As everyone knows, building a new habit is a difficult endeavor. However, there are ways that you can make it a whole lot easier and more enjoyable for yourself, and that’s what we’re going to be discussing today! Both of us have had our lives changed by James Clear’s Atomic Habits, and in this episode we’re going to be distilling the main concepts from the book, which is all about breaking old habits and starting new ones. As explained in more detail in the book, rather than focusing on a big end goal, it’s a much more effective strategy to focus on making small choices on a daily basis which will then compound until you reach your desired result. Whatever your goals are, there are four steps to building a new habit; make it obvious, make it attractive, make it easy, make it satisfying. These may sound simple, but sometimes we need a bit of motivation and some practical strategies to kick ourselves into gear, and that is exactly what we are going to provide you with today!  

Key Points From This Episode:

• Our thoughts on the podcast hitting 40! 
• Atomic Habits; the book which really helped us shift our mindset.
• Negative versus positive self talk. 
• The importance of understanding what you do, and do not, have control over in your life.
• Two questions that Atomic Habits author, James Clear, wants you to ask yourself. 
• An overview of the four steps involved in building new habits. 
• Using some real world examples to demonstrate how to put the four steps into practice.
• Explaining the concept of an ‘accountability partner.’
• Small rewards to give yourself that will make your habit building experience more satisfying.
• What ‘habit stacking’ is, and how it makes it easier to achieve your goals.
• How we have incorporated habit stacking into our lives (and the lives of our family members).
• The steps for breaking an old habit, and examples of what these look like in the real world. 
• Value that lies in creating a ‘habit contract,’
• How to implement ‘The Goldilocks Rule.’

Tweetables:

“Tiny, little micro changes compound over time and create a whole new version of ourselves.” — Megan Block [0:05:37]

“Negative self-talk is exactly the opposite of what will help you break the bad habits, or build the good habits.” — Megan Block [0:06:53]

“Stop focusing so much on the specific goal and focus on the systems that you can put in place that will help you achieve that goal.” — Megan Block [0:09:25]

“We stay motivated when we're challenged. We want to make sure we continue to move the goal post on our habits farther and farther. It needs to be attainable. It can't be some crazy dream circumstance. It needs to be attainable, achievable, and quantifiable. We have to be able to measure it. But it needs to be something that's just at the top of our capability level. Just at the edge of it.” — Kelly Castillo [0:53:58]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

Atomic Habits by James Clear

Kelly Castillo

Megan Block

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