The Tiny Daily Habits That Rewire Your Brain - Jake Humphrey & Damian Hughes

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1:21If you're the spark of light and things go wrong, people are rooting for you. We underestimate the importance of what we can do as individuals, particularly in a world where there's 24-hour revolving news, where the world seems so big and so muddled, we just think, well, how can I impact the world? I'm just an individual, there's nothing I can do. Well, the first thing to remember is if you go back through history, it's either individuals or small groups of individuals that have always changed the world. You start by being the light in the room. You walk into a room and you act like a thermostat, not a thermometer.

1:49A thermometer just tells you the temperature. A thermostat goes in and thinks, nah, man, I'm changing the temperature. Welcome to Open Book. I am your host, Anthony Scaramucci. Joining me today is Jake Humphrey and Damian Hughes. They are Sunday Times bestselling authors and hosts of the High Performance Podcast. But they've got a bestselling book. It's called Micro Habits, Tiny Changes at Supercharged High Performance. So guys, loving you coming in. I love the podcast, by the way. We should talk a little bit about that as well. You've got over 400 conversations on high performance, but you've spent a year decoding what makes extraordinary people tick.

2:34I actually, I think one of you handed me the book. I can't remember how I actually got the book, but I remember reading it on the way home from London. So I think either you or your publisher gave me the book. And I thought the book was awesome. It was a little bit like Atomic Habits in some ways, but better in other ways because there was like real intense stories in the book. And so let's go to some of these Olympic champions, world-class coaches, entrepreneurs, military leaders. what surprised you guys most about high performers and you can each take the question

3:08Jake Humphrey:well first of all thanks for having us on Anthony it's a real privilege to get to chat with you and um and thanks for reading the book as well that's uh that's always a privilege um we came up with the idea that we've done over 400 interviews with these incredible people on the podcast and one of the things is we often talk about great uh abstract ideas like motivation or having a vision or drive and what we wanted to do was sort of drill down into what are the small things that anybody can understand what leads to motivation what leads to greater drive so we started exploring like small behaviors that we'd seen that that i mean you referenced atomic habits we sat down with james clear who had this great line that the heaviest weight in the gym is always the front door so james has spoke to us about it's often just finding one small one small step you can take that has that catalyst effect for others so we spoke to charles do he the pulitzer prize winning author who shared with us that he he'd spent 15 years researching his book super communicators and we said distill 15 years of wisdom down into just a simple habit that any of us can take away and he spoke about every conversation is either a social emotional or technical conversation so he sums it up as one of three h's every conversation is either a request to be heard, to be helped, or to be hugged.

4:31Jake Humphrey:And if you can work out which of those three conversations you're having with the other person, what we find is that you connect so much at a deeper level, the trust, the cooperation, the generosity that you feel with that other party becomes so much more significant. So that's an example of a micro habit where anybody can start a conversation and work out very quickly. Is this a hug, a hear, or a help one? Yeah, Anthony, I think really micro habits is a self-help book for people that don't like self-help books and in some ways i almost felt embarrassed that we were charging people right for this book because it's so obvious but i think we live in a world we've been told for years that you have to have a big goal you have to have a big ambition you have to have a dream you have to write it down you have to have the big thing on the horizon the b-hag we call it in uk business don't we big hairy audacious goal and i think we oversubscribed for that and we undersubscribed for the fact that we've interviewed now as you mentioned 400 people on the high performance podcast including yourself and wherever we have these conversations with people it becomes absolutely clear that the reason why they've got to where they have in life is the behaviors that they've taken on board so the best example from the book is that tom daly originally started off by drawing a picture of himself on the 2012 olympic gold medal winning position as one of the british diving hopes for 2012 he would have been about seven or eight years old at the time because he was a very young kid and his coach said to him you know like that's fine you can think about that but drawing a picture of it and dreaming of doing it is never going to get you there what will though are the small daily actionable things so every day when you start your day I want you to write down three things that's going to get you closer to being a gold medalist at 2012 so it would be turn up for training on time do some extra stretching listen to my coach those three things are gonna they're not sexy and they're not exciting and you can't market them really but they're going to get you much closer to your end goal than that big ambitious poster on the wall that tells you you can you can achieve the thing you always want and that's really why we wanted to write this book because we wanted it to provide genuine value for people and it's stuff that anyone can do you know jake when we did the podcast i don't know if you guys remember this but you you talked to me about your show uh it was almost vectored into something that was going to be entirely different you know what was the version of your show that didn't happen and what is the origin story that still shapes the two of you in terms of how you interview because i think it's very important to the book yes so well remembered anthony well so i originally came up with two ideas for high performance or for the conversations i wanted to have and at the time i was working as a sports broadcaster here in the UK hosting Champions League football, Premier League football, Formula One.

7:12And one of my ideas was called One Last Thing Before I Go. And it was a conversation with people who were in end of life care, but it had to be people who weren't ready for the light to be turned off. People who were still ready to attack the world, who had a reason to live, who had an ambition to remain alive. And I recorded some of those episodes and quite frankly, they were just too painful to continue. They were impacting me to a point that I couldn't really cope with them. But I also, wanted to talk about the things I'd learned while doing elite sport presenting for over 30 years. And what that was, was that when I was hosting the Formula One, I didn't really care who won the Grand Prix.

7:49When I was hosting football, I didn't really care who won the football match. Was it Arsenal? Was it Manchester United? Was it Manchester City? I didn't mind. What I loved about that was how did these people get themselves to a place in their life where they can find an edge over others? And I kind of wanted to talk about it, but I knew that it wasn't the kind of thing that a TV channel would commission. So a friend recommended a podcast, but then I was super nervous because my background is on kids TV. And I thought people are just going to laugh at this former kids TV presenter attempting to have conversations about high achieving individuals, managing to find their non-negotiable behaviors.

8:24So I met Damien, luckily he was talking to, um, a professional football team. And I went along to watch the talk that he was giving to the team. We met and it started from there. and the entire premise of the show at that point in my head was let's explain to the world how you've got to work harder than everyone else how you've got to be you know these days anthony and this is a world that you frequented for a long time the alpha male world of work harder than everybody else beat your chest push yourself to your limits get up earlier go to bed later drink your electrolyte drinks get in the gym push push push push and one day you'll be happy it's only when we started having conversations you left out the viagra jake i mean well exactly The Viagra is also an essential ingredient to that happiness.

9:05Yeah. What we realized from all these conversations with these high achieving people is a lot of them do all those things, but they're not very happy. And it's this lack of happiness then became fascinating for Damien and I. So really what we've now distilled high performance down to is finding joy in what you do, because are you a high performer if you're not loving it? But also high performance is very simple. It's doing the best you can where you are with what you've got. if you can live a life doing those three those three things then you can't go far wrong and often we over complicate what high performance really is the reason i brought this up number one you have to be flexible with your achievement you guys found a niche but you were going in a couple of different directions before you got there i think we have to be honest with ourselves in terms of what we're good at what we're not good at i think you're very good at understanding that but then the second thing which i you know i really took from you guys and again this is you know something that james also writes about an atomic habit if you just change a few things right getting up early talk about uh something in the book where if you just shift your morning alarm by 15 minutes damian what happens tell us about the chemical reaction of that small change

10:19Jake Humphrey:well one of the things that we know is that um feeling that we have some degree of control over our circumstances is one of the big pillars to sort of the happiness and and high performance in any way so that idea of them being responsive rather than reactive just reinforces that sense of autonomy and control so choosing to set your alarm a bit early and therefore getting up in a calmer state maybe making time to eat breakfast spend time with your loved ones maybe leave the house in a calmer manner rather than rushing out is all elements that then put you in a place where your executive functioning your reasoning and your higher levels of thought are able to be accessed rather than constantly being on the back foot and reacting and and triggering those those those fight or flight responses i mean i'll give you a good example from the book anthony that we interviewed an amazing comedian in the uk called sarah pascal and she spoke about how for years when she started her stand-up career, she would be sort of waiting behind the curtain to be announced.

11:23Jake Humphrey:And she would be convincing herself that people in this audience don't think women are funny. They're going to hate me. They're going to not think I'm as good as the last person that stood on the stage. And it occurred to her one day, she thought, who is this thought process is actually helping? So she decided to adopt a philosophy that's been around since the 1950s from the psychotherapist, Carl Rogers, of unconditional positive regard. rather than be paranoid that everybody's out to get you she decided to be pronoid and assume that everybody was out to help her so she started telling herself a slightly different revised story that these people have left the house tonight where they could have watched tv so they've come out for live entertainment these people want to laugh these people want to like me and she found that just that small tweak in what she was talking to herself allowed her that when she got out on the stage she was far more relaxed she was far more confident and she was able to create that connection far faster than what she's been doing previously.

12:20Jake Humphrey:And that to me is a encapsulation of a micro habit in action. It doesn't cost you a penny. It's small enough to understand, but it's speedy enough that you can implement it right away and see the results quickly. Thank you for tuning into Open Book. And if you haven't already, please hit the subscribe button below so that you're the first to know when our new episodes drop each week. We've got a lot more coming and now back to the show there's so much packed in that but the battle i mean again what great theme from your book is the battle is inside your own mind right ultimately right by the way you know i i've tried stand up um i'm i'm two for three i my first stand up i was like oh this is awesome i gotta do it again and then i flopped the second time and i literally had sweat rings under my arms and i was like this is terrible and i had to go do it a third time but But it is your belief in yourself that gets you going.

13:14Why did you decide to attack that? I think it's one of the most difficult things in the world. Yeah. If you're in public speaking or you're doing a podcast like the two of you guys, I mean, you got to go. I mean, by the way, you guys are funny. I mean, I'd listen to, I haven't listened to all 400 of your interviews, but you guys are funny. You're cheeky, you're witty. Okay. But, you know, you have a serious podcast which has wit to it. but in a standup situation, you're there and everyone there knows you're there to be funny. So there's a, there's a incremental amount of pressure in that situation.

13:50That's very different from the conversation that you and I, the three of us are having right now. And so for me, it's very daunting. It's very pressurized.

13:59Jake Humphrey:And can I pass on the tip? We had a comedian that we interviewed called John Bishop. And there's a film recently come out called, is it on? I don't know if you saw it. With the line in it, But it's based on John Bishop's story that he was a guy that was working in the pharmaceutical industry for years. And his wife left him. And she said that he'd become boring, that he'd become too corporate, become a corporate drone. So she left him, took the three kids and he would have them every weekend. And then on a Monday, he'd hand the kids back over to his wife. And no, he wouldn't see them again for a week.

14:33Jake Humphrey:So to cope with the sort of trauma he was going through, he started taking himself out into his local city. where he went to a comedy club and he realized that he could get in for free if he agreed to do the open mic nights and it was from there that he started sort of just talking about his real life his real life situations and he tells a lovely story that one night he was in there delivering a set and his wife was in with her friends and she didn't know he was doing stand-up comedy and she said that in that moment the spark the person she'd fallen in love with was stood in front of the stage uh talking to her and they rekindled the relationship and started again but john told us this great story that he said one of the tips that he'd learn and i don't know if this is going to help you with your stand-up career if you choose to go back into it was he said when you walk onto the stage say nothing for ages but move something like he would pick up a chair or a microphone stand and he said just that that that brief period of time you direct everybody's attention to you and the anticipation of what you're going to say next has them on uh um on the end of the night all good stuff i i i'm going to try it again of course i don't know if i'm going to be ever be super good at it but i think the funniest people are the ones that are saying the truth guys right because when you say the truth a lot of people can't handle the truth and they strictly if you say it with some level of what do you talk about antony is it based around your history and talk about life and talk about raising kids and talk about my white house career and you know by the way i could give you five interactions with donald trump you guys would be peeing in your pants because it doesn't even sound normal but then you know it has to be because normal everything abnormal everything is okay so i want to go to some of these interviews guys if you don't mind okay usain bolt to matthew mcconaughey what are the main i mean you write about it so tell us what are the main universal habits that consistently separate the top performers because you would think Usain Bolt is different from Matt McConaughey but in so many ways they're very similar tell us how the thing that links more Anthony is that they've understood the power of being the light in the room and to throw in another guest that's joined us on high performance it was Will I am who came on and said be a spark of light he said if you're a spark of light you get more chances to bat if you're a spark of light and things go wrong people are rooting for you.

16:54We underestimate the importance of what we can do as individuals, particularly in a world where there's 24-hour revolving news, where the world seems so big and so muddled, we just think, well, how can I impact the world? I'm just an individual. There's nothing I can do. Well, the first thing to remember is if you go back through history, basically it's either individuals or small groups of individuals that have always changed the world. So I have a reminder to anyone that listens to high performance is you start by being the light in the room you walk into a room and you act like a thermostat not a thermometer a thermometer just tells you the temperature a thermostat goes in and thinks no man i'm changing the temperature and it's a beautiful way to live so it's kind of impacted the way that we live so if i walk if i take my kids i've got a 10 and 13 year old if we go to the park and there's five or six benches around a play area and there's one person on one bench i will go and sit on the bench next to the person and just spark up a conversation everyone knows something that you don't and i think all of these high performers that we have on the show they have become explorers they're constantly looking for information they don't have but usain bolt let's talk about those two usain bolt's coach once said to him you're going to have to learn how to lose before you can learn how to win and that was a totally confusing concept for us but he went in a guy who was so nervous in his first race that he could barely tie his shoelaces together because he was shaking so much to winning an olympic gold without even bothering to tie up his shoelaces because he was so confident and that ability to realize i know that if i push myself to the limit and i lose then it can happen but if i push myself to the limit is the only way that i'm actually going to win this race and i think back to matthew mcconaughey it's kind of an identical lesson said in a very different way where he said to us just don't leave crumbs you know the great george bernard shaw poem where he says i want to be thoroughly used up when i'm gone that is how these people are living they're sparks of light in the room they're thermostats they're givers of energy they change how people around them feel they're optimists no matter how bad a day can be they believe that tomorrow is going to be a great day so they get out of bed and they go again they're kind of like they're playing the lottery all the time they're buying tickets every single day and it only takes one lottery ticket to pay out once a year and you're doing pretty well it's so well said so talk about uh building a better future for our young people okay and what i love about you guys is that you're sharing your book during this national year of reading in the uk uh and let's talk about lifelong learning because everything that you just said is true jake but then there's also this spark of intellectual curiosity where I think, I'd like to think I'm a different person than I was at age 21, you know, 41 years later.

19:45Talk a little bit about that. Talk about the need for people to constantly read and constantly try to improve themselves.

19:52Jake Humphrey:Well, I grew up in a neighborhood similar to yours, a blue collar neighborhood in Manchester in the north of England. So my dad was a boxing coach so I grew up surrounded by sort of these incredible physical specimens guys that were going on to Olympic games and they're ending up boxing for world titles eventually so the message that I took out of that environment though was it was about the power of education and being able to be a sponge whether that was you were choosing to go after elite performance physically or my dad in my dad's case he pushed me down the route of academia he realized that I wasn't particularly good at boxing, but he said that you can always go and learn.

20:35Jake Humphrey:And it was very much the idea about being a sponge, not a rock. This is one of the things that we've heard from so many of our guests, that there's almost two ways you can go and experience anything. You can either go and be curious and sponge and seek to soak up as much information as you can, or you can be impervious to that information and just let it wash over you. I sometimes think of there's a great book by a guy called Andrew Lou Goldham he was the Rolling Stones first manager and he tells a story in the 60s he took Jimi Hendrix into a club in New York and there was a guitarist he went to see on there Andrew Lou Goldham said this guy was dreadful it was obvious in the first couple of chords that this guy didn't know what he was doing and he said come on let's leave and Jimi Hendrix said no I'm staying and when he said what on earth are you staying for he said this guy is that bad he might do something by accident that is a spark of genius and it i sometimes think of that example that even somebody as as elite as jimmy hendrix was open was a sponge he was open to learning from anybody that was putting themselves in the arena to do something with it and when we think about this national year of reading i often like look there's all kinds of quotes in there that leaders are readers but this idea that you've got some of the finest minds on the planet have distilled all their years of wisdom and experience and they put it in the page of a book and it's there for you if you want to take that mindset of being a sponge and going to soak it up and be able to assimilate it into your own life.

22:04I think it's sad, you know, Anthony, that we stop exploring at some point in our lives. There was a bit of research somewhere. Researchers went into a classroom of three roles and said, put your hands up if you can sing. And every hand went in the air. And then walked into a classroom of 13 year olds, asked them the same question and two hands went up because everyone added, well, put your hands up if you can sing. well they assumed that's what they were asking and i think one of the problems with life is that we assume that if we're not good at something then we need to stop doing it or there's a moment where we stop exploring or seeing what's next and i think it's such a shame my message particularly for young people is that in this world where you're given so much negative information the reality is you've never lived at a greater time you've never been able to access every book ever written on the internet within moments of wanting to read them like that literally wasn't possible for the previous generation it's possible for this generation you know the great tutoring that ai can provide us as well so is it totally right that's also a game changer and you know we work we've created a high performance foundation anthony working in schools right across the uk 100 000 young people at the moment are getting lessons from high performance where they sit in the classroom setting and they watch video content from the guests that joined us on the show so when you've got leading internationally famous figures, teaching lessons to young people about open-mindedness and being inquisitive and being resilient and being an explorer.

23:28I think we're on to separate it. Well, I greatly appreciate you both. Okay. We are down to the five words of my podcast. So I'm going to give you the word. You have to give me one word. You got to get yourself tight. You got to get yourself tight here. Ready? So if I say the word reading, you say what? Growth. Okay. If I say the word mindset. Kindness. Okay. Habits. Everything. Discipline. Consistency. High performance. Available. What I learned from the two of you, high performance is repeatable. Yeah. If you use all of those words that I just said. So it's Jack Humphrey and Damien Hughes, ladies and gentlemen, bestselling authors, micro habits, tiny changes that supercharge high performance, but also an award-winning podcast called High Performance.

24:24Guys, thank you so much for joining us today on Open Book.

24:28Jake Humphrey:Thank you, Anse. Thank you for having us on me. It's been a privilege.