Ep. #268: Stephen Guise on the Power of Mini Habits

Mike: Guten Tag, mein Kameraden. This is Mike. Yes, I’m learning German. Yes, it’s a pain in the ass, but I’m getting there. By the end of the year, I think I’ll be fairly fluent. Which, let me just rant for a second, so the language learning space is hilariously similar to the fitness space in all of its fraudulence.

See a lot of these language learning programs push the button of fluent in three months. You can be fluent in three months. It’s the equivalence of you can lose 30 pounds in 30 days. When it is simply impossible to be fluent in a new language in three months, unless you are working on it 12 to 15 hours a day, seven days per week, and probably living in the country so you’re fully immersed in it.

Then. Maybe. Of course what constitutes fluency is a bit subjective because if you look at it in the dictionary It’s just okay, you can articulate yourself and easily with no mention of well How many different types of ideas can you articulate? My five year old son can articulate himself pretty well and pretty easily on a very limited number of subjects, and therefore I wouldn’t exactly consider his level of fluency as the goal if I were learning another language.

I think when adults say, I want to be fluent in a language, they’re not thinking, I want to be able to speak like a five year old. No, of course not. You want to be able to speak well, And easily on a wide range of topics that you actually want to talk about. And that, my friends, takes time. I’m guessing a thousand hours of deliberate practice.

Not just dirtling, but really challenging yourself, stretching your abilities, and continuing to grow and progress in your language. And I’ve gone through a number of programs now, Michael Thomas. Pimsleur, I was doing Glosska for a bit and now I’m on Fluenz, which I like the most. And I can say that learning a new language is simply a pain in the ass.

It’s like building a good physique. So fluency is the fitness equivalent of it is like a fitness model physique. So if you’re going from normal to a fitness model physique, what does that take? Yeah, it takes a few years, really, unless you have outstanding genetics. Maybe you can get that a little bit faster, but it takes a few years for most people.

Similarly. To go from speaking no foreign language to speaking very well takes probably about the same amount of time if you were to play it out in terms of hours, right? So if you worked out five days a week, let’s just say you didn’t miss any weeks. So you’re doing 250 workouts per year, 750 workouts, probably about a thousand hours.

And I think that’s what it takes to reach fluency. So anyone out there that’s interested in language learning, don’t buy into the bullshit. Get ready for the grind. Cause that’s what it is. Even when you do it right, get ready to put in the time every day and just do the work that you know needs to get done, even though it feels like in the beginning that it’s not going to go anywhere and it’s not particularly fun in the beginning, especially in the very beginning because you suck, you can’t pronounce anything, you don’t understand how the grammar works, your vocabulary is worthless.

But you just work on the fundamentals and then it starts to come together very much like fitness So anyway, that’s the end of my language learning rant for now. Now, let’s talk about today’s episode. Today I talked to Steven Gies who is the author of the book Mini Habits, Smaller Habits, Bigger Results And I know habits are a trendy topic these days habits and routines and These topics have been beaten to death, and that’s actually why I wanted to get Stephen on the show to talk about a little sub cult of the habit space that I thought you might find interesting and helpful, and specifically, this is the mini habit movement that I think he has created, that’s when I first heard about it, was through his work, and how you can use these mini habits to make behavior change as easy and painless as possible.

Now, If you’re not somebody who struggles with breaking or making habits, then you probably are not going to find this episode very helpful. But if this is something that you struggle with, then it may just change your life. It changed Steven’s life. As you will hear about in our interview, this is where I would normally plug a sponsor to pay the bills.

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And if for whatever reason, they’re just not for you, contact us and we will give you a full refund on the spot. Alrighty, that is enough shameless plugging for now at least. Let’s get to the show. Stephen, thanks for coming on the show. Yeah, Mike. It’s great to be here. Yeah. So I’m excited to have you on because I’ve written about, you have a book on mini habits, which has done very well.

And which is a good book I might add. And, I’ve written a little bit about mini habits, but I haven’t really dived into it much. I haven’t spoken about it on the podcast that I can remember, but I’m a big believer in it and a practicer of it myself. And so I thought who better to bring on than you.

To talk about many habits. 

Stephen: I do talking about it. It’s one of the few things I like talking about. All 

Mike: right. Let’s jump into it then. So what is a mini habit for those of the people that haven’t heard of this and have no idea what we’re even talking about? 

Stephen: Sure. Yeah. Many habits, a very simple concept, something I call a stupid, small behavior that you do every single day.

And 

Mike: What are some 

Stephen: examples? So the most famous example, and the one that I started with, and one that’s Pretty relevant to this podcast is one push up per day. I did that for six months. It’s at least one push up per day. That’s a pretty important part of the whole mini habits strategy is that you can always do more.

It’s a low floor, no 

Mike: ceiling strategy. How does this concept differ from just discussions on habits in general? Cause obviously habit is a popular topic these days. Charles Duhigg’s book. obviously put it on a lot of people’s minds. And how does mini habits fit into that? And how does that then fit into ultimately what’s the benefit?

Why should we care? 

Stephen: So traditional habit formation, something I looked into as I was researching for the book is based on the Q behavior reward model. Which is a fine model. That’s how the brain does work. So it makes sense to, to look at that model as a guide for what we should do. However, it’s difficult to bring something like that into the reality of a crazy human life.

What I find that’s missing is the natural human weakness, which is fluctuating motivation. And just the difficulty of bringing a habit to it. To the point where the Q behavior reward cycle is actually working efficiently. What is 

Mike: that cycle just for people who aren’t familiar with it? 

Stephen: Yeah, so you have a Q, whether it’s the time of day or some activity or an emotion you’re feeling.

Qs are numerous and for a bad habit such as smoking, you can actually have Multiple cues for that one bad habit, and I think many habits actually model bad habits in the wild more than they do a Traditional good habit formation which is based on selecting one cue such as at 10 a. m Every day I will perform the behavior of eating an apple Oh, that’s actually a good mini habit because it’s small, but just for the example, I will perform the good behavior of eating an apple.

And then I will reward myself in some way, which might be like watching a TV show or you probably, I don’t know. 

Mike: Or maybe just enjoying the apple. 

Stephen: That’s also an option. Yeah. That’s what I would say, but 

Mike: I’d say if you need to follow an apple with a TV show, you have bigger problems. 

Stephen: Yeah.

That, that was a bad example because the reward is a mismatch for the behavior. 

Mike: That’s the concept of it. If it’s something more difficult, at 5 a. m. I’m going to wake up and do my 30 minute workout. And then I’m going to reward myself with whatever, an espresso or something else.

Stephen: Yeah, that’s a more realistic example. So many habits, you don’t actually need to Focus on the reward aspect at all because the behavior is so small and just completing the behavior gives you a sense of satisfaction because you set a goal and you met that goal and that has to do with the concept called self efficacy, which is simply your belief that.

You can do what you set out to do, and that’s extremely important. A lot of people set goals and then fail to reach them, and it’s fine to fail. We all fail, but if you do it to a certain extent in a certain quantity. You’re actually damaging your self confidence that you can do stuff and that’s pretty harmful.

So maybe you can get to 

Mike: a point where you don’t even want to try to do things because a part of you is dude, I fucking suck. I’m not going to be, I’m going to fail. 

Stephen: Yeah, exactly. It’s demoralizing. And this was a solid 10 years of my life when I tried to become someone who I wasn’t. And I just tried to basically skip ahead to that.

What’s that story? What did you try to do? I tried to get in shape. Actually I tried to go to the gym consistently for about 10 years. And it was just putting it nicely as saying it was intermittent, which these days 

Mike: is even that’s maybe on trend now, intermittent fasting, intermittent exercising.

So what happened though? Like you were trying different things. What’s the long, what was your key takeaway? I’m sure that’s what kind of led you to your area of expertise now, right? 

Stephen: Yeah, exactly. That struggle. I was searching for quite a while. My situation would be, I would get motivated and then I would exercise from, I would say one to three weeks.

And then somewhere in that time, my motivation would wane and I would find some excuse. It was always something different. My ankle’s a little sore today. I’m going to skip. And, that leads to another day of skipping. And then suddenly you’ve stopped working out and you’re like, Oh shit.

Mike: Yeah. And then, so what helped you get through that? Cause I’m sure everybody listening can relate to that to some degree. 

Stephen: Yeah. So at the time I thought it was coincidental, but obviously that was a pattern if I’m doing it for several years. Long story short, I stumbled upon my first mini habit at the end of 2012, I was just sitting on my bed, I wanted to exercise, and I hadn’t been exercising much at all for the previous year.

Because I was reflecting on the year behind, looking forward to the year ahead. I decided to exercise for 30 minutes that day and take it from there because I didn’t want to set a resolution. And I couldn’t do it. I was just an unmotivated slug on my bed and it sucked. I was searching for answers and nothing was coming to mind.

So I thought of a book I had read earlier called Thinker Toys and it’s a creative problem solving book. And I had a problem, obviously. Yeah, 

Mike: I’ve read it. I like a lot of the exercises in there. I think they’re valuable to do just as a, as part of a routine. Develop your creativity or lateral thinking, I guess you could say.

Stephen: Yeah, I agree. It’s a great book. Great exercises. I actually want to read it again, just to be reminded of them. One of the exercises he gives is called false faces. And that’s where you consider the opposite of what you’re currently thinking about and the point isn’t to actually Do the opposite idea is to more open your mind to the spectrum of possibilities is Instead of getting stuck on this one idea that’s not working for you.

So my idea was, I know just a 30 minute workout is not amazing, but to me, and I think to many people, it was really intimidating. Just because when you haven’t been working out and you have damaged your self efficacy, then you’re not going to feel up to doing much of anything, let alone a 30 minute workout.

So I had this big Mount Everest workout. In front of me and I was like, Oh, all what’s the opposite of this? One pushup. Yeah, that’s what I decided. Actually the opposite would be something obviously self destructive, but we get the point. Lying on the couch with chips all over my chest, I wanted it to go into your belly.

I decided that the opposite in quantity and intimidation, that sort of level was one push up. And generally the point is not to do the opposite, but I was like I could just do one push up because it’s better than nothing, right? Almost as a joke, I’m pretty sure that I was mocking myself as I thought of this And when I actually got down to do that one push up, I was definitely like, Oh, great job, Steven.

You’re really going to make it now. But when I got down and I did that one push up, it really changed things. My, my arms were creaking and few joints cracked. But I felt a little bit different and I realized that this was a start to an actual 30 minute workout. 

Mike: And so then where did that go from there?

You just built on it like, okay, now tomorrow I’m going to do five pushups or something like that. 

Stephen: Actually on that first day, I did a full 30 minute workout, the same exact workout that I could not do before. And that blew my mind. And I did it by setting all of these mini goals. I would set A goal to do a pushup.

I do say one to five and then I would say, okay, two more. Okay, one more. And I did that with pull ups and then it was time to do an ab workout, which I hate abs. There’s something annoying about doing ab work to me. 

Mike: Ab training is inherently annoying because it is, it just burns. It’s just annoying.

It just is what it is. 

Stephen: Yeah. So I was really aversive to that idea, but I told myself, okay, why don’t I just set up the mat? Okay. Why don’t I just press play on a YouTube ab workout video? 10 minutes later, my abs were on fire. So it works. 

Mike: That’s reminds me of it might’ve been in Baumeister’s book.

Willpower, one of these willpower books, the simple little trick of when you. Need to do something and you’re dreading doing it. You don’t really want to do it. Make a deal with yourself that you’ll do it for 10 minutes. And if at the end of 10 minutes, you want to stop then stop because more often than not, at the end of the 10 minutes, you’re already in the flow and you’re moving and you have momentum on your side.

Now you have inertia on your side and you’re probably just going to keep going. Yeah, exactly. Momentum is huge. So in, in your book, you talk about how doing a little bit every day has a greater impact than doing a lot in one day. Can you elaborate on that? 

Stephen: Yeah I think there are two levels of success.

The second level of success is professional athletes and bodybuilders and people who are training at a very high level. And they’re doing so because they already have the first level intact. And that first level is just showing up the ability to be consistent. And that’s where small intentions can beat big intentions in a big way.

It’s because when you set a small intention, it’s a lot easier to meet that intention. And. It enables beginners like me to be consistent. 

Mike: I think it also helps with specificity because vague, if you have some great desire and you haven’t really broken it down into exact actionable steps, it can be more daunting than motivating.

And we could take it even in terms of getting into great shape. If you’re starting out not in good shape at all you may be able to envision what you want to see in the mirror, but how do you actually get there? If you don’t really start getting specific about it, chances are you’re going to feel overwhelmed.

And even if you do get started, you’re not going to be sure as to what you should be starting with and why. And regardless of what it is, it’s going to be uncomfortable, whether it’s diet or exercise. And so then when you’re going through it and. You’re not feeling good. I think you’re going to probably come back to like, why am I doing this again?

What’s the point of this? And if you don’t understand how it fits into the whole, again, I think you just have a very low probability of actually following through as opposed to getting the right thing. A specific next action, like David Allen’s getting things done, right? What’s the next action in this case, with many habits you’re taking a small, simple next action.

This is the next action. And here’s how it connects to the next action. Here’s how that connects to a daisy chain of actions that eventually. Produce something that in some ways can seem to be greater than the parts. The sum can be greater than the parts. You know what I mean? 

Stephen: Yeah. That’s if you think about how the brain works, that’s exactly why it’s so effective.

It’s a bird that predigests food for its young. The brain doesn’t know how to quote unquote, get in shape. That’s not an action you can take, but you can get on the ground to do one pushup. It’s a very specific and easy direction for you to follow. 

Mike: And do you find that you use a mini habit approach to, you’d mentioned these two levels of success to first ingrain.

And I agree the first skill And this applies not just to working out, but to accomplish anything is you have to be able to show up. If it’s anything that has any value, it’s gonna take a lot of work. So you’re probably gonna have to work at it every day, or at least let’s say 3 to 5 days per week.

And you have to be able to do that consistently over the long haul. And that Skill. Yeah. Is the first thing you have to learn and how to mini habits. Help you first learn that skill before you even worry about where are you going to take this discipline once you have it. 

Stephen: Yeah. And one mini habit is literally to show up at the gym.

And often today, even though I’ve been going to the gym pretty consistently for about four years now, because of that pushup mini habit, which after six months, I was like, Whoa, Exercise isn’t completely resisted by my brain anymore. So I’m, I know I’m able to go to the gym consistently now. And I have been for years, which is pretty incredible because I was just because of my 10 year track record before of never being able to do this.

Mike: Yeah. That’s just the repeated exposure effect, right? That applies to anything I’ve written about that. And there’s quite a bit of research on that, that we can basically attune ourselves to anything. Basically by just doing it enough and that could be eating foods. We don’t like or doing things that we don’t like you do it enough.

Eventually you get to a point where if you don’t outright enjoy it, you become emotionally neutral to it. It becomes something that you do and it’s not negative. It may not be strongly positive, but there’s no negative emotion associated with it anymore. 

Stephen: Yeah, at first the brain tolerates and eventually it prefers the behavior that you repeat.

Mike: And so how do you get to that point though? Because, you talk about also that it’s unreliable to rely on motivation to get there because, when you look at the research out there on habits on average, what it takes about 66 days or so, but some people don’t realize is that’s an average.

And that, this is a bell curve distribution. So yeah, sure. If you’re somewhere in the middle, you could expect maybe a couple of months and it’s pretty ingrained, but there are people, that In various studies who are more the outliers in both ends on both ends of that distribution.

So you have some people that pick up habits very quickly, and then you have other people where it might take two thirds of a year for them to, where they have to willfully repeat something before it just sets in on automatic. So how has your. Approach helped, I’d say remove willpower as a stumbling block.

Stephen: Yeah you said it, the research out there on habit formation is not sufficient for us to say it takes this long to form a habit. And I don’t think it will ever get to that point because every person is slightly different. Every behavior that we’re trying to habitualize is different. So I don’t think that it’s smart to have a strategy that relies on reaching a certain number of magical days and then you can say, I’ve done it.

I prefer strategies that can work without backing, motivation, or willpower. And ones that can work for life. A mini habit works in that regard because it takes just the smallest sliver of willpower to get down on the floor and do one push up. I could do that in the middle of this interview and probably nobody would notice.

Mike: What are some other, what are some other mini habits that you found helpful or that just, I’m sure you’ve emailed and social media’d with a lot of readers at this point. That address some of the more common areas of people’s lives that they want to improve, which is, health stuff, money, stuff, work stuff.

Stephen: Yeah the most transformative ones besides exercise for me have been reading and writing. These are my first three mini habits and they’ve stuck with me today. And for some mini habits, I don’t actually. Intend to increase them like I, I still aim to read two pages in a book per day just because I basically always read more than that.

Just from getting started, you get into the flow of the book and we all know that reading is very beneficial for learning and growing the mind and. So on, in addition, I write for a living, I’ve written three books using my 50 words a day, mini habit. And once again, I almost always write more because once you get into the flow of something, or as I say, frequently, once you start the process of whatever you’re trying to do, you’ve already had a huge victory in that area because you’re very likely to continue.

Mike: Yeah. Those are good. I like that. Anything with finances? For example, saving money, that’s obviously top on a lot of New Year’s resolution lists. Save more money. 

Stephen: Yeah, you could you could definitely figure out something with that. Like saving X dollars per day or And making it small, making 

Mike: it something that you wouldn’t even notice it being gone, right?

Stephen: Yeah. And you could even do it a more general mini habit for this one. Make one money saving decision every day. That sort of thing can actually work too. And how would that play out, practically speaking? So you might be at Starbucks or something and get a smaller size cup of coffee. I know that it’s going to be 5 anyway, but maybe it would have been 7.

Yeah. Just as an example, something you would have done. But because you’re conscious of making a small money saving decision, you cut back a little 

Mike: bit. Yeah, I like that. What about the psychological value of not breaking the chain, so to speak? And how does that tie into many habits? Oh, that 

Stephen: is huge. And that’s why I highly recommend tracking your many habits because It’s actually attributed to Jerry Seinfeld, where he said he would write a joke every day and put a big red X on the calendar to denote that he had made a joke that day.

He actually denied that in a Reddit, ask me anything, but besides the point, it’s a very good concept. 

Mike: As it goes 

Stephen: with 

Mike: apocryphal stories and quotes all over the internet. Yeah, seriously. 

Stephen: As you look at your calendar, 13 Xs in a row, you’re like, oh man, I have to keep this going. And when it’s something as simple as a mini habit, you’re more than likely to keep that going.

And then your streak can get pretty massive. And that is just a reinforcing tool for A. You’re able to do this and you have proven that and be, you really don’t want to screw up this awesome run. 

Mike: You’ve been on, and do you do that yourself? Do you have a, I’m assuming it, most people probably would benefit from just going offline with this, having a, an actual calendar that you can fill in.

So you can look at it every day or, or I guess you could use an app. I guess it just depends on what you 

Stephen: prefer. I really prefer the big calendar, like one of those massive desk calendars, just because it’s so huge and easily visible. And it’s also tactile when you mark off your day you can definitely use an app for this as well.

And a lot of people have had success with that. So I would say if you can fit it into your lifestyle, I would use some sort of physical calendar. I think the physical presence really helps with this sort of thing. But just being realistic with how people’s lives are today, probably a cell phone app is what people will use.

Yeah. And that’s fine too. 

Mike: Or you guys, you need a special app. You could just use whatever calendar app. I’m sure. I don’t do it personally, so I, but I’m sure you could do that, right? You can probably fill in days with colors or do something that would indicate you have done what you want it to do.

Yeah, you could, and this also all this kind of reminds you, I’ve probably heard this quote. I don’t remember who said it. It probably whoever we think said it just stole it from somebody who stole it from somebody who knows, but that we tend to underestimate what we can do over a long period of time and overestimate what we can do in a short period of time.

Yeah, I believe 

Stephen: that was Tony Robbins. Yeah, that’s a great quote. And I think that’s true. 

Mike: Yeah, I think that’s very true. I’ve learned to condition my, expectations. Just over, over there, all the random projects I’ve had my hands in over the years that everything takes longer and more.

Money and more hardship than you think going into it. And you never quite get as much done every day as you hope that you can get done at least most of the time or want to get done. But you just learn to live with that because you see that if you just keep at it, eventually. You can have a pretty impressive amount of achievements behind you that you didn’t necessarily feel that way going through it.

It was just a pain in the ass by at least half the time you were just annoyed, but you just keep going and you put in enough of that. And then you look back and you’re like, Oh, actually, Hey, this is pretty cool. 

Stephen: Yeah, I’m a living example of this. I honestly consider myself to be a very lazy person naturally.

That means I, not only do I not want to work out, but I don’t want to work at all as in write anything, but because I’ve just been consistent, I’ve written three internationally bestselling books. And that’s, it’s still weird to me, but that just shows you the power of consistency and. Sticking to something, even though no day is individually impressive, it can produce an impressive results in the long term.

Mike: Absolutely. What would you prefer to do or some part of you or whatever, what would you prefer to do with your time? If not working or doing something productive? 

Stephen: If I’m left to my own natural disposition, I’m going to be entertaining myself. Probably to death, like just playing video games or watching TV or gambling or something.

That’s just, it’s 

Mike: just being honest. Know it though. And you were just like, I can’t give over to the dark side fully. Yeah. That’s why, until you get that’s that socialist universal basic income, bro. For now you have to, for now you have to work, work as a part of the evil, patriarchal.

capitalistic overlords. 

Stephen: Yeah. Maybe I’ll move to Europe. 

Mike: No, I think you just moved to California now. What is it? It just got, it’s like Stockton or something. They’re going to be, they’re going to be rolling out. I am literally in Los Angeles right now. You’re close. You’re almost there. You can probably just hang out there.

It’s California. It’ll find its way to you unless the money runs out. That’s always the problem, but Hey, who knows? Maybe it The Ponzi scheme will last long enough. Yeah, and there’s always bailouts. That’s true. Federal will probably step in. Anyways, no, that’s that’s great. I agree that you, even though I don’t track my adherence to my things, there’s still a subconscious effect of I do what I do on the days that I do it.

And I just don’t want to break that. I don’t want to deviate from my routine. That. To me is painful and just distasteful, not, going and doing the things that, that require effort and require discomfort and some things that maybe are, that seem unpalatable at first. 

Stephen: Yeah. And I think you’ve reached that point.

Dude, I’ve seen pictures of you. You’re a beast. But I should also say that I’m actually the same way now with exercise and writing specifically, I, while my natural disposition is a lazy human thing, I don’t think I could go very long without exercise and without feeling very frustrated and upset.

And the same goes for writing. I just write every day out of habit now. And that’s the power of habit is that you become a different 

Mike: person. Very true. And how do you know when something has become A habit, like people listening, what are some cues to where you can pat yourself on the back and say, cool, this is a pretty well ingrained behavior pattern.

Now, 

Stephen: based on my research and experience, I think it starts with decreased resistance. You could say that maybe it’s a young habit when you no longer resist a behavior as much as you used to. And that’s what I experienced with exercise after six months of doing at least one push up a day. One day I suddenly realized, whoa, I don’t actually resist exercise nearly as much as I used to because, and this is the second thing, it’s a normal behavior.

It’s something. You expect to do. It’s not something that you have to consciously decide every time to do. 

Mike: Yeah. That there’s just no way you’re not going to do it. I’d say that for me is when I know that something is really locked in where there’s no question in my mind. There’s no question right now, as I sit here that I’m waking up at five 30 tomorrow and I read in the morning first thing.

And then I go, Jim, like that’s happening. I’m either going to be dead. Or that’s going to happen that, 

That those are pretty much the two options. 

Stephen: Yeah. Jack LaLanne was 97. He died the day after he did a two hour workout with pneumonia. And I think he was 97 years old. So that’s a 

Mike: habit. I didn’t know that actually, that he had pneumonia.

Dan. I know of him. I don’t really know his story. I just know some of the feats that he did. But yeah that’s a hashtag dedication. Yeah, that’s, man, it’s impressive. Yeah. So are there any other mini habits that you’ve used in your life? Anything maybe related to diet? Have you paid attention to that at all?

Even if it’s just eating more nutritious foods, maybe not going as far as counting calories and macros and getting super into the details. 

Stephen: So I naturally eat a healthy diet. I’ve always, since I was about 20, I’ve been interested in that. So that’s not something that I’ve had to Change about myself, but there are definitely a lot of many habits that can help a person get to that point, one of which would be just trying to eat an extra serving of fresh fruits or vegetables per 

Mike: day.

So start there, just one, right? And to put that in perspective, we’re talking about. Like a cup of blueberries, just start there, eat a cup of blueberries every day. And you can make it specific. You can say at 9am, I’m going to eat a cup of blueberries or, even start at a half cup, whatever.

Stephen: Yeah. And you can also do it in the grocery store, do your shopping as usual, and then replace one unhealthy item with a healthier item, such as maybe taking out donuts and putting in. Pineapple, which is also delicious, but a lot healthier. 

Mike: And that also I’d say for, depending on what you’re trying to do with your diet, most people that have dietary struggles are trying to lose weight, of course.

And that’s an easy place to start. Obviously it does come down to energy balance and macronutrient balance matters as well. Not all calories are the same as far as how they impact our body composition, but If all that is daunting, you can start with something simple stop drinking calories.

For example, if you want to replace your caloric beverage with something else sweet, that’s one of the reasons why BCAAs are popular. A lot of people that satisfies their sweet tooth, it’s just tasty zero calorie water. I know just from working with a lot of people that, for example, is an easy place for many people to start.

If you’re drinking calories right now, you there’s, especially if you’re drinking a significant amount of calories, you have. Easy weight loss, if you just stop drinking calories and you can replace that with, if you want to be fancy, you can do the fruit water. But if you want to just have something simple, sweet and tasty, just get a tasty PCAA and drink that with water instead of the Coke or, whatever kind of caloric beverage fruit juice, even for juices like shit, you might as well just be drinking water or eating fruit.

Stephen: Yeah, seriously. And there’s, I think it’s called hint water, which is it’s just water with fruit flavor. I don’t think it’s, I think it’s zero calories. Yeah. 

Mike: Yeah. I don’t know which one you’re talking about, but there are a number of those them out there. That’s true too. You have just prepackaged stuff that you could buy, which is not ideal, if nothing else from a financial perspective, because you’re going to be overpaying a lot for that.

But if that’s, if that’s an easy way to start, sure. Just get A good zero calorie flavored water. 

Stephen: Yeah, you could just get an infuser and do it yourself if you want to save money too. 

Mike: Yeah, exactly. Hey, quickly, before we carry on, if you are liking my podcast, would you please help spread the word about it?

Because no amount of marketing or advertising gimmicks can match the power of word of mouth. If you are enjoying this episode and you think of someone else who might enjoy it as well, please do tell them about it. It really helps me. And if you are going to post about it on social media, definitely tag me so I can say, Thank you.

You can find me on Instagram at Muscle for Life Fitness, Twitter at Muscle for Life, and Facebook at Muscle for Life Fitness. What are your thoughts on, I, this isn’t something that I don’t think you’ve written about it. Maybe you have if you have, I haven’t seen it. I don’t know if anybody has, but it’s just something I’ve been thinking about recently.

I guess the best term for it would be like meta habits, so to speak habits that are not specifically Oh, I want to make it be specific and exercise specifically an exercise habit, or just some very particular behavior that you want to instantiate. In you, as opposed to something that for example, something that, that transfers, it’s a skill or an ability that kind of makes you better at a whole wide range of things in your life.

For example, just being able to experience discomfort, to be able to push through Pain and discomfort would be an example, I think, a meta habit that if you can develop that it’s going to benefit probably every aspect of your life. 

Stephen: Yeah, that’s a great question. I’ve got two thoughts. One on the discomfort one.

I’ve actually written a book called how to be an imperfectionist that talks about that. And it suggests doing. I guess there are multiple types of discomfort. So one would be the need for approval discomfort where you’re seeking approval constantly and you feel uncomfortable when you don’t have it.

So a mini habit in that regard would be like lying down on the floor in a public place, which is completely harmless, but also socially unacceptable. For some reason, that sort of thing could train you to not need that approval. And to learn to be okay being uncomfortable socially so that, that can also be modified for other types of discomfort, I think.

In regards to the meta habit, I would say meditation is actually one of the best because meditating, which is just breathing in and breathing out and focusing on your breaths and then getting distracted and then refocusing on your breaths, that’s training yourself to focus and also to be mindful.

Both of which are extremely helpful when trying to change or modify your behavior. 

Mike: Yeah. It’s funny because what passes for meditation now is this is like the pop meditation. I think Buddhist monks would laugh at us, right? Because What they do is a lot harder. You’re talking about hours and hours of being in uncomfortable positions.

And, there’s a lot more that goes into it. I think it’s I don’t know, just abusing that what now passes for a minute. I guess it’s more just indicative of, I think, our ever shortening attention spans and just our ever never ending quest for easier, faster. More rewarding for less is met.

What now is meditation is actually what you said is just sit there and chill the fuck out for 10 minutes. Like just take deep breaths, get the, that Coke addled squirrel that runs around in your brain 24 seven, just chill it the fuck out for 10 minutes. How about that? Which I agree. I agree. I think that’s a, that’s very important that you, that, you learn how to control your attention.

I just also think it’s funny though, that. That’s called meditation. Now, when in the traditional sense, that’s not meditation at all, it wouldn’t qualify. 

Stephen: It’s really a microcosm of a mini habits. Like it’s the 

Mike: habit approach to meditation, right? Okay, fine. You can’t actually meditate like a true, Buddhist monk because that’s hard, but can you just sit there and like breathe and not freak out for five minutes?

How about that? Yeah, 

Stephen: nobody’s going to call one push up a workout, but it’s it enables you to show up just like I could not do what monks do right now, but I could breathe for five to 10 minutes and not do anything else. And what have you noticed in the way of benefits since you’ve been doing that?

I haven’t been that consistent with this one. I think it’s because I don’t care that much, even though I see the value in it. It just hasn’t stuck. And that’s something people might find with many habits is you really have to want it, whatever you’re trying to do. 

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. Just to that point, do you think that’s because maybe you actually don’t struggle with it or you think, is it more just the value is more abstract.

And so you’re doing it almost as a, you’d be doing it like a leap of faith in hopes that it does something Somehow. 

Stephen: Yeah, that’s a great observation. It is definitely more abstract, more difficult to see the benefit as opposed to exercise, which a lot of the benefits come later. But you feel that you’ve done something to your body, 

Mike: yeah. You also do get the immediate benefit, right? You get the endorphins, you get the chemical eye. 

Stephen: Yeah. And I do feel A positive benefit from meditation, but I am a naturally pretty relaxed guy. So I don’t think that I need it as much as others, though. I still would say that it’s good for me and I should do it.

Mike: Yeah, I’m in the same boat. I’ve tried it again. I, it doesn’t, I wouldn’t even call it meditating, breathing exercises. I’ll give it that. And yeah, sure. I think it’s good, but for whatever reason, I just don’t struggle. With focus and concentration, I’m good at doing deep work, at least I’m fairly good at it by, I think most people’s standards.

After just five or six times of doing it, I’m like, Hey, do I need this? No, I don’t. I honestly do not feel like I will. I feel like I’m way beyond the point of diminishing returns with this. And I, that 10 minutes would be better spent reading or working. But then again, for some other people, it can be a life changing thing.

I know. That’s why I tried it. Cause I had heard a lot of people had emailed me and, shared their experiences. And I was like, wow, if 15 or even 20 minutes a day of breathing exercises or 10 minutes or whatever it is could create a similar effect. For me, if we’re speaking in relative terms, sure.

So that’s why I gave it a try, but I didn’t really notice anything. Maybe I did it more than Sam, maybe two weeks or so as this does, then just notice no difference. And I even keep a spreadsheet where I quantify, I got this from a book called triggers by Marshall Goldsmith.

I think one of the things I liked from that book, an idea of keeping basically a spreadsheet where you rank different. Elements of your life that you care about the things that you want to focus most on. And for me, that’s a mixture of strengths and weaknesses in terms of, I guess on the weaknesses, it’s more in terms of my character and strengths is maybe it’s character based, but it’s more behavior.

Have I really done my best to improve my relationship with my wife, improve my relationship with my family? My kids be positive in my work. And no, enjoy my work and generally stay positive things. And you rate yourself on a scale of one to 10 every day. And it’s not perfect obviously, but it’s actually fairly accurate because our brains are good at thinking analogously.

I even have a quantified metric esque type of approach to how am I doing in general, at least in the areas that I care most about certain areas, I just Don’t care. Like I don’t really have much of a social life and I don’t give a shit right now to have much of a social life because I care more about what I’m working toward over the next few years.

So that’s not even on my list. Like, how have I worked to deepen relationships with friends? Eh, I know that would be good for me, but it takes time that I’m not willing to give it my whole point with any, with all that is when I incorporate new things into my life, I like to. Keep, I have all these numbers are graphed and I like to just see, make little notes.

Here’s what I started doing at this point and how over the next, it could be as short as two weeks or it could be as long as two months or so, depending on like how much this thing matters to me in terms of an experiment, how has it impacted my life? That’s at least a, I think I’d say an evidence based way of approaching it.

Meditation free is one of those things where I didn’t feel any different and I didn’t see any difference in how I like to track my life. So I just ditched it. Oh, that’s really 

Stephen: interesting. Have you done this with any other things besides meditation? I’m sure you’ve done it with, exercise is such a huge part of your life.

Yeah. Can you track that or is that just obvious? 

Mike: Yeah, that’s something I’ve been doing for so long. There, I would have no reason To stop not even if I didn’t, it’s part of my job now, obviously, but even if it weren’t, nothing would change in that regard because I really do think it’s worth the time investment.

And I don’t put that much time into it on the high end. We’re talking probably 6 hours a week on the low end, like 4. And I just know. That it helps support everything else. And I would definitely lose. I’ve built up so much momentum over the years that I could stop exercising for a bit, probably, and still have good levels of mental acuity and high energy and good mood and stuff.

But eventually I would lose it. It’s just physiology. It is what it is. That, that wouldn’t change. But, silly things like taking cold showers, right? I’ve written about this. Basically there’s no physiological, the long story short is you’re not going to get better muscle recovery or higher testosterone levels or prettier hair or nails or any of that shit from cold showers.

But I do like it because they suck. Especially if you live somewhere that’s cold. So I live in Virginia and we have real winters here. And the water is it’s fucking cold. It’s ice water is what it feels like. And I like that habit because coming back to a meta habit is it’s a little that has trained me to become more comfortable with doing things that just suck, basically, and I like.

That because I know how important that is in pretty much every area of life. And so I’ve noticed, for example, that has made me a little bit more enjoy my work a little bit more and be a little bit more positive in general, because these days, a lot of my work feels like chores. There’s just a lot of stuff now between, with running a few companies.

I actually don’t really like running. Companies I don’t like managing people. I just don’t like it. I don’t think I ever will. I don’t think I can change that about myself, but I can learn to just do things I don’t like and not be a whiny little bitch about it. You know what I mean? Just do it because they need to be because it needs to be done and not do it begrudgingly.

But actually be okay with it because I know that, it serves something, a goal or a purpose that I do care about, even though I don’t think I’ll ever be that person to be looking forward to a lot of the things that I do these days, and there are certain elements of my work that I still look forward to, but I’ve honestly become, I really do think I’ve gotten to a point where I could do 10, 12, 14 hours.

Of things that I don’t look forward to and don’t inherently enjoy every day simply if I don’t need that strong of a reason anymore, which I think is cool, and I don’t attribute that all to just cold showering, but I just know from psychological research as well that what we do. Informs who we are a lot more than the other way around, like a lot of people think that they just have to change their mind and they have to get into the right mindset before they can start taking the right actions and research has shown this is totally backwards.

You have to, if you want to change the subjective, just change the objective. That’s the easiest way to do it, which is one of the reasons why I like many habits. Just start doing something and then you will. Just because of cognitive bias. If your actions are in conflict with your ideas or your attitudes, your ideas and attitudes are going to conform to your actions if you just keep doing the actions.

And that works for good and evil, right? It works for good things and bad things. So in the case of many habits, you’re using it for good. If you start doing those pushups every day, what are you telling yourself? You’re telling yourself that you’re the kind of person that can exercise every day.

And I think that. You’re telling yourself other things that are positive and it’s more subconscious and your attitudes naturally change. You don’t have to even think about it. You don’t have to read books about becoming a more positive person, this, that, or whatever. You just naturally start to change for the better.

So coming back to cold showering, that’s something again, I think helps train a meta habit. And so does exercise because exercise is fucking hard. Always. It’s never enjoyable to squat heavy weight for, until your legs are burning. That’s never enjoyable unless, I guess maybe some people get off on the Mac masochism of it, but for me, it’s not yeah, in that moment, I’m not going, Oh my God, I don’t have the Arnold.

I, it’s not where it’s like, Oh, I’m coming. I’m coming all day. I come every set, every rep now, like coming for me is a lot. Yeah, that, that’s that. And working out there, there’s no correlation there between the pleasures of coming and the hardships of working out. It just, you’re just, yeah, I. I’m with you on that one. I don’t think I wish how awesome would that be? Oh man, no shit. Where’s the, where’s just rewiring my brain. So anyway, so I, and I, so cold showering and coming back to that meta habit of just doing stuff that you don’t really like, there’s no.

Physiological payoff. I wrote about this recently. A lot of that, the purported health benefits of cold showering is just nonsense. It’s bullshit. It’s pseudoscience. There’s really no good reason to do it other than to just fucking be uncomfortable. That’s it. That’s the only reason to do it.

And if you can do it there, you can, if you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball, right? 

Stephen: Yeah. I actually did a cold shower experiment for 30 days just cause, and I did find it made my skin a little bit better, maybe less dried out. But yeah, I, man, I think that’s a really valuable thing to try, especially because of the society we live in today, where if you’re an American, Everything in our society is based around comfort, like we have machines doing everything for us.

We can order food easily. It’s easy to get too comfortable. Any sort of discomfort is just repulsive to you. And that’s, that can be very detrimental to what you actually want to do with your life, which often requires a great deal of discomfort. Absolutely. 

Mike: What were your thoughts on when you did it for 30 days in that regard?

Stephen: So I did find it very valuable. I felt like I had developed some sort of extra resilience, just, I think, because of what you said, I was getting more comfortable being uncomfortable because I was doing it to myself every day. There were some really interesting sub experiments within the experiment.

One time I turned the cold water. On immediately. So it just hit me right off the bat. And that was not pleasant. That’s what I do. I just have, I can just, and also 

Mike: I let the shower run for two minutes to make sure it’s as cold as it can get. 

Stephen: Oh man, that was, I hated that, but Hey, maybe that’s what I need.

But I think if people are. Maybe babies like me, they could try like a, I think it’s called a Scottish shower where you start the shower warm. And then for the last 10 to 30 seconds, you turn it to cold at least for starting out. That’s easier to take. 

Mike: And the only reason to go beyond that, honestly, is just to make it more uncomfortable.

Again, you’re not gonna you’re probably not going to benefit from it physiologically at all. In case anybody. listening is wondering about that. The long story short is if you get into like winter swimming, where you’re going to be spending long periods of time out in the freezing cold, and you’re gonna be swimming around in freezing water.

There’s actually some research that shows that, and this makes sense, like your body gets hardier. You’re probably gonna get sick a bit less and you might burn a bit more calories than usual. But a few minutes of cold water is not enough to do that. So the only reason, again, to take it up another notch is simply to go, all right, let’s make myself even more uncomfortable.

And so that, yeah, that’s an example of coming back to that meta habits, one that, that I think, Steven Pressfield, the dude who wrote the war of art and turning pro blah, blah, blah, one of, I think it was one of his books or an interview or something. He just basically said that the number one skill he has learned and that he, most attributes his success to is the ability to suffer.

That’s it. Just to sit down every day and suffer through whatever he needs to suffer through to put words on the page and, move the needle a little bit further and do the things that he needs to do. And he has pretty much disabused himself of any. Real desire or need for comfort, or even pleasure or joy out of his work, because he’s found that it provides so little in that regard to provide satisfaction.

And he has come to value satisfaction over momentary pleasure, but he gets very little pleasure out of his work. And I can relate to that. I wouldn’t say I, fortunately, I’m not necessarily in that position, but I can understand that. I can definitely understand that. 

Stephen: Yeah, I can relate to that too. I think for me, the ability to suffer, which I will admit my ability to suffer is not impressive.

Again, that goes back to the lazy disposition and video games and whatnot, but the ability to put myself in those cold waters. Which I’ve done through many habits has enabled me to get to the point where I would say I do enjoy my work quite a bit now. 

Mike: Yeah, that’s the key is you just get to that point where you get enough, there’s, you have enough of a drive to keep it going.

So it can be the joy that you get out of doing it, or it could be the reason that you’re doing it. Like, why what are you working toward? What’s your goal? What’s your purpose? Yeah, again, for myself, a fair amount of my work, I don’t think I’ll ever really get much joy from, but I get satisfaction from it because I know it’s contributing to something that I do care about.

You know what I mean? 

Stephen: Yeah. Yeah. Certain parts of work are just torturous, but other parts are. Fun and overall, it is satisfying. 

Mike: Yeah, I agree with that. Yeah, exactly. And that, that’s also, I think something that’s important to know because I think it’s just a human thing, right? We always have that grass is greener on the other side type of mentality.

And that’s why a lot of people end relationships and then wonder why after years and years, they have this. daisy chain of failed relationships and they don’t realize they are the only common denominator. Like it’s something wrong with them. We all have this built into us where because of I guess the hedonic treadmill type of adaptation, we tend to whatever was once interesting and stimulating becomes boring and normal.

And it’s easy to think that, Oh, if I just. Had this other thing. If I just was doing this other thing, or if I had this other person, then, I would be happy or I would be satisfied. And I think that’s more of a fantasy and a delusion than anything else. The opportunity for satisfaction is right where you are.

You know what I mean? And that isn’t to say that some relationships deserve to end and some work isn’t a good fit, but I’d say that more often than not that’s not exactly what’s going on. It’s more of the grass is greener on the other side effect. There’s probably a fancy term for that, but.

Stephen: Yeah, that’s I think, honestly, I think that sort of hedonic treadmill mindset is what leads people to things like drug addictions, because they’re looking for that, savior thing, that savior element in their life. And nothing is ever going to reach that status in our lives. It’s they’re always going to be ups and downs and anyone who’s looking for that constant high is.

Probably going to look to a substance to directly trigger that in their brain. Absolutely. 

Mike: Or it could be if it’s not drugs it’s sex or it’s video games or any, anything that gives you a nice hit of dopamine, right? Yeah, exactly. Great. Those are all the things I had on my list. Now I’ve hijacked this and babbled all kinds of shit.

Is there anything else that on, on, on the mini habit? Topic that we haven’t covered that you think should be mentioned. 

Stephen: First of all, I just want to say I really enjoyed what you said. So thank you. As far as many habits, I feel like we’ve 

Mike: covered the gist of it. Great. Where can people find you find your book, find your work?

I’m obviously in the intro I mentioned the book, people probably know, but we haven’t mentioned it throughout the interview. So it’s worth closing with it. 

Stephen: Yeah. So my personal website is Steven guys. com S T E P H E N G U I S E. That’s where I write my blog every week. All my books are on all major E retailers, most prominently Amazon.

They’ve got what? 90 percent of the market. No, I’m on all major retailers, but Amazon is. It’s over 90%. It’s crazy. Same. Yeah. 

Mike: Perfect. Perfect. All right. Yes. Everybody listening. If you found this discussion interesting, I highly recommend you check out the book. Good information. Researched and easy to understand.

Easy to apply. I definitely recommend you check it out. And Steven, thank you for taking the time. I appreciate it. 

Stephen: Yeah, Mike. I really enjoyed it. Thanks for having me on. 

Mike: Hey there, it is Mike again. I hope you enjoyed this episode and found it interesting and helpful. And if you did, and don’t mind doing me a favor and want to help me make this the most popular health and fitness podcast on the internet, then please leave a quick review of it on iTunes or wherever you’re listening from.

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