Habit Changes You Can Do Today
Welcome to the one day at a time podcast where we forget about yesterday. We don't worry about tomorrow. It's what are we going to do today? This all matters because you've only ever had or will ever have the fantastic twenty four hours a day you're about to embark on. So hopefully this episode is going to give you some daily dose of wisdom that you can take action on today to improve your life.
Speaker 1:And remember, all it takes is one day at a time. Good morning, chaps. Just finished book club and the first session back on Atomic Harbets. So we did Atomic Harbets a year ago. Now if you haven't read Atomic Harbets, I suggest reading it.
Speaker 1:It's probably one of the most actionable books you'll read. You know, how many pages is it? It's like 200 and it's about 300 pages, but it's actually jam packed. Like, every sentence hits hard, like a massive knockout punch. And going around the book club today, just like we've read the first seventy pages, like people's ideas, and there's a few there's a few things that for anyone listening, you should start adopting now to improve your day.
Speaker 1:The first thing is your morning routine actually starts in the evening, and this is Emma Baines coming with some great wisdom here where she realized, like, actually, like, you can't just make the morning routine work by just waking up at five thinking it's gonna fall into place. Because when you wake up in the morning, you're one, you're grumpy, you're tired, you want to stay in bed. So you can't be putting cognitive load on yourself. You can't be expecting your sleepy, dozy brain that wants more sleep to, you know, go and find clothes to put on to go for a run or walk or go and, like, get anything ready. Like, you need to have it all prepared the night before.
Speaker 1:So what you do the night before is, and this is from the ideas from a book club, is is one, put your worker clothes ready, folded, next to the bed, or wherever it is you're gonna be putting her on in the morning. Two, get a bottle of water ready in the fridge, nice and cold, ready for when you get up you're gonna drink water straight away, ready to go. Three, like if it is a workout, have the equipment ready, have the workout ready, you know, it's on a computer, iPad or your phone, like make sure it's ready. Four, put your phone outside your room or, like, and put notifications off, right, and have an alarm clock that you have to get up to turn off. Because if an alarm clock is just phone, you press snooze, you're gonna press snooze.
Speaker 1:So you really want a manual alarm clock in a way or if you can do a phone that's fine, but have it out of reach so you have to gear up to turn it off. That slight annoyance of getting up to turn it off most of the time will trigger you to just get up and get on with your day. Now the important thing here and again this is another point from the book and raised in a book club is you don't have to be winning that battle 100% of the time. If you're winning that battle 55% of the time, 60% of the time, 70% of the time, you're on the winning side, you're on the majority side. So most of the time you're waking up on the time and you're not letting the tiredness defeat you, that's not going to be the case all the time.
Speaker 1:But if it's the case most of the time that's going to be transformative to your life, of course. Really the then the other point is you know the phone scenario like going to bed and scrolling through phone on your TikTok before sleep. One is going to disrupt your sleep 100%. Two, you will waste hours of your life doing that, three is it really beneficial, I mean you know you might have a few giggles but it's not really adding to your life and really you know the light itself is causing you to stay awake, And four, if you're not really reading before bed, so you can read fiction non fiction because you know reading can make you like more tired. You want to put good ideas in your mind before you go to sleep.
Speaker 1:The reason this is is right, your thoughts come from your memories right? You know, there's probably more it's probably like more of a scientific like it's probably deeper scientifically than that, might not be a % true, but what they say is is that you can't have thoughts without memory. That's what they say, you can't have thoughts without memory. So if you're putting good things into your memory before bed, you're gonna have good thoughts, you're gonna have productive thoughts, you're gonna have thoughts that start connecting with older thoughts, you're gonna start building connections there while you're sleeping, your subconscious mind's at work, you wake up the day and then all of a sudden you've got like amazing ideas or you've got like a positive outlook. I 100% believe in this, like there's a lot of writers out there and creatives and business people who make sure that they write down the night before they go to bed any questions they want their brain to work on when they sleep and they wake up and all of a sudden they've got some solutions.
Speaker 1:So filling your mind up before bed with ideas with good writing is one of the most powerful things you can do because you'll then be generating better thoughts due to those memories. Does that make sense? Because you can't really control your thoughts, like of course I can think in other things, but a lot of time most of our thoughts are just automatic. And I speak to a friend of ours as well. I was like, why do always read up about, you know, rock stars, like overdosing and drugs and a lot of suicides and deaths, like these like deep dark stories like in deep dark music with these meanings like why are you always filling your mind with that?
Speaker 1:It's like I don't know, it's like don't you think that's contributing potentially to your thoughts that you're having that are maybe more dark and destructive because obviously it makes sense they would right. So the evening routine is essential for many reasons, one what makes your morning routine work, two it's what will give you the memories, the ideas to generate a better quality of life essentially, and three, like it basically, you know, your sleep, which is probably one of the most important things to do. Like if you can improve the quality of your sleep, then the next day your mood is going be elevated, your recovery is going be better. Like yes, you can say you slept six hours, but did you sleep? Were the first two hours kind of wide awake due to being on your phone?
Speaker 1:Right, so that's important. Then in the morning, are you just laying in bed for now scrolling TikTok and Instagram? Get the phone onto your bed, turn notifications off. So those are really the most important things that came in my opinion from like the book club tonight in terms of the evening routine, morning routine. And another thing is like, and I'll finish on this, is to think about your identity.
Speaker 1:Like, are you someone who tells a story to themselves and becomes a self fulfilling prophecy? Am I? I'm not a runner. Okay. So by saying you're not a runner, you're never gonna be a runner here.
Speaker 1:You're automatically stopping that in its tracks when every human being can be a runner. We are designed to walk and run. Like we literally evolved as like hunter gatherers to run and chase and walk miles and miles. So of course we've got the ability, the genetics, body to run. So we can run.
Speaker 1:All you're saying to yourself is you're not saying I'm not a runner, you're saying I'm not a very good runner right now and that's obviously true if you don't run. Like you could say that anything that you're not doing frequently. I'm not a good dancer. I'm not a good dancer. I could be a dancer if I, you know, danced and did it every day I'll be a dancer obviously.
Speaker 1:I might not be the best dancer, I might not be a good dancer, but do we not pursue something because we're not going to be the best at it? Like how stupid is that? Like why would you stop, why would you not even bother doing something because you think well I'm never gonna be the best at it, I'm never gonna be really good at it. That's not the point, like the benefits come from the enjoyment of f one, the health benefits, there's a lot of other things that come, you don't have to be the best at everything. But you can still be a runner, you can be a scientist if you wanted to, you could literally be a scientist tomorrow.
Speaker 1:You don't need a PhD from Oxford to be a scientist. A scientist is basically like a way of doing something, investigating something, doing running your own tests, knocking down things. You can be a scientist of your own life and your own data, your mental cycle. You can be a scientist of plants, you can look at plants and whatever you're growing. Like it's a mindset thing, you don't have to have somebody telling you you are this.
Speaker 1:And that raises another point like are you being someone because someone else has got that identity for you. Like for example, I can eat a lot of food very very fast and every time I go for food with people that have seen me destroy pizzas in one or two minutes, you say like you know, oh Scott you like you're the person who I they say something like, out of everyone I know, you can eat the most that I know of. And then know that's my my identity is I can eat a lot. And then when you go for food, I think, that's my identity that they're thinking I need to eat a lot, then you know, order loads and you eat a lot. You're not doing it for yourself, you're doing it because that identity has been given to you and you're just sticking up with it.
Speaker 1:Like, are you the joker of the group? Are you the someone that's always drinking heavy? Are you the someone that's always having a laugh? Like, people put in identities on us all the time and we actually start accepting them and then we change our behavior from what we want to be to what they expect of us and that's not good either. So true change comes from identity change as it says in the book.
Speaker 1:Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. True change comes from identity change. I'm not a smoker versus I don't smoke. Right, if I say I'm not a smoker then not a smoker. Preferably I don't smoke right now.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm basically saying I don't right now, but I I do smoke. Do know I mean? So it's how we speak to ourselves. We gotta think. We we literally have to trick our own minds all the time because that's how we work.
Speaker 1:Psychologically, need to be doing these things in our own minds. Those are the few things to think about today is, you know, all of you I would suggest writing down what you do day in day out like every what time do you wake up, what you eat, what typically you do. Try and map out all your habits good and bad and then really lead, look at them and go is that habit that I'm sticking to gonna take me to be the person I want to be? Who do I want to become? Because if that habit's not gonna get me there it's time to change it, it's time to break a bad habit and it's time to make good habits.
Speaker 1:But obviously the book is all about that. So I suggest everybody read it. But as a action point, as a one big thing to do today, is to sort your evening routine out. The most part, like, will you say to yourself eight till nine I'm gonna watch TV and just enjoy it and then nine till ten I'm gonna go to bed read a book and go to sleep whenever and I'm gonna have my clothes ready for the walk in the morning that's a good start and then just build a far and see what you can do. But other than that guys, have a good Friday, have a good weekend, and I'll see you on Monday.
Speaker 1:And that's it. Thank you for listening to the one day at a time podcast with your host, Golf Leer. Hopefully, you understood something I said. I hope that some wisdom kind of distilled through into your mind, and I want you to now action it today. I don't want you to think about tomorrow.
Speaker 1:I don't want you to think about yesterday. I don't want you to think about leaving a review on this podcast. I don't want you to think about going to another website. What I want you to do is as soon as this podcast ends, you will take action and make the most of today. Ground yourself today.
Speaker 1:Follow the one day at a time philosophy, and your life will change.
