The Power of Building Habits: Your Path to High Performance

0:28Watch it early on the High Performance app. week, myself and Damien. Hi Damien. Hi Jay. We'll look back in the archives of the show and we'll just try and collate something that we think will be really valuable to you. And I suppose before we look at some of the habits and we hear from some of the previous guests who've joined us, if someone's listening to this and they don't understand the science or the psychology or the importance behind the conversation about habits, what would you like them to understand? So there's three things to be honest Jake. First one is a habit can then be translated into a baby step.

0:56if you think of building a wall you build it brick by brick so a habit just allows you to establish a sense of momentum the second thing is that what you're doing is you're moving a conscious behavior into the unconscious part of your brain so it's almost like you're acting as a free ride with this that you're getting out your own way you're not debating or wasting energy thinking about should i do it or not a habit eventually if you get it embedded just becomes part of your routine without you even having to engage and think about it and look the science is clear on habits right they can sometimes be tricky to build but they are the fundamental building block for you turning your life from where it is now to where you want it to be there's still this belief that high performance is a huge leap in a certain direction and it isn't true high performance is about as Damian just explained small baby steps each of them get you closer to your own version of high performance which is why we've created a brand new feature on the high performance app by the way thanks to the honestly the hundreds of thousands of you that have downloaded the high performance app so far we've got a new feature called habit reminders and it's brilliant all you do is you watch some of the amazing content on the app from the previous guests you've joined us and when you see something where you think you know i love that bit of advice i want to make that a habit in my own life then you just hit the bell icon and you can type out what you want that habit to be you can set a time for the reminder and then every day or the days that you choose, on the home screen of your phone, you'll get a notification reminding you of what your habit is.

2:24And you can even hear the clip all over again. So it really is taking the lessons from high performers on this show and making them so ingrained in your life that you actually can't forget about these amazing habits that you know will make a difference for you. And by the way, can I just say thank you? Because the Habits Reminder feature on the app has been created really by you, our listeners, telling us that you hear these amazing things and you're not sure how you can remember them and incorporate them into your daily life well now you can on the high performance app which you can download for free from the app store and you get your first habit reminder for free as well so should we dive into a few habits that we've heard about over the years of this show then damien i think that'd be a great idea jake because like you say pretty much every one of our guests haven't taken great leaps to get from where they are to where they want to be they've done it in these small incremental steps and i think if we go and look at it you'll see that these people that we sometimes put on a pedestal are actually doing exactly what the rest of us are doing as well.

3:43Go to Upwork.com now and find your freelance expert. That's U-P-W-O-R-K.com. Post a job for free and get started today. Come to DSW for the shoes, stay for the fun. Because let's be honest, if shoe shopping isn't fun, are you even doing it right? So go ahead, try something new. Try something different, good different. Try something that feels like you, you know, the real you. And then definitely brag about it later. Because at DSW, you've got unlimited freedom to play. With sneakers, boots, and everything in between for every style, mood, and occasion, you'll definitely find shoes that get you at prices that get your budget.

4:20DSW, let us surprise you.

4:25This episode is brought to you by Opera Air, the first browser with mindfulness at its core. Now, most of us spend hours every day online, but how often do we pause to take care of ourselves whilst we're doing it? And that's where Opera Air comes in. It's a lightweight, fast, secure browser built not just for productivity, but for your well-being. With Opera Air, mindfulness is built right in. You'll find free breathing exercises, guided meditations, and soundscapes with ambient sounds, lo-fi music, and banyural beats, all designed to help you focus, relax, and even spark creativity while you browse.

4:59So why don't we start with Garibalo? Garibalo! What an episode! The one record my wife came down to because she loves him so much. All right, then. Here he is. Take that as Gary Barlow. Talking about the one habit he's brought into his life. And this is from a place where he admits he was terribly overweight, he was smoking, didn't love himself, wasn't looking after himself. But then he found a habit that made all the difference. Here's Gary. i'm not meant to be this guy i'm not meant to be this i'm better than this i need to sort this out i couldn't carry on with this and so that that was a big part of me sort of you know really putting that to bed remember the first thing that you did yeah i went for a run that's the first thing i did with all the weight and while smoking yeah i was i hadn't done exercise in such a long time and I have to say exercise is so much a part of my everyday um I'm a different songwriter when I exercise I'm I'm just a different person I think exercise I cannot I cannot advocate it enough of how much good you get from it and it could be a walk it just could be a stroll or you know it it It comes in many forms, exercise does.

6:21But the first run I did, I was so out of shape. I was so hilariously big at the time that I shouldn't have been running to start with. But it felt brilliant to run. It felt brilliant to move, to feel air going across my face, for my knees to be lifted. It just felt so ridiculous and funny is that I just remember giggling to myself, walking back, I'm thinking I've got a lot to do here, but you know what? It's all right because I'm on the road now. You know, I've put the shoes on for the first time, turned up. And I think that once I'd done that, I felt so good instantly. A minute later, I felt so good.

7:04I thought, well, I've got to do this again tomorrow. And I did. I'd run every day for the next two years. And slowly this guy disappeared in my trail in the dust. We're going to hear in a moment from James Clear, because when you talk about habits, you can't not talk about the author of Atomic Habits, James Clear. But I remember him saying the heaviest weight at the gym is the front door. And it kind of reminds me very much of what Gary is saying there, that just starting, he even said to just go for a walk, just do something no matter how small it is. The first step on the road to doing exercise is the biggest step, but unfortunately the hardest.

7:40Yeah, but if we go in, if we look at the granular level of a habit, I think James' comment about the heaviest weight at the gym is the front door. What James also spoke to us about is pre-plan. This is where a habit is. If you're going to get up in the morning to run, the night before you go to bed, put your running kit out, put your trainers at the side of the bed. And that's what we said originally on this, Jake, that you then get out of your own way of this. You then don't wake up in the morning and debate in your head, oh, is it cold outside? I don't feel like it. I'll do it later. you almost get it into that unconscious thing of you just get out of bed get your trainers on and you and you're out of the door before you even know it and I think that's what Gary's talking about there of recognizing that actually this makes me feel good so think about how you can create a habit like you might get off the bus or stop early as you can go you might decide that you'll take the stairs rather than the lift you might decide that it'll be a case of you'll go for a walk after your dinner and almost create that unconscious habit that allows you to get the exercise that subsequently brings the rewards of feeling a lot better and look myself and damien are not here to tell you what your habits should be we are here just to try and guide you in the right direction and the research now is very clear exercise improves your mental health eating junk food damages your mental health so if you can make a change in your life if you can find a habit in your life that doesn't just improve your productivity, doesn't just improve your relationship with other people, but actually improves your mental state, the impact of that across the rest of your life will be huge.

9:17So that's the advice from Gary Barlow. I mentioned the word productivity there. And I think that sometimes we fall into this trap of thinking high performance is about being productive every single day of the week, bringing our best self to the table all the time. And we both know that sometimes the title high performance, right, can be divisive because people are like well i can't be a high performer every day but as we've heard on many occasions on this show actually high performance takes different forms on different days and i wonder whether there's a habit that we've heard in the time that we've been doing this show that kind of reminds us of that yeah well it's a great question jake i remember you sending me an image of sort of a graph that was at different heights and it said like you are you are not a robot yeah high performance is different and that was captured beautifully for me in the interview we did with Vicky Patterson.

10:05Oh yeah. Now we debated if you remember whether we would have Vicky on originally as a guest because we knew we were going to come up against people's preconceptions of thinking that did seeing her on Geordie Shore or in the jungle and we're going to question what she had to teach us and the reality is she had some brilliant bits of wisdom she offered and the one that I remember most vividly because I've incorporated it was when she spoke about numbering of days. Shall we listen to her explain it? I used to think in order to be successful, I used to have to kill myself, basically. I used to think coming from the place I've come from, if anyone was going to take me seriously, I had to be the first one there.

10:44I had to know everybody's name. I was going to leave last. I was going to be respectful, polite. And I was going to do that every single day. There was no place for days off. There was no place for lateness and all of this. And like, I truly believed it. and actually it's so counterproductive to have that train of thought like all you do is burn yourself out all you do is lose the love for anything that you are originally passionate about you become resentful you slip because we're all human we can't go on like that forever so bill my life coach he taught me about numbering me days and basically those days that i just described to you you know getting up in the morning doing breakfast telly going straight from there to radio from radio to a record of something else from that to a big event you get home 12 o 'clock you're knackered your feet hurt you're tired but you know you've had a great day you've smashed it that is a number four day it's high octane it's stressful it's big you're getting a buzz from it it's amazing but it's hard it's hard going and you have to take that into consideration and then after that you've got your day threes so that is say like a couple podcasts maybe you're on Lorraine you might have like a little photo shoot in the afternoon still quite stressful you know but not non-stop pressure pressure pressure but it still takes it out of you then your day twos maybe you don't leave the house maybe you've just got some zooms in the morning and a podcast in the afternoon you fit in a nice dog walk bob's your uncle fanny's your aunt it's a good day but then you've got your day ones and these are the days that I absolutely live for and they are like days where you turn your phone off you have a digital detox you watch like back to back Emily in Paris you wear face mask and you play with the dog and you just give in to all of the foods that you haven't been eating that week and all of the things you probably haven't been doing and you just totally chill and recharge and that is it is important in life to have a mixture of these days if when you it comes to having a number four day you're going to be the best bright shiny positive brilliant version of you you can't do it if you haven't had your number ones you know i really enjoyed the conversation with vicky i love that clip there but i also just want to point out that these things aren't necessarily very easy to implement i don't want us to have a conversation like this and make people feel like they're failing because they haven't yet managed to do this stuff so you know i've done 300 episodes of high performance i promise you damien i still beat myself up when i have a day that isn't very busy and actually my big problem is every day is a three or four for me i don't have the number one days i don't have the quiet days because another another conversation that you said where is this idea of deep work do deep work for three hours a day and the rest of the day is yours i can't work like that my work sort of fiddles through my whole day i wake up and send an email i'm on the school run and i'm thinking about work i drop the kids off and i sit in the school car park for 15 minutes doing a social media post i get home and during lunch with harry i'm checking to see how many people have watched our latest youtube upload in the evening i'm doing stuff maybe on my phone till 10 or 11 and i think that's the other thing i just want to mention is be kind to yourself understand yourself yeah like i i think it's a great habit if you can do it i don't think i could I think I'd struggle to have a number one day without then being so stressed the following day that it kind of derails me.

14:09I think you're different and I think you're actually really good at it or certainly better at it. I don't, but I'd also challenge what you said about yourself there, because when you're good on going away on holiday with Harriet and the kids, and I think when you do switch off the quality of your ideas that you send then, you know, when you're having a number one day of a slower pace, I think it frees you up to then offer really creative ideas for what we can do. Do you know how I have tricked myself into being okay at switching off? If I go on the hydro rower or the peloton bike at home, not the running machine because of my bad needs, but if I do either of those two, I know when I do physical exercise my brain comes to life.

14:47And when my brain comes to life I get my best ideas. So although I'm kind of switching off and doing some exercise, I actually know that I'm kind of working as well because I'll always come off and go, oh I'm going to send a quick WhatsApp to one of the team about that idea. So I think that's the other thing like don't think that switching off has to become like sort of like dead brain time. You know you can switch off but also it can be useful if you like. Yeah so that's a perfect example of where just sometimes allowing yourself that maybe it doesn't have to be numbering our days maybe it can be numbering an afternoon maybe or just a couple of hours where we allow ourselves that guilt-free moment to do something like go on the row or go to the gym.

15:27and also accept that we can then switch back on into work. And you know why I'm kind of proud of the fact that I've accepted that I'm not like everyone else is this idea that I am not like everyone else. And we do live in this world where I feel there's a constant push to do the things that everyone tells us will be successful, whether it's have a nice bath, whether it's get great grades at school, whether it's have brilliant relationships or read nine books a week or whatever the hell the latest fad is. And that's why I want to play a clip from James Clear because among all of this conversation about habits is a reminder that these have to be your habits.

15:59These have to be the things that work for you. They're not determined by other people. Well, there's nobody better than the Diane of habits, James Clear himself, to share with us why this stuff is important. Here he is then, James Clear, when he joined us on High Performance. Rather than letting my worries about what other people think of me prevent me from writing or prevent me from creating, Instead, I just used it as fuel to say, okay, listen, you just need to get to work now. You know, like you need to put even more effort into this so that you can make it truly great, so you can create something that you're proud of.

16:34And if you use it as the gas pedal and not the brake, then it becomes a driver of creative output rather than a hindrance for it. I love that. Because it's using what's already there, you know, like the fact that people will have a judgment or people will make a comment about it. you don't get to change that bit it's only how you choose to interpret it and if you get into the habit of just seeing that that comment is a springboard to go on and carry on doing what what brings you alive what brings life to you is really powerful yeah so you're now thinking well how does that become a habit well we're having this conversation because we've created habit reminders on the high performance app where you can write yourself an affirmation using our app and you get a notification whenever you want, reminding you of that affirmation or that message to yourself.

17:24And I think that's how you turn this into a habit because the human brain has biases. The human brain has a way of being derailed by other people's achievements, opinions, successes, right? And it will happen. The trick for me is to just be aware that that's happening and the habit is to replace it with a fuel. So I guess really the habit that I got into was realizing that I wasn't jealous of other people doing great things. I was envious. and if I'm envious, it means I want what they've got and if I want what they've got, then it's actually a great thing for me. Like I've kind of rewritten my relationship with envy that it's a really good thing.

17:56So let's say there's a podcaster or a business owner or a TV presenter doing something incredible. My brain will automatically go, ah, how dare they? I'm good too. Why haven't I got that job? Why has no one wrong me? And then the habit kicks in, which is, hey, that's great. It means that you want that. So what are the behaviors that you can employ right now to make that a reality? that's where the habit formation element here comes in i think actually i remember the billion alan de bottom from the school of life mentioning exactly that let's listen to him i sometimes think a really good guide to what you might be doing and who you should be is envy every time that you feel envious of someone or of a situation you come back you know someone someone tells you what they what they're doing and and you feel hmm i kind of hate them and if you use that hatred it's often a sign that there's something that they're doing that you're capable of that's why you've been slightly triggered by because you're recognising a kind of future potential so using envy is I think a really useful step and then just slowly assembling the jigsaw puzzle do various exercises like imagining 12 different scenarios of your future and just going let's try and grade them on a scale of 1 to 10 in 10 years time I am a da-da-da.

19:13How does that feel? In 10 years' time, it's a Tuesday morning and I'm off to do da-da-da. How does that feel? Sometimes our minds are a little bit obtuse. I mean, you'd think they'd work that bit out, but no, we sometimes have to go through an almost childishly simple thought exercise to try and project ourselves forward and see how we might feel. So that's what we should be feeling. And I just want to be clear with people that you can, again, make that a habit i think often we think that habits are physical things but actually the way that we think the way we talk to ourselves they are that is a habit man negative talk is such a habit again i would suggest that if people are going to use the habits on the high performance app maybe just set a habit that you allow yourself five minutes every couple of hours to go and just process how is it i'm feeling remember when we spoke to professor steve peters who said that once you can take an emotion and articulate it out loud it allows you to inspect it and explore it and decide that like you've done there i'm not jealous i'm envious i'm not angry i'm just a little bit hungry do you know what i mean it gives you different ways of being able to to understand our feelings and be able to then use them in a far more productive way right final clip then from a previous guest on this habit-based shorter episode of high performance i'm going to give the floor to you my friend.

20:37Yeah thank you I'm going to choose Jamie Peacock so Jamie Peacock is somebody that won nine Super League Rugby League titles now to win one Super League title you might be considered lucky to win two you might start to be considered as good but to do it nine times is something that's superhuman and I think what Jamie did was bring what we might perceive as superhuman into something really tangible and practical that any of us can apply in our own lives. Let's listen to him explain how he'd achieved these incredible feats. He boiled it down into understanding how we can get into the habit of making the hard choice on a more regular basis.

21:19Most moments we get into, we have like an hard or an easy decision, a decision that might be a little bit more difficult to do or one that's a little bit easier to do. So for example, you know, one we've been talking about is when I used to go running, I'd always make a decision as a player not to have any music on, because I think when I'm playing, no one's playing Rocky to me, and no one's making it any easier to me, so why would I want to run with any music on? Because that's just an easy decision, I'm making it easier for myself. But those little decisions are all around our lives, whether we want to decide to get fast food or not.

21:52Say we have a drink, we're hungover, next day we've always got two decisions, do we cook something healthy or do we get on Deliveroo? And I think the more decisions in our life that we make hard decisions, I think how easier our lives become, but I think the more easy decisions we make, the harder our lives become on the compound impact of those. And I think those decisions are done day to day. And I think as well that the bigger chain you build up of hard decisions, they almost become easier to make because they just become you as a person along the way. And I think it's that really thinking to yourself, which is going to be the most beneficial for me, probably the hardest one to do right now, but do this a few times, a few days in a row, then I'll get to the point where this is just a way, it's not even a decision anymore, it just happens.

22:45I think that's the key. You know what, I must have seen a million clips on my Instagram over the last few years of people going, do hard things, make the hard things count, make the hard decision. And it always, it used to leave me going, well, why? Why are we forcing ourselves to do hard things for no reason other than to punish ourselves. What is this nonsense? Then I heard that conversation with Jamie and I was like, oh, that's why we do the hard things, because it reminds us that we can. Therefore, it builds our confidence, builds our self-belief. And I think almost every time we take the easy decision, the decision that internally disappoints us, I think that sends a message that is actually pretty damaging and can take us to quite a dark place eventually.

23:27So making the hard decision, believing that we can make the hard decision, is powerful. Absolutely. So when we've been talking about the habit reminders on the high-performance harp, what we're recognising is that there's a concept called the Ulysses Contract. So it comes from ancient Greek mythology where Ulysses was sailing close to where these sirens were singing and their beautiful song was alleged to bring you closer to the rocks where you'd eventually crash and die. He knew he was going to pass through these sirens, so what he chose to do was tie himself to the mast and blindfold himself and cover his ears so that he wasn't going to be distracted by the siren noise that was eventually going to lead him off course.

24:08So this feature on the High Performance app gives us the opportunity to make a contract with our own selves, the selves that we want to be, not the selves that are going to be distracted by life in the moment. So like Jamie describes there, if we can sort of set the habit of making hard choices more frequently in the moment when we don't want to do it, but we've already made that contract with ourselves. We're more likely to do it, which means that when times are tough, we've given ourselves the confidence and the tools to be able to get through it. So look, before we wrap up, one habit that's changed things for you?

24:41Ben Bergeron, the CrossFit trainer, when we spoke to him, I remember having sort of a light bulb moment where he suggested, just set your alarm clock 15 minutes earlier than what you traditionally get up and use that 15 minutes to go and do some kind of exercise or just get moving. that's one that I took away from the conversation with him and I've tried to integrate it whenever I get the chance I set my alarm 15 minutes earlier than what I need to just to go and do a little bit of exercise great what about you um I love the idea of the early starts as you know mainly because as James said again it was a ripple effect habit you know it has an impact on your whole day but I think the one for me the habit for me has been asking my kids to rate themselves or their day or their week rather than me give it an assessment because of conversations on here where we've been told that if we tell our kids they've done well if we attach all the praise to the successful moments in their lives we end up creating young people who are constantly looking outside themselves for validation or to work out if something's been good or bad so all i've it's a very small change before i say you were brilliant today so like you know flo sings in the choir at my local cathedral seb loves sport so it's not well done you were amazing in that game or in that choir it's how did you find it today in the choir what did you make of that match what was what do you reckon was the best thing you did where do you think you struggled a bit today and then at the end you then go well i thought you were brilliant i mean i'm your dad so i would but i really thought you were amazing for this reason and that reason or well actually i thought this could have been better or that could have been better but it's always my opinion comes after theirs so when they have grown up and they're in the big wide world their opinion of themselves comes before other people's opinions themselves i think that's a powerful habit to pass on it's powerful but what What I love about it as well is it's simple.

26:25Yeah. Which is... It just requires a bit of mindfulness. It's how habits should be, right? Absolutely. The simpler the better. Well, look, I hope you've enjoyed that conversation. Just a reminder, you can check out the full conversations with all of those guests in the back catalogue of High Performance. You can watch them on YouTube, listen to them wherever you get your podcasts, or of course, you can watch them and listen to them on the High Performance app as well. And that's the place where you can try out for yourself our brand new habits reminder feature. And look, I would suggest, honestly, if you've got two spare seconds download the high performance app right now if you haven't already and just try the feature out it's free so you can have a go for free right now and just see what kind of impact it makes I've been using it for a while Damien's been using it for a while the whole team are using it and honestly the impact of those little messages on your phone every day it genuinely is great isn't it?

27:12Yeah absolutely I'd really recommend just give it a go Alright brilliant thanks a lot Damien Thank you mate and thanks to you for listening as always and we're back very soon with another episode of High Performance. Maybe make it a habit to listen to every episode.

27:48No one knows your business better than you. So who better to create your website than, well, you? Wix's website builder puts it all in your hands. Create a beautiful website just by talking with AI or choosing from thousands of templates. Customize every detail with simple drag-and-drop tools and get everything you need to start running business your way. Build more, think bigger, and do it all yourself on Wix. Go to Wix.com. You're invited to spend an evening on Fremont Avenue. For generations, this house has been home to soulful music, good food, and cutthroat card games. Saints and sinners.

28:29Unexpected laughs and unspoken truths. Good times, hard times, and of course, family. Always family. So pull up a chair and join us at Fremont Avenue, a world premiere play only at Arena Stage. Performances start October 8th. Tickets at arenastage.org. For a limited time at McDonald's, get a Big Mac extra value meal for$8. That means two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun, and medium fries, and a drink. We may need to change that jingle. Prices and participation may vary.