Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - Benjamin Hardy on Breaking Habits and Changing Your Environment | Human Behavior | YAPClassic

Episode Date: July 27, 2022

Do you have trouble breaking old habits, creating new ones, or accomplishing your goals? If so, you might be relying on your willpower to make changes, and according to Benjamin Hardy, organizational psychologist and author, willpower doesn’t work! In order to create true, lasting change, you need to utilize your environment to support your goals.  In this #YAPClassic, Hala and Benjamin chat about key topics from his book Willpower Doesn’t Work, discuss the alternatives to willpower and how to commit to something, share how you can alter your surroundings to help you make changes, dive into the importance of morning rituals, and talk about how to get into a peak state.  Topics Include:  - What motivated him to write Willpower Doesn't Work  - Traditional beliefs behind willpower  - Why does willpower suck?  - Alternatives to willpower and how to commit to something  - Social pressure and making it public  - Importance of investing in your goals  - How to alter environment to help accomplish your goals  - How to optimize primary and secondary connections - Fostering high stress and high recovery environments  - Playing roles in different situations  - Importance of morning rituals and how to get into peak state - Ben’s recommendation for millennials  - And other topics…  Dr. Benjamin Hardy is an organizational psychologist, author, and the world’s leading expert on the application of the Future Self science. His books have sold hundreds of thousands of copies, and his blogs have been read by hundreds of millions. He’s published six books, Willpower Doesn't Work, Personality Isn't Permanent, Who Not How, The Gap and the Gain, Be Your Future Self Now, and 10X is Easier than 2X.  Sponsored By: ClickUp - Sign up today at ClickUp.com and use codeUse code YAP to get 15% off ClickUp's massive Unlimited Plan for a year! Shopify - Go to shopify.com/profiting, for a FREE fourteen-day trial and get full access to Shopify’s entire suite of features Resources Mentioned: YAP Episode #7: Willpower Sucks, Just Change Your Environment: https://www.youngandprofiting.com/7-willpower-sucks-just-change-your-environment-with-benjamin-hardy/  YAP Episode #154: Social Entrepreneurship with Mark Batterson: https://youngandprofiting.com/154-social-entrepreneurship-with-mark-batterson/  Benjamin’s Website: https://benjaminhardy.com/  Benjamin’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjaminhardy88/  Benjamin’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/benjamin_hardy_phd/  Benjamin’s YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC07WXGmXVbNrv3VMOp5DvDw  Benjamin’s Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/benjaminhardy88/  Benjamin’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/BenjaminPHardy  Connect with Young and Profiting: Hala’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/htaha/     Hala’s Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/yapwithhala/     Hala’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/yapwithhala  Clubhouse: https://www.clubhouse.com/@halataha   Website: https://www.youngandprofiting.com/  Text Hala: https://youngandprofiting.co/TextHala or text “YAP” to 28046

You're listening to Yap, Young and Profiting Podcast, a place where you can listen, learn, and profit. Welcome to the show. I'm your host, Halitaha, and on Young and Profiting Podcast, we investigate a new topic each week and interview some of the brightest minds in the world. My goal is to turn their wisdom into actionable advice that you can use in your everyday life, no matter your age, profession, or industry. There's no fluff on this podcast, and that's on purpose. I'm here to uncover value from my guests by doing the proper research and asking the right questions.

If you're new to the show, we've chatted with the likes of ex-FBI agents, real estate moguls, self-made billionaires, CEOs, and best-selling authors. Our subject matter ranges from enhancing productivity, how to gain influence, the art of entrepreneurship, and more. If you're smart and like to continually improve yourself, hit this event. button because you'll love it here at Young and Profiting Podcast. Today on Yap, we're chatting with Dr. Benjamin Hardy. Ben is an organizational psychologist and the author of six books, including the bestseller, Willpower Doesn't Work. Benjamin's blogs have been read by over 100 million people and they've been featured in the Harvard Business Review, the New York Times, Forbes, Fortune, CNBC, and so many more.

And from 2015 to 2018, Ben was the number one writer in the world on Medium.com. This episode is the Yap classic taken from number seven, which was recorded back in September of 2018. Four years ago, back when I was just a baby podcaster, number seven, and somehow I snagged one of the top productivity experts in the world. And this conversation is still super relevant and helpful today. That's the beauty of Yap. It's generally evergreen content so you can find relevant value, no matter if it's episode number three or episode number 300.

And as we're in the middle of summer now, I thought it was the perfect time to revisit this conversation with Ben Hardy. So you guys can get inspired and encouraged to keep pursuing your goals and building new healthy behaviors. It is not too late to accomplish your goals in 2022. In this episode, Benjamin argues that the key to creating positive change is through enriching our environments rather than depending on sheer willpower. Benjamin tells us why willpower sucks and he gives us an alternative

tactic for changing our behaviors. We chat about the importance of a morning ritual and how to get into peak states, and Benjamin shares why it's crucial to foster environments with high stress and high recovery. If you're having trouble accomplishing your goals or breaking bad habits, get ready to have your mind blown because Benjamin is about to tell you the secrets to getting all that you want. So why did you become interested in helping people achieve their goals and what motivated you to write your book? Willpower doesn't work. So, The reason I got motivated to write this book is because I've studied psychology for a long time. I've studied self-improvement. I love it all. And basically, I thought that a lot of the things that were being written were a little overly simplified.

Like, you know, I'm a huge believer in obviously having a positive attitude, having positive thoughts and things like that. But my experience being a foster parent and even studying psychology and even my own experience kind of made me really think a little bit more, like from a first principal's perspective. of like where does the positive mindset come from? You know, for most people, it's not instinctive. It has to be trained. Like so for myself when we were foster parents, and we've recently adopted these kids, we've had them for going on four years,

but they came from a really bad environment. They didn't have access to a lot of opportunity and their parents were very neglectful and on drugs. And so, you know, when we get these kids and we put them in our environment, they all of a sudden have to adapt to something totally different. You know, there's these two pretty highly educated people in a pretty affluent neighborhood,

who are super invested in them and who are giving them energy and attention, giving them good food, like wanting to get them extracurricular activities. Like all of a sudden, you know, like, you can't actually totally comprehend what that shift would be like for them. But I know what it was like for me because we had never been parents before. And all of a sudden we were dealing with challenges, problems, things like that that we had never had to deal with before. And so, well, I wrote it for two reasons.

I wrote it for one to say that a lot of people talk about willpower and discipline and are not bad ideas, but they're not really full pictures. Like my kids, for example, if they had stayed in their prior environment, you know, they might have had a lot of grit and willpower, but they just lacked options. They didn't really have a lot of choice. And then when you put them in this new environment, all of a sudden a whole new world is open up to them, where change becomes a lot more organic. It's kind of like, you know, fruits and vegetables. Like you can't grow certain fruits and vegetables in bad terrain. You have to have the right soil, the right sunlight, things like that. And so I started just think about like what about the circumstances that allow growth to happen. And then I started

studying addiction and things like that because obviously as, you know, I had mentioned before in my past, there was a lot of addiction in my environment growing up. And, you know, there's a lot of people in my world who are very close to me, who I love, who I've watched fail over and over when it comes to trying to overcome addiction. And if you really study addiction, you realize that you really can't overcome an addiction through willpower. It's the worst approach. It's trying to fight a silent battle. It's trying to do it all by yourself. And the only way really out of an addiction, as they say is through connection. It's through getting help with other people,

through being vulnerable, through getting a supportive accountability-based environment. And so those are a lot of the reasons why I wrote the book was because I was sick of hearing people trying to grit their way to change when you really can't do it that way. You need an environment that supports you and you need an environment that helps you move forward.

Cool. Well, I really look forward to picking your brain on this. How about we start with some context to help our listeners understand what traditionally psychologists and scientists have said about willpower. Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, totally. So, I mean, willpower traditionally, it is a muscle. It's viewed as something that the more you use it, the more it goes away. Like another definition of willpower is decision

fatigue. So, you know, some people who have like, you know, there's lots of blog posts and things that were popularized for a while talking about Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg and the fact they wear like the same clothes every day. They did that because of this concept of decision fatigue, is basically willpower. And it's this idea that if you make too many decisions, it wears you down. And so people who have a lot of things to do, such as CEOs or entrepreneurs or people who are pursuing big goals, they don't want to wear their mind down with menial things such as like where they're going to wear that day. So they try to optimize or systemize as much of their life as possible to remove the decision-making component so that they can use their mind to actually

make bigger decisions. So that's kind of like where the traditional perspective. And I actually agree with it, view of willpower is. In your book, you state that willpower is nothing more than a dangerous fad that's bound to lead to failure, or maybe it was a medium post. So in your opinion, why does willpower suck so much? And why do you think people resort to using willpower to achieve their goals? So willpower, willpower sucks for a lot of reasons. First off, willpower is clearly unsustainable. It runs out. So if you're using willpower, it's for a short-term thing. And so because of the fact that it's unsustainable, it clearly should not be a first approach.

There should be better ways of doing things. So I'm just going to give a few different angles on why willpower is a bad perspective. But I'll start with the fact that just we live now in a very global world. We live in a world that's changing so fast, that willpower is kind of like an old model. Like because things are changing so fast,

because we have so many options and choices now, our quote-unquote decision fatigue wears out very fast. Rather than trying to rely on willpower in this environment, it's a lot better to actually remove as many options as possible. And so like there's a really good quote from Dr. Marshall Goldsmith. And he wrote the book Triggers. In the book, he said, if we do not create and control our environment, our environment creates and controls us. And that's basically what's happened for most people in the world today. Most people are addicted to technology, to, whether it be stimulants, like caffeine, huge, like, rates, almost everyone drinks caffeine every single day, even though it's, like, not necessary.

Unhealthy food, technology, work. Like, there's just, in general, and even things like depression, like all these things are on the rise. And it's because the state of our environment is just in a huge state of flux. You know, everything's changing so fast. And these things are benefits. I mean, all the amazing options, the fact that you and I can talk over the Internet. it's amazing but the only way to like actually thrive in environments like this is to systematically remove most of the options that are mostly distractions you know like a very

simple example is just if you don't want to subconsciously and out of habit dopamine seeking that your body is craving open up your cell phone and just mindlessly go through social media like just delete the app like basically it's making one decision so that you don't have to think about it again. Like that's like the new model is make one decision rather than rely on willpower. So like make one decision to change your environment so that you don't have to be influenced in a negative way. That's one reason why willpower sucks. It's just it just burned too fast in an environment is stimulating as this. Another reason that willpower is just kind of, you know, if you really like drill down and ask yourself, why does willpower exist in the first place?

A lot of it's because you haven't actually made the decision. Like willpower in a lot of ways reflects internal conflict. You're not actually sure what you want. I'll just give an example. I myself, and I have no judgment towards anyone who does this, but I don't drink alcohol. Like, it's just not interesting to me. And it literally takes zero willpower for me to not drink alcohol. It's not a part of who I am. It's not interesting to me. I don't have an environment that would even, like obviously I'm around people. I've got friends, family who drink, but I'm rarely in an environment where it's there. It's just not a part of my life. And it has zero interest to me. Therefore, it takes zero willpower. And I know that some people, obviously, there's,

certain things in my life that do require willpower because I haven't set things up and I haven't actually made firm decisions and commitments. But the actual Greek definition or root of the word decision is to cut off alternatives. And so if a person is relying on willpower, it's because they actually haven't truly made a decision about what they want. Like they're still unclear. They're like, I kind of want to be in really good shape, but I also really want to eat ice cream every day. And so they're torn between two things and they're not really clear. Once you actually make a decision and you're firm on that, then like the other options go out the door. And then your job is to create the environment that facilitates that decision, the support, the help. So those are a few

reasons why if you're relying on willpower, your environment is coming against you and also you yourself are not really clear on what's going on. So if willpower doesn't work at all, what does work and And what do we need to do to bypass the need for willpower and truly commit to something? Yeah, absolutely. I would say there's two core things. You have to make decisions and you have to create environments that facilitate those decisions. So like as Marshall Goldsmith said, he said, you know, if you do not create and control your environment, then it will create and control you. So the first step, you know, is changing what's coming in.

Zig Zigler, who's a famous pop psychologist in a lot of ways, motivation. motivational speaker, he said your input shapes your outlook and your outlook shapes your output. Basically what he's saying is your input, the things that are coming in, the information you're consuming, the books you're reading, the people you're around, the food, you're eating, the music you're listening to. All those inputs coming in are influencing your outlook on the world and your behavior. And your outlook determines your behavior and your outputs. And so I think that a really key just initial step for people is mindfulness. mindfulness. Mindfulness is really an awareness of what's going on around you and how it impacts you. So being

mindful of the fact that you're being influenced by things, by the stuff in your newsfeed, by the people around you, by your upbringing, you're being influenced. And so then you have to ask yourself, like, is this really influencing me in the way that I want to? Am I becoming the person I want to be? Am I behaving? Is my environment reflective of who I really want to be? And if not, then you've got to start making different decisions and then changing those inputs to determine what you actually want to get out of life. And so true decision making, if it's true, like if it's a real decision, not just a preference, it means that you absolutely will change your external circumstances to make that decision happen. So at the most basic level, I mean, and I can give you obviously a lot of

strategies if you want, happy to do it. There's lots in the book. But really, what it comes down to is making real decisions and then creating an environment that actually allows those decisions to be real, not just something that's in your head and not just something that you say you want to do. It's like, no, if you will do it, you have to actually go out in the world and make it happen. So let's talk about those strategies. One of them I found really interesting was making them public. Can you talk about social pressure and how announcing something and making it public can help us commit to a goal? Yeah, totally. So in the book I talk about John Burke, and he's a really good friend. He's a fun guy. he's a piano player in Atlanta, Georgia.

And he's a super creative guy, 29 years old. He's pumped out lots of different albums. I think he's got eight or nine albums that he's composed and recorded. One of them was nominated for an Emmy. But he uses social pressure a lot. He actually has a really good system that kind of goes through a lot of what I would call forcing functions or basically just strategic ways in which you can get yourself to do things. but how he uses social pressure is whenever he creates a new album

he tells his fans that he's working on it and that it's going to be out on a specific date he says that it really matters to him what his fans think about him and so when he tells him that something's going to come out soon that kind of puts the pressure on him to actually produce it and he does that on purpose he publicly commit to his audience whether that be on social media or Facebook or through email or at concerts that he's got a new project coming out and that it's going to be out and he tells them when it's going to be out even though he hasn't even completed it or finished it or maybe even start working on it.

He does that so that it will actually force himself to do it in a lot of ways because now people are expecting it. I actually do that personally too. Even with starting this podcast, I had announced it as a New Year's resolution. I didn't even start yet, but just purposely to make sure that I had the fire under me to get it done. Yeah, the quote that is really good is just pressure can bust pipes or can make a diamond, you know, but in my opinion, creating a little bit of social pressure just to get yourself to do what you really want to do internally anyways, why wouldn't you do it? You know, I mean, it's something that you already want to do, so why not just add a little bit of motivational fire? Hold tight, everyone. Let's take a quick break and hear from our sponsors.

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Learn how you can get more out of your dot com from a Framer specialist or get started building for free today at Framer.com slash profiting for 30% off a Framer pro annual plan. That's 30% off in 2026. Again, that's framer.com slash profiting for 30% off. Framer.com slash profiting. Rules and restrictions apply. And how about investing up front and the importance of investing in your goals? Yeah, this is a huge one. This is like one of, in my opinion, this brings the two worlds together as far as making decisions and changing your environment. Because investing financially into your goals, it changes your psychology. It changes your psychology. Like when you become invested in something, you have ownership over it. And when you have

ownership over something, you become very committed to it. That's a concept called sunk cost bias. And a lot of people look at it from the negative. They say, you know, if you're too invested in something, you're going to stay committed to it long after, you should. But for someone who has a hard time committing in general or who, you know, has a hard time making decisions in the first place, starting to invest your money into something, let's just say, the podcast, buying a microphone or, you know, getting some form of mentoring or joining a gym and getting a personal trainer, like actually paying money and investing. It in a lot of ways solidifies the decision. And I spent a lot of time studying this in my PhD research. I studied entrepreneurs and want to be

entrepreneurs and I wanted to know the difference. And I interviewed a ton of them. You know, and these are people, the wannabes, for example, these are people who said they really wanted to be entrepreneurs, but they didn't define themselves as one. They didn't see themselves. truly as an entrepreneur, their identity hadn't gone through a shift. They were like, that's something I want to be, but that's not what I am. They were still an outsider of what they wanted to be, whereas, you know, actual people who are entrepreneurs, they saw that as their identity. And I asked, well, how did you make that shift? What was that transition? And the transition almost always involved some form of financial investment where they started investing money

into their goals. They started actually taking on risk and then having to kind of rise to the risks that they created, you know, having to rise and produce and become. And they started behaving in ways towards that goal. And when you start behaving towards a goal, your identity starts to change. Because your personality and your identity, they follow your behavior. So when you start behaving in a certain way, you start to see yourself differently. That idea is called self-signaling in psychology. But basically, if you start acting in a different way, you're going to start to see yourself in a different way. And so that was kind of the big shift. And you can apply this idea in in amazing ways. You know, when I first started blogging, it started really small.

It started by, obviously, like, buying a domain name, you know, Benjamin Hardy.com. That was an $800 investment in my wife. We had to actually ask ourselves, like, is this something I'm actually going to do or is this just some pipe dream, you know, or am I just, like, am I actually going to do this or am I wasting $800? And so I convinced her that, like, this is something I really want to do. And in the investment itself, I think in a lot of ways is what helped me maintain commitment and then just investing further, buying an online course, learning how to write, hiring coaches,

people who had successfully written blogs, like paying for 30 minutes of their time, maybe like $100 or $200 just to like have a conversation. Like those investments, although not huge, when you watch yourself perform those type of behaviors, you have these aha moments where you're like, wow, I'm actually doing this thing. Like, wow, like this is actually, you know,

in your case, for example, like at some point, you know, you start telling people you're going to do a podcast. Like now you're actually witnessing yourself having a conversation you've got a recorder, you know, you're putting stuff out. So it's really important to have those moments where you're actually watching yourself do things that are goal-oriented. And then, you know, you can stretch the idea really far where it's like, you know, there's certain environments that are very exclusive, you know, whether they be like mastermind groups, which I talk about in the book. You know, I talk about a group called Genius Network, which is one that I was very intrigued by when I first heard

about it like four years ago. Because my aunt, Jane, who is an awesome business owner, she joined to Genius Network, which costs $25,000 a year to be a part of. It's a very exclusive entrepreneurial mastermind group run by Joe Polish. And what was interesting is, you know, she was freaked out, obviously, because $25,000 is an enormous investment for a one year, basically, opportunity to be in a group. But what I watched when I saw her, and this was back in 2014, I watched her make some huge shifts.

And it was because of the type of people that she was around and the things that she was learning and the fact that she had invested so. huge into her own goals. I mean, when you invest that big into your dreams, you're pretty much telling yourself that I'm worth it, that I really believe in it. Like, there's a really cool idea in psychology. It comes from Dr. David Hawkins. He wrote a book called Letting Go. But he basically said that your subconscious mind will only allow you to have what you believe you deserve. So like he said, if you believe you deserve poverty, then that's what you're going to have. And so what's really cool when you make a big decision or like an investment in yourself or even

small investments in yourself is what you're doing is you're telling your subconscious mind that you deserve more. You're telling your subconscious mind you can have more. And so that's what I saw in my aunt is when she made this huge investment, then she was surrounded by these people who were succeeding at a level way higher than she was used to succeeding. You know, you become the product of the five people you spend the most time with. I just saw her transform. And that had a huge impact on me like four years ago. And so I was like, I made the kind of initial commitment in my mind. You know, made the decision that I'm going to learn how to get into environments like that. I'm going to learn how to invest in myself that big and I'm going to learn how to be able to contribute in groups like

that. And that's what I've learned how to do on multiple levels. And I can just definitely attest, you know, like Dan Sullivan's the founder of strategic coach. And he said, when you sign a check, like a check like this where you join a group or when you invest in yourself in some way, all of a sudden you start to get all these big ideas. You start to learn new things, you know, because you've already made the commitment. And once you've made the commitment, the decision's already been made. And therefore, you don't have to think about or wonder about what you're going to do anymore. I call it the point of no return. And at that level, all of a sudden, your motivation shifts. You're no longer pushing. You're no longer using willpower. You're actually being pulled forward.

And all of a sudden, you just unblock the roadblocks. And all of a sudden, all the ideas and inspiration start coming and you start thinking bigger. And so that's some of why investment is so key. So let's focus on environment because I feel like that's really one of your big tenants in your book is to remove and alter anything in your environment that opposes your commitments. Can you talk about how we should do that and how we should kind of set limiting options to make sure that we accomplish our goals? Yeah, I mean, you got to be aware of what influences you. Jason Freed, he's the founder of Basecamp, which is a multi-billion dollar company. He said that he really limits what influences him. because he doesn't really want to be influenced by that much.

So basically what he's saying is he realizes that most of the stuff out there is garbage. You know, Greg McKeown in the book, Essentialism, said that almost everything is irrelevant. And so I think first step is just realizing that almost everything in the world on the internet is a distraction. And so you want to limit all of that stuff. You know, there's a really good book, Good to Great. And he says, Good is the Enemy of Great. And so I think the first step is just removing bad options.

removing even good options so that you can save time for the best. And, you know, what does that look like? It includes food, you know, books, information. I mean, just actually raising your standards for what's actually in your life. Like, rather than trying to exert willpower to not eat big crap in your fridge, like, just get rid of it. You know, just like literally remove it. Make one decision so that you don't have to drag your feet and think about it all day. I mean, that's a big one.

It's just removing negative influence or removing substance. par influence. That could include people who are dragging you down. It could include just information, media, decision, you know, even places, places that trigger you into reverting back to perhaps unhealthy behaviors. I mean, that's just

like 101. It's just remove the negative. And then being strategic about what's going to happen when you're in an environment where you may be triggered. You know, so there's an idea in psychology called implementation intentions. And basically what it is is, you know, you

want to pre-plan for the worst-case scenarios because they're going to come up. You want to have a plan in place so that when you get triggered to self-sabotage, you have a game plan. Basically, it's planning for failure. It's just, it's thinking about the process, but it's really easy. Actually, you just create if-then scenarios. And you're very specific. It's like, if this happens, then I'm going to do this. You know, and in the book I talk about, I used to always, like, when I walked into my kitchen, just I had a bad habit, just like craving sweet, you know, and A lot of it was just, that was just how our environment was set up. That's where I was, and this was years ago.

But what I did just using this strategy was whenever I walked in the kitchen and if I ever got triggered or just had the desire, because when you walk into an environment, generally you're triggered subconsciously to want something or do something. You know, you feel a certain way based on the places you go. But every time I would walk in and if I had the thought, like that I wanted to eat something sweet out of habit, I would just drop and do like 20 pushups. So it's like if I walk into the kitchen and get triggered to do something, in this case, eat a cookie or whatever, eat chocolate chips, then I'm going to do 20 pushups and grab a cup of water. Basically, what this does is it trains you to eventually develop the new habit. Basically, you create a new trigger so that whenever I walk in the kitchen now, rather than being triggered to eat chocolate chips, I'm triggered to drink water and do push-ups.

You basically just shift the pattern subconsciously, and it gives you enough time, especially in the beginning, to distract yourself. Because in a lot of ways, when you get triggered to do something, whether it's check your smartphone, whether it's, you know, for some people who have heavy addictions to go get drunk or whatever. In a lot of ways, you just need a few minutes to distract yourself, to divert your attention, and focus on something else. Just for a few minutes and the craving will go away. That's why they talk in AA Alcoholics Anonymous about having, like, a sponsor. So like if you get triggered and like a person's like having this intense craving, they call someone who just helps distract them and helps them

think about something else, refocus on their goals. You can get good at that. I mean, those are a couple strategies. It seems relatively straightforward to remove things in our physical environment, but you mentioned distancing yourself from negative influences in terms of people. And you also mentioned you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. And in your book, you mentioned that the people your friends are friends with also impact you too. Can you talk about primary and secondary connections and how we should. should aim to optimize that part of our lives? Yeah, the quote is very popular by Jim Rohn. You know, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with, which is true. But yeah,

that would be considered a primary connection. A secondary connection is who are your friends' friends? Because, you know, you may be influenced by your friends, but who are your friends influenced by? Because your friends aren't always with you, clearly, and they're being influenced by other people. And so you want to think about not only who are your friends, but where are your friends going? you know, what are your friends being influenced by? Like, you know, what's cool about this is that if you think about the idea that you're connected to everyone in the world through like seven degrees of connection,

you know what I mean? But if you think about it, like there's certain people in your world who are connected to people who maybe you want to be connected to, right? You may really want to get in touch with someone. And this is actually really a strategy in business. If you want to get to someone who's really hard to get access to, you know, but they may have friends or someone who's not very hard to get access to. Well, how do you become friends with that person?

You know, and obviously this is like a very strategic approach, but, you know, in real simple terms of like, you want your friends to be powerful and to have a positive impact. And I think generally, you know, there's a quote that basically says like attracts like, but generally if you're around positive people, they're probably around positive people. So something else I just wanted to touch on is in your book, you mentioned creating environments that have a lot of high stress and high recovery. Can you talk about the difference between the two and why they're important? Yeah, definitely.

So basically, in order to grow to get good at something, like let's just say in fitness, for example, in order to get stronger, you have to have stress on yourself. You know, to grow a muscle, you have to put a lot of stress on it. But where the actual growth occurs is actually during recovery while you're asleep. The same is true with your brain. You know, you stress it out through learning or through some, you know, form of tasks, but then you actually need to let it recover.

Like without sleep, for example, your brain, it doesn't process memories and things as well. And so the idea is just simple, is that you need to really stress your system and you need to really recover your system. And the problem in today's world is that that rarely happens. The situation hasn't been set up for such. So most people are not really, you know, on a regular basis, rising to really hard, challenges and difficulties at work. For the most part, they're not paid based on performance.

They're paid based on just time and effort, you know? And so because of that, there's a lot of room for being distracted. There's a lot of room for just doing this or that. There's not a lot of true intense stress. And I'm talking about like you stress, which is positive stress. And even in people who go to the gym, even though they're in that environment, they haven't situated themselves where they're actually pushing themselves and going farther and farther in a lot of ways.

they're just repeating the routine that they did yesterday. And so, you know, the idea of recovery, like very few people truly allow themselves to recover. And recovery should be a daily thing, but it also should be a regular thing where you go a lot deeper into the recovery. So there's a lot of really good ideas around the concept of like sabbaticals nowadays

where, like, there's a really good TED talk about a guy. And if you just, like, Googled TED Talk sabbatical, you'd find it. But there's a really famous artist. who lives in New York. And every seven years, he leaves for an entire year, travels the world, doesn't work.

He closes his studio and just totally blisses out, just travels and just relaxes, doesn't do any work. During that one year, he gets all of his best creative ideas because he's actually in a state of relaxation, which is generally required for creativity.

It's why people get creative ideas in the shower or when they're on the commute. It's like most good creative ideas happen in a state of recovery and relaxation. And so, you know, there's an idea in psychology called psychological detachment from work. And basically what it means is that if you don't turn off mentally, physically, spiritually, emotionally from work, you'll have a really hard time attaching to work when you get there. You won't be fully in a flow state. You won't be fully engaged because you're not really engaged anywhere else.

And Dan Sullivan has a good quote, but basically it's wherever you are, that's where you should be. So the idea is, well, how do you set up environments? you set up a situation so that you're under high pressure and actually growing and stretching. And then how do you set up environments where you can totally unplug and just be where you are and actually recover and just be present with your loved ones? I think that that's kind of key is figuring out how to set those two things up. And in the book I explain, you know, the flow triggers or the situational factors. But basically in order to have a high stress environment, there needs to be difficulty,

meaning you're doing stuff that's above your skill level. You need to be doing new things, novelty. Like novelty and newness is really good for being engaged where you're at. Obviously, you need to eliminate distractions. You know, having a short timeline is really good. You know, like, obviously, if you have a short timeline, then you're probably more focused. And just like the more of these types of things you can create for yourself,

you know, being paid based on performance, for example, rather than just time punched on the clock. like where your behavior actually matters. The more of those things you can do, like collaborating and working with other people, and then just actually having hard boundaries, giving yourself boundaries and giving yourself and the other people in your life the respect

of totally unplugging, leaving your cell phone in your car, or not bringing it home with you, like actually just trusting that everything's going to be okay, the universe is going to be all right, and when you get back, you can get back to work tomorrow and just leave it alone

and go home and just be home, and just engage with the other components of your life and actually have a life. And it's so good for creativity and so good for work. Let's hold that thought and take a quick break with our sponsors. Hello, Yap Gang. I know my young improfiting listeners want bigger businesses and a better life. And the New Year is the perfect moment to reset and commit to your growth. But let's be real.

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That's Shopify.com slash profiting. Yeah, fam, hear your first. This new year with Shopify by your side. Something else I want to touch on is the different roles that. people play. So in your book, you go into how based on the environment, you play different roles. Can you talk about that and you can talk about how, if it's possible to redefine our roles in a certain environment that we have? So obviously, we all play roles in the various situations we're in. You know, you can go in one situation from sitting in class and being a student.

to going into a different class and being the teacher or, you know, in my case, for example, especially in my PhD program, I would go from sitting in class and being a student to going home and being dad. You know, like those are two different roles. And in those roles, I operate differently, right? So who you are in one situation is not who you are in a different situation because it's actually the relationship between things that is the reality. So, for example, the relationship between me and my teacher creates the roles and

that relationship between us, it defines us. So in that situation, you know, there's a relationship between us. I'm the student. He's the teacher. And so within that relationship, I have certain possibilities, opportunities. I behave in a certain way. I feel a certain way. And then when I go home, the context changes. You know, and all of a sudden, you know, the relationship between me and my child is that, like, they see me as dad. And from that role, I then act in a different place. What's really cool, though, to realize is that in a lot of ways, most people are very reactive about the roles that they're in. They're not proactive about choosing their roles in life. So some people are like a victim to the situations they've been in.

They don't proactively decide what role they will play. And I think when you start to really learn that you have a lot more creative control over your life, you get to design the roles that you're in. It's just like acting and improv. You know, like you get to decide what role do I actually want to play in the situation? Is the role that I've been in effective or is it been limiting? And you can start to design the roles that you're in. I think it's very freeing to realize, like, if you've been acting a certain way, it's not because that's who you are.

It's because you've been assuming a role. And you can change that role. In a lot of ways, the role is a story that you've told yourself about the situation. And you don't have to live in that role. You can change the role. And when you do, you can act in a different way. You know, you've got a lot more freedom to act if you decide you want to play a different part in a situation. It's just taking a lot more control and responsibility over your life.

So moving on to you other gems that you put out there in the world, something really popular you have is a morning ritual and getting into peak state. Can you describe that to our listeners? Yeah, absolutely. So basically the idea is really simple. You know, first thing in the morning, you don't want to be distracted and react. active to the addictions in the environment, such as smartphones and things like that, you actually want to give yourself space to think about what you want to do that day, who you want to be,

what you want to do big picture and long term. And so most people, their day is a repeat of the past. They wake up, they get caught into their subconscious loops, whether that be through smartphones or through just the foods they eat or through their schedule and their routine, and they just, they live a pretty predictable life. But if you want to create a life from your future rather than from your past, you have to give yourself the space to actually think about that. And so that's, I think, in my opinion, the core reason for having a morning routine. Obviously, in the morning routine, you can actually start behaving towards that future as well, and then you can start creating it.

You can also do things like fitness and do those things which are more important than urgent. But the idea of getting yourself into a peak state is really connected to this idea and self-improvement called be, then do, then have. And basically what it means is that in order to have something, you have to first be that thing. You have to be and then you have to do and then you have to act. And so you want to give yourself space. And in the book, I talk a lot about journaling. You know, obviously there's a lot written to the idea of writing down your goals.

But writing down your goals and visualizing them has to also include really truly experiencing the emotion of what it would be like and feel like to have achieved those goals. Like that's what true being feels like. You actually want to assume there's a really good quote from, I forget his last name, Neville something. And that might even be his last name. But he said, assume the feeling of your wish fulfilled. Basically, you know, you want to ponder, meditate, write about what you're trying to accomplish. And you want to feel, feel gratitude, feel powerful emotions about what it would actually be like to have that.

And then believe it. And what's cool is is that your brain doesn't actually know the difference between true experience versus visualized and emotional imagination. Albert Einstein said that imagination is more important than knowledge. It's far more powerful than knowledge. And it can stimulate your brain the same way. And so when you give yourself space in the morning to write about your goals, you know, and you can obviously work out. And you put yourself into the emotional place of the future you want to create. Then you act from that future.

You be, and then you do. you start acting from the future you want to have versus acting the same way you did yesterday. That creates what I would call peak state because you're in this flow where you're living intentionally and you're living on purpose. And it just, it feels a lot better than just doing what you're doing because that's how things have been done. And obviously there's a lot of, a lot that comes with acting with intention. Like when you start acting in new ways, it can create a lot of uncertainty because when you act in new ways,

it's slightly unpredictable. There's a reason why people act the same way every day is because it's predictable and they like their lives to be predictable. Our brains seek prediction. But when you do something new, you've stepped out of those boundaries. You've stepped out of the realm of like,

oh, I know exactly how this is going to turn out. And it feels different. But what that feeling is, even though it's uncertainty, is that it's actually being alive. Like it's actually doing something new like you did when you were a kid where you didn't actually know

exactly what would happen, but you were okay with that. And that is really good for the brain, and it's really good for the body, and it's just a great way to live. And it's better to live that way with intention, even though you don't exactly know how it's going to turn out, than being reactive and just doing the same thing you did before. Before we go, what is one thing you would recommend a millennial change after listening to this show? If you had one thing to recommend a millennial to change? I would say, probably take a hard look at like what's going on around you and if it really matches with the person you kind of see yourself as or see yourself wanting to be and then just owning the fact that

you know your environment is is a vehicle and it's taking you a direction and that includes the friends you have the people you listen to the things you put in your body like those things are a vehicle taking you somewhere and willpower is not going to work in that situation because the environment's just stronger than you. You're in the environment. It's like, you know, you're inside the jar. And so rather than trying to fight against the jar, you know, change it. And, you know, you can deploy a lot of the strategies we talked about in this book,

making decisions, changing to having more positive influence, investing in yourself, seeking mentorship. So I would just say hyper awareness of what's going on around you and the fact that it's taking you somewhere. And then if you want to do something about it, making strong, powerful decisions. There you have it, Yap fam. Willpower sucks. Let's face it, if you want to make any permanent change in your life, willpower is not

going to be the thing that gets you there. Personal progress and achieving success is best approached like you're overcoming addiction. May sound extreme, but literally, that is what you're doing. As human beings, we all have different addictions. Maybe you're addicted to food. Maybe you're addicted to social media or TV or porn or weed. But if you're serious about making the change,

that you want, willpower won't be enough. In fact, my idea that willpower is what's holding you back. Ben Hardy says that if you're relying on willpower to make a change, it's because you haven't made up your mind that this goal or new behavior is something that you actually want. You have internal conflicts and you actually haven't committed to what you're going to do. That is the writing on the wall. If you're required to exert willpower to do something, there's an obvious internal conflict. You want to eat the cookie, but you also want to be healthy. Environment versus your goal. Are you going to be strong this time and resist? Or are you going to cave in and crumble just like the damn cookie that you want to eat? To be super clear, if you're relying on willpower,

then you don't know what you want, unless you're internally conflicted, and you haven't committed to something or created conditions that facilitate your commitment. There's this famous quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson. And he goes, once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen. Take heed young improfitors to the wise Ralph Waldo Emerson. Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen. So are you serious about making a change and breaking your addiction to whatever that is? Or are you just dreaming?

Are you still on the fence? Or have you actually decided? Until you decide you'll be required to use willpower. power and will continue to make minimal progress. The formula is, according to Ben Hardy, you've got to decide that this goal or behavior is something that you really want, then you have to commit to it, and then you have to use your environment to set you up for success. When it comes to achieving goals, commitment involves things like investing up front, paying some money for a course, right? Investing using actually dollars, putting your money

where your mouth is, that's the saying. Make it public. right put it up on social media announced it to your coworkers that's what i did for young and profiting podcast i literally announced it to my coworkers and then i would look like i had egg on my face if i didn't make it happen so i put it on lincoln and announce it to my co-workers and then within six months i had a podcast and you set a timeline when you're making it public you say by xyz date i'm doing this right set a timeline set a deadline and then also you can install different forms of feedback and accountability having an accountability buddy is really helpful. And lastly, this is key.

This might be the most important part. You want to remove or alter everything in your environment that opposes your commitment, right? So that is the special step there. That is a step that Ben stresses. Your environment is way more powerful than your willpower. So use it to your advantage. Commitment means that you're building external defense systems around your goals. You're going to set up yourself for success.

You're going to prepare and you're not going to leave anything. up to chance. You want your environment to work for you, not against you. So you need to proactively remove anything destructive in terms of your environment from your life. That could include negative friends, right? You can include junk food, deleting distracting social apps, whatever it is. You want to alter your environment, the things that are getting in the way of your success. And the bottom line is that in order to make lasting change, everything around you needs to be in alignment with your decision. That is how you commit. You need to create the right conditions and remove the drugs from your addiction from the equation. You can't eat the cookie if the cookie does not exist. So you want to

think about what you want and you want to think about what is that drug to your addiction and how can you remove it from the equation. Your environment is more powerful than your internal resolve. Your environment is more powerful than your willpower. And as a human being, we always take the form of our environments that we put ourselves in. This is how evolution works. We adapt to environments. That has been scientifically proven. And today's evolution involves purposely choosing or creating environments that mold us

into the person we want to become. So if you want to be a successful entrepreneur, hang out with successful entrepreneurs. And if you don't have access to them, listen to them on podcasts like mine. And if you want to lose weight, hang out with friends who enjoy a healthy lifestyle and stop hanging out with the ones that don't, right? You want to drop that wine habit? Get rid of all the wine in your closet. Toss it out. You want to stop being a loser? Stop hanging out with loser friends. One step at a time, though, because I know that it's easier said than done. Take inventory of your friends. Take an inventory of the surroundings in your home at work, even the food in your pantry,

see what you can manipulate and change your environment to actually help you meet your goals. Remember, you are responsible for shaping and choosing the environments that will ultimately shape the person you become and the destiny you have. That's right. You are responsible. Growth and evolution is optional. Too many people pass up growing up and taking responsibility for their lives. They take up excuses instead, but you can take control. Really, I mean it.

And not by exerting willpower, but by changing your environment. Let me know how it goes young improfiters. And if you're going public with that goal, I want to hear about it. First of all, you can text me directly. Text Yap to 28046 to join our text community. And I would love to hear what your addiction is and how you're going to break it and how you're going to remove your drug from your environment. Tell me all about it. You can also tag me on social media.

I'm on Instagram at Yap with Hala. I'm on LinkedIn. You can search for my name. It's Hala Taha. I'm also on YouTube now. our YouTube is on fire. If you want to watch these podcasts, you can go subscribe on YouTube. And lastly, if you want to thank the Yap team for all that we do here, you know,

we pour our blood, sweat, and tears to make the most incredible episodes for you. I mean, who goes off and does a recap for you after the interview? Nobody does that because nobody cares as much as a young and profiting podcast. I promise you. If you want to thank us, drop as a five-star review on your favorite podcast platform. Apple Podcasts me the most. In fact, I love Apple. Apple podcast reviews so much. I check them every day. I'm going to go pull up right now on the spot

some reviews and shout out some of my favorite reviews that I've gotten this week. And kudos to everyone who took the time to drop us a five-star review. And the first one is from Daniel P. hailing from the United States of America. And he says, amazing education podcast. I've been following Hall on social media for years and it's amazing to see her growing her career. Yeah, it is a great podcast for young people to be exposed to new topics, professions and industries. I like the question Holla asks and her interaction with the guess. Wow, Daniel, thank you so much for taking the time to drop us this awesome review. The next review is all the way out from India, and it's from Emmett Stora, and he says

contents shared are quite incredible, full of high impact and motivation. There's quality conversations, and they're great and insightful. There's lots of learnings and knowledge that can be gathered here. Brilliant. I wish you huge success ahead, Hala. stars fire emoji and lots of different emojis. Thank you so much for your amazing review. And one more.

I'm going to read one more. This one is from Engaging from Apple Podcasts in the U.S. And obviously this is not his real name. So when you guys drop a review, do leave your full name. I mean, that's super helpful because then I can actually shout you out because some of these user ideas on Apple are super weird. So this one says, engaging. I had the chance to tap into your latest podcast with Josh Peck,

and I wanted to share that I thought it was awesome. You had great questions and seemed to be really prepped for him to share insightful and relatable contacts with your audience. Keep up the great work. Thank you. I loved that episode with Josh Peck. He's the former Nickelodeon star. He was on Drake and Josh.

And man, my team was so excited about that interview. They were like fan girling super hard. I'm like a little bit of an older millennial, I guess. So like I didn't know him as well as they did, but they were so pumped. And so many of my listeners loved that episode. I just didn't really watch Nickelodeon when I was a kid. So if you want to check that out, Josh Peck recently came on just a few weeks ago. So I'm going to just read another one.

And why not? Because you guys are listening this long. You obviously think this is interesting. And so I'm going to read another one. And this one is from Mike Forward from the United States. And he says, professional and patient. I love the podcast with Ed Milet, Hollow's prepared, patient, and respectful. She really gets fun out of her guests and really appreciates their talent and abilities.

I look forward to future podcasts. Well, thank you so much, Mike, for taking the time. to drop us a review. And I want to ask one more time, if you listened all the way to the end of the show, you obviously were motivated, you obviously were inspired, you obviously found value. And if you want to thank us, the best way to do that is to drop us a five-star review on Apple podcasts. All right. So thanks again for listening to another incredible episode of Young and Profiting Podcast. Again, if you can, drop us a five-star review on your favorite podcast platform. And thanks to my awesome and incredible young and profiting team.

We have superstars here at YatMedia. Thank you for all that you do. This is your host, Halitaha, signing off.