Hal Elrod: Hello, friend. It’s Hal Elrod, and welcome to the Achieve Your Goals podcast. I hope you’re having a great day today, or I should say, as I told my son when I dropped him off this morning, I hope you are making it a great day today. And if you are not, I hope this podcast makes your day a little bit better. Today, I’m going to share a new way of looking at habits and specifically how to make them so simple and easy to change that you almost can’t fail. And habits is one of the most popular topics in the personal development, self-help space, and that’s because it’s one of the most important. The only way to change your life is to change your habits.

Even though you’re listening to the Achieve Your Goals podcast, the reality is that you don’t change your life by setting goals. How many of us have set goals over and over again and over again, only not to follow through, only to not achieve them, only to end in disappointment, and that is because you change your life by establishing the habits that enable you to achieve your goals, which the bigger payoff is then that makes you into the person who has these habits installed that is able to achieve any goal that you ever set. And this is true in every area of life.

If you want to improve your health, you want to be happier, you want to make more money, save more money, invest more money, just improve your financial situation overall, if you want to improve your marriage or a relationship or improve as a parent, even improve just your overall mindset, in every area of our life, our habits determine our results. And yet I had a realization recently. I take my habits for granted. I was preparing for today’s episode going, “What can I share that would most help people?” And it was like a light bulb went off. I was like, “Well, wait a minute. Habits.” But then I went, “Nah, I’m sure I’ve talked about that a ton. It’s such a popular topic.”

It’s almost like the word ‘habit’ is so popular that it’s like you roll your eyes, you’re like, “Yeah, I know I need to have better habits,” right? But, for me, my habits have become so automatic, so much a part of who I am that I don’t even think about them. And while that’s ideal for me, like that’s where you want to get to is where you install these habits, which 20 years ago, 25 years ago, I started down this path of identifying what are the habits I need to put in my life that will enable me to achieve success in every area. And because I did that and I put the habits in place of I have a healthy diet, I have an exercise routine, I have practices to earn money and save money and make money. When I say practices, I mean habits.

Well, because they’re automatic, it’s like I didn’t even realize, “Oh, yeah, that’s what I’m doing. That’s what I did a long time ago.” And it almost makes success become on autopilot. But because I don’t think about them, I haven’t talked about them to you very much on the podcast. In fact, when I went to the archives, I went and searched the word ‘habits’ yesterday, I realized that I haven’t done an episode focused on habits since Episode 280. And now we’re on, I think this is Episode 585 or 586. That’s over 300 episodes ago.

So, long story short, like today’s conversation is long overdue, and it might just be one of the most important episodes for you because if you want to improve or change any area of your life and maybe get that in mind right now, like what’s an area of your life that you want to improve or change? You have to establish the necessary habits that will enable you to make those changes. And so, today I’m going to share, again, I say a new way of looking at habits, but it’s really a synthesized way because there is no new information. Habit’s been talked about from every direction, every which way for decades. But I’m going to share with you what’s worked for me to make them so simple and easy to change that you almost can’t fail because when you get your habits right, everything else falls into place.

Let’s dive in, but before I share the approach that’s worked for me and I believe might work best for you, I want to take a moment to acknowledge some of the most well-known books on habit formation because they’ve made a massive impact on millions of people, myself included. I’ll start with the number one bestselling habit book of all time, Atomic Habits by James Clear. Now, this book is all about how small changes lead to big results. James teaches that rather than focusing on goals, we should focus on our systems, the tiny daily behaviors that compound over time.

I think about when I was in Cutco sales, my epiphany was when I stopped focusing on my goals of how much I wanted to sell, and I determined what my system was going to be, which is how many phone calls I needed to make each day and I determined in order to reach my goals for the year, I needed to make 20 calls a day, five days a week. And so, all I did I stopped worrying about the goals and worrying about if I didn’t have a sale or had a bad day or things didn’t go my way or I didn’t hit my goals for the week and I just focused on my systems, my habits, 20 calls a day, five days a week, whether I feel like it or not, no matter what.

And as soon as I started doing that, within three months of doing that, I was the number one sales rep. Out of 60,000 sales reps in the entire Cutco company, I was number one. But here’s the beauty of it. I had the easiest job in the world because I used to ride the rollercoaster that most of us ride, and definitely salespeople ride, which is like good results, you feel good. Bad results, you feel bad. So, it’s like you’re on this up-and-down rollercoaster where many people quit or give up because they can’t handle the ups and the downs. I had no downs. It was like, “Well, no, I’m not going to worry about how my sales go for the week or for the day. I’m going to make 20 calls a day. And if nobody schedules an appointment with me, great. I’ll make 20 calls tomorrow.”

Where it used to be, if nobody scheduled with me, I felt discouraged and I felt bad, and I doubted myself because I was focused on my goals, whereas James Clear says, “You should be focused on your systems.” One of his most powerful ideas is that habits shape your identity. So, instead of saying, “I want to run a marathon,” you begin by saying, “I am a runner,” or I prefer to say, “I am committed to being a runner,” because I do find, this is my own distinction, that if you say, “I am _____,” and that blank is not something that is yet true for you, it can create an inner conflict between reality, which is like if you’re saying, “I am a runner,” but you don’t run, then your brain’s going to be like, “Yeah, right. I don’t even run. I don’t even like running. I hate running.”

But if you say, “I am committed to being a runner,” that’s completely rooted in truth as long as you’re committed, and it’s the commitment that will determine whether or not you follow through with the habits and going on those runs. But the identity shift changes everything. And James’s four laws of behavior change are this. This is kind of the premise of Atomic Habits. Number one, make it obvious. Number two, make it attractive. Number three, make it easy. And number four, make it satisfying. Those four laws of behavior change give you a clear roadmap to follow. And again, if you haven’t read Atomic Habits, phenomenal book.

Then what preceded Atomic Habits, The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg, which explains that the science behind how habits form. So, Charles introduces what’s called the Habit Loop: cue, routine, and reward. So, you can see James, I’m sure, was inspired. I know he read The Power of Habit. Charles’s research shows that to change a habit you don’t have to eliminate the whole loop. You just change the routine while keeping the same cue and the same reward. So, that insight is a game changer when you’re trying to break old patterns, which anytime you’re installing a new habit, you’re almost always having to break an old pattern to replace an old habit.

So, Charles also talks about keystone habits, which are those core habits that when you commit to them, they create ripple effects across every area of your life. For me, the Miracle Morning is my keystone habit. It ensures that I start every day in a peak physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual state. It ensures that I start every day by focusing on my goals and the habits and systems and rituals and routines that I have to commit to and remember and keep top of mind in order to follow through. So, again, as Charles Duhigg talks about in The Power of Habit, a keystone habit is the core habits that when you commit to them, they create a ripple effect through every area of your life.

I know for my wife that is going to the gym in the morning. That helps her physical health, her energy levels, her mental health. That is her keystone habit. And then, of course, I can’t go without mentioning one of my favorite books on habits, Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg. Now, BJ is a behavior scientist at Stanford, and his philosophy is make it so small, it’s impossible to fail. So, you’ll notice there will be inspiration from BJ and also from Charles Duhigg and James Clear because, again, there are no new ideas. My approach to life and to personal growth and development and optimization is study as much as I possibly can, try it all out, and then synthesize the best ideas that are the most effective and that work for me, and then put my own spin on it, find my own unique approaches.

Miracle Morning’s a good example, right? I didn’t invent meditation or affirmations or visualization, exercise, reading, or journaling. I just put them all into one package by stacking all six of those habits so you could do them every single day, every single morning, and make it really easy because otherwise it’d be overwhelming. Like, “Oh man, I really want to start reading more. I should really implement that habit. And I really should start meditating. I’ve heard that’s so beneficial. I should implement that habit. What else? Oh, exercise. I need to start exercising more. That’s a good habit.” It’d be overwhelming to implement six habits, but when you stack all six habits into one ritual, you’re getting the benefits of all six, but it simplifies it. It makes it easy.

So, according to BJ Fogg and his approach of making it so small, it’s impossible to fail, don’t try to do 100 pushups. Just commit to doing one, and then tomorrow do two, and the next day do three. How easy is that? And the next day, do four. That’s how I went from hating running and I was never a runner and thought I couldn’t become one to running a 52-mile ultra marathon. Like, how do you bridge a gap from going, “I’ve never run outside of the high school mile that they made you run in PE class,” and I hated every moment of it, and I complained, right? Like, I never ran. And then you run 52 miles. The first day, I went and walked for five minutes. The second day…

And actually, I’m making this up. I don’t remember my exact training regimen. I just remember I bought a book called The Non-Runners Marathon Trainer for people who hated running. And then it’s basically designed to get you to take those baby steps and just go for a walk, and then go for a little jog, and then go for a little more, right? And before I knew it, I was running a mile, and then I was running two miles, and then I was running five miles, and then I was running, right? But it was like, it was gradually taking those baby steps, making it so small in the beginning.

And the brilliance of this is that once you start, even with the tiniest action, even with one pushup, and then two the next day, you build momentum. And that momentum naturally leads to more. Now, BJ also emphasizes that celebrating those small wins is crucial because it trains your brain to enjoy the process. All right. So, again, the three books I just referenced, Atomic Habits by James Clear, The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg, and Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg, all three of those books are phenomenal. They are research-backed, they are super practical, and I highly recommend them. But here’s the thing: despite all the valuable frameworks and strategies, I have found that most people still struggle to follow through because even when a method is simple, it can still feel overwhelming when life is already full.

All right. So, today, now, we set a foundation. I want to offer you a version of habit change that is simple, that is frictionless, that takes the best of what the books I just referenced, and real-world applicable based not on theory, but on my personal experience that’s worked for tens of thousands of Miracle Morning practitioners around the world. Because I believe that when you make a habit so easy that it fits into your life without resistance, you don’t need that much more discipline. You just need, as James Clear would say, a better system. So, let me walk you through how I do it.

So, I’m going to start super basic. Okay. Stick with me. I think this is important. Even though what I say, you’ll probably nod your head and be like, “Yeah, yeah, Hal, I get that.” We need to start here. All right. Let’s get all of us on the same page. So, number one, what is a habit? What is a habit? We’re going to start there. In fact, I spoke to a group of high school students the other day, and this was the first I went over this framework. Okay. But as I did, I’m like it’s important because we need to be reminded of the basics. A habit is a behavior that is repeated regularly and tends to occur subconsciously, requiring little thought once it’s established. And again, going back to what I said in the introduction, that’s why I take it for granted because I’ve installed these habits, right, these behaviors. I do them every day so they’ve become unconscious, they’ve become automatic, et cetera.

So, that’s what a habit is. It’s repeated behavior that’s done regularly so it occurs subconsciously. How do habits form? Through constant repetition of an action or of a ritual, a routine. The Miracle Morning wasn’t a singular action. It was a routine, but through constant daily repetition, it became a habit because over time, our brain creates strong neural pathways that allow the behavior to happen automatically without conscious effort. And then last but not least, what is the impact of our habits? Without being redundant here, your daily habits determine your productivity, your health, your mindset, and ultimately your success in every area of life, in business, and whatever area matters to you.

So, it’s important to understand that some habits serve you and some habits sabotage you. So, positive habits like exercising, reading, journaling, eating nutritious foods, meditating, practicing gratitude, doing the dishes, like these habits enhance your life. Negative habits like procrastinating, eating junk food, scrolling mindlessly through social media. You ever do that? I get what I call a social media coma, like a Facebook coma or Instagram coma where you go to social media to check something specific. Like, you go there to look at one-year-old post to try to find it or you go there to look for someone else’s post or follow someone, and then all of a sudden, you go there and you see a post and you get sucked in, and then you start scrolling and scrolling mindlessly. And five minutes goes by or 10 minutes goes by or more, and you don’t even remember why you went there. You’re like, “Wait, didn’t I come here to do something?” I call it a Facebook or Instagram coma.

Here’s the truth. So, whether it’s positive or negative habits, and this is important, I’ll probably say this twice because it’s so important, you don’t decide your future. Your habits decide your future. You decide your habits, and then your habits decide your future. It is so crucial to understand that. That for you to change your life, you have to change your habits. You can’t roll your eyes and be like, “Yeah, I already know this. I have already heard this before. Maybe I even read one of those books or I’m already doing pretty good with my habits.”

If you are a student of personal development and self-optimization, then you realize that whatever level you are at in terms of your habit, how do I say this, your habit implementation, there is always a level of mastery that is a lifelong pursuit. And I think there are a few reasons why changing habits feels hard. Yes, it’s important. Why is it so hard to change them? I think most of us struggle because either we aim too big, too fast, which is counter to what BJ Fogg and Charles Duhigg, and James Clear would say, right? Meaning, “I’m going to start running five miles every morning,” when you haven’t run for six months, or you’ve never run before.

So, number one, is we aim too big, too fast. We try to change too much. In fact, when I teach the Miracle Morning, when I’m giving a speech, at the end of my keynote message, at the end of my speech, I issue a 30-day Miracle Morning challenge or 30-day Miracle Morning journey to everybody in the audience. And that used to be where I’m like, “All right, wake up an hour earlier and do all six SAVERS.” And then as I studied habits, I realized I am setting people up for failure. I’m aiming people too big, too fast. So, instead, now I say, “Hey, wake up like 15 minutes earlier, 30 minutes if you want, and just do one of the SAVERS. You don’t need to do all six, just do one. Now, of course, you could do more if you want. You could wake up an hour earlier and do more but just wake up a little bit earlier so it’s easy.”

Anyone could wake up 10 minutes earlier, even if you’re not a morning person, right? And anyone could do one of the SAVERS. Reading is a great one. So, if someone’s never read the Miracle Morning, I’ll just say, “Wake up 10 minutes earlier and read for 10 minutes or brush your teeth and read for five minutes. And then when you get to the chapter on Silence, add that into your Miracle Morning.” So, you’re starting small. People fail because they aim too big, too fast. Number two, we rely on willpower. Research shows that willpower depletes throughout the day, meaning your motivation fades often just when you need it most. So, you can’t rely on willpower.

And the third reason that habits feel so hard to change is because we focus on outcomes, not identity. We think, “I want to lose weight,” instead of, “I am a healthy person,” right? Or we think, “I really want to be better at this,” instead of thinking, “I am committed to being self-disciplined.” So, you don’t want to focus on outcomes as much as you want to focus on identity and seeing your potential, not basing who you are now based on who you were before, but based on who you are now, basing it on who you’re committed to being in the future, starting now, starting today.

All right. So, here’s what’s worked for me and what I want to teach you. I want to keep it really simple. Step one, focus on one micro habit at a time. Okay? Don’t overhaul your entire life overnight. Pick one simple action. It’s like BJ Fogg said, don’t do a hundred pushups, do one pushup. Instead of committing to a full 60-minute workout, start by putting on your workout shoes. And I mentioned BJ Fogg is a Stanford professor. His research shows that tiny habits, the name of his book, create the biggest long-term change because they feel achievable.

Step two, make the habit frictionless. The easier it is, the more likely you’ll do it. So, for example, if you want to read more, leave a book on your pillow so you see it before bed. That’s something that I used to do when I wanted to read before bed is literally in the morning before I left my bedroom, I put the book on my pillow. I did the same thing when I want to start journaling before bed. I put the journal on my pillow. Then when I walked in, there’s no friction. It’s like, “Oh, yeah.” And if I hadn’t done that, I would’ve probably forgotten because my lifelong habit was not reading before bed and not journaling before bed. So, make it simple.

Sleep in your workout clothes, that’s another great example, or set your workout clothes out the night before right next to your bed, on your bedside table, or on the floor so when you get up, you’re like, “Oh, yeah, I’m going for a workout.” So, make it easy. Make it, as James Clear would say, make it obvious. So, remove any extra steps between you and the habit. And by the way, before I go any further, I want you to have in mind what is one habit that you want to change in your life, that you want to start in your life, that you want to stop in your life. Another way to make it frictionless if you want to stop something is stop buying the unhealthy foods that you crave.

If you eat chips at midnight every night and you eat a whole bag of chips, well, if you don’t have the chips in the house, and I know this might be obvious, but we don’t do the obvious, right, because I’m sure many people are like, “Oh, yeah, I totally keep chips in the house and then I keep trying to stop eating the chips or stop smoking, but I keep buying cigarette.” You have to make it frictionless. So, remove any extra steps between you and the habit that you want to implement.

All right. Step three, and this is one of my favorites, and I forgot who invented habit stacking. In fact, I think it might have been SJ Scott or also known as Steve Scott, who I co-authored The Miracle Morning for Writers with. He was the first person I read about habit stacking. I don’t know that he invented it, and I know James Clear talks about it in Atomic Habits. But anyway, here’s the point. After I make coffee, I’ll read one page from a personal development book. That’s an example of habit stacking, where you take one habit that you’re already doing and then you stack another habit.

My favorite example of habit stacking, of course, is the Miracle Morning SAVERS, stacking six of the most timeless, proven personal development practices in the history of humanity into one ritual. The point of this is that your old habit, your old behavior, the thing that you already do, acts as a trigger for the new one. It makes it that much easier. Step four, focus on identity, not just outcomes. Instead of thinking, “I need to meditate,” shift to, “I am someone who prioritizes meditation every day,” or use my affirmations formula, “I am committed to meditating every morning no matter what. There is no other option.”

And then step two, affirm why it’s a must for you, “I’m doing this because I need more peace and clarity in my life that meditation will give me.” Step three, in order to follow through, affirm your actions, and that would be, “In order to follow through with my commitment, I will set a reminder every morning to meditate at 6:00 AM or 7:00 AM or whatever it is.” When you align your habits with who you believe you are or who you believe you’re capable of being and that you’re committed to being, your behaviors naturally follow. And I’ll share with you a personal story of how tiny habits transformed my life.

When I created The Miracle Morning, it wasn’t about giant leaps, and keep in mind, I needed to make money. So, what was interesting is it wasn’t a habit that was directly related to increasing my income. It was a keystone habit that was related to optimizing my mental state, which was in a bad place in 2008 when the economy had crashed and I was deep in debt and living on credit cards and wasn’t exercising. I was really depressed. I was a mess. Mentally, I was in one of the worst states of my life, not the worst. It got worse later on after my cancer, but that’s another story you’ve probably heard. But the point is I needed to optimize my mental state. I also needed to learn the things I needed to learn, identify the habits, the strategies that would enable me to make more money.

So, I bought the book. Why am I blanking on this? Michael Port is the author, and the book is Book Yourself Solid. That was a book about how to get clients. So, again, it wasn’t that I immediately knew which habits would make me more money. I needed to put personal development habits in place that would enable me to optimize my mindset, learn the strategies, reprogram my identity to override my limiting beliefs, and establish the new mindset and the new beliefs that would enable me to follow through. I needed to implement exercise in my life so that I’d have more physical energy and mental clarity. You follow?

So, deciding that I’d wake up a little bit earlier and try these practices – and I was terrible at first. I didn’t know how to meditate affirmations because I didn’t know how to do them. They felt really goofy and inauthentic. But I committed to that keystone habit of dedicating time to my personal development every single morning. And within two months, you probably know the end of the story, I doubled my income. I went from being deep in debt, now, my debt didn’t go away when I doubled my income. I had to pay it off over time. But the point is, by establishing that keystone habit in the form of a morning routine, I was able to transform my entire life in as little as two months, doubled my income, went from being physically out of shape to training for a 52-mile ultra marathon, and my depression didn’t take two months to go away.

My depression, my fear that I was living in, it went away. It started going away. It didn’t go away completely on day one, but day one was when I went from being hopeless, the night before, or the day before I decided to do a Miracle Morning, I was feeling hopeless. Nothing that I was doing to try to make more money, none of the things that had worked in the past were working now. And maybe you have felt that way. Or maybe you go, either you’ve lost the drive and the motivation that you used to have, and you’re thinking, “I just don’t have the energy and the motivation and the clarity. I don’t know what to do. I can’t get myself to do the things that I need to do.”

Maybe there are obstacles or hurdles for you, which, by the way, are all internal for the most part, or at least they start there. You might go, “Well, no, no. I’ve got some physical elements, or I’ve got issues with my business or the economy.” Okay. You can’t control the things that you can’t control. You can only control you and how you show up, and that’s what we’re talking about. That’s what this episode has been about, which is to, number one, identify one micro habit at a time. Make the habit easy by removing any extra steps between you and the habit, stack your habit with existing habit so that it becomes easier to do, where it’s like, “I’m already doing this thing in the morning, what will I add to it?”

Like, for example, let’s say you’re not drinking enough water. Well, start filling up your water before you go to bed and set the water next to your toothbrush. So, then when you wake up and you brush your teeth in the morning, you don’t have to remember to go get water. The water is sitting next to your toothbrush. This is just one example, of course. Or lay the book on the bed on the pillow, right, or lay the book. Like, for me, to do My Miracle Morning, I laid everything out the night before. I had printed off affirmations. I laid out my affirmations. I bought a meditation pillow so that I’d have an actual physical reminder to get me to meditate.

And something that was new because when you buy something new and it was like $20 or $30 and you buy something new, though, you’re like, “Oh, cool. I get to use that new meditation pillow.” Now, it feels like a new fun thing to do. So, I would set out my meditation pillow, add my affirmations printed. Visualization was something that I didn’t have a physical reminder of, right? Exercise. I had a yoga DVD. That’s what I did every morning for the first like six months of my Miracle Morning, I did yoga. And then that was what got me limber to then start running. I then bought that book. I’d set my book out in the morning, and I’d set my journal out. So, the night before, I set everything out on my living room coffee table to do my Miracle Morning.

And then step four, and one of the most important is focus on identity, not just outcomes. Affirmations are my favorite form of personal development because they allow you to, in writing, articulate your identity that you are committed to living into, to articulate your actions and habits that you’re committed to following through with, to support those actions and those habits with reasons, compelling reasons why, and then to clarify what specific things you need to do each day and the time you’re going to do them to ensure that you follow through.

And then when you read those affirmations every single day, you literally reprogram your subconscious mind while directing your conscious behavior to live, to think, and live in alignment with the habits that you’ve identified are most important to you. And these habits, these tiny daily wins compound over weeks and months, and years. That’s what leads to massive transformations in your health, your mindset, your business, your relationships, everything. And at first, it will feel insignificant, right? You’re like, “I did one pushup today. Woo-hoo,” right? I read one page today. Big deal, right? I ate or I drank one less cup of coffee because I want to lower my caffeine intake. It seems small, but over time, it’s these habits that rewire your brain, shift your identity, and completely change your life.

Here’s a phrase to remember. Consistency beats intensity. Consistency beats intensity. All of us think we need this intense like huge, monumental change. The reality is we don’t. All right. So, here’s your simple blueprint for today. To sum it all up, choose one micro habit to start with. Example, drink a glass of water first thing when you wake up. Well, now, something I recently did when I started working with the doctor I mentioned earlier that gave me my blood results yesterday is he said, “How much water do you drink?” I said, “I don’t really track it, but I think I drank quite a bit.” He said, “Okay, I want you to track it.” And I started tracking it, and I was drinking half as much water as I should have been.

I was like, “Oh my gosh. I was not aware of my water intake habit, which was not effective.” And so, the way that I made it simple is I got a, again, I’m thinking it’s a 40 ounce, what’s it called? A Stanley. And we already have that. So, I got a 40 ounce Stanley, and I’m supposed to drink 80 ounces of water a day minimum. And I was drinking half of that. So, now I fill up my Stanley, and this is important too, on a side note, to put sea salt and lemon juice in your water. Now, I didn’t like that at first. That was another habit that I simultaneously implemented with drinking more water is I added sea salt and I added lemon juice. I didn’t really like the taste of lemon juice in my water. So, I put just a little bit of lemon juice and a little bit of sea salt. And then every day I would add a little bit more and a little more lemon juice. A little more sea salt.

And then the point being, that Stanley, I have a commitment that I have to drink it before lunch once, then I refill it, and I have to drink it before dinner. That’s how I made the habit easy. I don’t have to drink eight glasses of water. I drink two Stanleys a day, one in the morning, one in the afternoon before dinner. So, choose one micro habit to start with. Number two, make it easy and obvious. So, again, if you’re drinking a glass of water upon waking up, leave the water next to your bed or next to your toothbrush. Stack it onto an existing habit. So, drink the water immediately after you turn off your alarm. Affirm your identity. “I am someone who takes excellent care of my body and drinks 80 ounces of water a day.” If you read that every single day, you affirm your identity every single day, what you affirm repeatedly becomes your internal reality.

And then last but not least, track it visually. Just a little bonus tip. I use an app to track my intake called Way of Life. It’s a really simple habit tracking app. And I have, here, I’ll read you some of my habits. Sleep seven plus hours with no alarm. So, that’s one habit, and every day I get to either mark it green as I did it or red as I didn’t do it, or if there’s some reason that I’m skipping it, I can skip it. Read spiritual books. I always read family books. I read parenting books and marriage books. I read business books. But I had gotten away from reading spiritual books and I felt like when I was reading books on spirituality, it really enhanced my mental, emotional, and spiritual health.

One of my favorite new habits that I just started so I do still implement new habits, just to be clear in case that didn’t seem obvious in how I presented it earlier. It’s this awesome little three-part morning routine. It takes about five minutes. I do plank, toe touch, and back bend, not necessarily in that order. So, I’ll start with a toe touch. I’ll set my timer, my alarm for 60 seconds, and I’ll do 60 seconds of touching my toes and stretching out. And when it goes off, I reset the alarm and I drop down into a plank. I do 60 seconds of plank. And then after the plank, I reset the alarm and I do 60 seconds of back bend. So, imagine a superman position where I lift my legs behind me, lift my arms up in the air, and I’m balancing on my torso and strengthening my lower back.

Then I have a 45-second timer, and I stand up. I do 45 seconds of toe touch, drop into 45 seconds of plank, and then 45 seconds of back bend. And then 30 seconds. I do 30 seconds of toe touch, 30 seconds of plank, 30 seconds of back bend. And it warms up my whole body. It’s strengthening my core and my abs. It’s strengthening my chest, my arms, and my shoulder through the plank. It’s strengthening my lower back and my shoulders through the back bend, and it’s helping me maintain flexibility. Super simple, takes five minutes, and I’ve been doing it every day and tracking it. And I’m not perfect. I miss some days.

I have another habit that I’m tracking. Mission. It’s one of my missions in life, embrace Ursula and love her the way God intended. So, every day I’m checking in to make sure that I did that. I’ll also wear my wrist guard 24/7. I hurt my wrist a year ago. And there’s actually more habits beyond that, and sometimes I get overwhelmed and I focus on 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 habits at once because that’s all I can see on the initial screen before I scroll it down. But anyway, that’s a really helpful habit tracker, and that makes a big difference of that visual representation. Now, you can use a piece of paper, you can use a journal, you can use a calendar or a simple app like Way of Life, or if the Miracle Morning is the habit that you’re wanting to track, of course, the Miracle Morning app has a built in SAVERS tracker that you can utilize to track those habits.

All right. So, to wrap this up, your habits are shaping your life, whether you’re conscious of them or not. And you don’t need to be perfect. You just need to be consistent. I always like to think of it this way. I want to make sure I’m maintaining my habits at least four days a week. If I fall short three days a week, that’s okay because I’m doing it more often than not. Again, it’s not about perfection, it’s about progress. And remember, consistency beats intensity. It’s these small, simple habits repeated daily that create extraordinary results over time. So, remember this: changing your life is easier than you think when you make it easy to change.

If today’s episode resonated with you, I’d love it if you would share it with someone you care about. And if you want to go deeper into habits, I encourage you to read any of those three books: Atomic Habits, Tiny Habits, or The Power of Habit. I’ve read all three of those, and that, as you can tell, informed a lot of today’s episode, and I’ve synthesized that into the things that I shared with you today. Until next week. Keep showing up. Keep stacking those habits. Remember, your future self will thank you. I love you so much. And I will talk to you next week.