already, record something, and then shoot it off to producer Jason to work his magic and we re done.
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And I think that there are ways to do this.
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We set this up socially at The Art of Charm for people who want to network and build professional and personal relationships, but there has to be a way, in fact, probably even easier way to do this in your home or office as well for fitness purposes or for leveling up purposes as well.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it s funny, actually, while writing this book, I wanted to overcome a self-limiting belief that I had, and that was that I couldn t sing, I was a terrible singer, and also that I wanted to learn how to play the violin despite not knowing how to do so.
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So, I signed up for singing lessons, and I rented a violin for 20 bucks a month and signed up for weekly lessons.
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And with the violin, I found repeatedly that I would come home from my lesson, and I would put the case down, and I d go do something, and I d tell myself the next day I need to practice.
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And very much like what you just said, Jordan, with the box of microphones, you have to set everything up.
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Just the idea to me of having to open the violin case and pull the violin out and rosin the bow and tune the strings and set the music up, blah, blah, blah.
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I wouldn t practice.
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Months went by and I would show up to my lesson every week and say, I m sorry, I didn t practice this week.
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And my teacher s like, that s okay, I know you re busy and blah, blah, blah.
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I was lying.
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I wasn t busy.
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I had the time to do it.
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It s just the tiniest hurdles to get me to practice was enough to get me to not to do it.
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So I bought a $15 on Amazon violin stand, and I made it a habit where every day that I came home from my lesson,
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The first thing I did when I walked in the door was pull the violin out, put it on the stand, which was in the middle of my living room, and it was already tuned.
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I set the music up instantly, and then for the rest of the week, every time I had to walk by that violin to go to the kitchen or the bathroom or whatever it may be,
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Sure enough, I picked the violin up because it s already set up and I can only play for 30 seconds or a minute.
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And I made more progress in a month, I think, than I had made in my previous six months because my default action was to see this thing, see it existing in the middle of my living room, and it became the thing that I had to do.
3
SPEAKER_00
So I think it applies to learning anything, be it learning a language,
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learning a musical instrument.
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If you re writing a book, have the Word document open so the first thing you see on your computer when you wake up in the morning is that document.
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SPEAKER_00
Already have the time-wasting websites blocked in your computer when you go to bed the night before so they can t distract you first thing in the morning.
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SPEAKER_00
If it s fitness, it s sleeping in your workout clothes, packing your gym bag the night before you go to the office in the morning so that it s already in your car.
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SPEAKER_00
There are so many things you can do where if you take five minutes on the first day, it makes you 95% more likely to actually follow through on the things you re trying to do every day after that.
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SPEAKER_00
We call it building your bat cave.
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SPEAKER_00
It s restructuring your environment of which we are products of, restructuring that environment so your default behavior is growth, progress, happiness, learning a particular skill, or following through on a workout plan, or recording your podcast on a weekly basis.
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SPEAKER_01
Perfect excellent.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I think everyone can do this in a certain way And I think if this is where a lot of creativity comes into play as well It doesn t just mean setting up your studio.
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SPEAKER_01
It doesn t necessarily even just mean all right This is blocked, and this is ready on my computer I think everybody kind of has their own little vice or their own time waster or their own well You know I d have to go all the way down to the garage to do that or something like this and ways to intercept that
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SPEAKER_01
are only limited by your imagination.
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For example, back when I was really, really busy, I literally had five minutes between phone calls to work out.
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SPEAKER_01
I was doing crazy kettlebell sets in my apartment, which was a loft in the middle, and so I had to buy the pads, and I had to leave them out, and one sort of hack that
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SPEAKER_01
that my girlfriend loves a little bit less than me is I bought these kettlebells that were shaped like monsters and monkeys and things like that.
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SPEAKER_01
My theory was kettlebells
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SPEAKER_01
Kettlebells are pretty ugly, right?
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SPEAKER_01
So I don t want them in the middle of my living room because people are just gonna be like, okay, meathead weirdo.
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SPEAKER_01
It s less their judgment and more just like, ugh, these things are not attractive.
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SPEAKER_01
So when I got those, I thought, these are cool and they re kind of decorative in my studio.
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SPEAKER_01
But what happens when you look at a kettlebell a lot while you re working?
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SPEAKER_01
Well, when you get five minutes, you don t go on Facebook, you pick that sucker up,
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SPEAKER_01
and you do a regimen that you ve already got written down right next to it, that s gonna get you a nice little workout in concert with everything else, given the amount of time that you have.
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And that was super necessary.
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SPEAKER_01
There was a post-it note that said, five minutes, do this, 10 minutes, do this, 15 minutes, do this, and then probably get some water.
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SPEAKER_01
And that was very much mandatory, because otherwise what happens is, I get a five minute break, Facebook, another five minute break, Twitter, another 10 minute break, oh man, I m kinda hungry, I m gonna go look at my junk food drawer
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and see what s in there.
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So I ve already had a preemptive strike on my own psychology by showing me what I do in those breaks, and the stuff s already out.
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SPEAKER_01
I don t have to go upstairs to the fitness closet and grab my crap and set up the mats.
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SPEAKER_01
They re ready to go.
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I m the only thing that s not necessarily ready to go.
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Therefore, I m the bottleneck and the barrier, and if I can push through that, everything else falls into place.
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SPEAKER_00
I love that.
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SPEAKER_00
I love two things in particular there.
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SPEAKER_00
One thing you were saying like, if I have five minutes, I do this.
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If I have 10 minutes, I do this.
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15 minutes, I do this.
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SPEAKER_00
Most people think like, oh, if I have to work out, I need an hour.
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And then they only have like 45 minutes free.
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SPEAKER_00
And they re like, oh, well, I only have 45 minutes, but I need an hour to work out.
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SPEAKER_00
So I ll just spend those 45 minutes doing anything else.
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SPEAKER_00
45 minutes of working out is amazing.
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SPEAKER_00
Five minutes of working out is amazing.
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SPEAKER_00
It can be any length of activity.
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SPEAKER_00
It doesn t have to conform to this large number that most people really just use as an excuse for them to not to do something.
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SPEAKER_00
But I think the reason why even five minutes is important is, in my opinion, and from what I ve seen through helping literally thousands of people at Nerd Fitness, is that diet and nutrition is 80 to 90% of the battle.
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SPEAKER_00
And most people don t want to hear that.
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SPEAKER_00
They want to hear that they can go for a quick run and then eat whatever they want, and they ll look like King Leonidas, or they ll look like Chris Evans as Captain America or something.
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SPEAKER_00
So instead, I encourage people and let them know like, hey, I love the idea of exercise, but make it something that you do on a regular basis, something that you enjoy, or something that consistently reminds you that you re living this healthier life.
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SPEAKER_00
And I ve found that on days when I don t work out,
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I m far more likely to eat poorly because being healthy is not at the front of my mind.
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Whereas if I was exercising for a few minutes every hour or doing a 15-minute workout every day, I m much more likely to make the healthier decision when it comes to food and food being 80 to 90% of the battle is so much more important than many people give it credit for.
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SPEAKER_00
So I commend you on the five minutes per hour or whatever it is between phone calls.
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SPEAKER_00
I freaking love that.
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SPEAKER_00
And another thing I think that people do far too
4
SPEAKER_00
too often is they say, I don t have time to do something.
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SPEAKER_00
And instead we encourage people to say, that particular thing is not a priority.
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SPEAKER_00
We do the same thing, yeah.
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SPEAKER_01
Because then how big of a dick do you feel when you re like, hey man, you should really work out more because I know I m out of shape.
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SPEAKER_01
Well, that particular thing is not a priority for me.
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SPEAKER_01
You re like, oh wow, I m slowly killing myself.
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SPEAKER_01
Instead of, I have this higher power calling me to do work because that s noble.
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SPEAKER_01
You re like, no, I just deprioritized myself.
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SPEAKER_00
Everybody says it, they re like, oh man, I wish I had time to read more, or I wish I had time to work on this, or I don t have time to work out.
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SPEAKER_00
It s like, no, what you re really saying is Facebook, watching TV, playing video games, scrolling through Instagram, checking email compulsively, all of those things are actually more important to you than the activity that you say is a priority.
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SPEAKER_00
It s not what you say, it s what you do.
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SPEAKER_00
And I think when you make that shift in your head and start to prioritize the right things, like you said, it got to a point where working out is non-negotiable, where it s like, this is what needs to happen.
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SPEAKER_00
I might need to cram everything else around this exercise now instead of vice versa.
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SPEAKER_00
And when I started doing that, I was missing sales calls, I was late to work, whatever, because I said exercise has to be the thing.
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SPEAKER_00
I m just gonna make it a priority and I ll deal with the rest of it.
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SPEAKER_00
And sure enough, after two weeks, I was like, okay, I can t be a jerk at work.
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SPEAKER_00
I can t piss off my friends by showing up late.
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SPEAKER_00
I need to get better at time management.
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SPEAKER_00
And if working out is something that is truly a priority, and it s non-negotiable, then all of this other nonsense that I m wasting time on has to go away if I m gonna get in shape and do all the things that I said I m going to do, and have some fun with friends at the same time.
4
SPEAKER_01
Exactly.
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SPEAKER_01
One thing that I find myself repeating often on the show is discipline only counts when you actually need it.
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SPEAKER_01
You think about this, oh man, I m gonna get in shape.
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SPEAKER_01
It s the same thing we talked about before with I m gonna eat kale five times a day.
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That works until you re like, you know, I hate this, or I m tempted by something else, or something else good comes along.
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SPEAKER_01
And the same thing is true of relationships.
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No example necessary, I m sure, for most people, especially when it comes to temptation.
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SPEAKER_01
This is something that you need to build in, because if you don t,
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You might think that you re disciplined when really you re only wearing a veneer of discipline because as soon as something more powerful comes along, it simply crumbles.
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SPEAKER_01
And granted, okay, if you ve got a family member in the hospital and you miss a workout, understandable, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
Okay, but if you overslept,
4
SPEAKER_01
and now you re missing workouts regularly.
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SPEAKER_01
That s because you re undisciplined.
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SPEAKER_01
You might need to, and going back to building your life around this, you might need to go to bed early by turning off your computer earlier so that you can get up earlier, so that you can get to the gym earlier, so that you can get to work on time.
4
SPEAKER_01
And doing that consistently is where discipline comes in.
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SPEAKER_01
It s not just going to the gym and pushing through that last set.
4
SPEAKER_01
That might be little micro occurrences of discipline, but it actually starts much earlier than that.
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SPEAKER_01
You know, when I was in college, I went to the gym every day because I didn t have a lot else going on.
4
SPEAKER_01
Now, getting to the gym requires me to schedule my entire life around it, to schedule meetings around it, and frankly, to have meetings at the gym if possible.
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SPEAKER_00
That s great.
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I do the same thing.
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I have every workout in my calendar.
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I work out four days a week for 45 minutes to an hour or so.
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It s nothing crazy, but it s every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday.
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If for some week, I think it was due to Thanksgiving, I was traveling and whatever, and I was two days off of my rotation, so then it was like, okay, I need to go Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday off, Thursday, Friday, Saturday off.
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After a week, I got back on schedule, but it was very important for me
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As soon as that routine started to break down, it makes it so much easier for it to crumble.
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Like you said, it s the three little pigs.
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If you re like, oh, I m disciplined, but you re building a house of sticks, the big bad wolf shows up, you re screwed.
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I m pretty sure that s how the fairy tale goes, right?
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Yeah, I think so.
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If you ve been slowly laying
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Disciplined brick after brick after brick after brick when the big bad wolf shows up like you re actually properly prepared to deal with That thing that would have thrown many other people off the path I mean we all see it every year it s the people that say on January 1st I m gonna be different this year, and there s some studies that say like by January 20th 80% of people have already abandoned or forgotten what they had said just three weeks earlier like wow it s super depressing Because everybody s attacking the problem the wrong way one of your favorite characters is obviously Batman
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I think it s Batman.
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I mean, everybody loves Batman.
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Everybody loves Batman.
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And of course, his alter ego Bruce Wayne, or vice versa, Bruce Wayne and his alter ego Batman.
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You talk a lot in the new book about how to crush fear like Bruce Wayne.
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I don t know why you didn t say Batman, but let s go with Bruce Wayne the way that you ve gone with it.
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I would love to talk more about this because identifying and quantifying fear and then taking action on it is something that could and should be a life-changing habit or skill for most people.
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Absolutely.
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Well, the reason I specifically mentioned Bruce Wayne, I loved what Christopher Nolan did with the most recent movies, Batman Begins, Dark Knight, et cetera.
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As a young kid, Bruce Wayne falls down a well and he appears in this cave and thousands of bats come out, scares the crap out of him, and he spends the majority of his childhood and young adult life
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terrified of bats.
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He returns to Gotham a changed person and he s like, okay, I m going to become a symbol that the city needs and I m going to help protect this place.
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He thought back to a fear of his that had kept him prisoner and scared the crap out of him for so long, in turn decided to use that fear
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to strike fear in the hearts of his peers.
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That s why he becomes Batman.
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He takes this thing that had kept him prisoner and kind of occupied his brain and redirects it in the right path.
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So I am the type of person, very similar to many, that
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you know, pretty risk-averse type person.
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I can overanalyze anything to the point of paralysis.
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I can get myself to talk myself out of pretty much anything because I m terrified of it.
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So in order for me to change that, very similar to what Bruce had done, like you almost have to like,
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acknowledge what this fear is, like, okay, I m afraid of talking to this particular person, or I m afraid of asking for this particular thing at work.
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Asking yourself what, you know, the worst possible thing that could happen.
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Bruce found out, it s like, okay, well these bats are not out to get me, like, they are a species doing their own thing, and I m doing my own thing, and that s just what it is.
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And then from there, it s like kind of re-channeling that energy, and using it to attack that particular problem that you re working on.
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So, I know Tim Ferriss talks about this quite frequently, and other guests you guys have had,
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but it s truly breaking down and getting excruciatingly detailed about what s the worst possible thing that could happen if there s an outcome that doesn t line up with the thing that you re trying to do.
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And everybody, I think, with fear comes down to failure.
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Like, oh, if I ask that person out and they turn me down, or what if I try to do this particular skill and I fall on my face, or what if I try to start my own company and it goes belly up?
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It s like, okay, identify what this fear is, this thing that s probably keeping you from doing it in the first place.
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break it down into what it actually means, and then come up with a plan to address it should that worst case scenario happen.
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It s like, okay, this person tells me to screw off and they re not interested in talking to me.
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It s like, okay, I m still in the same place as I was before.
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I just get to move on with my life knowing that that wasn t a good interaction.
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If you try to start a business and it fails, it s like, okay, I might need to sleep on a friend s couch.
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I might need to move in with my parents temporarily until I get another gig going.
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but I went for it, I tried it, and I can get through it, but we get so hung up on what the fear part is and how bad things can go that we forget things can also go right.
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There s a great guy named Jia Zhang, and he runs a website called, was it Fear Buster or something like that?
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He did a rejection therapy, I think he just put a book out.
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He talks about 100 days of rejection where he was so afraid of being rejected that every day he went out and sought rejection.
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And more often than not, the people actually said yes to his ridiculous questions and he couldn t get rejected.
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He asked a cop to ride in the cop car.
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He went up to a stranger s house and knocked on his door and said, hey, can I play soccer in your backyard?
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In many of these instances, they re like, that s kind of weird, but yeah, okay.
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I guess so, I don t see why not.
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So I just thought it was so neat to see all these different opportunities of people that have like, okay, here is something I m afraid of.
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Here is a systematized approach to addressing, defining, analyzing, and attacking that fear.
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And more often than not, in many or most of those cases, that worst case fear never results.
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If anything, anything is temporary, but more often than not, it s the opposite, that things actually go right and go well.
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Fortune favors the bold, I truly believe that.
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I just love the idea of Bruce Wayne and how he attacked that problem and how he dealt with something he was truly afraid of and instead made it like a rallying cry for who he is and what he stood for.
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Let s put that into a box.
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So the first thing that we do is we identify what we re afraid of instead of just having an anxiety reaction whenever we think about writing a book or whatever.
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We identify, what if nobody buys it?
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Or, oh, I m gonna have to write it, it s gonna take so long and I m not a great writer.
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Something like that.
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We codify that.
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We put it down on paper so that it becomes more real and not just a physical revulsion to the task or to the occurrence of whatever it is.
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And then,
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Once we ve identified it, we can then, what, plan for the scenario so that we are less scared of it because we have a contingency, or am I skipping something?
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I think it s acknowledging that you re afraid of it and just kind of laughing at yourself, being like, okay, I get it, this is what I m afraid of, I understand that this is the fear that I m, and when you acknowledge what it is that you re afraid of and that you are afraid of it, you can
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mentally prepare yourself for if this goes wrong, this is what I can do.
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It makes it much less of like this big, hairy, audacious disaster.
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And instead, it s like, okay, this is what the problem is, and I can attack it otherwise.
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Like you said, after you write down what the worst thing that could happen is, and then once you get to that point, you can then spend a minute or two be like, okay, if this happens, then I will do this.
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and you ll realize very quickly that the thing that you re afraid of and this world-changing failure, if it were to happen, is actually quite temporary and not that bad, it makes it far less likely for you to chicken out and not actually go for it.
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How is that different than worrying?
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Different from worrying how, in that people worry about everything that could go wrong.
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Yeah, is it only different because we re writing it down?
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No, I don t think so.
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I think worrying is far more pessimistic.
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It s just like, oh, this could go wrong, and this could go wrong, and this could go wrong.
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And I think this other attitude is more like, okay, should this go wrong, this will be my response, or this is what I can do.
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So instead of just pessimistically worrying about if it s gonna rain tomorrow, you re like, okay, should it rain tomorrow?
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It s like building a contingency plan, or building a parachute almost.
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Like, okay, should this happen, then I will do this.
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When you ve got these default,
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behaviors to fall back on when any of those potential outcomes could happen, it makes them far less likely to paralyze you from taking the action you re trying to do.
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Perfect, thank you so much.
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Steve Kam, Nerd Fitness, we ll have that linked up, of course, in the show notes along with the book, Level Up Your Life, which will be available at bookstores, which still exist, and Amazon as well.
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And of course, we ll link to your Twitter so people can go, great episode with Steve Kam, and then CC you on that.
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Love it.
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Well, thank you so much for the opportunity.
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You guys are doing a great thing and it seems like there s a great synergy between helping people, helping guys get more confident and helping them get fit.
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I see such a tremendous overlap in those two things for sure.
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Thank you so much, man.
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I appreciate it.
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Thanks for the chance.
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I love stuff like this.
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Anything that talks about habit change, and Steve s a good dude.
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I mean, he s been around for a while.
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This isn t like the latest get rich quick or get skinny quick type diet stuff, and anybody that wants to help gamify or use the hero s journey, I m a big fan.
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Practical is the name of our game.
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If you enjoyed this one, don t forget to thank Steve on Twitter.
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We ll have that linked in the show notes, as well as, of course, his new book, Level Up.
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You can tap the album art in most mobile podcast players to see the show notes right on your phone.
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I m also on Twitter at The Art of Charm.
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Boot camp details for our live program also at theartofcharm.com.
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Remember, subscribe in iTunes, iPhone and Android apps available.
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Special thanks to the Jasons and to Fogarty for their help in production of The Art of Charm podcast.
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Go ahead and tell your friends because the greatest compliment you can give us is a referral to someone else either in person or shared on the web.
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Now have a great week and leave everything and everyone better than you found them.
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Thanks for listening to the Art of Charm.
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Get more confidence, relationship skills, life hacks, and more at theartofcharmpodcast.com.