May 29, 2023 • 48 mins
In this episode of the "Stuck In My Mind Podcast," host Wize El Jefe is joined by guest Jason Harwood to delve into the topic of creating successful habits in life. With insightful observations, practical advice, and personal anecdotes, the conversation navigates the complexities of habit formation and behavior change. Listeners are guided through strategies to craft an environment conducive to positive habits, develop small consistent actions, and identify core values for lasting happiness and fulfillment. The episode opens with Jason Harwood advocating for dedicating just 5 minutes each morning and evening to plan and reflect on 2-3 main tasks, fostering increased productivity. This simple habit helps individuals stay focused and organized amidst the chaos of daily life. Building upon the theme of small habits, the discussion emphasizes that awareness is the first step toward change, and tracking everyday activities, whether related to nutrition, finances, or personal growth, can uncover areas for improvement. Throughout the episode, Harwood shares his belief that habit creation is about consistent, incremental efforts over time, cautioning against sudden, drastic changes that often rely on fleeting motivation. Instead, he suggests starting with small actions, such as expressing gratitude or performing acts of kindness, to build momentum and consistency. Moreover, he underscores the significance of aligning habits with core values, asserting that true happiness is derived from a life in harmony with these fundamental principles. The conversation delves into the pivotal role of environment in shaping behavior change, highlighting examples such as keeping a gratitude journal bedside or stocking the fridge with healthy foods. It becomes evident that intentional habit formation involves a deliberate curation of surroundings to facilitate desired changes. The insightful exchange posits that habits, whether intentional or not, govern our actions, prompting the listener to ponder the level of intentionality imbued in their daily routines. As the dialogue unfolds, the speaker delves into personal experiences, recounting a period of dissatisfaction in his 40s despite achieving professional success. This realization led Harwood to apply his business principles and behaviors to cultivate habits that promote a happier, more fulfilled life. His introspection leads to the conclusion that major life events or reaching a point of unhappiness often catalyze transformative change in individuals, challenging them to confront their state of "adjustment" and seek true fulfillment. The episode also reveals the pivotal role of self-awareness and identifying core values, as Harwood emphasizes that generosity, learning, personal belief, and gratitude constitute the bedrock of lasting happiness. As the conversation unfolds, the host and guest engage in a reflective discussion about their personal journeys and the transformative power of self-development. Their narratives underscore the profound impact of intentional change and the interconnectedness of habits, mindset, and life outcomes. In an engaging turn, the episode tackles the transitional phase following the pandemic, delving into the notion that it presented a missed opportunity for individuals to enact permanent positive changes in their lives. As the discourse navigates the proliferation of old habits, it emphasizes the importance of seizing the moment to initiate change and embark on a trajectory aligned with one's true aspirations. The podcast episode encapsulates a multitude of valuable insights, weaving together stories, strategies, and personal reflections to empower listeners in enacting positive change. With its focus on habit formation, environmental influences, and the alignment of habits with core values, the conversation offers a roadmap for individuals seeking to cultivate a fulfilling, intentional life. The intersection of personal experiences, practical guidance, and
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:41):
And welcome back to another live episode of Stuck, my Mind
podcast. I'm glad to be back. I didn't do any shows last week.
I was not feeling well, battling COVID. But I'm back and I
have a very special guest. He's a coach. He's here to
actually talk about
creating successful habits. Focusing on creating
(01:04):
successful habits. Welcome to the show, Jason Harwood.
Hey, how are you? Good to be here. Glad you're feeling better. Thank you. Thank
you. I appreciate it, man. I appreciate it. I'm excited to have you on.
I got some questions. Oh, good. I'll do my best to
answer. Let's learn a little something
about you because how many kids you
(01:26):
have. If you
do any looking, that's always one of the first questions
because, yeah, it's a lot, but yeah, we have seven
kids and last month
or two months ago, my oldest turned 20
when he was still 19. At the time we had six teenagers
(01:49):
all at once. So six of the seven of them were teenagers. So now we
have five teenagers, a 20 year old and a nine
year old. So yeah, we run the gamut.
Yes. I could tell you why you didn't watch much TV.
Nothing to do in Idaho, turns out.
(02:10):
All right. What
led you to this? What led you to wanting to help people
get into showing them how to create successful
habits? Because that's something that people don't realize
that things we do are habit forming.
What led you to this? Yeah, it is interesting
(02:33):
because the reality of habits is that they exist,
whether they're intentional or not. The question is not do you have
habits? Because you do. It like almost everything that we do
is based off of some type of habit pattern in our
minds. So the question becomes how intentional are your habits?
So I have done a lot of business
(02:55):
development and coaching and in the process
of that had helped a lot of people on the business side of
their life create systems around
finance and sales and marketing and things.
And I had an experience that kind of
mirrored a lot of the experiences of people that I was working with. And that
(03:18):
is, as I got into my forty s, I
was, I guess, shocked and disappointed to
discover that everything that had been on
my happiness list in, like, my twenty s and thirty
s, I'd gotten a nice house, married, good
family, good relationships,
(03:40):
nice cars, good job. Everything
that I thought. I had been working so hard, going to college,
trying to drive my career, and so many
things that I thought, man, once I get this taken care of, this is going
to reduce stress. This is going to reduce unhappiness. Once
I get into this financial position, then all of a
(04:01):
sudden I get my forty s and I'm in that financial position and I'm like,
then why am I not as happy as I thought
I was going to be. And so I started looking around it at
the process that I'd gone through and helping people on the business
side develop habits and systems from a business standpoint,
and decided to apply those same principles
(04:24):
in behaviors that were specifically and
intentionally designed to help me live a
happier and more fulfilled life.
And so that's where this comes together, is to let's take all of
the fantastic research and process that's out there about
creating consistency in our lives, and let's apply it to
(04:46):
things that will help us live a better life, not
just get more sales
or consistently
manage our business finances. I mean, we can talk about those things,
but turns out those things don't actually contribute to
fulfillment and long term happiness. So
(05:09):
that's where my focus has become, is, all right,
let's also talk about who we are at our core center.
And that's something that
people assume, that these materialistic
things and all this stuff have a nice heart, that they bring you
(05:30):
happiness, and then you see all these celebrities who have all
this money, and they end up committing suicide and killing
themselves. It just shows you that
life is precious. It's very delicate. And
for me, I was widowed at 31,
(05:53):
so it made me look at life much more different than
my age because I knew how precious life
was. And you have to live and enjoy
every day. Yeah, sure, look at life
and go, all right, it can end just like
that. It can be taken away from you.
(06:15):
For me, there's days, of
course, you're not going to be happy every day, there's certain things that are going
to happen, you're going to have. But I've decided that, no,
I'm going to live my life, I'm going to be happy. I'm going to do
what I love to do, which I found found out in my 40s
that podcasting is something I love to do, and being able to share
(06:37):
these messages with people has given me a
purpose. Yeah.
And it's interesting because in
the course of this work, I've just come
across fascinating ideas around the fact
that we talk about some of the unhappiness that we find
(06:59):
in celebrities and things like that. But one of
the kind of scary statistics is that suicide rates
among men in middle age is one of the
highest percentages of any demographic. Wow. And I think
that's because a lot of this happens to a lot of people
is you're driving in your twenty s and thirty s and even into your
(07:21):
40s because you think, man, once I get these
things or once I get this career or
once I get to a place of
stability, then I'll feel happier. And we're driving, driving,
driving. Then we get there and we're like, wait a minute,
all there is to life? Like, really, I just killed myself to get the
(07:44):
VP job or to grow the business, or
to be able to afford this house and car.
And now I still feel internally
unfulfilled and miserable. And unfortunately, that
leads to a lot of people down kind of a dark path. And so
becoming then intentional around now, I have to become as
(08:06):
intentional in my
fulfillment as I was in
getting that VP position or moving up
in my career or building my business or whatever
brought you to that point. You got to get as intentional on
the emotional and the mental side of
(08:28):
doing things to grow yourself as a human. So
that becomes important. What is something you recommend people
do to really try to
find those habits, find those things
that's going to help them find that fulfillment and
(08:49):
help them find what basically is their purpose, what is
going to help them enjoy their life?
Yeah, so I love that because that's where it has to start. It has
to start with identifying what are some of the core values that are most
important to me. And if you go to
thejasonharwood.com there is a little document there, the
(09:11):
Happier Habits Guide, that will walk you through some of this. That's one of
the remarkable things that happened to me as I went through this process
is I just happened to have kind of
this almost like lightning bolt
inspiration moment where these core character traits
that really mattered to me came into focus. And
(09:32):
it happened as I was going through that process of saying, my
gosh, it turns out that houses and cars and jobs are not the
thing that's fulfilling me. So what is going to bring me fulfillment?
And for me, I came to some core character traits
of generosity. I'm just happier when I'm
intentionally behaving in a way to help others.
(09:56):
And generosity isn't giving money. It's
much bigger than that. And then learning. I'm happiest when
I'm learning. And so reading and growing
some things in that way, I start playing around
with woodworking just because it's something I love to do. I'm not real
good at it. That's not the point. The point is just learning.
(10:20):
I learned how to do this thing. I watched this video. I learned how to
do it because learning makes me happier. And then
I focus on some things around personal belief and gratitude because I'm happier in
that. So one of the
practices that you can go through is it's a little bit of self
reflection helps if you maybe have a piece of paper
(10:42):
or something. But just start thinking back over your life and start
identifying. When are times when I
felt happiest? When are times when I felt
most fulfilled? When are times when I felt
growth in my life? And
again, one of the challenges that we face is that often
(11:04):
through our earlier years, so much of that is tied to our
career or growing a business, or growing
a family. But we've got to start
identifying, okay, when are moments within my career when I was happiest.
When are moments within my job when I'm happiest? And
what you'll start to see are some consistent patterns for you
(11:25):
personally. Now, you might align similar to things like me, that
for most people, they're happiest when they're doing things
for other people. And so we strive to make generosity a
habit. Most people are
happier when they come from a mindset of gratitude and
being grateful for what is rather than focusing
(11:48):
on what isn't or kind of
mired in what should have been.
Those are a couple of common ones that we can build
habits around, but it
is a process of taking a few minutes sitting down and just
jotting down, think through when are times
(12:09):
in your life when you were the most happy, the most fulfilled. You're experiencing
growth and enjoyment in life and start
identifying common traits. And then we look at those and say, all right, let's start
building habits around that.
Wow. Yeah.
Because now as I sit here while you're saying that, I'm reflecting on some of
(12:32):
those moments. And for me it's really been
recently because like you said,
I've been learning. I've learned so much in this past couple of
years. I wasn't
into media and any of that. I'm a table games dealer.
And when I got further from my job, I
(12:54):
started podcasting, I learned about editing, I started
learning video editing, started doing all these different
things. And
it was so much that I was just loving the fact that
I'm like, all right, I'm picking up new things, learning things that I would have
(13:14):
never thought I would be able to do. These are things that I didn't think
about, hey, I'm going to be a podcast. It
just happened. And it's just
the networking, the people I've met, the conversations I've
had has helped me honestly and has helped me so
much growth wise, because I've learned so much.
(13:36):
I've been able to speak to some amazing people and pick up some great
nuggets and apply some of the things that
they're teaching. And at one point, I felt
kind of selfish because I was learning so much
and listening and enjoying these conversations. And a guest pointed out to me, like,
no, you're not selfish. That's self love and the fact that you're
(13:59):
sharing it with your audience, that shows that you're a generous
person. You want people to learn with you. And I was like,
yeah. Oh, man, that rings. That
hit me like, wow, that is true. That's so true. Being able to
have you on the show and share with your
experiences and share what you do, somebody might
(14:21):
hear this episode and be like, oh, man, I needed to hear what Jason had
to say. And for me, that's like the
ultimate. This is awesome.
This is great. I love this. Yeah,
as you mentioned, right, taking some of those things that you are passionate about,
that you enjoy doing, talking with someone, meeting someone new,
(14:45):
interacting and what's great is in today's
world, whether it's that or almost anything,
you can start making small, easy progress
towards just about anything. Maybe you want to run a podcast. Great. You want to
write a book. It's easier than ever. You want to
get into woodworking. And I build little
(15:07):
tables. I sell them on Facebook marketplace. I sell them for about the cost
of the wood. I turn around, I use that money to buy more wood and
build the next table. It's like, just for fun, just for
enjoyment, just because I like it. And
some of it is freeing up that space to be able to do that, to
say, you know what? I've got to
(15:27):
create space. And that's where the intentionality
comes in, to be intentional in what you're doing,
because you have a system of habits in place right
now. It's not that you don't have
habits. It's that maybe you're not as intentional about them as you'd like to
be to get the outcomes that you want. Yeah,
(15:49):
absolutely. There's things I'm still
learning that I know that I need to
apply, but I know these things. It's
just me doing it. It's just me going and doing
it and stop procrastinating. And that's one thing that I
know I do a lot of. But I'm
(16:11):
working on it. I'm working on it. I guess
realizing it's the first step. Yeah,
it's fascinating because
the strength of that comment is really
powerful. Because when we talk about small
habits and we start to identify what
(16:34):
some of them are in other areas of our life,
we're really aware of this. Because if you want to,
say start eating better, the easiest, fastest thing you
can do to eat better is track everything that you eat. Because as
soon as you become aware of everything that you eat, you're like, oh, my gosh,
yeah, I really do eat bad. Or
(16:57):
like, I've gone through periods of my life where I've looked back
over the last two or three days and been like, oh, my gosh, I don't
think I've eaten a fruit or a vegetable in, like, three straight days.
But you don't know that until you become aware of it. Same with finances.
The easiest, fastest thing you can do to start changing your
spending patterns is to literally track every single dollar that you spend.
(17:19):
Now, the same thing applies in
these other areas of your life. As soon as you start thinking like, man, how
much time am I spending in personal
growth? And start tracking it, you start to realize,
man, I haven't hardly been spending any time on it. How
much time do I spend intentionally doing kind acts
(17:41):
for others? You start realizing, oh, man, I
think of myself as a generous person, but maybe I don't
match my impression of myself
with actions consistently enough to really make a difference.
And so, yeah, that awareness often becomes
the very first thing, okay, start tracking it. Start writing down,
(18:04):
start keeping a calendar. It's usually the smallest,
easiest thing that you can do to start changing behaviors, because now you
become aware that things aren't exactly as you thought they
were. Okay, yeah, definitely.
No, it does. It makes sense.
(18:27):
There was a situation at work where I wasn't getting along with
someone at work, and
I had a guest on, and they said something,
and I'm like, man,
let me apply that to this situation and
(18:49):
see how it goes.
And when I did that, it was
like, the situation now me and that coworker is
completely different. Now the energy is completely different. But that's because
I approached it in a different manner,
because before, I was like, maybe it's not him.
(19:12):
Maybe it's me. And
when I spoke to this guest and they said whatever they said to
me,
maybe it isn't him. Maybe there's something inside me I need to work
on and change and see how this approach
works. And when I did that and when I started doing that more
(19:33):
frequently with this person, things changed,
and it was me just changing
the way I interacted with them. It was
like, okay, I need to approach this differently,
because the way I'm approaching it isn't working.
(19:54):
Yeah.
And that's often where we start, is looking at
our own life and saying, man, if it's not working,
I've got to change something. And that's where so
many of us start, because for me,
I've talked with a lot of people, and, man, it sounds like
(20:17):
that was part of your past history. I can't imagine
losing a spouse at 31 and the difficulty and the pain
that that would bring. Many people have
those type of experiences where it's kind of a light switch moment where
life is going along one way, and then boom, all of a sudden, it's like
the light switched off, and you realize,
(20:41):
physically, I can't keep living this way. Death of a loved
one, job loss, car accident,
medical diagnosis oftentimes
force us to change behaviors. Unfortunately,
I think the bigger percentage of the population lives
in kind of this sunset environment. And if you've ever sat
(21:03):
through a sunset, it's this constant adjustment and convincing
ourselves that the new situation is acceptable.
Right? Things get a little darker, and you adjust your eyes, and you say, no,
it's fine. I can still see. Gets a little darker. It's fine. I can still
see. Life gets a little darker. I'll be fine. Gets a little
darker. I'll be fine. We adjust. We say, no,
(21:25):
I can adjust it. Instead of identifying and saying,
man, this place of unhappiness, this place of pain, this place
of a lack of fulfillment, I'm no longer
willing. And until you hit that moment of saying, you know what?
I'm no longer willing to live my life the
way it's trending,
(21:48):
unfortunately, humans almost always change based off of
pain. And until you're like,
I'm sick of it being dark I'm going to start turning on some lights. You
just readjust yourself to the current reality
and define it as acceptable. Yeah.
And until you change that, you don't have the
(22:11):
kind of the internal drive to start making some changes.
You kind of broke down how it was for me for a few
years. You broke it down to kind of I was in
a dark place. It was different. My attitude
was different. The way I was approaching life was
different. I didn't care. It was just
(22:34):
me not caring about anything.
Finally one day waking up and realizing, this isn't the way
I'm supposed to be living. This isn't the life that's intended for
me. And so I had to get out of that.
I had to stop doing the things that I was doing.
(22:55):
And I wasn't harming anyone else. It was just
me. It was just basically
just harming myself. Not
physically, but
just mentally and emotionally,
just trying to block out anything, not wanting to feel anything,
(23:18):
to wake up and realize, like, no, this is not where I'm
supposed to be at. Because
even after losing my wife, it was just like one tragedy after another after
another. And I was angry
and just didn't enjoy life
(23:38):
whatsoever at all. And
then, like I said, it was one day, it was like, no, this has to
change. Life has to change. And once that
I started doing that, things started changing for the
best. I met my wife now
I met my wife, who I've been now with for
(24:01):
almost ten years now, and
I became a table games dealer. I made pretty good
money. I started doing my podcast. Life
just started changing for the best. And it was
because I had to get out of that mindset that
I just knew this wasn't the way I was
(24:23):
supposed to go, this wasn't the path that I was supposed to be down. And
so being able to switch that and it's crazy because my first
wife had, I guess, started preparing me
because she introduced me into the world of self
development, into reading books, into wanting to
learn and grow. And so it prepared me.
(24:44):
Eventually when I got out of the darkness,
it brought me back to learning and growing
and wanting to continuously grow and become a better
person.
I look at it like, things happen for things happen for a
(25:05):
reason. This was my path. This was what was written for me to happen.
And now
where am I going to go with this? What
path am I going to follow? What am I going
to start doing to continue on this journey?
And it's every day. It's every day I'm learning something to know and
(25:28):
just growing as a person. Yeah.
And that's the key to it, right? When we look at creating
habits, the first
step, the first principle, I guess the first idea
is that it is going to be these small,
(25:50):
consistent things, you mentioned this
everyday journey towards it. And that's really what it is.
Because it's not just like one
big flood of a thing that you can do.
It's the consistent, daily, just little drip,
drip, drip of one small thing. One small thing.
(26:12):
And I think that's the trap that a lot of people fall in is they
find themselves in a position they don't want to be in, mentally,
emotionally, whatever. And they think, I need to change, and I need fast change.
And so they think, I got to make some huge, big effort
change. And that almost never leads to success
because it relies on heavy motivation, right? Then you're
(26:33):
really feeling it, but a day or two or a week
later, probably not really feeling it. And so when
you reduce the size of the action, you
can build momentum rather than relying on
motivation. And as you build
momentum and consistency, now you start seeing results. Not because any one
(26:54):
individual action was so significant, but it was
the consistency of action that made a difference. So when I talk
with people and they say, okay, I want to start making changes, I say, what's
the smallest possible action
you can take? You want to become more grateful? What's the
smallest thing you can do? Write down one thing a day you're grateful
(27:15):
for? Want to live a life of increased
generosity and kindness? Do one small
act of kindness for one member of your family
every day, right? It's getting it down to as small as
possible. Right now, I'm trying to increase
my exercise and working out, and I'm not real
(27:38):
consistent with it. And so I just always go
smaller. Okay, I'm going to go smaller. And right now I'm doing
these little ten minute, they're called amwrap, as many
reps as possible. And it gives you a small little workout.
You do as much as you can in ten minutes, and after ten minutes, boom,
workout over. Because I'm like, okay, I can work out for ten
(27:59):
minutes. I know that's not going to turn me into
this hyper fit, cross fit,
like those crazy people out there running Spartan races.
But what it does do is it gets me consistent because I know, okay,
I can do ten minutes. I can write down one thing I'm grateful for. I
can read one page in my book to learn a little bit every
(28:22):
day. I can spend ten minutes in
meditation. I can get up
five minutes earlier and
spend five minutes on just kind of
personal reflection time, whether that's meditation or prayer or whatever,
right? So just go as small as possible to build
(28:44):
consistency.
That's something like which I mentioned, reflection, that's
something we don't do. That's something a lot of people don't do, is
reflect on whatever the day was or
whatever it is. That's something
(29:05):
I'm learning that
especially doing with the podcast and everything,
is I set a plan,
I execute that plan, and then I
reflect on it and look at how, okay,
(29:26):
what could have I done differently in this situation
to make this work or make this happen.
And that's something we don't do. That's something we really, generally, a lot of
people don't do, is sit down and reflect on how their day
how their day went and what could have they done
differently throughout that day to change
(29:48):
certain circumstances. Yeah,
people sometimes they get wrapped up into thinking, oh, man, now you're
talking about 30 minutes at the end of the
day. No, just five minutes.
(30:09):
Just wake up five minutes earlier and think about, okay, what's
the main thing, the two or three main things I really want to get
done today? And at the end of the day, just two things. The other
key to this that always
trips people up, and it's one of the easiest things you can do, is change
the environment to change your behavior. If
(30:31):
when you decide. Okay. I want to write down one thing I'm grateful for every
morning. The best thing you could do to increase your
consistency with that is get the notebook that you want to write your thing down
on and put it, like, right next to your bed or right next
to your toothbrush. And then you go brush your teeth. You brush your
teeth every day already, so you brush your teeth. There's your notebook. You write down
(30:52):
your one thing you're grateful for. I have my little gratitude journal right on my
desk. And so as soon as I sit down, boom, there it
is, and boom. I write down my three things I'm grateful for. It's the first
thing I do every morning before I start getting into
emails and projects and things like that.
So oftentimes,
(31:13):
our environment is crafted to support your current behavior.
Anytime you want to change behaviors, changing your environment
will dramatically increase the likelihood of
success. So take whatever it is
that you want to implement in your life. Make it
easier to get to it. Put the book closer.
(31:35):
Put the notebook closer.
Put your running shoes right next to your bed. Sleep in your
workout clothes, for heaven's sakes. If you want to
eat better, buy more vegetables. Put more vegetables in your fridge. And when you
go up in your fridge and all you see is vegetables and,
I don't know, cheese, you can eat a little bit
(31:57):
better. And so if you
change the environment around you, you'll
dramatically impact the success
of the endeavor. But right now, the environment is probably
situated to keep you doing the things you're already doing.
Yeah, it is.
(32:22):
But these are things you learn along the way.
There's things I definitely know I got to work on. I definitely have to change
my eating habits. I know this for a
fact. I'm not the most healthy. And it
was like at the beginning of the pandemic,
(32:43):
me and the wife were doing so
well. We couldn't go out and eat junk food.
We had to cook food and watch what we ate and
make sure, like, okay, this is healthy for us.
It's not fried. We're grilling it. We're using the air
fryer. We're like, okay, we're doing a little bit more salad
(33:05):
and stuff like that. And we saw a
difference in energy and everything. And then when we went back to work and
everything went back, we kind of went away from that and started eating
out again and not eating the right foods. So me and her
know that we need to change it. We actually invested in the juicer.
We're going to start using it, buy more fruits and vegetables and start
(33:28):
juicing. But it's a step. It's a step in the right
direction. So we're excited. Yeah. And
you hit on something that's interesting is that the pandemic
forced many of us to
dramatically shift behaviors.
Not that we necessarily wanted to, but we were forced into
(33:49):
it. Then as we've started
transitioning back into normal life, many of us have just adopted back
into the same exact patterns we had before. Not because we particularly liked them, but
that's just what we were comfortable with. We just started unintentionally doing
it again. So now I'm eating the same, I'm spending the same, I'm spending my
time the same. It's almost like
(34:10):
it never happened. And in many instances, that's great, but
in some instances, it was a missed opportunity to look at our lives
and say, okay, as we phase back into normal
life, I'm never going to do this again. I'm going to forever
change this. I'm going to make a dramatic change there. And so
(34:32):
if we've missed that opportunity, that's the great thing, is we can at any moment
say, okay, today's the day. Today is the day. I'm changing. You don't have to
wait for a light switch moment. You don't have to wait for
a medical diagnosis to decide to live different. You
don't have to get in a car accident to decide to live more
intentionally. You don't have to lose your job to
(34:54):
decide, I'm going to not put all of my value
and worth in my career. You can just
decide today, all right, today I'm going to do it. And then just identify
what's something that's important and valuable to you and what's the
smallest thing you can do to start implementing
that. So one of the reasons I
(35:16):
decided to go live, because I started off audio,
then I started pre recorded videos, and then
I transitioned to live earlier
this year. And one of the reasons, because
the audience interaction, it was because I started doing a sports
talk radio show Thursdays and
(35:39):
Fridays. Big shout out to Brian Snow and Snowman in the Morning
with Cole Johnson. But I started doing the show Thursday,
Friday, and it's live, and they have a lot of
audience participation in the chat and all that. And I'm like,
man, I. Like that aspect of it. I like to have people
comment and stuff like that so
(36:01):
sick. Who's actually he
tunes into Snowman in the Morning. He's an audience member there.
And so he comes and he supports my show. He goes cheese
and vegetables. Has that Jason Hardwood been in my kitchen
where when I wasn't looking? But that's why I
enjoyed because the comments like that is to have that. And then he also drops
(36:23):
stuff like procrastinating is a big
obstacle that although one get it was things like
that that made me want to go live and being able to
interact because now
it makes it their show as well. Yeah, it's not just
my show and my guest show. Now it's the audience show as well, because they
(36:46):
get to interact and they get to share their comments. And
I really thought that was like, yeah,
this is the route I want to go with my show. Yeah, I love
it. Procrastination. I think part of that
is because we just start to
define and as we get
(37:08):
older, we get better at kind of defining the current
situation as acceptable. And we just say, I don't really
need to change. Change is difficult. This is
good enough. This life is good enough.
And if you're happy and fulfilled, my gosh, I am
so happy for you. I hope that's what you have.
(37:31):
My experience was not that my experience was, man, I was grinding and
driving and pushing and then was like, what in the world? Why
am I still waking up most days
unhappy and
identifying, what do I have to do? What matters to me? What
behaviors bring a sense of happiness and satisfaction? And that made
(37:53):
a big difference for me. But then you
really have to decide, like, okay, I'm making a change. Something's got to be
different. Yeah, I agree. There's nothing
you've said that I don't disagree that I don't agree with,
because again,
I know I procrastinate and I know I need to change these
(38:15):
things. But again, like you said,
it's it's easier
just to procrastinate.
But there's certain things I know I know I don't procrastinate on,
and that's doing my podcast and being able to
do this. And there's other things in my life that I need to work
(38:37):
on. The food thing where I really need to
watch what I eat and the exercise
sort of like you but I started with five minutes.
There you go. I started with five minutes. Let me give you five minutes. Let's
do this. And it's early in the morning. It's doing some leg
(38:57):
squats and some it's just something to get me going early in the
morning. But eventually I'll probably go to ten minutes, and
hopefully I'm moving up to 15. There you go. One
step at a time. Yeah, that's exactly how it works.
I try to remind people the first goal is not results. The first goal is
just consistency. I know that I know that
(39:20):
the amount of working out that I'm doing right now is not going to bring
huge long term results. That's okay. I'm just working on getting consistent. And once
I get consistent at ten minutes, then it's going to
grow naturally. But if I try to go 30 minutes
right out of the gate, it doesn't happen.
Right. And things get in the way. You just
(39:41):
don't get there. And so then you're frustrated and angry because you
haven't gotten to where you want to be, and
then you quit. And ten minutes is better than zero
minutes. Five minutes is better than zero minutes.
So just shoot for short term, and that's
okay. It's the beginning
(40:04):
of forming a successful habit. That's what it
is. Like you said, yeah, start with five minutes, and then eventually you're
like, I can do ten minutes. And then you do the ten minutes,
and you're like, oh, man, this is easy. I can do it. But you have
to build yourself, because like you said, if you really jump into those people that
at the New Year, they're going to the gym hard for the first
(40:25):
month, and then after the first month, they're like, man, I'm tired. I don't want
to do and they burn
themselves out. But then if they would have started off slow, like, all right,
today I'm going to just do ten minutes on the treadmill. Just start the
next day. Let me do another ten minutes, and it just starts and just get
you going, get you going. Then eventually you start adjusting
(40:48):
it. Yeah. I love it. Yeah, you've nailed
it. Boom. You're set. I'm
far from set. I still got a lot of work.
But that's the thing. I know I'm still learning and
growing. Yeah. And I'm having fun and
is these conversations that are helping me. It's
(41:11):
me being able to learn from someone like you that, hey,
listen, this is how you start. Just start with ten minutes.
But it's being able to speak to
someone like yourself, and
eventually it's going to stick.
(41:31):
Yeah. And that's the crazy thing for me, is everything that I've tried
to implement, none of it was, like, brand
new. I write down three things I'm grateful for every morning. It's the way
I start off. So mentally, I come at life
from a place of gratitude that helps me. I've heard that
for, like, a decade. That's a good idea.
(41:54):
And I have, like, a half dozen notebooks with, like, two or
three days worth of gratitude statements and then a
six month break, and then another day, okay,
I'm going to start again. And I could never get consistent with
it. And then eventually, boom, I
got there. The biggest thing for me was having
(42:16):
a great trigger. I changed the environment to where I put my notebook right there
by my desk. And then I mentioned brushing your teeth. For
me, it's letting my dog out. We got a dog during COVID And every
morning at, like, 05:00 A.m., without fail, that
dog starts dancing around our bed.
That's why I can't have a dog. It's the worst.
(42:40):
I was like, at first I was kind of mad that this was happening, and
then I thought, you know what? This is a brilliant habit trigger,
because every single day I have to do this action.
So what's the thing I want to do immediately following this action?
And for me, it was right in my gratitude journal. And so now I'm more
consistent than I've ever been because I let the dog out. Boom. There's my
(43:02):
gratitude journal. Boom. I write down three things I'm grateful for.
So just take something you're currently doing, say, brushing your teeth, drinking your
morning beverage, taking a
shower, putting on your pajamas,
setting your alarm, whatever it is, just find something you're doing and
say, I do that every day. What's the thing I want to do
(43:24):
immediately after that every day? And become real
intentional in taking something you're already doing and tying
it to something you want to do, and suddenly your success with it will increase
from with me. Every morning, I like to
sit down, have my cup of coffee, and just
(43:46):
think about how my day is going to
go. I wake up shop,
hop in the shower, brush my teeth, and
have my cup of coffee, and then just sit down and
kind of like is meditation. It's kind of like my form of meditation,
(44:06):
just sitting here, just reflecting and looking at,
like you said, what is it that I want to get
accomplished today? What are two things that I
really want to get done that I need to get done that
by the end of the day, I could be like, all right, I got those
things done now. Tomorrow is two new things I got to
(44:28):
conquer. Yeah.
You create this pattern, right? Used to be I
just drank my coffee maybe while I was frantically getting ready in
the morning. Now I've tied in. All right? But I'm going to
sit, I'm going to contemplate, I'm going to write down. And
(44:49):
so I drink coffee every morning, so I might as well tie it to something
else that's important to me
that can become a powerful trigger in
making consistency in your behavior.
All right, Jason, this has been fun, man. I appreciate
you coming on the show. Yeah. Habits are, like, the most fun thing ever to
(45:12):
talk about. But now it's the
part of the show where you get to just get the camera on
yourself and solo layout and plug away,
brother. Oh, well, yeah, if this
has been helpful for you, if you're thinking, yeah, I want to start making some
changes, go to thejasonharwood.com
(45:34):
get the Happier Habits Guide. It looks like this. I've got one printed off right
here. You'll go through identify areas that are important to
you, and then I'm going to help you create your habit plan
through that. If you get through that and you want a little bit extra help,
just reach out to me. You can connect with me. Obviously there's a
contact thing there. Or you can reach out to me on
(45:54):
LinkedIn or Instagram or Facebook and just let me know. Hey, I'd like to
set up some time to talk about my habits and more than happy to
go through with you and create a habit journey, a
habit path, and plan for you around whatever
habits you want. So start off by going to thejasonharwood.com
connect with me on social media. All
(46:17):
right? Don't leave just yet. I want to talk to you a little bit
after. But it was great having you in the show, brother. Man, this is
so fun. I really do appreciate you coming through and
dropping some of those nuggets you dropped for us. Great to
be here. All right, so now it's time
for shout outs. Big shout out to everybody who stopped by,
(46:39):
man. Tony, man, what's going on, brother? I haven't seen you in a while. I
know I've been out of action for the last week or so, but it's great
seeing you. Big shout out to Ben. We are on the BS Three network.
Catch us live every day. Well, Monday, Tuesday,
Wednesdays 04:00 P.m Central Time. 05:00
P.m Eastern Time. Big shout out to my man Sick Diggy for
(47:00):
coming through. Sharing is always coming through and supporting, man. I appreciate you,
brother. I like to say, since Sick is in
Norway, that we are an
international podcast. So thanks, Sick, for
stopping by. Facebook user. It's probably my man or by
me. What's going on, brother? If that's you. If it's not, still, thank you for
(47:22):
coming through and showing some
love. Now, also, big shout out to my real Wise fan,
Poppy J, brandy J. Love you guys. Big shout out to
the boss lady. Love you, baby, and appreciate you. Big shout
out to our guests, Jason Harwood for coming through and like I said,
having a great conversation, man. I love it. And as always,
(47:44):
a big, big shout out to all the essential workers out there. God bless you.
I'll be safe. You know your boy Wise does it. Peace out.
And welcome back to another live episode of Stuck, my Mind
podcast. I'm glad to be back. I didn't do any shows last week.
I was not feeling well, battling COVID. But I'm back and I
have a very special guest. He's a coach. He's here to
actually talk about
creating successful habits. Focusing on creating
(01:04):
successful habits. Welcome to the show, Jason Harwood.
Hey, how are you? Good to be here. Glad you're feeling better. Thank you. Thank
you. I appreciate it, man. I appreciate it. I'm excited to have you on.
I got some questions. Oh, good. I'll do my best to
answer. Let's learn a little something
about you because how many kids you
(01:26):
have. If you
do any looking, that's always one of the first questions
because, yeah, it's a lot, but yeah, we have seven
kids and last month
or two months ago, my oldest turned 20
when he was still 19. At the time we had six teenagers
(01:49):
all at once. So six of the seven of them were teenagers. So now we
have five teenagers, a 20 year old and a nine
year old. So yeah, we run the gamut.
Yes. I could tell you why you didn't watch much TV.
Nothing to do in Idaho, turns out.
(02:10):
All right. What
led you to this? What led you to wanting to help people
get into showing them how to create successful
habits? Because that's something that people don't realize
that things we do are habit forming.
What led you to this? Yeah, it is interesting
(02:33):
because the reality of habits is that they exist,
whether they're intentional or not. The question is not do you have
habits? Because you do. It like almost everything that we do
is based off of some type of habit pattern in our
minds. So the question becomes how intentional are your habits?
So I have done a lot of business
(02:55):
development and coaching and in the process
of that had helped a lot of people on the business side of
their life create systems around
finance and sales and marketing and things.
And I had an experience that kind of
mirrored a lot of the experiences of people that I was working with. And that
(03:18):
is, as I got into my forty s, I
was, I guess, shocked and disappointed to
discover that everything that had been on
my happiness list in, like, my twenty s and thirty
s, I'd gotten a nice house, married, good
family, good relationships,
(03:40):
nice cars, good job. Everything
that I thought. I had been working so hard, going to college,
trying to drive my career, and so many
things that I thought, man, once I get this taken care of, this is going
to reduce stress. This is going to reduce unhappiness. Once
I get into this financial position, then all of a
(04:01):
sudden I get my forty s and I'm in that financial position and I'm like,
then why am I not as happy as I thought
I was going to be. And so I started looking around it at
the process that I'd gone through and helping people on the business
side develop habits and systems from a business standpoint,
and decided to apply those same principles
(04:24):
in behaviors that were specifically and
intentionally designed to help me live a
happier and more fulfilled life.
And so that's where this comes together, is to let's take all of
the fantastic research and process that's out there about
creating consistency in our lives, and let's apply it to
(04:46):
things that will help us live a better life, not
just get more sales
or consistently
manage our business finances. I mean, we can talk about those things,
but turns out those things don't actually contribute to
fulfillment and long term happiness. So
(05:09):
that's where my focus has become, is, all right,
let's also talk about who we are at our core center.
And that's something that
people assume, that these materialistic
things and all this stuff have a nice heart, that they bring you
(05:30):
happiness, and then you see all these celebrities who have all
this money, and they end up committing suicide and killing
themselves. It just shows you that
life is precious. It's very delicate. And
for me, I was widowed at 31,
(05:53):
so it made me look at life much more different than
my age because I knew how precious life
was. And you have to live and enjoy
every day. Yeah, sure, look at life
and go, all right, it can end just like
that. It can be taken away from you.
(06:15):
For me, there's days, of
course, you're not going to be happy every day, there's certain things that are going
to happen, you're going to have. But I've decided that, no,
I'm going to live my life, I'm going to be happy. I'm going to do
what I love to do, which I found found out in my 40s
that podcasting is something I love to do, and being able to share
(06:37):
these messages with people has given me a
purpose. Yeah.
And it's interesting because in
the course of this work, I've just come
across fascinating ideas around the fact
that we talk about some of the unhappiness that we find
(06:59):
in celebrities and things like that. But one of
the kind of scary statistics is that suicide rates
among men in middle age is one of the
highest percentages of any demographic. Wow. And I think
that's because a lot of this happens to a lot of people
is you're driving in your twenty s and thirty s and even into your
(07:21):
40s because you think, man, once I get these
things or once I get this career or
once I get to a place of
stability, then I'll feel happier. And we're driving, driving,
driving. Then we get there and we're like, wait a minute,
all there is to life? Like, really, I just killed myself to get the
(07:44):
VP job or to grow the business, or
to be able to afford this house and car.
And now I still feel internally
unfulfilled and miserable. And unfortunately, that
leads to a lot of people down kind of a dark path. And so
becoming then intentional around now, I have to become as
(08:06):
intentional in my
fulfillment as I was in
getting that VP position or moving up
in my career or building my business or whatever
brought you to that point. You got to get as intentional on
the emotional and the mental side of
(08:28):
doing things to grow yourself as a human. So
that becomes important. What is something you recommend people
do to really try to
find those habits, find those things
that's going to help them find that fulfillment and
(08:49):
help them find what basically is their purpose, what is
going to help them enjoy their life?
Yeah, so I love that because that's where it has to start. It has
to start with identifying what are some of the core values that are most
important to me. And if you go to
thejasonharwood.com there is a little document there, the
(09:11):
Happier Habits Guide, that will walk you through some of this. That's one of
the remarkable things that happened to me as I went through this process
is I just happened to have kind of
this almost like lightning bolt
inspiration moment where these core character traits
that really mattered to me came into focus. And
(09:32):
it happened as I was going through that process of saying, my
gosh, it turns out that houses and cars and jobs are not the
thing that's fulfilling me. So what is going to bring me fulfillment?
And for me, I came to some core character traits
of generosity. I'm just happier when I'm
intentionally behaving in a way to help others.
(09:56):
And generosity isn't giving money. It's
much bigger than that. And then learning. I'm happiest when
I'm learning. And so reading and growing
some things in that way, I start playing around
with woodworking just because it's something I love to do. I'm not real
good at it. That's not the point. The point is just learning.
(10:20):
I learned how to do this thing. I watched this video. I learned how to
do it because learning makes me happier. And then
I focus on some things around personal belief and gratitude because I'm happier in
that. So one of the
practices that you can go through is it's a little bit of self
reflection helps if you maybe have a piece of paper
(10:42):
or something. But just start thinking back over your life and start
identifying. When are times when I
felt happiest? When are times when I felt
most fulfilled? When are times when I felt
growth in my life? And
again, one of the challenges that we face is that often
(11:04):
through our earlier years, so much of that is tied to our
career or growing a business, or growing
a family. But we've got to start
identifying, okay, when are moments within my career when I was happiest.
When are moments within my job when I'm happiest? And
what you'll start to see are some consistent patterns for you
(11:25):
personally. Now, you might align similar to things like me, that
for most people, they're happiest when they're doing things
for other people. And so we strive to make generosity a
habit. Most people are
happier when they come from a mindset of gratitude and
being grateful for what is rather than focusing
(11:48):
on what isn't or kind of
mired in what should have been.
Those are a couple of common ones that we can build
habits around, but it
is a process of taking a few minutes sitting down and just
jotting down, think through when are times
(12:09):
in your life when you were the most happy, the most fulfilled. You're experiencing
growth and enjoyment in life and start
identifying common traits. And then we look at those and say, all right, let's start
building habits around that.
Wow. Yeah.
Because now as I sit here while you're saying that, I'm reflecting on some of
(12:32):
those moments. And for me it's really been
recently because like you said,
I've been learning. I've learned so much in this past couple of
years. I wasn't
into media and any of that. I'm a table games dealer.
And when I got further from my job, I
(12:54):
started podcasting, I learned about editing, I started
learning video editing, started doing all these different
things. And
it was so much that I was just loving the fact that
I'm like, all right, I'm picking up new things, learning things that I would have
(13:14):
never thought I would be able to do. These are things that I didn't think
about, hey, I'm going to be a podcast. It
just happened. And it's just
the networking, the people I've met, the conversations I've
had has helped me honestly and has helped me so
much growth wise, because I've learned so much.
(13:36):
I've been able to speak to some amazing people and pick up some great
nuggets and apply some of the things that
they're teaching. And at one point, I felt
kind of selfish because I was learning so much
and listening and enjoying these conversations. And a guest pointed out to me, like,
no, you're not selfish. That's self love and the fact that you're
(13:59):
sharing it with your audience, that shows that you're a generous
person. You want people to learn with you. And I was like,
yeah. Oh, man, that rings. That
hit me like, wow, that is true. That's so true. Being able to
have you on the show and share with your
experiences and share what you do, somebody might
(14:21):
hear this episode and be like, oh, man, I needed to hear what Jason had
to say. And for me, that's like the
ultimate. This is awesome.
This is great. I love this. Yeah,
as you mentioned, right, taking some of those things that you are passionate about,
that you enjoy doing, talking with someone, meeting someone new,
(14:45):
interacting and what's great is in today's
world, whether it's that or almost anything,
you can start making small, easy progress
towards just about anything. Maybe you want to run a podcast. Great. You want to
write a book. It's easier than ever. You want to
get into woodworking. And I build little
(15:07):
tables. I sell them on Facebook marketplace. I sell them for about the cost
of the wood. I turn around, I use that money to buy more wood and
build the next table. It's like, just for fun, just for
enjoyment, just because I like it. And
some of it is freeing up that space to be able to do that, to
say, you know what? I've got to
(15:27):
create space. And that's where the intentionality
comes in, to be intentional in what you're doing,
because you have a system of habits in place right
now. It's not that you don't have
habits. It's that maybe you're not as intentional about them as you'd like to
be to get the outcomes that you want. Yeah,
(15:49):
absolutely. There's things I'm still
learning that I know that I need to
apply, but I know these things. It's
just me doing it. It's just me going and doing
it and stop procrastinating. And that's one thing that I
know I do a lot of. But I'm
(16:11):
working on it. I'm working on it. I guess
realizing it's the first step. Yeah,
it's fascinating because
the strength of that comment is really
powerful. Because when we talk about small
habits and we start to identify what
(16:34):
some of them are in other areas of our life,
we're really aware of this. Because if you want to,
say start eating better, the easiest, fastest thing you
can do to eat better is track everything that you eat. Because as
soon as you become aware of everything that you eat, you're like, oh, my gosh,
yeah, I really do eat bad. Or
(16:57):
like, I've gone through periods of my life where I've looked back
over the last two or three days and been like, oh, my gosh, I don't
think I've eaten a fruit or a vegetable in, like, three straight days.
But you don't know that until you become aware of it. Same with finances.
The easiest, fastest thing you can do to start changing your
spending patterns is to literally track every single dollar that you spend.
(17:19):
Now, the same thing applies in
these other areas of your life. As soon as you start thinking like, man, how
much time am I spending in personal
growth? And start tracking it, you start to realize,
man, I haven't hardly been spending any time on it. How
much time do I spend intentionally doing kind acts
(17:41):
for others? You start realizing, oh, man, I
think of myself as a generous person, but maybe I don't
match my impression of myself
with actions consistently enough to really make a difference.
And so, yeah, that awareness often becomes
the very first thing, okay, start tracking it. Start writing down,
(18:04):
start keeping a calendar. It's usually the smallest,
easiest thing that you can do to start changing behaviors, because now you
become aware that things aren't exactly as you thought they
were. Okay, yeah, definitely.
No, it does. It makes sense.
(18:27):
There was a situation at work where I wasn't getting along with
someone at work, and
I had a guest on, and they said something,
and I'm like, man,
let me apply that to this situation and
(18:49):
see how it goes.
And when I did that, it was
like, the situation now me and that coworker is
completely different. Now the energy is completely different. But that's because
I approached it in a different manner,
because before, I was like, maybe it's not him.
(19:12):
Maybe it's me. And
when I spoke to this guest and they said whatever they said to
me,
maybe it isn't him. Maybe there's something inside me I need to work
on and change and see how this approach
works. And when I did that and when I started doing that more
(19:33):
frequently with this person, things changed,
and it was me just changing
the way I interacted with them. It was
like, okay, I need to approach this differently,
because the way I'm approaching it isn't working.
(19:54):
Yeah.
And that's often where we start, is looking at
our own life and saying, man, if it's not working,
I've got to change something. And that's where so
many of us start, because for me,
I've talked with a lot of people, and, man, it sounds like
(20:17):
that was part of your past history. I can't imagine
losing a spouse at 31 and the difficulty and the pain
that that would bring. Many people have
those type of experiences where it's kind of a light switch moment where
life is going along one way, and then boom, all of a sudden, it's like
the light switched off, and you realize,
(20:41):
physically, I can't keep living this way. Death of a loved
one, job loss, car accident,
medical diagnosis oftentimes
force us to change behaviors. Unfortunately,
I think the bigger percentage of the population lives
in kind of this sunset environment. And if you've ever sat
(21:03):
through a sunset, it's this constant adjustment and convincing
ourselves that the new situation is acceptable.
Right? Things get a little darker, and you adjust your eyes, and you say, no,
it's fine. I can still see. Gets a little darker. It's fine. I can still
see. Life gets a little darker. I'll be fine. Gets a little
darker. I'll be fine. We adjust. We say, no,
(21:25):
I can adjust it. Instead of identifying and saying,
man, this place of unhappiness, this place of pain, this place
of a lack of fulfillment, I'm no longer
willing. And until you hit that moment of saying, you know what?
I'm no longer willing to live my life the
way it's trending,
(21:48):
unfortunately, humans almost always change based off of
pain. And until you're like,
I'm sick of it being dark I'm going to start turning on some lights. You
just readjust yourself to the current reality
and define it as acceptable. Yeah.
And until you change that, you don't have the
(22:11):
kind of the internal drive to start making some changes.
You kind of broke down how it was for me for a few
years. You broke it down to kind of I was in
a dark place. It was different. My attitude
was different. The way I was approaching life was
different. I didn't care. It was just
(22:34):
me not caring about anything.
Finally one day waking up and realizing, this isn't the way
I'm supposed to be living. This isn't the life that's intended for
me. And so I had to get out of that.
I had to stop doing the things that I was doing.
(22:55):
And I wasn't harming anyone else. It was just
me. It was just basically
just harming myself. Not
physically, but
just mentally and emotionally,
just trying to block out anything, not wanting to feel anything,
(23:18):
to wake up and realize, like, no, this is not where I'm
supposed to be at. Because
even after losing my wife, it was just like one tragedy after another after
another. And I was angry
and just didn't enjoy life
(23:38):
whatsoever at all. And
then, like I said, it was one day, it was like, no, this has to
change. Life has to change. And once that
I started doing that, things started changing for the
best. I met my wife now
I met my wife, who I've been now with for
(24:01):
almost ten years now, and
I became a table games dealer. I made pretty good
money. I started doing my podcast. Life
just started changing for the best. And it was
because I had to get out of that mindset that
I just knew this wasn't the way I was
(24:23):
supposed to go, this wasn't the path that I was supposed to be down. And
so being able to switch that and it's crazy because my first
wife had, I guess, started preparing me
because she introduced me into the world of self
development, into reading books, into wanting to
learn and grow. And so it prepared me.
(24:44):
Eventually when I got out of the darkness,
it brought me back to learning and growing
and wanting to continuously grow and become a better
person.
I look at it like, things happen for things happen for a
(25:05):
reason. This was my path. This was what was written for me to happen.
And now
where am I going to go with this? What
path am I going to follow? What am I going
to start doing to continue on this journey?
And it's every day. It's every day I'm learning something to know and
(25:28):
just growing as a person. Yeah.
And that's the key to it, right? When we look at creating
habits, the first
step, the first principle, I guess the first idea
is that it is going to be these small,
(25:50):
consistent things, you mentioned this
everyday journey towards it. And that's really what it is.
Because it's not just like one
big flood of a thing that you can do.
It's the consistent, daily, just little drip,
drip, drip of one small thing. One small thing.
(26:12):
And I think that's the trap that a lot of people fall in is they
find themselves in a position they don't want to be in, mentally,
emotionally, whatever. And they think, I need to change, and I need fast change.
And so they think, I got to make some huge, big effort
change. And that almost never leads to success
because it relies on heavy motivation, right? Then you're
(26:33):
really feeling it, but a day or two or a week
later, probably not really feeling it. And so when
you reduce the size of the action, you
can build momentum rather than relying on
motivation. And as you build
momentum and consistency, now you start seeing results. Not because any one
(26:54):
individual action was so significant, but it was
the consistency of action that made a difference. So when I talk
with people and they say, okay, I want to start making changes, I say, what's
the smallest possible action
you can take? You want to become more grateful? What's the
smallest thing you can do? Write down one thing a day you're grateful
(27:15):
for? Want to live a life of increased
generosity and kindness? Do one small
act of kindness for one member of your family
every day, right? It's getting it down to as small as
possible. Right now, I'm trying to increase
my exercise and working out, and I'm not real
(27:38):
consistent with it. And so I just always go
smaller. Okay, I'm going to go smaller. And right now I'm doing
these little ten minute, they're called amwrap, as many
reps as possible. And it gives you a small little workout.
You do as much as you can in ten minutes, and after ten minutes, boom,
workout over. Because I'm like, okay, I can work out for ten
(27:59):
minutes. I know that's not going to turn me into
this hyper fit, cross fit,
like those crazy people out there running Spartan races.
But what it does do is it gets me consistent because I know, okay,
I can do ten minutes. I can write down one thing I'm grateful for. I
can read one page in my book to learn a little bit every
(28:22):
day. I can spend ten minutes in
meditation. I can get up
five minutes earlier and
spend five minutes on just kind of
personal reflection time, whether that's meditation or prayer or whatever,
right? So just go as small as possible to build
(28:44):
consistency.
That's something like which I mentioned, reflection, that's
something we don't do. That's something a lot of people don't do, is
reflect on whatever the day was or
whatever it is. That's something
(29:05):
I'm learning that
especially doing with the podcast and everything,
is I set a plan,
I execute that plan, and then I
reflect on it and look at how, okay,
(29:26):
what could have I done differently in this situation
to make this work or make this happen.
And that's something we don't do. That's something we really, generally, a lot of
people don't do, is sit down and reflect on how their day
how their day went and what could have they done
differently throughout that day to change
(29:48):
certain circumstances. Yeah,
people sometimes they get wrapped up into thinking, oh, man, now you're
talking about 30 minutes at the end of the
day. No, just five minutes.
(30:09):
Just wake up five minutes earlier and think about, okay, what's
the main thing, the two or three main things I really want to get
done today? And at the end of the day, just two things. The other
key to this that always
trips people up, and it's one of the easiest things you can do, is change
the environment to change your behavior. If
(30:31):
when you decide. Okay. I want to write down one thing I'm grateful for every
morning. The best thing you could do to increase your
consistency with that is get the notebook that you want to write your thing down
on and put it, like, right next to your bed or right next
to your toothbrush. And then you go brush your teeth. You brush your
teeth every day already, so you brush your teeth. There's your notebook. You write down
(30:52):
your one thing you're grateful for. I have my little gratitude journal right on my
desk. And so as soon as I sit down, boom, there it
is, and boom. I write down my three things I'm grateful for. It's the first
thing I do every morning before I start getting into
emails and projects and things like that.
So oftentimes,
(31:13):
our environment is crafted to support your current behavior.
Anytime you want to change behaviors, changing your environment
will dramatically increase the likelihood of
success. So take whatever it is
that you want to implement in your life. Make it
easier to get to it. Put the book closer.
(31:35):
Put the notebook closer.
Put your running shoes right next to your bed. Sleep in your
workout clothes, for heaven's sakes. If you want to
eat better, buy more vegetables. Put more vegetables in your fridge. And when you
go up in your fridge and all you see is vegetables and,
I don't know, cheese, you can eat a little bit
(31:57):
better. And so if you
change the environment around you, you'll
dramatically impact the success
of the endeavor. But right now, the environment is probably
situated to keep you doing the things you're already doing.
Yeah, it is.
(32:22):
But these are things you learn along the way.
There's things I definitely know I got to work on. I definitely have to change
my eating habits. I know this for a
fact. I'm not the most healthy. And it
was like at the beginning of the pandemic,
(32:43):
me and the wife were doing so
well. We couldn't go out and eat junk food.
We had to cook food and watch what we ate and
make sure, like, okay, this is healthy for us.
It's not fried. We're grilling it. We're using the air
fryer. We're like, okay, we're doing a little bit more salad
(33:05):
and stuff like that. And we saw a
difference in energy and everything. And then when we went back to work and
everything went back, we kind of went away from that and started eating
out again and not eating the right foods. So me and her
know that we need to change it. We actually invested in the juicer.
We're going to start using it, buy more fruits and vegetables and start
(33:28):
juicing. But it's a step. It's a step in the right
direction. So we're excited. Yeah. And
you hit on something that's interesting is that the pandemic
forced many of us to
dramatically shift behaviors.
Not that we necessarily wanted to, but we were forced into
(33:49):
it. Then as we've started
transitioning back into normal life, many of us have just adopted back
into the same exact patterns we had before. Not because we particularly liked them, but
that's just what we were comfortable with. We just started unintentionally doing
it again. So now I'm eating the same, I'm spending the same, I'm spending my
time the same. It's almost like
(34:10):
it never happened. And in many instances, that's great, but
in some instances, it was a missed opportunity to look at our lives
and say, okay, as we phase back into normal
life, I'm never going to do this again. I'm going to forever
change this. I'm going to make a dramatic change there. And so
(34:32):
if we've missed that opportunity, that's the great thing, is we can at any moment
say, okay, today's the day. Today is the day. I'm changing. You don't have to
wait for a light switch moment. You don't have to wait for
a medical diagnosis to decide to live different. You
don't have to get in a car accident to decide to live more
intentionally. You don't have to lose your job to
(34:54):
decide, I'm going to not put all of my value
and worth in my career. You can just
decide today, all right, today I'm going to do it. And then just identify
what's something that's important and valuable to you and what's the
smallest thing you can do to start implementing
that. So one of the reasons I
(35:16):
decided to go live, because I started off audio,
then I started pre recorded videos, and then
I transitioned to live earlier
this year. And one of the reasons, because
the audience interaction, it was because I started doing a sports
talk radio show Thursdays and
(35:39):
Fridays. Big shout out to Brian Snow and Snowman in the Morning
with Cole Johnson. But I started doing the show Thursday,
Friday, and it's live, and they have a lot of
audience participation in the chat and all that. And I'm like,
man, I. Like that aspect of it. I like to have people
comment and stuff like that so
(36:01):
sick. Who's actually he
tunes into Snowman in the Morning. He's an audience member there.
And so he comes and he supports my show. He goes cheese
and vegetables. Has that Jason Hardwood been in my kitchen
where when I wasn't looking? But that's why I
enjoyed because the comments like that is to have that. And then he also drops
(36:23):
stuff like procrastinating is a big
obstacle that although one get it was things like
that that made me want to go live and being able to
interact because now
it makes it their show as well. Yeah, it's not just
my show and my guest show. Now it's the audience show as well, because they
(36:46):
get to interact and they get to share their comments. And
I really thought that was like, yeah,
this is the route I want to go with my show. Yeah, I love
it. Procrastination. I think part of that
is because we just start to
define and as we get
(37:08):
older, we get better at kind of defining the current
situation as acceptable. And we just say, I don't really
need to change. Change is difficult. This is
good enough. This life is good enough.
And if you're happy and fulfilled, my gosh, I am
so happy for you. I hope that's what you have.
(37:31):
My experience was not that my experience was, man, I was grinding and
driving and pushing and then was like, what in the world? Why
am I still waking up most days
unhappy and
identifying, what do I have to do? What matters to me? What
behaviors bring a sense of happiness and satisfaction? And that made
(37:53):
a big difference for me. But then you
really have to decide, like, okay, I'm making a change. Something's got to be
different. Yeah, I agree. There's nothing
you've said that I don't disagree that I don't agree with,
because again,
I know I procrastinate and I know I need to change these
(38:15):
things. But again, like you said,
it's it's easier
just to procrastinate.
But there's certain things I know I know I don't procrastinate on,
and that's doing my podcast and being able to
do this. And there's other things in my life that I need to work
(38:37):
on. The food thing where I really need to
watch what I eat and the exercise
sort of like you but I started with five minutes.
There you go. I started with five minutes. Let me give you five minutes. Let's
do this. And it's early in the morning. It's doing some leg
(38:57):
squats and some it's just something to get me going early in the
morning. But eventually I'll probably go to ten minutes, and
hopefully I'm moving up to 15. There you go. One
step at a time. Yeah, that's exactly how it works.
I try to remind people the first goal is not results. The first goal is
just consistency. I know that I know that
(39:20):
the amount of working out that I'm doing right now is not going to bring
huge long term results. That's okay. I'm just working on getting consistent. And once
I get consistent at ten minutes, then it's going to
grow naturally. But if I try to go 30 minutes
right out of the gate, it doesn't happen.
Right. And things get in the way. You just
(39:41):
don't get there. And so then you're frustrated and angry because you
haven't gotten to where you want to be, and
then you quit. And ten minutes is better than zero
minutes. Five minutes is better than zero minutes.
So just shoot for short term, and that's
okay. It's the beginning
(40:04):
of forming a successful habit. That's what it
is. Like you said, yeah, start with five minutes, and then eventually you're
like, I can do ten minutes. And then you do the ten minutes,
and you're like, oh, man, this is easy. I can do it. But you have
to build yourself, because like you said, if you really jump into those people that
at the New Year, they're going to the gym hard for the first
(40:25):
month, and then after the first month, they're like, man, I'm tired. I don't want
to do and they burn
themselves out. But then if they would have started off slow, like, all right,
today I'm going to just do ten minutes on the treadmill. Just start the
next day. Let me do another ten minutes, and it just starts and just get
you going, get you going. Then eventually you start adjusting
(40:48):
it. Yeah. I love it. Yeah, you've nailed
it. Boom. You're set. I'm
far from set. I still got a lot of work.
But that's the thing. I know I'm still learning and
growing. Yeah. And I'm having fun and
is these conversations that are helping me. It's
(41:11):
me being able to learn from someone like you that, hey,
listen, this is how you start. Just start with ten minutes.
But it's being able to speak to
someone like yourself, and
eventually it's going to stick.
(41:31):
Yeah. And that's the crazy thing for me, is everything that I've tried
to implement, none of it was, like, brand
new. I write down three things I'm grateful for every morning. It's the way
I start off. So mentally, I come at life
from a place of gratitude that helps me. I've heard that
for, like, a decade. That's a good idea.
(41:54):
And I have, like, a half dozen notebooks with, like, two or
three days worth of gratitude statements and then a
six month break, and then another day, okay,
I'm going to start again. And I could never get consistent with
it. And then eventually, boom, I
got there. The biggest thing for me was having
(42:16):
a great trigger. I changed the environment to where I put my notebook right there
by my desk. And then I mentioned brushing your teeth. For
me, it's letting my dog out. We got a dog during COVID And every
morning at, like, 05:00 A.m., without fail, that
dog starts dancing around our bed.
That's why I can't have a dog. It's the worst.
(42:40):
I was like, at first I was kind of mad that this was happening, and
then I thought, you know what? This is a brilliant habit trigger,
because every single day I have to do this action.
So what's the thing I want to do immediately following this action?
And for me, it was right in my gratitude journal. And so now I'm more
consistent than I've ever been because I let the dog out. Boom. There's my
(43:02):
gratitude journal. Boom. I write down three things I'm grateful for.
So just take something you're currently doing, say, brushing your teeth, drinking your
morning beverage, taking a
shower, putting on your pajamas,
setting your alarm, whatever it is, just find something you're doing and
say, I do that every day. What's the thing I want to do
(43:24):
immediately after that every day? And become real
intentional in taking something you're already doing and tying
it to something you want to do, and suddenly your success with it will increase
from with me. Every morning, I like to
sit down, have my cup of coffee, and just
(43:46):
think about how my day is going to
go. I wake up shop,
hop in the shower, brush my teeth, and
have my cup of coffee, and then just sit down and
kind of like is meditation. It's kind of like my form of meditation,
(44:06):
just sitting here, just reflecting and looking at,
like you said, what is it that I want to get
accomplished today? What are two things that I
really want to get done that I need to get done that
by the end of the day, I could be like, all right, I got those
things done now. Tomorrow is two new things I got to
(44:28):
conquer. Yeah.
You create this pattern, right? Used to be I
just drank my coffee maybe while I was frantically getting ready in
the morning. Now I've tied in. All right? But I'm going to
sit, I'm going to contemplate, I'm going to write down. And
(44:49):
so I drink coffee every morning, so I might as well tie it to something
else that's important to me
that can become a powerful trigger in
making consistency in your behavior.
All right, Jason, this has been fun, man. I appreciate
you coming on the show. Yeah. Habits are, like, the most fun thing ever to
(45:12):
talk about. But now it's the
part of the show where you get to just get the camera on
yourself and solo layout and plug away,
brother. Oh, well, yeah, if this
has been helpful for you, if you're thinking, yeah, I want to start making some
changes, go to thejasonharwood.com
(45:34):
get the Happier Habits Guide. It looks like this. I've got one printed off right
here. You'll go through identify areas that are important to
you, and then I'm going to help you create your habit plan
through that. If you get through that and you want a little bit extra help,
just reach out to me. You can connect with me. Obviously there's a
contact thing there. Or you can reach out to me on
(45:54):
LinkedIn or Instagram or Facebook and just let me know. Hey, I'd like to
set up some time to talk about my habits and more than happy to
go through with you and create a habit journey, a
habit path, and plan for you around whatever
habits you want. So start off by going to thejasonharwood.com
connect with me on social media. All
(46:17):
right? Don't leave just yet. I want to talk to you a little bit
after. But it was great having you in the show, brother. Man, this is
so fun. I really do appreciate you coming through and
dropping some of those nuggets you dropped for us. Great to
be here. All right, so now it's time
for shout outs. Big shout out to everybody who stopped by,
(46:39):
man. Tony, man, what's going on, brother? I haven't seen you in a while. I
know I've been out of action for the last week or so, but it's great
seeing you. Big shout out to Ben. We are on the BS Three network.
Catch us live every day. Well, Monday, Tuesday,
Wednesdays 04:00 P.m Central Time. 05:00
P.m Eastern Time. Big shout out to my man Sick Diggy for
(47:00):
coming through. Sharing is always coming through and supporting, man. I appreciate you,
brother. I like to say, since Sick is in
Norway, that we are an
international podcast. So thanks, Sick, for
stopping by. Facebook user. It's probably my man or by
me. What's going on, brother? If that's you. If it's not, still, thank you for
(47:22):
coming through and showing some
love. Now, also, big shout out to my real Wise fan,
Poppy J, brandy J. Love you guys. Big shout out to
the boss lady. Love you, baby, and appreciate you. Big shout
out to our guests, Jason Harwood for coming through and like I said,
having a great conversation, man. I love it. And as always,
(47:44):
a big, big shout out to all the essential workers out there. God bless you.
I'll be safe. You know your boy Wise does it. Peace out.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.