Latest / Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families / #674 The Power of Habit

Transcript

#674 The Power of Habit · Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: It's the Happy Families podcast.
• 0:05
  Speaker 2: It's the podcast for the time poor parent who just
• 0:09
  Speaker 2: once answers.
• 0:10
  Speaker 3: Now, Okay, school holidays continue, first week of January done.
• 0:15
  Speaker 3: I don't know if we should be counting down the
• 0:16
  Speaker 3: year already. Maybe maybe let's just enjoy the holidays and
• 0:19
  Speaker 3: stop counting.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Sorry, that's my.
• 0:21
  Speaker 3: I've created a habit over the years of just counting
• 0:25
  Speaker 3: the weeks and the days, the months as our life
• 0:29
  Speaker 3: disappears before our eyes, and it happens faster and faster
• 0:33
  Speaker 3: as you get.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: Older and older.
• 0:35
  Speaker 3: Hello, this is doctor Justin Colson, the founder of Happy
• 0:38
  Speaker 3: Families dot com, do a You, and the host of
• 0:41
  Speaker 3: Oh Sorry, the co host and parenting expert on Channel
• 0:43
  Speaker 3: nine's Parental Guidance Season two coming soon.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: I'm here with Kylie, my wife mo to our six kids.
• 0:49
  Speaker 3: Kylie, the idea with our summer series is to keep
• 0:51
  Speaker 3: our podcast under five minutes. We've been doing a terrible
• 0:53
  Speaker 3: job of it all week because we're pretty pumped about
• 0:56
  Speaker 3: making this year the best year ever and being the
• 0:58
  Speaker 3: best parents we can be this year. So we've been
• 1:01
  Speaker 3: talking about all kinds of things related to goals and
• 1:04
  Speaker 3: systems and journaling and doing all the things that make
• 1:08
  Speaker 3: life great Today, we just want to talk about one
• 1:11
  Speaker 3: simple thing, and.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: That is the power of habit. Charles Dewi wrote a
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: book called that a few years ago.
• 1:17
  Speaker 3: James Clear followed that up with Atomic Habits, which is
• 1:21
  Speaker 3: one of your favorites and.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: One of mine as well.
• 1:23
  Speaker 3: So there's a handful of things to talk about when
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: it comes to habits. Ultimately, if you want your family
• 1:27
  Speaker 3: to be happier, if you want to be a better parent,
• 1:30
  Speaker 3: it's about establishing better habits. So what's your habit when
• 1:33
  Speaker 3: your children tick you off?
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: Is it to sigh? Is it to roll your eyes?
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: Is it to yell and shout and scream? Is it
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: to threaten them? Is it to take something off them?
• 1:43
  Speaker 3: Or is your habit to pause, to take a beat, water,
• 1:50
  Speaker 3: and whatever else you need as well to pull it together?
• 1:53
  Speaker 3: Is your habit to lean in, to explore rather than explode,
• 1:57
  Speaker 3: to understand, not reprimand to get curious not furious. If
• 2:03
  Speaker 3: you can do those things, then you're probably well on
• 2:06
  Speaker 3: the path to a happier family and better parenting.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: But how do you create the habit?
• 2:11
  Speaker 3: That's what we want to talk about over the next
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: couple of minutes of this podcast, and we're going to
• 2:15
  Speaker 3: keep it really brief.
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: When I was reading Atomic Habits last year, one of
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: the things that stood out to me was just how
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: minuscule the changes need to be.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: To create change over time.
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So for me, when I look at where the
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: gaps are in my life, the things that I want
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: to change, I feel like I have to do a
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: whole revolution. I have to change everything to you know,
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: create the lifestyle that I want. And the reason James
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: calls this book Atomic Habits is because he's suggesting that
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: the changes that we actually need to make are like
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: these tiny little tweaks.
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: So that ties in with Darren Hardy's book The Compound Effect,
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: the idea that if you do that small, that tiny
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: little thing, that tiny little tweak consistently day in and
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: day out, that over time the results compound.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: And if you look not.
• 3:10
  Speaker 3: Three minutes or three hours or three days down the track,
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: but three years or even three decades down the track,
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: that's where you see the change.
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: The biggest challenge for most of us, I think, is
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: that it's so hard to keep doing what we're doing
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: when we don't feel like we're getting the change that
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: we want.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: Right the instant reward. I've been to the gym three
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: days in a row, Why haven't I lost the twelve killers?
• 3:33
  Speaker 3: Really really hard?
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and you're telling me I have to wait three
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: years before I'm going to actually see the results that
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: I want.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: Delayed gratification. It's a killer.
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: It's hard.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 3:42
  Speaker 3: So that reminds me, as you say that, of a
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: couple of things that I think are really worth emphasizing.
• 3:47
  Speaker 3: The first is something that I share when I'm talking
• 3:49
  Speaker 3: to high performance teams in corporations and in schools, when
• 3:52
  Speaker 3: I'm talking to adults about well being sort of stuff,
• 3:55
  Speaker 3: and I'll highlight that dieting for a day won't change
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: your life, going to the gym for a day won't
• 3:59
  Speaker 3: change your life. Telling your wife a husband that you
• 4:02
  Speaker 3: love them for a day won't change your marriage.
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: But if you do this stuff every single day.
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: So I guess when I think about your marriage, our
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: marriage together, I was going to say your marriage to me,
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: but it's our marriage to one another. The marriage that
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: we have isn't what it is because one day I
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: got it right or one day you got it right.
• 4:23
  Speaker 3: It's because consistently for twenty four years, now twenty five years,
• 4:27
  Speaker 3: is it twenty it's twenty five years. This, No, it's
• 4:30
  Speaker 3: twenty four years. Hang on, I always get the year
• 4:32
  Speaker 3: mixed up. Nineteen ninety eight, it's nineteen ninety eight. Twenty
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: five years, twenty five years. I can't believe it.
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: This year.
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: It's a big milestone.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: That's a big one. Wow.
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: For twenty five years, we have been consistent in doing
• 4:46
  Speaker 3: the small things, reaching out and touching each other when
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: we walk past, looking one another in the eyes, giving
• 4:50
  Speaker 3: each other kisses regularly. It's about making the consistent investment
• 4:54
  Speaker 3: in I think it was nineteen eleven, nineteen eleven.
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: We haven't been married that long.
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: No, no, no, no.
• 4:59
  Speaker 3: In nineteen eleven, Robert Falcon Scott and Roald Amerson were
• 5:03
  Speaker 3: essentially in a race to the South Pole, and they
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: had different strategies, different tactics, different ways of getting there.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: Scott was the Englishman trying to do a whole lot of.
• 5:12
  Speaker 3: Things for science foundations and sponsors, and he had a
• 5:17
  Speaker 3: really tough agenda, and so he was right under the
• 5:20
  Speaker 3: pump and when the weather was good, they would go
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: on million miles an hour, do as much as they could,
• 5:25
  Speaker 3: and then they'd just collapse. And if the weather was bad.
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: Then obviously they just hunkered down. But Roald Aminson, the Norwegian,
• 5:31
  Speaker 3: what he would do is do twenty miles every single day,
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: so it's a three thousand kilometer round trip. And what
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: Amonson did was every day he did his thirty K's
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: took him one hundred days, ninety nine days in fact
• 5:42
  Speaker 3: to do it, because he got up and he just
• 5:44
  Speaker 3: did the work every single day. So as a as
• 5:47
  Speaker 3: a parent, what is the work? What's the habit? What's
• 5:50
  Speaker 3: the system that you can create? What's your twenty mile march?
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: Honestly, when you say it, it seemed it's like it's
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: too easy. It actually seems like it's too easy, and
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: therefore it's not going to work.
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: It's kind of like writing a book, though.
• 6:08
  Speaker 3: If I get up every day and I write a
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: certain number of words, within a couple of months, the
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: book is written. I've got to do all the research,
• 6:15
  Speaker 3: I've got to do all the planning, but just writing
• 6:18
  Speaker 3: those words every day and suddenly you've written a book, an.
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: Entire book that you've written. It's phenomenal. How that works.
• 6:24
  Speaker 3: Parenting's the same, It's just that the metrics aren't quite
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: as obvious, Like you can't get up and run five
• 6:30
  Speaker 3: k's every day and say, all right, I'm going to
• 6:31
  Speaker 3: be a good parent because I ran my five k's.
• 6:33
  Speaker 3: But that five k run, metaphorically is when the kids
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: are angry, I don't shout, or when I need to
• 6:40
  Speaker 3: talk to my children, I walk into the room and
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: I meet their eyes, or I mean, pick your thing.
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: Whatever it is that you want to change, it's about
• 6:49
  Speaker 3: getting it right today, but also tomorrow and also the
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: day after, and getting it right every single flipping day
• 6:55
  Speaker 3: for twenty years until they finally are adults and you've
• 6:58
  Speaker 3: gotten to write consistently. Is that ongoing investment, creating the habit.
• 7:02
  Speaker 3: That's how we make our families function. That's how we
• 7:06
  Speaker 3: become better parents.
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: I guess at the heart of all of that is
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: just it's it's the discipline that it takes us to
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: do that. Because some days it's easy, okay, well it's
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: really easy to show up, and other days it's not.
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: And on those days, a rule that I love to
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: remember is to not miss two days in a row.
• 7:27
  Speaker 3: Great, well, I was going to say, give me some strategies.
• 7:28
  Speaker 3: I've got a handful as well, But that's that's a
• 7:30
  Speaker 3: perfect one. So if I've made a commitment and I'll
• 7:32
  Speaker 3: just stick with the don't yell at the kid's idea
• 7:34
  Speaker 3: as the or don't smack the kids, or don't whatever
• 7:37
  Speaker 3: it is, I'm going to stop doing this thing. What
• 7:40
  Speaker 3: you want to do is make that the commitment and
• 7:43
  Speaker 3: if you blow it, just don't blow it. Two days
• 7:44
  Speaker 3: in a row, reinstate the commitment. The other thing that
• 7:47
  Speaker 3: you can do, though, is you can have a commitment device.
• 7:49
  Speaker 3: This is one of my favorites. So commitment device is
• 7:51
  Speaker 3: essentially that thing that makes things happen for me. If
• 7:54
  Speaker 3: I want to exercise, my commitment device is my friends.
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: I don't exercise otherwise, I want that social thing for
• 8:01
  Speaker 3: our daughters. As we mentioned on the podcast yesterday, they're
• 8:04
  Speaker 3: not going to run unless they've got me running alongside them,
• 8:08
  Speaker 3: my involvement. That's the commitment device. Now, sometimes it's people.
• 8:11
  Speaker 3: Sometimes it's a thing. It's a decision that you've made
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: that if I do this, I get that, or whatever
• 8:16
  Speaker 3: it might be. But absolutely essential. There's probably a couple
• 8:20
  Speaker 3: of other things that we could do though, to really
• 8:22
  Speaker 3: make these habits stick.
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: James clear talks about stacking habits. Oh yeah, and this
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: was actually really useful for me. So if there is
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: something that I'm already doing and it's just habitual that
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: I do, I don't even have to think about it.
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: So you're already brushing your teeth, you might as well
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: add flossing to the.
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: You add something else to it, so it has to
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: kind of make sense that you do it. So for me,
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: during winter time, I actually forget to drink right, Like,
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: I just stopped drinking, and I get to the end
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: of the day and I've got the worst headache in
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: the world. And so I decided to stack the habit
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: of walking into the kitchen. How many times do you
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: walk into the kitchen every day?
• 9:00
  Speaker 3: A lot?
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: Yes, if you're working from home or you live, you
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: know you're at home during the day. And so I
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: just decided that every time I walked into the kitchen,
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: I would take a drink of water. I didn't tell
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: myself that I had to drink a whole cup or whatever.
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: It was, just every time I came into the kitchen,
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: I would have water. And I went from pretty much
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: drinking no water during the day to doing two and
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: a half liters without even thinking about it.
• 9:22
  Speaker 3: So an easy parenting corollary is to say, every time
• 9:25
  Speaker 3: I walk into a room that one of my children
• 9:27
  Speaker 3: are in, I'm going to call out their name and
• 9:29
  Speaker 3: smile at them and tell them that I love them,
• 9:31
  Speaker 3: or I'm going to reach out and squeeze their elbow
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: or acknowledge them in some positive and kind way. That's
• 9:36
  Speaker 3: the idea. That's that idea of habit stacking. The child
• 9:39
  Speaker 3: becomes the commitment device as well. You've got those things,
• 9:41
  Speaker 3: you know, at the very core of it, and we
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: need to wrap this up. But at the very core
• 9:44
  Speaker 3: of it, I think that if we want to create
• 9:46
  Speaker 3: better habits, better systems, it's one thing to come up
• 9:50
  Speaker 3: with all these techniques and strategies and to have your
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: twenty mile march and make sure you're doing that thing
• 9:54
  Speaker 3: day and day out consistently. But what you really want
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: is to have a sense of identity around.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: This is the kind of person I am.
• 10:02
  Speaker 3: Because fit people exercise every day or most days, they
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: very rarely missed two in a row. They might miss
• 10:09
  Speaker 3: one now and then, And it's the same with parents
• 10:11
  Speaker 3: who are really striving to build that great relationship with
• 10:13
  Speaker 3: their kids. They're going to get it wrong every now
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: and again.
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: We all do.
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: But if we get it wrong now, we don't get
• 10:18
  Speaker 3: it wrong again tomorrow. We make sure we pull it
• 10:20
  Speaker 3: together for tomorrow, and we maintain that intention because it's
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: because we are that kind of person.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: We really hope this has been helpful. Thanks so much
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: for listening.
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: To our Happy Families Summer series on the Happy Families Podcast.
• 10:32
  Speaker 3: Back again on Monday. We're going to be focusing on
• 10:34
  Speaker 3: how to get the most out of summer and holidays
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: with the kids. That's on the Happy Families Podcast.