Breaking Habits and Sucking Less- (Cliffs Notes from a Curious Mind Episode 5)

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Welcome to Curating the Curious, the podcast that celebrates staying curious in life and never settling into a box. This show is for the creators, the seekers, the explorers, the truth-tellers and the forever students of life, no matter what age or stage you're currently at. This is not as good as it gets, and it is never too late to begin. Join me as we explore all of the questions that come with the idea of curiosity, a place where the possibilities are endless and you can always start again. All big things come from small beginnings. The seed of every habit is a single, tiny decision, but as that decision is repeated, a habit sprouts and grows stronger. Roots entrench themselves and branches grow. The task of breaking a bad habit is like uprooting a powerful oak within us, and the task of building a good habit is like cultivating a delicate flower one day at a time. That's by James Clear. I keep this on my desk as a reminder that as I try to change my habits, it's implanted in me and I am uprooting this powerful oak inside of me. It's going to take time and then, after that, comes the task of building the good habits and cultivating that delicate flower one day at a time. So there are so many steps. This takes time. It's literally two steps forward, one step back. That's the way it goes.

Speaker 1: 1:46

I had to read this because it's one of my favorite things from James Clear and I've been talking about and thinking about and writing about habits for months now, so definitely keep that one in your back pocket. So my brain is now full of too many ideas and thoughts and notes and highlights and colored index cards, so it's time for another episode of Cliffs Notes from A Curious Mind. This is where I get to unleash seven of those ideas in order to make more space for some new stuff. Number one I'm going back to the previous episode when I was talking about habits and referring to atomic habits, the book and all of the things that James Clear was saying about identity, and I feel like I kind of didn't fully explain the whole identity thing in the way that I had meant to. So here's a way better explanation from the book.

Speaker 1: 2:52

Imagine there are two people resisting a cigarette and when offered a smoke, the first person says no, thanks, I'm trying to quit. It sounds like, you know, normal response, but this person still believes their smoker and they're trying to be something else. They're hoping their behavior will change while carrying around the same beliefs. The second person declines by saying no thanks, I'm not a smoker. See that difference. No thanks, I'm trying to quit. And no thanks, I am not a smoker. It's a small difference, but this statement signals a shift in identity. Smoking was part of their former life, not their current one. They no longer identify as someone who smokes.

Speaker 1: 3:37

Most people don't even consider identity change when they set out to improve. They just think of some outcome that they want. So that, right, there is the important difference between the regular, outcome based habits which most people are trying to do, you know, like, oh, I want to go to the gym every day, and then they just start trying to do it, or what James clear talks about in this book, which is identity based habits. You've got to change from the inside out. So I highly recommend this book to anybody that has really been trying to work on changes during these first months of this year and you notice yourself just going back into the same old stuff. It's happening to me. Look at, I skipped two weeks of doing this podcast because it's not yet ingrained in me that this is a regular thing, no matter how much I'm enjoying it being back. No matter how excited I was and pumped I was in January to come on back, I still am slipping back into that old thing because it's not built into me yet again. It's been so long.

Speaker 1: 4:50

And number two is the coolest creative tool I have seen in so long and it's called millinot. Am I L A note? I actually picked this up from Jan Palmer. I started this year off in a way that I never do and I decided to take a workshop and it was Jan's teeth kiss. I'm just a silent student but I've picked up so many cool things and this tool, millinot, is the coolest thing. So it's kind of like Pinterest but way better and has so many more options. It's kind of like Evernote plus Pinterest for creative. So it's like this whole visual way to lay out any plans that you have. Basically, anybody could use it Anybody visual that loves seeing things laid out, so you can upload notes and to do lists and you can have it in a little section all visually up on the page. You can upload images and files, you can put links from the web, save text, you can add things from your phone and then it's all in this interface that looks kind of like a Pinterest board, but it's got all the different features. Then, even from there, you can do things like like draw on it and draw some plans and everything is drag and drop so you can move it around. It's the coolest. You have to check this out. Milano.

Speaker 1: 6:26

Number three we're back to one of my favorite topics ever, but hopefully explained in an interesting way neuroscience, and this is about the effort-driven reward circuits in our brains. This was something very cool to learn, so we all remember the time during the pandemic when everybody started making bread and people started gardening and it was just this whole thing that took off. There is an actual neuroscience explanation for all of this and it has to do with this system in the brain that connects movement with emotion and thinking, and basically, working with your hands is the key. So what drives that effort-driven reward circuit, that part of your brain that I was referring to, are physical activities that involve our hands, particularly activities that produce a tangible product that we can see, touch, enjoy. Something like knitting, tending a garden, like I said before, making bread, making art, drawing, painting, collage, weaving, sculpting, things like that. Those tangible results give pleasure to us and they have meaning for the creators. It lifts people out of depression.

Speaker 1: 7:50

We all knew that when people were doing this it was helping them. I remember just hearing all about it and I saw it happen to me when I was raising my butterflies. Each year since I've noticed this thing that takes over me whenever it's my monarch season here. But I didn't know there was an actual part of the brain that was activated by using your hands. I didn't know that that was the key. And it's so interesting to hear about this whole effort-driven reward circuit because basically they're saying you know, if anybody is depressed, the easiest way for your body to kind of break out of that is to get into something where you can use your hands. They could even be scrubbing the bathtub, folding laundry. I know that doesn't sound fun, but it really does. Do you remember when the Marie Kwan-Do is that her name came out with a cleaning thing and everybody was just raving about it? I think it's because it was activating the effort-driven reward circuits in people's brains and it was lifting them out of the sadness or depression that they may have been living with and it became this whole movement, not knowing that that's really what it was. It was the movement of your hands. It doesn't take much and that's really good to know. Easy hands make happy brains.

Speaker 1: 9:18

And number four is something that I received from Austin Cleon. I follow his newsletter and he does like a 10 favorites for Friday thing, and he sent a link to the cutest little thing where, if you're trying to get better at something instead of making it the serious thing, you can just print out one of these pages and it's called practice for 30 days to suck less and basically it just says practice up at the top. Then it has 30 boxes that you can check off as you practice each day. They count up to 30. And then at the bottom it says suck less, practice every day. Put an X in the box. After 30 days you will suck less. I think I'm going to give my daughter one of these, because she tends to take things a little too seriously. So if our only goal is just to suck less, I think you know what it'll get you to check off those 30 days of practice and it will also take that pressure off of having to create some masterpiece or be the master of something after practicing. I'm going to try and put a link for this printout too in my show notes.

Speaker 1: 10:39

Number five is an awesome little reminder. Everyone who enters your life is either A a mirror, b a teacher or C an expander. Think about the different people who have come in and sometimes out of your life, and I guarantee you they were one of those in a great way or not so wonderful way. All of the expanders are great, though, and it's basically you know. If you walk away from a relationship without learning the lesson, you recreate that same lesson in a different person. I've done that many, many times in my life. I think I'm starting to get the hang of it now, but I've spent a lot of time recreating lessons over and over and over again.

Speaker 1: 11:30

Number six takes us back to John Batiste's wife Suleika, who I have just become enamored with. After A seeing American Symphony, which I already told you about, and if you have not seen that documentary you really need to make some time for it but B I listened to her on Rich Roll I think it was last week and I was blown away by how unbelievable this woman is. You can see it in the documentary, but obviously she's sick during the documentary, so we're not really and it's actually not about her the documentary, so you don't get into her whole story. Her story blew me away and then I found out. You know she's a bestselling author. I did not know this. This is well before all of this and her whole story. I think we just need to have like Suleika Day, because the things that she has done, oh my gosh. So look for Suleika's interview on Rich Roll please.

Speaker 1: 12:42

That is such a good podcast episode and she said the most amazing quote on that episode and I think it's in her book too. But she said you know, we all talk about waking up to live as if every, as if it's your last day and you know, live the most out of life. And she said I try to wake up and live every day as if it's my first. And that hit me so hard because it just reminds you of beginner's mind. Every day, every day is so beautiful and you're seeing it through these new childlike eyes Like you've just landed in some country by yourself that you've never. You've never been, or just beginner's mindset. And what a great twist on a quote that we've heard our whole lives. She's so inspiring. Her book between two kingdoms I just bought it. Have not read it yet, but I can already tell you by what I heard them talking about. It's going to be amazing and it's done really well too. So, so that number six was kind of a combo of a podcast listen, a book to read and a quote. And number seven has just given me a definition for what the hell.

Speaker 1: 14:12

I went through for a few years and no explanation for it. You know we've heard about wintering, thanks to Catherine May, and everybody's got that concept. I was like, well, you know what? This is a whole lot more than wintering happening right here. What is going on with me? And I fell across the idea, the concept of following. Have you heard of fallow years in the farming community? Basically, when it comes to following, you can have a fallow season, you can have a fallow year, and some farms do a fallow five years, and that's leaving the land without any sewing, with one goal in mind, which is to replenish the nutrients. So, just like humans need time to rest and recharge, following is done for many of the same reasons, and when a field lies fallow, it doesn't look like anything's happening. All the other fields are out there producing their crops and we watch them change, but the fallow field is just a pile of dirt and it just keeps looking like a pile of dirt for one to five years. But within that pile of dirt, all of this activity is happening Worms burrow tunnels that nourish and aerate the soil, organic matter decomposes into life, giving nutrients, like sometimes they put their livestock over there so that can all soak in Rainfall gathers into the underground water, and the health of next year's harvest depends on this invisible dance happening beneath the surface. It's pretty cool. So that's what I'm declaring.

Speaker 1: 16:09

The last few years of my artistic endeavors have been a fallow season. I have a name for it and I love having a name for something, but in all actuality, I did a lot of photography in 2023. I just didn't share it and I kept taking notes and photos and writing and doing all this stuff. I just did zero sharing. So 2023 was not a fallow year for me. I would say for sure. 2022 was fallow. That was a lot. 2021 probably was, or maybe part of it, but I had some fallow fallow times.

Speaker 1: 17:01

So I love sharing that, because sometimes we feel like, oh my gosh, what am I doing? I'm not creating anything, but guess what Things are happening, even if no seeds are planted, because you always hear that saying like, oh well, the seeds haven't burst through. In fallowing. There are no seeds, there is nothing. It is all about repairing what is going on with that soil and that dirt Just not making it do any work whatsoever and regenerating life so that when you do plant those seeds, the best results can come after you do plant those seeds there, because you gave that time to rest and not just for a winter Longer. If you like this episode, please share it. Also, please give me a five star rating and awesome review.