Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Motivation Monday: The Power of Habit

Episode Date: May 7, 2018

This episode is part of a weekly series that I have dubbed “Motivation Monday.” (Yes, I know, very creative of me. What can I say, I’m a genius…) Seriously though, the idea here is simple: Every Monday morning, I’m going to post a short and punchy episode that I hope gets you fired up to tackle the workouts, work, and everything else that you have planned for the week ahead. As we all know, it’s one thing to know what you want to do, but it’s something else altogether to actually make yourself do it, and I hope that this series gives you a jolt of inspiration, energy, and encouragement to get at it. So, if you like what you hear, then make sure to check back every Monday morning for the latest and greatest installment. Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: www.muscleforlife.com/signup/

This episode is brought to you by me. Seriously though, I'm not big on promoting stuff that I don't personally use and believe in. So instead I'm going to just quickly tell you about something of mine, specifically my 100% natural sleep supplement Lunar. Now Lunar's formulation contains ingredients that are scientifically proven to reduce sleep onset latency, which means you will fall asleep faster, reduce wakings and improve sleep quality and do all that without the side effects of habit forming drugs. Lunar is also naturally sweetened and naturally flavored and contains no artificial food dyes, fillers, or other unnecessary junk. And all that is why it has over 180 reviews on Amazon with a four-star average and another 90 plus on my website with a four and a half star average. So if you want to

enjoy more deep, restful sleep, and if you want to wake up every day feeling energized and revitalized, restful sleep, and if you want to wake up every day feeling energized and revitalized, then you want to head over to www.legionathletics.com and pick up a bottle of Lunar today. And just to show how much I appreciate my podcast peeps, use the coupon code podcast at checkout, and you're going to save 10% on your entire order. And lastly, you should also know that I have a very simple 100% money back guarantee that works like this. You either love my stuff or you get your money back, period. You don't have to return the products. You don't have to fill out forms. You don't have to jump through any other hoops or go through any other shenanigans. So you really can't lose here. Head over to www.legionathletics.com now, place your order and see for yourself why my supplements have thousands of rave reviews all

over the internet. 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. Good morning. It is Mike Matthews here back with another Motivation Monday episode of the podcast. Sorry, I missed last week. I was in Florida visiting family and taking my kids to Disney World and so forth. And actually I was going to record an episode while I was there, but did not have a mic. I thought I left a mic in my condo in Florida, but apparently not. And Amazon delivered one that I bought too late. So anyways, here we are moving on. So let's start the day with a quote that I like, and we actually don't know who said this. It is often attributed to Winston Churchill,

but we know he didn't say this. However, it is a good message worth sharing. And it goes like this, success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm. So I want you to think about yesterday when you woke up, what did you do first? And in what order did you go straight into the shower? Did you check your email first or maybe Facebook and then your email? What about brushing your teeth? Where does that fit into your routine? What about tying your shoes? Which shoe did you tie first? You tie your right shoe first, your left shoe first. What did you say to your family or your boyfriend or girlfriend or roommate before leaving? On your way to work,

which route did you take? And then once you got to work, what did you do once you sat down at your desk? Did you go straight to your email or maybe did you chat to a colleague first? And then what about lunchtime? Did you have leftovers or a salad or something else, maybe a hamburger? And then think about when you got home. What did you do when you got home? Did you go for a bike ride or a walk? Did you pour a drink, have some dinner? Now I could go on and on with these questions, but I'll stop here and get to the point. My point is that we truly are creatures of habit and we all have deeply ingrained daily patterns of behavior. In fact, according to a 2006 study conducted by scientists at Duke University, over 40% of the daily actions that people perform aren't really decisions, but are just habits, are things they do on automatic. And in many cases, these habits are useful. They save us mental energy. We don't need to decide

newly each and every day how to put toothpaste on our toothbrush or how to go about washing our bodies. But there are other habits that are much more complex and that can emerge without our permission, so to speak, and that can be quite troublesome. For example, studies have shown that families that eat fast food regularly didn't originally intend to eat as much fast food as they do. It started as a monthly habit, and then it became something that they did every other week, and then it became a weekly habit, and then it became something they do a couple times a week until finally they're just eating junk food every day. And any of us can fall into this trap in any area of our lives. 30 minutes of TV per day can become 60 minutes and then 100 minutes and so forth. Skipping a

workout once per week can lead to skipping twice per week, which can lead eventually to just quitting altogether. One drink per week can, for some people, easily multiply in both size or frequency or both. And you see this habit creep, so to speak, it can be very insidious. The ramifications of these negative habits can be deceiving. There are the immediate and obvious things like you fall behind your peers in your work and you get passed up on the promotion, you gain weight and feel lethargic, your health deteriorates and so forth. But then there's the not so obvious. You start to lose faith in your ability to put your mind to something and see it through. You start to avoid challenges and opportunities for fear of failure. You start to criticize yourself. You start to erode your self-esteem. You maybe

even start to become depressed and so forth. Now, of course, there's a positive side to this because habits can cut both ways. Just 45 minutes of exercise a few days per week, if done for long enough, can absolutely transform your body. 30 minutes of reading per day over time can turn you into an expert in just about anything you might want to learn. An hour or two of more work per day than your peers can help you outproduce them by a rather large order of magnitude. Now, there's a lot of cliched advice out there about how you have to focus on dreaming the right dreams and wishing the right wishes in order to achieve success. And while that's all well and good, the reality is thinking dim thoughts just doesn't make things happen. Our dreams

may influence what we're capable of, but it's our habits that will ultimately determine what kind of lives we live. Anyone can get energized by tantalizing visions, but very few people can stick to the daily grind long enough to actually get there. 15 seconds of fantasy can take 15 years of work of habitual action to fully realize. 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. So 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 MuscleForLifeFitness, Twitter at MuscleForLife, and Facebook at MuscleForLifeFitness. You know, Aristotle said that we are what we repeatedly do, right? He said greatness then is not an act, but a habit. Now, if you show me a great achiever in any field or activity, I will show you a master of habits. Someone that has mechanically repeated the same positive actions countless thousands of times until finally they had produced something extraordinary, whether a skill, fortune, invention,

or even a sublime relationship with another person. Controlling our habits can be hard though, because some routines and actions are so ingrained that we find ourselves almost slaves to them, unable to do anything but mindlessly comply. And that leads me to one of the great unsung benefits of using diet and exercise to stay fit. You see, it improves your habit mastery. Staying fit teaches us habit mastery. In other words, it teaches us how to control our habits, how to break the bad ones and instill and protect the good ones. Because you can't overcome bad habits with voodoo rituals or exorcisms or self-mortification. You beat bad habits simply by creating new behavior patterns that overpower

and override them. Things that are more compelling to you than the bad things. So instead of watching that hour of TV every night to unwind, you let off steam with an hour of weightlifting instead. The enjoyment that is normally provided by that 3 p.m. cookie snack can be replaced by an equally enjoyable apple with peanut butter. You can trade the short-lived pleasure of junk food for the longer-lasting pleasure of improved health and overall well-being that comes with eating more nutritious foods. And interestingly enough, once you establish a new pattern of behavior, it quickly begins to feel just as automatic as the old one, no matter how different it is. And this is just one of those psychological quirks. Whatever we repeatedly do is what we want to continue doing, whether it's eating ice cream in front of the TV or hitting the treadmill for some late night cardio. And in this way, achieving fitness goals is actually fairly easy.

It is definitely straightforward. You just keep doing the things that start to feel more and more right. And then you make slow and steady progress. And over time, these small improvements add up to something extraordinary, even if the whole process felt ordinary and maybe even mundane. When you do this though, you not only show yourself that you can change your behavior patterns, that you are in control, but you also come to realize how powerful your daily routine really is. And this then begins to mold other areas of your life. You become different than other people. And all of this, of course, is good for a lot more than just fitness. You see, in my experience, many people dramatically underestimate the time

and effort it takes to make things happen. They don't give very much thought to the long-term habits that all meaningful endeavors require. They just kind of set off haphazardly and usually don't last very long in their journeys. But if you can build your habit mastery, and again, exercise and diet is a great way to strengthen that muscle, so to speak, you start to look at all goals that you have a little bit differently. You start to realize that new undertakings require new habits, and often old habits are going to have to go to make room. And you also come to realize that the first month or two of a new habit is always the toughest. But if you can get over that initial hump, if you can clear that initial hurdle, it becomes much easier as time goes on because it just

becomes more and more automatic and familiar and you become drawn to it naturally more and more. The better you are with habits, the less afraid you become of hard work. The idea that something will take one, two, or even three years or more of regular work to see real results isn't daunting to you. You learn patience. You learn to appreciate the actions of today, no matter how small they might seem and no matter how little immediate reward they may give you because you know that they are contributing to the bigger picture. If you can achieve a high level of habit mastery, it just gives you a huge advantage in every area of your life. You become the kind of person other people talk about, about your superhuman work ethic and your superhuman ability to see things through and your superhuman

stick-to-itiveness. People marvel at the sheer amount of stuff that you can get done, the amount of plates that you can keep spinning. Little of these people know, however, that you actually don't possess any superpowers. There's really nothing mysterious about it. You've just developed a skill that many people don't have and many people don't understand. And that skill enables you to do things that may seem extraordinary to others and may by definition be extraordinary outside of the ordinary, but to you feel completely routine and natural. So if I've inspired you to get more interested in harnessing the power of habit in your life, I recommend you check out Charles Duhigg's book, Power of Habit, because it is one of the better ones that I've read on the subject. And it will

give you an in-depth understanding of how habits work and how to get really good at creating and sticking to good habits and avoiding and breaking bad ones. Hey there, it's 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, then please do give this video a like and leave a comment down below. Not only do I like to hear from everybody and I jump in and reply to as many comments as I can, it also helps other people find their way to the show and learn how to build their best bodies ever too. And of course, if you want to be notified when the next episode goes live, then just subscribe to my channel and you won't miss out on any of the

new content. Lastly, if you didn't like something about the show, then definitely shoot me an email at mikeatmuscleforlife.com and share your thoughts on how you think it could be better. I read everything myself and I'm always looking for constructive feedback, so please do reach out. Thanks again for listening to the episode and I hope to hear from you soon. And lastly, this episode is brought to you by me. Seriously, though, I'm not big on promoting stuff that I don't personally use and believe in. So instead, I'm going to just quickly tell you about something of mine, specifically my 100% natural sleep supplement, Lunar. Now, Lunar's formulation contains ingredients that are

scientifically proven to reduce sleep onset latency, which means you will fall asleep faster, reduce wakings and improve sleep quality and do all that without the side effects of habit forming drugs. Lunar is also naturally sweetened and naturally flavored and contains no artificial food dyes, fillers or other unnecessary junk. artificial food dyes, fillers, or other unnecessary junk. And all that is why it has over 180 reviews on Amazon with a four-star average and another 90 plus on my website with a four and a half star average. So if you want to enjoy more deep, restful sleep, and if you want to wake up every day, feeling energized and revitalized, then you want to head over to www.legionathletics.com and pick up a bottle of Lunar today. And just to show how much I appreciate my podcast peeps, use the coupon code podcast at checkout, and you're going to save 10% on your entire order. And lastly, you should also know that I have a very simple 100% money back guarantee that works like this. You

either love my stuff or you get your money back, period. You don't have to return the products. You don't have to fill out forms. You don't have to jump through any other hoops or go through any other shenanigans. So you really can't lose here. Head over to www.legionathletics.com now, Head over to www.LegionAthletics.com now, place your order, and see for yourself why my supplements have thousands of rave reviews all over the internet. And if for whatever reason they're just not for you, contact us and we will give you a full refund on the spot.