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Habits, Routines & Why They Matter More Than You Think

Episode 21 · 28 April 2025 · 33 min

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Show notes

Habits and Routines: Why They Matter More Than You Think

Habits and routines shape our work, health and relationships whether we notice them or not. Dr. John Oberg and Randy Lorensen share what works for them, and how to build routines that stick.

Randy explains why routines free his brain for creative work, and how ideas often come on walks or at the gym. John describes how his schedule has changed over the years. They cover habit stacking, journaling through times of change, checklists, and why habits can fade once the reward goes away.

Randy walks through his priming practice. They also talk about mindless eating, noticing the routines you've fallen into, and learning from people who've done it before.

Their advice: start with small, sustainable changes, automate what you can so it doesn't have to be a habit, lighten the load, and look for groups to learn with.

Habit Stacking, Morning Routines and Journaling

What you'll discover:

  • Why routines free up your brain for bigger things
  • Habit stacking: build new habits on top of old ones
  • Journaling and checklists
  • Priming, prayer, reading, meditation and exercise
  • Why habits fade when the reward goes away
  • Small, sustainable changes, and automating what you can

Timestamps

  • [00:00] Welcome: habits and routines
  • [00:56] Randy's routines
  • [01:43] Like it or not, we have habits
  • [02:31] Starting with a piece of paper
  • [03:20] Routines free up your brain
  • [04:55] Ideas on walks and at the gym
  • [05:42] Letting AI do a first pass
  • [06:33] A fasting story
  • [08:08] A scheduled start to the day
  • [09:44] Habit stacking
  • [11:19] Journaling in times of change
  • [12:54] Checklists
  • [14:31] When the reward goes away
  • [16:07] Priming
  • [17:43] Prayer, reading, meditation and exercise
  • [18:30] Routines that build community
  • [19:17] Mindless eating
  • [20:05] Noticing ingrained routines
  • [22:28] Learning from people who've done it
  • [24:53] Small, sustainable changes
  • [26:32] Automate what you can
  • [28:09] Second homes, and what draws you in
  • [29:44] The three biggest factors
  • [30:34] Lighten the load
  • [31:27] Learning in groups
  • [33:01] Building community deliberately, and wrap-up

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About the hosts

This is a hosts-only episode with Randy Lorensen and Dr. John Oberg (Anthony Marino isn't on this one). Host bios are on the host pages linked below.

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Related episodes

Meet the hosts: Randy Lorensen · Dr. John Oberg · Anthony Marino

Transcript

A full transcript is below. It was generated automatically from the episode audio, so expect some spelling errors in names and terms.

[00:08] of Abundance. I am Dr. John Oberg. With me as always, Randy Lorensen and my co-host Randy. Hey John, it's exciting topic today. I think I this this is an interesting topic. Habits, rituals, daily routines. Yeah. Spe speaking of which, our habit is say this is an exciting topic. Like you'd never hear us like, "Hey listeners, this is a crappy topic today. Stick around for the next 16 hours as we bore you to death again. Not going to happen. Well, somebody's got to sell and market a little bit, too. I love it. It's our habit that we're saying what an exciting time. I mean, the truth is we're excited about it, but it is a habit we have. What's interesting to me is when when I brought this up, I was like, you know, this is a great topic because people ask me about this all the time. And in particular, people ask me about a morning routine. This is a just a a question I get from random people. fairly frequently and you're like, "Nobody ever asked me about this." So, I don't know what that means. I think I'm boring. I'm approachable and charismatic. I don't know. Some I don't know. I don't know what he's good-looking. He's funny. Incredibly athletic. So, what uh if we talk about a again, it doesn't have to be a daily or a morning habit, ritual, routine, whatever you want to call it.

[01:20] Let's talk about why people want these. Why? Why do they have them? I mean, we have them whether we like it or don't like if I say, "Hey, Randy, how you doing today?" I'm doing great. Yeah, you like that was usually you say fine, but yeah, I'm doing great. There's these like, you know, if I hit your knee right now, you're going to kick me, right? There's we have reflexes. And so, we can do these things on purpose or we can fall into them, right? But whether we like it or not, we have habits. Yeah. I I think so. I'm a person who I've made it no secret. I like change. I like new things. I like shiny objects. I like I like new technology. But I day going. Yeah. But it could also be something as simple as I go to the gym, you know, to lift weights three times a week at, you know, basically these days this time, right? And run a routine when I get there. Yeah. Structure is good, right? Like the whole reason that I've created the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of tools, not that I came up with, but that I've gathered, collected, curated over the years, is to give people a mental model. So when they have a problem, they don't start with a blank piece of paper. Like if you have a like like a blank screen and you have a problem, like why not start with 80% or 90% of the solution in front of you?

[02:40] That's that's the great thing about mental models. we call them tools, but a lot of the things that that that I talk about with clients, friends, whatever, it's it's like what's the best practices as they're understood broadly in this domain so that that's the beginning of the conversation versus trying to build a wheel every time you get into your car, which is the most ridiculous thing that nobody ever does. But we solve other problems like that all the time, and it just seems like a waste. I just had a really interesting I don't know if it's a thought, an aha moment, but now I'm curious. I'm going to run a oneperson test. So huge sample size here. Yeah. I just realized in having this conversation that a lot of times my routines are where I I am able to because everything is on autopilot is where my brain is able to explore new ideas and think and be creative whether it's about whatever it is and I'm able to maybe I'm able to listen to a podcast about something that gets the juices flowing because if I'm lifting weights at the gym frankly that's boring to me but if I can do it while I listen to a interesting podcast. It's no longer boring because I'm focused on that and I'm thinking even as I'm making coffee in the morning as part of my routine, I'm listening to a podcast and I'm I'm stimulating my brain. So, am I is that just me or is that something you do? I think is look it's true that the whole walk and chew gum thing. Can you walk and chew gum? Sure. A lot of people can listen to podcasts while they take a walk or they can, you know, talk on the phone while they take a walk. And the thing the thing the brain can't do is process two bits of information at precisely the same time. It can task switch back and forth quite a bit. But you've got an autonomous system and then you've got a you know a voluntary system, right? In in terms of your nervous system. So I think you know when you build something into muscle memory, right? It allows you to then process other information while you're doing what's in muscle memory is my guess. I don't again I don't know the science behind that but that that makes a lot of sense to me. I'm just curious if it because it really the routine actually is one of the times that I do get to explore that side more than almost any other time. You know in writing the book a lot of the thoughts came while I was on a walk while I was at a gym a lot of ideas came you know doing sometimes I'm listening to a podcast walking but I'm not really listening. I'm, you know, my brain is I know people that listen to podcasts in the shower and like I was thinking to myself like that'd be a great time to listen to audiobook or podcast, but I don't do that because I'm actually processing other information. And if you've ever tried to process information, two things at the same time, like listening to a book while you're writing a letter, you can't I mean, right, there's a reason it doesn't I'm just curious because I I just I never really thought about it from that.

[05:27] This is why I love deep search with OpenAI because I can go have it solve a problem and it's doing all the reasoning, thinking, searching, whatever, and I can go to the next. seriously because I do this routinely, by the way. I give AI something. I have it do it and then I go like check emails or whatever and come back to it. Yeah. But I think the point is that when anyone says I'm multitasking, you know, the truth is you're not because you can't. you can task switch and that task switching has a context cost and that context cost according to research that I've read is 35 to 60% or more uh depending on how much context you're loading up each each time you switch and those switches can happen like in milliseconds. So you can seem like you're doing two things at once, but the truth is you're task switching back and forth if you're processing information and there's a cost to it. And so um I I make no value judgment about whether you should or shouldn't do it, but let's be just open about what's really happening. And so well and that vary I think I think it varies greatly person to person. I know even me I was on a middle a I don't know a three five seven day fast some ridiculous fast I was doing one time and in the middle of it I'm usually very good at somebody would come in pop in ask me a question and I would go back to work and I could get back in fully fully engrossed very quickly. Yep.

[06:48] All of a sudden in the middle of this fast, somebody would come ask me a question. I'd be like, "Wait, hold on, slow down. Repeat that." And then I would go back to my task and it was really hard for me in that state for whatever reason to t like I think I had more mental clarity while I was fasting. However, I wasn't able to switch tasks as fluidly as I used to. We were on a call yesterday with a third person and I said, "Let me take a note." And I was writing a note. They're like, "Hey, while you're doing that, I was like, "Hey man, I can't pay attention to you and write this note because I'm processing information." Yeah. And there was some reaction that was funny that I can't remember the exact reaction, but because I wasn't paying attention to that. I was paying attention to the note I was taking for the benefit of the conversation. And I just try to get really clear about like I can't process two things at once and I'm not going to try and anybody thinks they can. They're they're task switching back and forth. And I try to just not I don't want to spend the extra energy on context switching where it's unnecessary. All right. So I took us down this rabbit trail. Let's go back to routine. What Well, that is my routine. My routine is to try to get done what I'm doing at the time. Right. We were see I was doing it to you. All right. Sorry. Morning routine. I I have some things I try to do like I I literally have a checklist of things that I try to get done in the morning. Do you have what do you do you have anything like that? You know um from a young age like and thinking about like uh high school in particular like I rolled out of bed and I was working out you know we were generally in the water by 5:30 in the morning. And so I kind of learned to just have a really scheduled like start to the day. And so even today, like I don't have a I have friends of mine who will wake up and they'll read and they'll journal and I I have a little bit of jealousy because I don't have that system built for me. Like I need to jump straight into like a workout or a shower or a meeting or something um that is like a like like a a structured start to the day um versus an unstructured start to the day. And then I do things like reading, journaling, other times throughout the day. But I need to have a structured scheduled kind of start to that routine, which I know a lot of the morning routine people would say is crazy. I can still get more work done before noon than a lot of people get done in a day or a week or whatever. I can still work hard and be but but it's a it's a much more rigid scheduled thing. And I think that's as a function of when I was creating schedules early in my life. Um it at some point as I move toward um a different phase of my career, it may become really important for me to to rethink that. And I've for the last couple years thought through like what would it be like if I didn't actually talk to anybody or schedule anything before 10:00 a.m. But it would require a new set of muscles. I'd really and so I'm being thoughtful about that now because I want that to be a part of my life maybe 10 or 15 years from now.

[09:24] But I I recognize that um it's going to be a departure from what I've done for the last let's call it 35 years. Yeah. What about other parts of the day? You mentioned you do stuff later. So what what are the routine? I mean it don't have to be morning, right? Yeah. I think I think routines, you know, a lot of places talk about habit stacking. So if you want to start something new that's small, you stack it on top of a habit that you already have. And so I can't even tell you the number of things I've attached to brushing my teeth as habits in my life, right? Taking supplements, taking medicine. Um my next one's going to be um facial moisturizer that I don't use today. that is probably prudent for a guy of my age and putting sunscreen on every day. I'll attach that to brushing my teeth because I do that consistently at the same time. And so habit stacking is a really uh common way to add new habits to old habits. Um and finding um I think James Clearary called it like an environmental trigger in his book atomic habits, right? And so if one of your other habits is one of those triggers, it can be really powerful to help you build positive habits. What about what about journaling? This is one a lot of people challenge. What's your what's your do you have a routine with? And for me, I know sometimes I have a routine and then I don't have a routine and I do and I don't. That's a hard one for me to consistently stick on. So journaling to me is is a is a tool and and like a mental model for um moving in in a direction. And so there are times I journal every day very consistently. And then there are periods where the journaling is less consistent. And it's based on um what what deliberate movements I'm trying to make. And so I think there's seasons in our life. And I know people swear by journaling every day, all day, like not all day literally, but like they think that journaling is an important part of every day for decades at a time. And more power to them. That's amazing. I'm glad they can do that. I wish I could do that. And they'll probably tell me why I can and I'm not. And I'll probably get all kinds of love letters for saying this. But I think that um journaling is a really powerful tool for people in a period of change. And so, as you know, I wrote a journal for me that and I've shared with lots of people that's um really simple. I joke that it's like Mad Libs for journaling. It's fill in the blank. It takes two to three minutes and it gets people hyperdisciplined and it really helps when people are going through periods of change in particular.

[11:40] And then I use that journal to write in for other things. So, I'm opening that journal every day. I just don't always follow the exact same process. Yeah. All right. And I I use that journal as well. And I've used it at different sometimes for six months. I journaled five, six, seven days a week and sometimes I'll journal every day. Sometimes I go three months without journaling and sometimes, you know, anywhere in I've been anywhere in between. So yeah, I I use that journal every day, but I I don't want to be like disingenuous. Like some days I use it as a blank piece of paper to write down the three things I want to get done or to write down the person I told them I'd call them back so I don't forget that. And that and I may miss the Mad Libs part of it and just use it as the like checklist of things that I promised I would give people that I don't want to miss. And so I don't want to I I think people have a really good look at the front like what do they say? Facebook is like the front lawn of your life and I want people to be able to see the inside of the house in the backyard where it's not so pretty. Right. And so yeah, I have this great journal. It's amazing. But sometimes it's just a a really fancy piece of paper that I write down the things I promised people I would do today so I don't forget them.

[12:41] Yeah. I for I forgot yesterday to get the groceries and I told my wife I'd get them. We live in a building that has a door man and groceries, whatever. So, I walked past the groceries twice before I got them the third time because I didn't write it down in my journal. And so, that was pretty funny. Failure. So, I I'm just thinking, so I have a checklist, right? And and my checklist is um, you know, I've had a lot of back problems and the, you know, I use this soaz stretching tool that I find unbelievable. Right. That's part of my list every day is doing that along with some other back exercises. How long have you been using that tool? Call it two years. Three, two, three years. And every day? So, when I first got it and I was first introduced to it, I used it every day and it worked so amazingly well that my back pain that I'd been struggling with for 30 plus years went away. And then I just was like, "Oh, I don't really need it." Well, and the truth is now if I did it probably three days a week, it would be effective. But sometimes what I do is like lately for the last few weeks I've been doing it actually twice a day, morning and night.

[13:54] Um and I've been trying to do it right before I sleep which has helped my sleep some I think doing it right before I sleep instead of in the morning also which has become part of a new routine. but it's it's one of those things where I'm a little bit until the last couple weeks using it. I'm like oh my back's starting to hurt again. And then I use it to stretch out my soazes and and get that back. Yeah. A super cool book, right? Like the Atomic Habits, James Clearary, he talks about the reward of the habit. And so like if you're doing something that made you feel better, but then it doesn't make you feel different anymore because you already think you feel better. The reward goes away. And so um Kirk Patrick is a guy who does work on um adult learning and he talks about knowledge, application, skill, habit. Like so you have the knowledge of this thing. you know how to apply this thing, you have the skill of using it, but it hasn't turned into a real habit yet because the may because the reward isn't enough to keep you coming back. It's a real it's a real interesting like mini case study on uh on like um what drives habit like there's pain and pleasure, right? So it's what you've just described is like a really interesting pain pleasure case study.

[15:09] Yeah. Lots of pain. I I I create a habit that that maybe have it and then once the once the pain goes away and I'm actually just working toward, you know, reduction of pain or future pain or pleasure or like I stop like I don't know. I find that super interesting. Well, I think when I first started hurt using it, my back would hurt. Yeah. And you're like, "Hey, dummy. You can make the back pain go away to I get it. Yeah. Get on here and do it." And then when the back pain when you've done it so much that you've loosened up the soaz it you just stop thinking about it. You should put the link the stretcher looks awesome. We'll put a link in the show notes so you can see what stretcher it is. It's on the website tailsabundance.com. It is on there 40 bucks or something on Amazon and it it I'm telling you if you have back pain start with this thing. I wish I would have found it 30 years earlier. I could have saved a zillion chiropractor and doctor visit. Your mileage may vary. Maybe it's your so maybe it's not. But if it is right, but I would just for 40 bucks, I would try it. Yeah, sure. It's cheaper than one visit. So, I've got I've got that. I have a I've got a part of something I do called priming. This has been really helpful. This is a Tony Robbins thing. It's it's I think it's free. Tony Robbins priming. It's about a 12minute exercise that's a combination of prayer, meditation, light calisthenics. It kind of gets blood and there's you know it's typical gratitude exercises which is part of the journal and it's just it it's a healing of the body and it is focusing on what things you want to accomplish. A lot of the same stuff that's in your journal. Uh you know that's really good. I've been trying to do breathing exercises. I've added in these stretches for my back.

[16:48] I've got at least 15 minutes of movement every day. So it it could be as simple as I just go walk around the yard for 15 minutes. I try to do more, but at a bear bare minimum is 15 minutes. Uh I'm forgetting one or two things, but then I try to have some kind of resistance weight training three times a week minimum. Uh and it's, you know, reading that reading has been I'm trying to get back into consistently reading every day. And uh and those are all great, you know, those are those are things that make me feel better and I think give me a better, happier life. I love it. Does priming stand for something or just what he calls it? It's just what he calls it. It's cool. It's a It's a great It I've tried a lot of different things. This is the one that is I I just heard prayer, meditation, reading, exercise. I was looking for the R and the I because you know me. I love acronyms that you hate. Yes. Correct. Sorry. Sorry. Yeah. Prayer, reading. I'm not sure what I would be. Meditation, exercise, reading.

[17:51] Again, I don't know. We hate acronyms. That's That's our show stance. We hate acronyms. Oh, is that okay? You didn't get that memo. John loves them. Randy hates them. That means we hate them. Yes. Correct. Got it. As long as we understand the rules. I can live with that. That's okay. Our rules. Got it. Okay. Right. But yeah, but but but I think there's a lot of I think there's a lot of routines we have that we don't think about. I mean it it for a lot of people it's going to church whether it means Sunday or other nights or Bible study for other people it means this is the night that I go hang out with my friends or you used to do a thing you on Sundays when you lived in the house not downtown and maybe you still but you used to have a thing where your house was just open every Sunday for anybody that wanted to come to we just had a big Sunday fun Sunday fun Sunday fun Sunday funday and the open front door and you just brought whatever you wanted to bring or whoever you wanted to bring and it was just an open door every Sunday yeah and that I I thought that was amazing. Like I I came two or three times I think and it just it was one thing what didn't necessarily fit our schedule the best but I always enjoyed I always thought it was really cool where just people came and talked and um you know yeah one of my core values is deliberateness and and and it's about making sure that that I understand like I I choose the routines I want to choose and then the routines that aren't serve me well I can ring those out. And so we all have habits that are good habits and we probably most of us have habit I have habits that are bad habits. And so um you know one of my bad habits is eating food that's put in front of me. Like you know sometimes I'll just eat food when I'm not hungry and that's a bad habit or um sometimes I'll eat when I'm stressed as a as a way of coping with stress and that's a bad habit um because I'm not eating for the right reasons. And so, uh, I do think that that, you know, people can look at their habits and decide how deliberate they want to be.

[19:36] And so, the thing the thing that I would tell people to do if they're interested in their routines is to take like a time in motion planner and we can put one up on the website tellsabundance.com where it just has a week and it's like a 15 minute slot every 15 minutes for the entire week and you just keep that one piece of paper with you for one week only. You don't do this every week of the years, one week only. And you just write down all the routines that you bump yourself into and all the things that interrupt you out of your patterns for the week. So you get an idea of what's causing you to do the the routines you like, what routines are maybe ingrained that you maybe don't like, and then what's interrupting you for the important things in your life. And so I think it's a it's like one routine I see people having is answering their phone when it rings just because it rang. And someone said to me once like your phone that that thing that goes off when your phone is ringing, that's a signal, not an alarm. Yeah. And so I think I think you know h do having a habit tracker that you can say for a week like and then you figure out like what's serving me, what's not serving me. Yeah. Yeah. That's an interesting one.

[20:40] I it kind of brings a smile to my face because I I can I remember especially like when the kids were in high school a lot of times my phone would be left in the other room or on my desk and we'd be eating dinner and my phone would be ringing and I'd ignore it. And the youngest Ryland in particular, he could tell just he's like he'd look at me and I'd ignore it and he'd look at me and he'd be like, "Your phone is ringing." And I'm like, "Yeah." He's like, "Aren't you going to answer it?" I'm like, "No." And it it was just it was incomprehensible to him that it was okay to let my phone ring. And me, not only was I not answering, I wasn't even looking to see who it was. Yeah. My kids got the memo on that one for you. Like I call my kids, they'll like call me back maybe. Yeah, I called one of them spring break. He was with his mom divorced in different households and I called him on spring break and two days later kid hadn't called me back. I was like I I wanted to see how long it would go then I couldn't wait any longer and I was like hey man I called you. I'm sorry. Yeah teenager. Yeah. Well, mine is I'm going to check it after dinner, but I sure, you know, but there's a there's a great thing that, you know, I I think I I would like to look at it more from the creating good routines. And the routine is I think the healthier routine is you don't answer the phone during dinner.

[21:55] You don't look at your phone during dinner. Like for me, leaving it in the other room or just turning it off and not answering them. I would like that to be the habit or that to be the routine, not to have the phone controlling us that the phone rings and I have to answer it. I I think for me the thing I would offer to listeners is first of all know what your good and bad routines are and then don't try to fix everything at once. Like just fix one or two at a time and then um when you're building a new routine, stack those habits and then start with best practices. Like if you have a habit that you want to implement, like don't just start from scratch. Go see who's done it before. You know, we talked about James Clearary and Tony Robbins and um Kirk Patrick and we've got some tools at talesofabundance.com. like whatever it is, just don't start from the ground up. Like like figure out what you know where where's the the the frontier of knowledge and then jump off from that point so that you don't have to do all the work that people have done for decades or centuries before you. Journaling's been a habit for ever. I mean I still read Marcus Aurelius's journal called Meditations about stoicism. Yeah. You know, I'm looking up meditations to see when it was written, but uh let's see. When was meditations?

[23:05] Couple thousand years ago. Yeah, I think it was a while ago, right? I don't I'm going to round off to the closest uh thousand years and say 2,000 years ago. Dude, you nailed it. It was written between uh 2,200 years ago, give or take. Dude, nice work. Well, I thought it was like 400. I didn't realize it was a 170 AD. I mean, it's Roman history. We kind of have a pretty good idea of when a lot of that h I mean, I know I know it went on. I mean, the Roman Empire didn't really fall till I think around a thousand or maybe even after a thousand. All I'm telling you is I was off by four or 500 years and you nailed it. All right. Well, it's pretty easy when you round to the no clear thousand. I'm just saying high five. Good job. All right. All right. I'm I'm going to get better at taking compliments. So, good job me. Yeah. See, this new habit we can work on. It's good. It is. So, what happens? Okay. Sometimes I've had habits where I have tried to get so one of the the habits I think I've talked about it on the show before is asking God, the universe, energy, love, I don't care what you want to call it, whoever is listening, what you know, in my case it's what should I do today? How do I get to spread abundance in the world?

[24:10] And taking time every morning to do that. And that one has been very difficult for me. Now I've added it to my stretching, my priming routine. And I've been doing a good job of it very recently. But I have been struggling with this for 6 months or a year. And I feel like my days are better when I do it. But a lot of times I get up, the phone starts ringing, and I just get skipped. So how what does somebody do when they just they they they have the intention. They want to create a habit. It could be as simple as new year New Year's comes and they're like, I'm going to go to the gym three times a week. And then they go twice and they never go again. It could be anything. I you know the um in the medical practice we talk a lot about small sustainable changes. So the first thing is make sure that whatever it is that you're doing is a small enough change that is sustainable versus like I'm going to change my whole life like and and people may want to do that and are successful at doing that sometimes. But on the clinical side we tell people like let's make small changes. That's I think that's a one thing. And then I really appreciate what Clearary had to say about this in atomic habits, right? He talks about designing your environment to like cue the triggered behavior that you want to have. And then he goes in, he talks about creating a positive association so you're getting that positive association. He calls it, I think, craving and then making it easy to start and then making it rewarding. Like he's really clear about that in the book. And I think that when you talk about small changes that you're that thoughtful about, you know, um it becomes much easier to see the momentum and then keep the momentum. And then when you bump into the soaz thing, you're talking about making sure there's a reason to keep it going. Yeah. Like and and evaluating that because sometimes you want to have it for a season. Sometimes you want it longer than a season. Like brushing my teeth is a long a lifelong event for me. Like I'm going to do that my whole life. Um learning is a lifelong thing for me. Like I'm going to do that my whole life. There are other things that I just haven't been able to get going. You know, I Spanish, you know, learning Spanish has been one that it's at some point I will learn Spanish, but hasn't been important enough to me yet.

[26:14] And so I've got to go sort that. Learning guitar. I'd love to learn guitar, but not enough to actually make it a habit. Yeah. I think this applies to all the five Fs, right? I mean, one one of the other simple ones is, you know, a basic money money accumulation management, wealth building skill is to take a certain amount of your income and invest it, right? Yeah. I don't call that one a habit, man, because all you have to do is automate it. And once it's automated, it's not your habit. It's just done. Like, I can just have I can just have the bank move my money to another place. And so, so I don't think that's really like I think it's something you have to decide to do. I think you can automate it out of your life so you don't have to worry about the habit. But I think that that can be as simple as making a choice. That's a fairly new choice. But it's but look, this is something I've known my entire life, right? Is it take x amount? And for most of my life, I didn't do it. It was one of those, oh, kind of like the person, I'll start going to the gym next week or whatever, right? Uh, and you're right, I now have it automated. Yeah. And every time that money hits my account, a certain amount goes into, you know, and by the way, my suggestion would be automate anything you can so you don't have to make it a habit. Like like I I think that there's a real value in finding automation or delegation or you know, so I I think there's just there's things in my life that I don't do. Um, and uh, and whether I don't do them because I just am not going to do them or I found someone else to delegate them to, whatever the case may be, like part of it is just knowing what's really important to you. And so I went through a list, you know, my 20s for the first time and I do this exercise pretty regularly. It's like I go write down all the things I want, habits, things, whatever. And I write down why. And a lot of times the answer is just no. Not worth the effort. I'll give you a really, this is going to sound really first world problem, but like, you know, my wife and I have talked about like, do we want to have a second home? And right now, there's no place that draws me enough to it. And everyone I've talked to that has a second home feels some connection like they have to go there versus traveling somewhere else. And my wife and I enjoy traveling. And so, it's just not like our habit around travel is going to be to travel. We want to travel, not to go to a second home. Now, when our kids have kids and we want to be around family more, that may change.

[28:31] But I think that's true for like, you know, exercise. Like I didn't ever want to go to the gym until health became really really important to me. And then I, you know, I found a different reason to go to the gym than I'd had previous to that. And then I found a way to make it enjoyable. I found a way for my environment to support that. All the things Clary talks about for sure. And and it's become a thing that's becoming a habit for me after the last 15 months. But I wouldn't say I've got it locked in like in the way that you do for example, even though I worked out twice a day for years of my life. Yeah. Well, it's it's working on it, right? But and how do you make it fun? I mean, that's been one of the challenges for the gym. It used to be I played football multiple days a week. I played basketball. Yeah. And I looked forward to going to playing football or basketball. I have an accountability partner there. I've got someone who shows up in the gym and I know that if I don't show up they're going to be there and it's like I'm not willing to put up with the you. So I think that's a big part of it. And then I I'm also able to see the results in a way that are really meaningful for me. So I sat out some really clear like and for me as I get older it's like I want to be flex more more mobile like joints and muscles. So mobility is really important, balance is important and then uh strength is important. And so as you age, you know, those three things are kind of the most important factors as understood, you know, and so like falling is the number one risk for people dying as they get older and older and older. And so these are the things that kind of offset some of that. I'm I'm doing handstands now in the gym. I haven't done a handstand since I was in my 20s. Um but but in order for me to do there'll be there'll be video of that at I have a video. It is really underwhelming. It will inspire you to know how un like it is I am uninspiring to inspire you. I set the bar very low but yeah so I think I think but um and then for me it's about few habits right like I want to have lots of habits but good habits and I want to get rid of bad habits but I I try to give myself a lot of grace to not overdo it. And so as as I work with clients and we work through some of these things, it's it's always about how do we lighten the load, lighten the lift, not because we're trying to take the easy road or the shortcut, but because we want to make sure we have like highest return on on energy expended. Yeah.

[30:48] And I I really I'm I'm thinking I just I keep getting the fun going through my brain. That's anything we can do to make it Oh, yeah. fun is or at least rewarding. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. And you've done a great job of this for a long time, Randy. Like I think about like just the way that you have some of your habits. I mean, there's places we've talked about where you want to make them better, but some of the habits you have are long lasting, really healthy, and then I think we both have a list of habits that were so good and so healthy for us that we stopped doing them. Yeah. Which is embarrassing. Yeah. for me and you know so it it's but even thinking that instead of doing research or learning about something online I prefer to go to a meetup or a group if I can find a group of interesting people. Yeah. It's about knowing how you learn. Yeah. And you know I instead of you know reading articles about Bitcoin was like not even as much as I liked it. It wasn't that exciting. But then going to a meetup and meeting like-minded people and it was more social. All of a sudden I was like, "Oh, this is a lot more fun." I learn much better in that environment, too, by the way. I just do.

[31:53] And it's more sustainable. And you do you look forward to it instead of it feeling like a chore. And it's an environmental thing, too. Like again, back to Clar's thing. Like getting your environment to trigger the behavior. Like if you've got a meet up at 7:00 on Tuesday mornings, like you're going to show up because 25 people expect you there, right? Versus like I'm going to get up at 7 o'clock and read about Bitcoin. like it's just especially if you went to bed, you know, late because one of the kids was sick and you didn't get the number of hours of sleep you want. It's just so easy to hit the snooze button or change the alarm setting versus 25 people are counting on me, right? You know, I think I think there's something to that. So, I think part of the environment for me is getting people involved. And so, I think when you can get people involved in your habits that you're changing, that can be really helpful. up pretty good. You got anything you want to add? I mean, […] Let us know what's working and not working for you. And uh you know, I think another time we can talk about affinity groups and how to how to start affinity groups for community, making friends as we come up and what it's like to build a community very deliberately around you, not from a transactional perspective, but from a relational perspective. as we get into those topics. I think habits and relationships, there's a lot of uh a lot of things where they support one another really really well and we can kind of maybe um pull the curtain back on some of the affinity group work we've done over the last gosh 15 years. Yeah. And how important that's been for us.

[33:22] Fantastic. Cool. Well, thanks John. Thanks listeners. Uh as always, uh we definitely appreciate the support. Uh check us out at talesofabundance.com. Uh download on your favorite podcast app, player, whatever. Give us five stars. Tell your friends, tell your family, tell people you don't like. We don't care. Just bring people that want to Yeah, we're on social media, too, now. Give it check us out on social media. Yeah, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, uh whatever whatever else you use on social media. But uh the support is greatly appreciated and uh hoping everybody has a wonderful day. Why settle for less? Yeah. Thanks,