Transcription
[Music] Well, welcome to this session of the Habit Camp process, and I wanted to walk you through five of the major laws for highly sticky habits. One of the greatest challenges that a human being has is to make their habits sustainable. I remember once working for an organization, and one of the leaders said he went off to Harvard for one of those two-week-long advanced business classes, and he said his favorite professor kept on saying the same thing and asking the same question that he encouraged his class to ask all day long when considering a new move: "Is it sustainable? Is it sustainable? Is it sustainable?"
And so, when it comes to world-class habits, which I know you are in the process of installing, the key is to really keep asking yourself, "How can I make these habits?" Whether it's joining the 5:00 AM Club, whether it's OMAD (one meal a day) – remember, I'm not giving any medical advice, but one meal a day works incredibly well for me on certain days of the week. Maybe your habit will be the second-wind workout, so you finish work, you go for a mountain bike ride, you go walk in the woods, you do yoga, you do planks, you do burpees, you do push-ups. Maybe the habit that you're working on over these next 60 days, days of the habit installation process, that will allow you to lift your life to a whole new level, is an excellent pre-sleep ritual. The bonus or pro tip, really, is to remember that the key to a great morning routine is a fantastic pre-sleep ritual. So maybe you're turning your phone off at 6:00 and not looking at any white screens. Maybe part of your excellent or calibrated pre-sleep ritual is you're going to read for an hour every night. One of my favorite habits I love teaching, which is the 60-minute student: less scrolling, more reading. Less scrolling, more reading is a great way to go through life.
Maybe the habit that you're working on is building a stronger family life. Maybe it's three family meals every day where you all put your devices in a basket or in another room, and you actually do something not so many families do anymore: you talk. And if you lose the conversation with your family, you'll probably, unfortunately, lose your family. Maybe the habit that you're working on is being an MA, a merchant of wow at work, in this world of so many people who want the results of world-class but are not willing to do what world-class requires. They want a great life, whether it's physically, spiritually, relationally, economically, and yet they're not doing any work, and they're waiting for the world to make their lives amazing. And that's what psychologists call magical thinking.
So, what I wanted to do here, to encourage you, and to be of usefulness to you, is to walk you through five of the major laws that will help you make habits that last, that are enduring, that are sustainable. Let's get right into the first one, which is: Reprogram your opinion of you. Your opinion of you is incredibly important. What I'm really asking you to reflect on right now is your self-identity. Here's the big idea and the powerful point: We all have these secret contracts, and they're secret because they're subconscious, and they get set up in the first seven years or so of childhood. So, we have these contracts that we pick up from our parents and our teachers and the people around us and our ecosystem – that's just your environment. And so, let's say you sing beautifully, and someone says, "You're a terrible singer." Well, you set up a secret contract that you'll never sing again. You are a little kid, and you color outside of the lines, and someone says, "You're stupid." A subconscious, hidden contract is set up that you're stupid. And so, of course, you're never going to do anything that would amaze you because, deep inside, your self-identity says that you're stupid.
Maybe you picked up programming and formed a secret contract that people who have beautiful things or achieve remarkable feats are bad. A lot of, sometimes parents, I should say, not a lot of, but sometimes parents come up with things like, "Oh, rich people are liars, cheats, and thieves," or "Successful people are cut from a different cloth." And all of these words that our early caregivers, who teach us how the world works, share with us, plant deep seeds in our subconscious mind, and they set up these secret contracts. And the secret contracts come together to create your self-identity. And so, what I encourage you to remember, this first law of creating highly sticky habits, is you've got to start to reprogram yourself out of your limited beliefs and your negative secret contracts. And the best ways I know to do that, MVP, is one: meditation, visualization, and prayer. Meditate every morning. Meditate on the person you want to be. Meditate on how you want to show up in the world. Meditate by going into your body and feeling your anger, or sadness, frustration, because to release a wound, you must feel a wound. Meditation. There are lots of great apps out there, whether it's Calm, or I believe it's called Buddhify. I love an app called Meditation Oasis. There are so many. And as you know, in the Habit Camp program, I've created some meditations for you, especially some very powerful and transformational morning meditations. So, definitely go into the meditation room of the Habit Camp program and do your morning meditations, because they work. MVP: meditation will help you rewire these secret contracts.
V: visualization. Closing your eyes, getting still in a quiet place, and seeing yourself living out your perfect days. Seeing yourself behaving in a way that makes you prosperous and healthy and happy and kind and excellent and enough, used by as many people as possible. And the more you can visualize yourself, the more you will step into being the person that you want to be. Great neuroscientists will tell you that brain cells that fire together, wire together. And I'm going to repeat that again because it's so important: Brain cells that fire together, wire together. And so, when you start practicing a new habit, you're starting to fire the same neural pathway. You're activating a certain new series of neurons, which eventually become a neural pathway through the power of practice. So, I want you to remember the power of visualization.
And then the third element of MVP is prayer. No prayer goes unheard. And so, prayer is so incredibly potent. I pray every morning. I pray to my higher power. I pray for strength. I pray for wisdom. I pray for peace. I pray for the ability to serve. I pray for less ego. I pray for the health of my family and my team and my base and my readers, because I love each and every one of you, and I want to be of service to you for as long as possible. Another tool to help you reprogram your self-identity is journaling. And you may have heard me talk about the PPP, the pre-performance paragraph. When you first get up in the morning, or before you go to sleep at night, those are two very powerful times of the day to reprogram your self-identity. And so, journaling in a PPP, which is a pre-performance paragraph, is you write one paragraph, not 10 paragraphs. This will take you five minutes maximum. You write a paragraph about your ideal self. If it's the beginning of the day, you write a paragraph about your perfect day and how you want it to unfold, the choices you want to make, the smile on your face, the moods you want to have, the things you want to do, how you want to interact with other human beings. So, the first law is to simply remember that your daily behavior reflects your deepest beliefs. And to summarize that first law in one line: Reprogram your opinion of you to build sticky, sustainable, enduring, ironclad, undefeatable, unbeatable habits that stand the test of time.
Law number two is: Persistency is the mother of mastery. Let's say that together, digitally speaking: Persistency is the mother of mastery. This sounds so obvious, but if you look at any titan industry, any world-class entrepreneur, I just watched the Beckham docu-series on Netflix the other day. And when he was one of the most hated people in the UK because he made a mistake in one of the national football matches, or if you're in North America, soccer, and he got thrown out of the game, and the whole nation of England – I'm speaking in generalities, but they were very upset with him because football is a religion there, and I believe he was the captain of the team. And so many people felt he should have known better than to do this kick, which cost him the chance to participate in the game. And all I'm saying is, David Beckham never gave up. And even in the docu-series, it's called Beckham, I encourage you to watch it, four episodes. He said, "I don't give up." And then in another part, he said, "I don't give up easily." I also think about Jimmy Iovine, who became a billionaire when he sold Beats to Apple along with Dr. Dre. And when he was relatively early in his career, and he was starting a music label, he wanted to have this artist that was central to the success of his new music label. And that artist was with a, let's say, fierce and independent-thinking owner of that record label, who just didn't want to part with his talent, with his artist. And Jimmy Iovine explained in the documentary "The Defiant Ones" – encourage you to watch that as well – he said, "Every morning for almost a year, I'd get up in the morning, and I'd go to the bathroom, and he had installed a telephone there, and he would do the same thing at 6:00 AM. He would call this owner of the record company and try to persuade him to part with the artist." And he did it every single day for almost one year. And so, persistency is the mother of mastery. So many members of the majority, they just don't stick with anything. They give up. And it's because they're sabotaging themselves deep inside. A secret contract is: "I don't deserve to have world-class habits. I don't deserve to be in perfect health. I don't deserve to have the love of my life. I don't deserve to have all the money I want, or things that I dream of. I don't deserve to dominate my domain." It's the secret programming that's sabotaging, not what our conscious minds teach us. Our prefrontal cortex knows what we want. It's the amygdala, it's the reptilian brain, that ancient brain full of fear and cortisol, that causes us to start a habit and then stop a habit. Stay with your habits. Never, ever – I'm sort of channeling Winston Churchill – never, ever, ever, never, ever, never, never, never, never, never, never, never give up. And when you look at Beckham, you look at Elon Musk – I'm going through his biography written by Walter Isaacson again – persistency, incredible tenacity, resilience. He just will refuse to give up. Tesla was almost going bankrupt. He would not give up. He sold PayPal, made a fortune, put it all in SpaceX and Tesla, and I believe SolarCity, but he just wouldn't give up. You look at Nelson Mandela, Rosa Parks, O.J. Simpson, Martin Luther King Jr., Nikola Tesla, Hedy Lamarr, Beethoven – whoever it is who is dominating or winning, even spiritually, these people do not give up. So, if you want sticky habits that stand the test of time, that wire in a place where, remember, brain cells that fire together, wire together, and so you've got to stay with whatever habit you're trying to install over these 66 days of this challenge. It's Habit Camp. You are like a boxer. You are away from the world. You're at this camp, like a training camp of a great boxer. Makes me think of what Muhammad Ali, one of the legends, if not the legend of boxing, once said: "I hated every single one of the early morning workouts, but I loved the idea of being champion of the world." You've got to stay with your program. You've got to stay in the training camp through thick and thin, when you're bloody, when you're happy, when you're discouraged. Get up. It's what the Japanese say: "Get knocked down seven times, get up eight."
Law number three: I watched a movie that the star is uh, Steve Carell, and I think he's a very fine actor. A lot of people know him for his comedic skills, but I think he's a very fine actor. He was amazing in "The Big Short," and he was amazing in a lot of great movies. But I watched a movie called "Beautiful Boy," and I've got to read the novel or the, the book based on it. And in "Beautiful Boy," Steve Carell is playing a father, and his son is addicted to crack. And the son was a little, when he was a kid, he was just a beautiful, wonderful boy, and he's become a crack addict. And in one part of the film, the son has gone through rehab and is making great progress, but he slips, and he's lying to everyone around him, saying, "Oh, everything is perfect," when he's secretly smoking crack and stealing to pay for his addiction habit of smoking crack. And at one point, the father, played by Steve Carell, has learned a term through the therapists in rehab that he shares with his son and says, "You know what? It's okay. Relapse is a part of recovery. Relapse is a part of recovery." And I want to suggest to you, I thought that was very powerful, because when you install a habit, it is normal to stumble. You don't get to run if you fail to walk and fall, if that makes sense to you. And so, the path of installing world-class habits to the point of automaticity, where it's easier to do the new habits than not to do the new habits, is a messy path. World-class is not for the faint of heart. And so, just like relapse, making mistakes and getting back into the addiction for people who are addicted to, let's say, substances that are unhealthy, slipping or falling off the wagon, as they called it, is part of being sober in that universe. And I'm using that line from "Beautiful Boy" to remind you that falling off the wagon and stumbling and not following through on your commitment once a week or twice a week, or whatever it is, is part of installing world-class habits. You are not a machine. You are a human being. I try to install a new habit and stumble. Of course, I'm flawed. I make mistakes. But I get back up the next day. I dust myself off. I clean off the blood, and I get back on the horse and I try again. And channeling the words of David Beckham, the football or soccer superstar and legend: "I don't give up easily. I don't give up easily." So much can be achieved if you simply refuse to give up.
Which brings us to law number four, which is: Your daily ecosystem is essential to your habit installation. What do I mean by that? Well, I mean your environment matters. If you're around toxic people, they're going to bring you down. You won't have the energy to execute beautifully on whatever the core habit, the master habit of these 66 days of Habit Camp, is. Remember, in an earlier module, I walked you through the concept, the scientific phenomenon of a keystone habit. It's the one habit you choose to install that will lift every other habit. To me, the best one, or one of the best ones, is installing the 5:00 AM Club habit. Read the "5 AM Club" book. Master the 20-20-20 formula. Build a world-class morning routine, because the way you start your day dramatically influences, and I'd even say determines, the way your day unfolds. And your day is your life in miniature. And so, if you consistently build beautiful days, you're going to have great weeks, which become excellent months, which become fantastic quarters, which morph into amazing years, which turn into fantastic decades, which make an incredible lifetime, which is my great hope and prayer and wish for you. You can't be around negative people and install that keystone habit because they'll bring you down. Their negative thinking. Remember the phenomenon of emotional contagion. I know I'm firehosing you with so much information in this session, but emotional contagion is the phenomenon where you pick up the emotion subconsciously of the people around you. And if you're around negative people, angry people, frustrated people, toxic people, that's going to affect you. And your energy matters. Energy is even more important than intelligence. If you have energy, if all the billionaires mentor, the sports superstars, the entertainment royalty, have one thing in common: huge levels of energy. Yes, some people have naturally high levels of energy, but with a great morning routine, getting really fit, cleaning up your information diet, fasting once a week or twice a week for caloric restriction, which puts you into the state of autophagy, which is like a cellular cleansing process, a little bit of sunlight every day, lots of water, time in nature – all the habits I've been encouraging you – those things will give you more energy. So, you've got to clean out your ecosystem. Clean out the messy rooms. If you haven't done a will clean that up. You haven't forgiven a loved one? Clean that up. If you're following petty influencers, stop following them. If you're reading negative magazines or watching the news too much, clean up and calibrate and purify your ecosystem. And watch what happens to your freedom. Like, basically, when you clean up your outer life, you create space in your inner life, which gives you more self-discipline. All of the billionaires and athletes and entertainment royalty, not only have huge levels of energy, they build massive grades of personal willpower. And we all know from science now that willpower is like a muscle. I call it the bicep metaphor. You want to build your bicep? You got to go into the gym. You got to push it to the point where there's micro-tearing on the muscle. Then you recover, and there's growth in the recovery. But the point is, if you want to build world-class willpower, consistently do difficult things. A great life is built on the consistent doing of difficult things. One of my favorite brain tattoos: A remarkable, exceptional, world-class life is built on the consistent doing of difficult things. What I really want to say to you is: Hard is easy. You do hard things, you get an easy life. You do easy things, you end up with a hard life, full of misery, frustration, because you're disappointed, you're filled with the pain of potential unrealized.
And then law number five for highly sticky habits that stand the test of time is: Just because no one is doing it, doesn't mean it's wrong. In other words, to have the results only 5% of the population has, you've got to be willing to think, do, operate, show up like 95% of the population is unwilling to think, do, show up, live, serve, contribute, operate. So, be a contrarian. If you want to really win in this Habit Camp program, look at what the majority are doing and do the opposite. And when I mentor the Titans, these are some of the most successful people in the world. And I don't just mean economically, I mean spiritually, I mean in terms of their lifestyle, I mean in terms of the way they serve people. These people understand that if you're considered crazy and weird and strange, you're doing everything right. I think about Elon Musk. He was laughed at. He was regularly called crazy. I think of Steve Jobs. I think of Steve Jobs. I think of Nikola Tesla again. I think of any great pioneer: Alexander Graham Bell, Edison. I think of Rosa Parks again, who launched the Civil Rights Movement. I think of Lady Gaga. I think of Jane Goodall and her work with chimpanzees and the environment. All of these pioneers trusted themselves. They listened to the still, silent voice within. And when people laughed at them and called them weird, they knew they were on the right track. And so, when you install these habits, whether it's getting up at 5:00, or the second-wind workout, or the 60-minute student, whatever it is, I want you to remember that if people think you're strange, you're doing the right thing.
Thank you so much, and I've got a bonus resource to absolutely wow you. It's a master class on productivity that I'm just giving you. It's very valuable, beautiful information, but I'm just giving it to you to reward you for your investment in the Habit Camp program and faith in my work. I just want to encourage you to stay with the program, go through these modules, take good notes, and most importantly, apply what you're learning, because ideation without execution is delusion. And enjoy the bonus resource that I'm giving to you, and I wish you an amazing day.