00:00:00 Welcome to episode 633 of the inspired stewardship podcast. I'm Robert Farrington from the college investor.com. I encourage you to be inspired, to become a better steward through financial wisdom. By listening to this show, the inspired stewardship podcast with my friend Scott Mader, And what you'll find out is over time. You'll begin to replace that old bad habit with a new and improved good habit.
00:00:40 You do that consistently, and you just examine habit after habit after habit. And over time, you'll begin to build a whole new routine and it's that 1% improvement each and every day. That truly leads to growth and success. Welcome, and thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship podcasts. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be,
00:01:06 then you must learn to use your time, your talent and your treasures for your true color. In the inspired stewardship podcast. We'll learn to invest in yourself, invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact the world. In today's episode about impacting the world by stewarding your time. I talk with you about why recognizing your current habit triggers and hijacking those current triggers to form new habits is so important and why without actually recognizing triggers,
00:01:44 you won't break your bad habits or form new ones. 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 Amazon and a small commission will come back to support the show.
00:02:07 Just that quick. If you enjoy the show, when you are ready to buy from Amazon, just use inspired stewardship.com/amazon. Let's talk about habits. You know, the truth is one of the biggest reasons that I noticed that people struggle with their time and what their productivity is because of habits, both good ones and bad ones. See the truth is we all have literally thousands and thousands of habits that make up our daily routine.
00:02:42 They're often unconscious, too. We don't even think about them as habits. That the truth is what happens is we have something that triggers us that cue, or that trigger sets off a routine or a pattern of behavior in our brain where the neurons fire. And we do something without even really thinking about it. You're, you're just doing it on autopilot.
00:03:06 Have you ever gotten up in the morning on perhaps a day off and you get ready for work, you get dressed, you do everything you get in the car and you drive to work. Even though in your head, you knew you were supposed to be driving to the airport or to somewhere else. You know, you had a day off and yet just by automatic triggers when the pattern happened,
00:03:28 when the alarm clock went off at the same time that it normally does. You executed a long series of different things, some of which are quite complex, like driving to work. And yet all of it was triggered by that first alarm into this cascade of habits or routines that caused you to go about your business and end up in the wrong place. You know,
00:03:52 life is filled with all of these opportunities and all of these different things around us. And yet many of us end up doing over and over and over the same thing we always do. And sometimes that's a good thing. And sometimes it's a bad thing. You know, the truth is that the trigger, the cue for a habit, the fancy definition for it is it's an event that kicks off the automatic urge to complete a habit.
00:04:23 It's the thing that starts the pattern because it creates the firing in your brain. The truth is if you can disrupt triggers or hijack triggers or recognize triggers, then you can both break old bad habits and form new good habits. Deliberately triggers are the key to reprogramming our habits. And it's simple as point a trigger and a habit pattern is if X then Y if the trigger happens,
00:04:56 then do the habit behavior. You can actually write them down. And that way you probably already have things. If the morning alarm goes off at 9:00 AM, get out of bed, it's already happening that way. Then I get out of bed. I get dressed. I brush my teeth a whole series and patterns of one habit after the next is triggered by that initial alarm.
00:05:21 And the truth is if you notice triggers that are very specific, they're, they're clear, they're unambiguous, they're consistent. They happen each and every single day, or with some sort of reliable frequency. If they're automatic. In other words, they have it without they happen without any impact from you without any, uh, doing anything yourself and they're unavoidable.
00:05:44 There's something that you can't ignore. Usually for most of us, those habits fall in the category of a proceeding event. Something happens that triggers the next it's a beginning list, but it can also be time. Like certain times of the day. It can be emotional triggers, like feelings, things that are going on inside your own head. It could be location.
00:06:07 Like when I sit down at my desk, then I do this. So for instance, I have a dedicated place. That's my workplace. And I try very hard to keep that for work. That's an, a location type of trigger. Emotional States by the way, are really good for replacing bad habits with some sort of good recovery habit. A recovery habit is anything that you do that helps you feel better,
00:06:32 but is it something you would regret? So, unfortunately, a lot of times with an emotional trigger, our normal recovery habits are things like go get some ice cream, which is great, unless you're trying to lose weight. And then you can replace that with things like gratitude, take a walk journaling, but it can be difficult to do that at times,
00:06:52 but that's one of the ways you can hijack a bad habit. Even other people can be triggers. Think about it. You probably have certain people that when you run into them, y'all do certain things. That's using people as a trigger. All of these sorts of triggers trigger their own responses. When you start thinking that way, you begin to notice things that you do each and every day.
00:07:17 Think about what happens right before it think about your emotional state. Think about the location that you're at and the time of day, and try to figure out which one or ones of those things are triggering the habit. And then what's interesting is you can begin to substitute a new then a new behavior for the existing behavior. So if a certain thing triggers you to turn on Netflix and binge Netflix for an hour,
00:07:43 you can replace that with reading a book. It takes time. It's not easy, but over time, you'll begin to break the bad habit and replace it with a new habit. And you can even use a habit to trigger another habit. So for instance, brushing your teeth can be the trigger that then causes you to do something else like meditate for 10 minutes.
00:08:08 If you are already got a consistent routine of always brushing your teeth in the evening or in the morning, then that habit can be the trigger for the next habit like meditation. If that's something you're trying to add into your life. So the, the process of doing this first examine the triggers of your current habits, think about which of those habits or things you want to change.
00:08:32 Try to think about new triggers that you can put in place a trigger. How can it be more specific? Can it be more consistent? Can it be more automatic? Can it be less avoidable, find the triggers and then hang off of that, a new habit, a new behavior, write down the habit that you're trying to do. Write it as an if then statement,
00:08:54 if this happens, then I'm going to do that and then begin to practice that. And what you'll find out is over time, you'll begin to replace that old bad habit with a new and improved good habit. You do that consistently. And you just examine habit after habit after habit. And over time, you'll begin to build a whole new routine and it's that 1% improvement each and every day.
00:09:21 That truly leads to growth and success. Thanks for listening. 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 heard and find a way to live your calling. If you like this episode on the stewardship of time, be sure to sign up for our stewardship of time tips series,
00:09:57 by going to inspired stewardship.com/time or texting four, four, two, two, two time tips, 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.