The One You Feed - Knowing vs. Doing: Overcoming the Obstacles that Get in Our Way

Episode Date: April 14, 2021

This is the first episode in a special mini-series in which Eric explains the obstacles that get in the way of us bridging the gap between what we know and what we do and how to overcome these obstacles so that our lives really transform. Be sure you're signed up on our email list at www.oneyoufeed.net so that you don't miss out on some exciting things to come!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallyknowreally.com

and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really Know Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Decisions Decisions, the podcast where boundaries are pushed and

conversations get candid. Join your favorite hosts, me, WeezyWTF, and me, Mandy B, as we dive deep into the world of non-traditional relationships and explore the often taboo topics surrounding dating, sex, and love. That's right. Every Monday and Wednesday, we both invite you to unlearn the outdated narratives dictated by traditional patriarchal norms. With a blend of humor, vulnerability, and authenticity, we share our personal journeys navigating our 30s, tackling the complexities of modern relationships, and engage in thought-provoking discussions that challenge societal expectations. From groundbreaking interviews with diverse guests

to relatable stories that will resonate with your experiences, Decisions Decisions is going to be your go-to source for the open dialogue about what it truly means to love and connect in today's world. Get ready to reshape your understanding of relationships and embrace the freedom of authentic connections. Tune in and embrace the freedom of authentic connections. Tune in and join in the conversation. Listen to Decisions Decisions on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, everyone. Welcome to a special mini episode. You know, from the very beginning of the show, we've been trying to better understand and solve a pretty specific problem. In a lot of ways, I think this is one of the fundamental things this show has oriented around.

And it's really, how do we bridge the gap between what we know and what we do? We're all exposed to so many life-changing ideas every day. We consume so much information. We learn so many things, things that could benefit us in our spiritual lives, our personal lives, our business lives. But we in the world are over full of information. And this starts to become problematic because we end up knowing a lot, but not being able to translate a lot of it into our lives. And it's really by living these various ideas that we actually see transformation happen. It was one thing to know a lot about recovery for me, but it wasn't until I started living recovery, when I

started taking the principles and really putting them into practice and found a way to embody them, that my life really changed. And there are so many things that are like this. It's great to know all different types of exercise and all the benefits that it offers. But if we can't consistently exercise, we don't get those benefits. Same thing in our spiritual lives. We might know that being more present is really valuable. So we know it, but we don't do it. We don't know how to do it. And there are things that get in the way of this. And this is one of the fundamental things, like I said, we've been trying to solve. And a question I've been asking since very early on in the show. So I wanted to do a little series of episodes on why it's so hard to turn what we know into what we do, and really look at what some of the biggest obstacles in personal or spiritual growth are,

and how we can overcome them. And so this is the first episode of that series. So the first really big obstacle, I think, is that we think we have to make really big changes. We've talked about this one a lot on the show. We've talked about taking small steps, mini steps, tiny habits with BJ Fogg. We've covered this a lot of different ways and from a lot of different angles, but that's because it's so important. And there are two main problems that come from us thinking we have to make really big changes. The first is that if we think that in order for us to grow or change thinking we have to make really big changes. The first is that if we

think that in order for us to grow or change, we have to make really big changes. And we look at our lives and we don't see how we could make big changes. Then we conclude, well, I guess I'm not going to do anything because I can't figure out how to make the big change. If I think, well, I need to exercise an hour and a half a day to get in better shape, and I look at my life and I go, well, I don't see how that's going to happen. We don't do anything. A great example for this in my own life is if I think about this podcast. If I had in the beginning thought, well, I need to record 350 some episodes and we're going to need to send out hundreds of emails and all the blog posts and all that, I never would have gotten started. Instead, I just thought about, all right, well,

we're going to create a couple of podcasts, right? I kept it really small. And I just did sort of one thing at a time. And I'll come back to this podcast later as an example. But problem number two is that if we think we need to make big changes, is that we do get started on them, but we take on too much. And while this often starts in a very promising way, we can't keep it up and we get discouraged and quit. We see this a lot with New Year's resolutions. People are like, well, I'm going to start exercising an hour a day, writing in my journal for 30 minutes a day, meditating for 30 minutes a day, and I'm finally going to learn the guitar. And we start out doing all those things. And for the first few days, weeks, it goes pretty well. It's pretty exciting. But then life has a tendency to get in the way and those things start to fall apart and we get discouraged and we quit. So that's the second problem with thinking we have to make really big changes. So what works better? Well, what works better is to make small changes that are sustainable. I've used this example a few different times because I think it's a really good one. So I'll

use it again. And it's really about my meditation practice. I was an on again, off again, meditator for probably 20 plus years, meaning that I took a transcendental meditation class at 18. So I've been trying to build a consistent meditation practice since I was 18. And I was never successful at it, I would have periods of time of meditating consistently, but they wouldn't last. And the biggest problem was that for me, I just kept hearing, you need to meditate for 30 minutes a day. Now, this has changed a lot in more recent years, but go back 20 years, and most people in most books were saying, hey, you need to do it for 30 minutes. So I would say, okay, I'm going to meditate for 30 minutes. Well, 30 minutes was really hard for me. As I've jokingly said, it was kind of like the circus came to town when I sat down to meditate, and it was not the friendly circus. And so 30 minutes was really hard. So I would start out and I would do it, and I'd have a lot of motivation and I could stick with it, but it was too hard. And eventually I started to fall off, and then eventually I would quit. And that would be the end of that until, you know, a month would go by or two months would go by. I'd get re-inspired.

Oh, meditation is really important. I really want to do it. And I would try the same thing again. I got to do it for 30 minutes. And the same pattern repeated year after year. It was finally, I don't know, it's probably been about eight years now that I said, all right, enough of that. I'm going to try something totally different.

And I said, I'm going to meditate for three minutes a day, but I'm going to do it every day. And so that was really my focus, three minutes every day. And I was able to do that. That was easy enough to do. It fit in my schedule and it wasn't too mentally hard for me. And then once I did that, once I had that established, I was able to grow that to five minutes to seven minutes to 10 minutes. And now for the last eight years, I've been someone that meditates probably 95% of every day over the last seven or eight years. And most of the time I'm meditating around 30 minutes, right? So I got there, but I had to get there via small steps. The idea here is that little by little, a little becomes a lot. I think that's a Tanzanian proverb, and it's one of my favorites of all time. Little by little, a little becomes a lot.

We had a guest on quite some time ago. Her name was Michelle Seeger, and she researches why people stick with exercise. And she said, there's only one basic instruction, take any and every opportunity to move in any way possible at whatever speed you like for any amount of time. And I loved that. And she said, everything counts. And her point was, it adds up a little here, a little there, a little here, it all starts to add up. So take every opportunity to make a small change. One of my favorite books, the Tao Te Ching says the giant pine tree grows from a tiny sprout. The journey of a thousand miles starts from beneath your feet. So the changes we want to make start where we are in a really small way, but sustainable

way. To come back to this podcast, right? I think we've probably been listened to something like 18 million times by now. We've got 350 plus episodes. So we've created this body of work that's pretty big in a lot of ways. But the way we've done it is just day by day. Each day, I just read a little bit of the book for the interview I'm preparing for. Chris keeps editing week by week. We've just slowly built this thing, right? And if we'd started by setting out to

record 350 episodes, we would have been overwhelmed and we would have never started. There's another idea that applies in this way that I think is really interesting. And it's really if we think about water. At 211 degrees, water is hot. But at 212 degrees, it boils. And with boiling water comes steam. And steam can power a locomotive, right? That one extra degree makes the difference. So as we slowly aggregate these small changes over time, it can turn into something really big and powerful. Another phrase I love is little and often, right? Do something a little bit, but do it often. So I'd encourage you to look in your

own life right now. Are there changes that you want to make? And if so, how can you start small, very often much smaller than maybe you think, but where can you make a commitment to some small change that you can start doing and be consistent with. Certain elite trainers, when they're talking about training an athlete, they really focus on first consistency. So they say to themselves, how many days a week does this athlete need to be training? And they then work on getting the athlete training that many days per week. So let's say it's five days a week the athlete needs to be training. And then they say, well, how long does the athlete need to be training for? And so they start to slowly increase the duration. So they get them to the consistency

five days a week. Let's say they need to get to five days a week for three hours. They start at five days a week for a much smaller amount, get the consistency in, and then they slowly start to build the duration. And then finally, at the end, they then add in intensity and they start increasing the intensity. But often we try and start with the consistency, the duration and the intensity all turned to 11 for you Spinal Tap fans out there, right? So let's start smaller. And so one of the reasons to summarize that I think it's so hard to turn what we know into what we do is this barrier, which is that we think we need to make really big changes. And the antidote to that is to start with really small changes, focus on getting consistent, and then build from there.

I think, to be able to go from what we know to what we do, we've actually created a program that helps bridge this gap in our spiritual lives. And it's called the Spiritual Habits Program. It's all about how to turn what we know into what we do. And we're going to be opening that group program back up for enrollment in May. So stay tuned for more on that. If you're not already on our email list, I'd encourage you go to oneufeed.net and get signed up now so you hear all about the program. And then next week, we're going to talk about the next big challenge I see in terms of why we struggle to really put knowledge into practice. So I hope that was helpful. I appreciate you listening and I will see you next time.