MM164 - Maintaining the Habit | MM Book Study Pt. 22

A big part of leading a positive and productive life is to develop good, productive habits. Once we have committed to a positive habit we need to work hard to maintain that habit.

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♫ Trenches by Pop Evil ♫

*Alex*

Welcome to Morning Mindset. A daily dose of practical wit and wisdom with a professional educator & trainer, Amazon best selling author, United States Marine, Television, and Radio host, Paul G. Markel. Each episode will focus on positive and productive ways to strengthen your mindset and help you improve your relationships, career goals, and overall well-being. Please welcome your host; Paul G. Markel.

*Professor Paul*

And we continue on with the Morning Mindset book study. We are on section or chapter 22 today, Maintaining the Habit. Now, I'm not going to be the first person who has ever said that human beings are creatures of habit. We all know that you know that I know that we all know that. Now some of our habits are good some of our habits our productive some of our habits are destructive and some of our habits are not necessarily destructive, but they don't really help us to do anything.

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They don't help us grow, they may be time-wasters or great distractions. Part of our journey to lead a more positive and productive life is to develop good habits positive habits, productive habits, habits that help us improve our mental strength or our physical strength, and we do these things we sit down and we have little conversations with ourselves and we say, you know, I really should.

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Read more often or I really should walk or I should run or I should treadmill or I should do whatever and we have these honest conversations with ourselves, and we decide that we are going to get involved in a positive productive habit right going to the gym regularly. Is a habit or it should be a habit exercising treadmill and walking running whatever reading often studying.

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These are positive habits, but the problem we run into you as humans is that we often allow the great to be the enemy of the good for instance. You say well, my normal gym routine is 90 minutes, and I give myself 90 minutes-two hours to go to the gym, and do all the things I need to do. The stretching, and the running, and the treadmill and the bathing and so forth and what happens?

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Well, you find out or you realize that you only have 45 minutes you're planning to do a 90-minute workout session and that's your Norm. But you get busy or you get behind or you end up late and you look at the clock and you realize that the most you can dedicate as 45 minutes. Now if you are disciplined and you say well I'll just do 45 minutes.

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But there's also this natural human tendency to say well if I can't do my full 90-minute workout routine, then I just might as well not do it at all. It's just. For instance, I've used this before but it's a good example Matt and Scott with Starting Strength. They were talking about people are on the road. Now in an ideal situation, if you were strength training, you would go to your gym your facility or what have you, and you would use your equipment what you know, you have what you know what you need.

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But then you end up on the road you're either on business vacation or your own personal time or whatever, but you're away from home. You're away from your facility your gym Your Perfect Workout. So it'd be easy to say "Well, you know, I'm just not going to do anything" and that was the question that Matt and Scott address. So if you cannot do your normal prescribed training routine, is it better just to skip a day and do it the right way or the perfect way or the best way, or is it better to do something and the answer that they gave is it's better to do something than nothing because what you're doing is you're maintaining.

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You're maintaining the habit and that's something that I think that most people, if they're honest with themselves, will agree or admit to the fact that they come up with all these good ideas for self-improvement. You know, it's the reading or the exercising or whatever. They come up with these ideas and they agree with they have little conversations with themselves and they say I'm going to start blank.

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I'm going to start. You know, I'm going to get up each morning and I'm going to get on the treadmill, or every other morning or whatever. What have you, and then something gets in the way. Something changes, it becomes inconvenient, they run short on time and then they start making excuses to themselves or they start making bargains with themselves. Say, "Well, I'll skip it today, but tomorrow or the next day I'll do it twice as long."

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I know I was supposed to today, I know I was planning to. But how things are just you know, they're just, you know more difficult than I thought it was going to be. I'm busier than I thought I was going to be, I'm running late this and that and we give ourselves excuses to not maintain the habit. Now if you were going to go on a, let's say your normal routine is to go on a 30-minute walk in the park.

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Go off for 30 minutes, right? That's your normal routine, and something changes. You get busy or late, kids, whatever and you say "Ah, normally I would do this, but I just don't have the time." Is it better to just not do anything or is it better to maintain the habit and I'm here to tell you if you're hoping to develop positive habits.

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You're if you're hoping to replace negative habits with good habits. With productive habits, it's better in that case. You know, the 30-minute walks, "I was going to I was going to walk for 30 minutes and that's my normal routine. But I can't today. I just don't have the time." You're better off going and walking for 10 or 15 and coming back and moving on with your day than you are with skipping it.

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Because when you skip it, for whatever reason you skip the reading you skip the training you skip the whatever now you're developing the habit of not doing it. Now, you're actually developing a skipping it habit. I know human beings are complicated and complex individuals. They're complicated creatures the fact the matter is this if you are serious, and you want to lead a more positive and productive life.

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We need to maintain good, positive, productive habits, and the only way to do that is to force yourself to maintain the habit. To do it even when it's not convenient, even when it's not going to be fun even when you know you have other things to do. For instance. A lot of people have said, you know, I was going to go. Yeah, I want to go to the gym and I'm going to do it and I really told myself I'm going to this year. I made a resolution and all that stuff.

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I did it, but you know "I don't feel like it". When you don't feel like it is exactly when you need to do it. Because that's forcing yourself to maintain the good habit. So the next time you find yourself faced with that conundrum, with that question, where you had planned to but things became things changed you got busy the kids the work the business the whatever and you just don't feel like you have the time don't allow the great the perfect situation to be the enemy of the good it's better to do something.

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When it comes to maintaining positive habits than it is to do nothing and go through that. Well, I'll do it twice as much next time now. You won't don't lie to yourself maintain the Habit ladies and gentlemen, and you will be on the road to a more positive and productive life. Thank you very much for joining me for this Morning Mindset book study. I am your host Paul Markel, and I will talk to you again. Real soon.

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*Alex*

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