Episode 1063: Examine Your Habits

[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: Thanks for joining me on episode 1063 of the inspired stewardship podcast. I'm

[00:00:07] Darryl Lyons: Darryl Lyons, author of 18 to 80. I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence and impact the world by using your time, your talent and your treasure. To live out your calling, having the right behavior with your money is key to doing that.

[00:00:26] And one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this, the inspired stewardship podcast with my friend, Scott.

[00:00:34] Scott Maderer: the truth is you have to understand that habit loop that I just talked about. Cue action reward. And when you recognize that you can break that loop or reform that loop. So maybe every time you go to the break room, you grab a cookie. Instead you can form or reform that into every time you go to the break room.

[00:00:56] You get a cup of coffee. Welcome. And thank you for [00:01:00] joining us on the inspired stewardship podcast. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent and your treasures for your true calling in the inspired stewardship podcast. We'll learn to invest in yourself, invest in others and develop your influence so that.

[00:01:22] Can impact the work.

[00:01:24] In today's episode about investing in others by stewarding your time. I talk with you about why habits are something you need to examine periodically. I talk about how to focus in on habits. You want to keep and you want to change. And I also share some advice on how to actually go about changing.

[00:01:43] Habits as we talk about stewarding your time. Wouldn't it be great. If you could support this podcast and do it without just taking too long, it turns out you can't. All you have to do is use inspired stewardship.com/amazon. When you're ready to make a purchase via [00:02:00] Amazon and a small commission, we'll come back to support the show.

[00:02:02] Just that quick. If you enjoy the show, when you are ready to buy from Amazon, just use inspired stewardship.com/. I was working with a cohort. That's going through my productivity. The other night and we were talking a lot about habits. And one of the things that came up is the idea that habits themselves are neither good, nor bad, but the results we get from them can be good and bad.

[00:02:31] And so we were talking about the need to examine your habits, periodic. To take a step back and to look at the habits that you have and to decide which of these are good results, which of these are giving me things that I want and which of these are perhaps distracting me from things that I want, which are disrupting my ability to move in the direction that I want to move.

[00:02:56] And the fact is that we need to take times [00:03:00] almost set structured times to examine our habits. I actually do this as part of my. Quarterly and annual review. I don't think it's something you need to do every day or every week. But I began to think about some of the habits that I have, and I try to make a little.

[00:03:16] Three to five habits that are good, that are giving me good results that I want to actually reinforce and have continue. And then I also try to think about what are some habits that I have that maybe aren't giving me the best results that I want to work on, or I want to reinforce changing are I want to break and completely reform into a new house.

[00:03:40] And the way I do that is I look at different components of my life because each quarter and each year, I'm trying to look at certain areas that I'm trying to Uplevel or improve. And as I do that, I maybe focus in on that zone of habits. So if I'm trying to make my business as an area of focus, then what [00:04:00] habits do I have in my business that I'm currently doing that are keeping me from getting the results that I want to get and what habits do I have in my business that are good, that are giving me results that I do want to get.

[00:04:12] The truth is you can do that in any component of your life. You can look at your habits by time to what are the habits that I have in the morning that helped me get up and get going in a positive way. And what are the habits I have in the morning that perhaps are disrupting me know, just in case you don't know what a habit is simply an unconscious action that you do in response to a particular cue that gives you a reward.

[00:04:40] And oftentimes you think to yourself, what's the queue, but the queue can be a location. It can be a time. It can be something you visually see. A smell even can be a cue. Anything that can trigger an action from an unconscious response and the reward part. A lot of times people are like, but I don't necessarily [00:05:00] get a reward by habitually checking Facebook, but you actually do.

[00:05:04] You get a little brain dopamine hit from that social reward, or maybe there's a reward in terms of sugar or something that you get in your body. Have a habit of grabbing a cookie. Every time you go in the break room are maybe it's some other kind of psychological or physiological our social reward.

[00:05:23] The reward doesn't have to be like a pin ball coming out of a pinball machine or a gumball coming out of a gumball machine. It can literally be something that just triggers your brain to go. That was good. That was a good thing. When you do that, when you recognize that's really all a habit, is that realize that in a given day, you probably have thousands of habits that you execute.

[00:05:48] Many of them don't really matter in the larger scheme of things, but some of them are really holding you back. And some of them are probably doing really good things and getting you good [00:06:00] results. It's being intentional about focusing on the habits that you want to keep and that you want to change. That is the important part, because remember the description of a habit, something that you do unconsciously, you do without intention, you just do it because.

[00:06:17] If you actually tried to list out every single habit that you have, you would end up with page after page of habits. So how do you actually go about changing a habit? How do you go about if you've identified that there's a habit that you want to change? How do you go about changing it? And by the same token, if there's a habit that you want to keep, how do you go about reinforcing that?

[00:06:40] The truth is you have to understand that habit loop that I just talked about. Cue action reward. And when you recognize that you can break that loop or reform that loop. So maybe every time you go to the break room, you grab a cookie. Instead you can form or reform that into every [00:07:00] time you go to the break room.

[00:07:01] You get a cup of coffee, maybe that's the replacement that you use that may not be the best one, but it could be one. So you're changing the action that gives you a similar reward. But for the same queue or you can change the action completely. Instead of going to the break room, you could take a loop around the building, or you could walk around the floor where you work, or you could actually go visit with some other employee and give yourself a social.

[00:07:32] You could take a few minutes and just put your feet up on the desk and close your eyes. The truth is you could change the middle part. The action. Oftentimes we can even change the reward because part of the reward for the cookie might not just be the cookie. It might actually be the social interaction.

[00:07:51] And that's why changing that to give yourself a different social action can also reprogram. The reward. And by the same token, if you want to [00:08:00] reinforce a habit and make it stronger, you pay attention to what the cue is and what the reward is and what the action is. You concentrate on those things and you try to make those things occur with much more consistency and regularity, and that makes the habit get strong.

[00:08:19] The truth is breaking a habit or changing a habit or reforming. It is really difficult because you can picture habits as carving tunnels in your mind or channels in your mind, like a river carves, a river bed. And if you dam it up, that's like breaking a habit. And that takes a lot of energy and a lot of effort to do.

[00:08:39] And in fact, if the dam breaks that habit can come pouring back the same way the water would pour back into the. By the same token. If you want to create a whole new channel and a new direction for the habit that still takes energy and time, in some ways it's easier, but it still takes energy and time to create that new channel and that new rut in your brain.

[00:08:59] This is why [00:09:00] changing habits. Isn't easy. You can also connect new habits to existing habits. It's called habit stacking. You tie together the cue action and reward of one habit and make doing that habit. The. For a new habit that you want to reinforce and form. That's another way of both changing habits or adding new habits into your life as well.

[00:09:26] There's lots of other ways you can reinforce and change habits. That's a lot of what we talk about as one section, only one of the productivity course as you go through it. So I want you to think about what are the habits you have, what are the ones you want to. And what are the ones you want to change?

[00:09:45] Thanks for listening.

[00:09:47] Thanks so much for listening to the inspired stewardship podcast. As a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've [00:10:00] heard and find a way to live your calling. If you like this episode on the stewardship of time, be sure to sign. For our stewardship of time tips series by going to inspired stewardship.com/time or texting 4 4, 2, 2, 2 time tips.

[00:10:24] And that'll get you our best tips on stewarding your time until next time. Invest your time. Your talent and your treasures develop your influence and impact the world. .