Edition #4

Hi All!

Here is your weekly serving of practical guidance and inspiration to ensure you live your life with purpose. Feel free to forward this along to friends and family. Enjoy!

I wanted to give a quick shout to the 15 amazing individuals who have joined us since last week. Thanks for being here and welcome to the Never Idle team!

Read Time: 6 Minutes

Master Your Mindset

Consistency is Your Superpower

Wonder Woman has godlike strength and the ability to fly.

Spider-man can shoot webs and move with deadly accuracy.

The Flash has immense superhuman speed, agility, and reflexes.

While we mere mortals were not quite blessed with the powers of these supers, we do have one superpower we can harness when we develop the right mindset:

Consistency

Ready to cultivate this superpower to turn yourself into Captain Consistency? Consista-girl? The Consistinator? Alright relax, I’m still working on the name. But I got the goods. Here we go:

So first let’s understand why consistency is so powerful. Albert Einstein said “Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it … he who doesn’t … pays it.” Exaggeration? I think not.

Here’s a compelling example as to exactly why not. What would you rather have:

• $1 million today

  OR

• An enchanted penny that doubles every day for 30 days?

At 1st glance, it may seem tempting to take the 100 racks (that’s what the hip people call $10k) but if you understand the power of compounding, you should choose the enchanted penny as at the end of the 30 days it will be worth more than $5.3M.

Pretty shocking huh?

I demonstrate this because consistency is the compound interest of our actions, behaviors, and thoughts.

Investing a dollar once won’t make you a millionaire. But doing it consistently can.

Studying Spanish for a week won’t make you fluent. But doing it consistently for a year can.

Eating healthy and exercising for a month won’t get you to your desired physique. But doing it consistently for 9 months can.

See where I’m going with this? The power is not in the action itself. It is in the consistent repetition of the action towards a desired outcome.

1. Think about a desired outcome you want to achieve. It could be something that has eluded you for years or something you just recently decided on.

2. Now think of a small step you can take today that will move you ever so slightly towards that goal

3. What about the next day? Maybe you repeat the same step. Maybe it requires a different action.

4. As these daily actions compound, how can you adjust to rise to the new level you have reached? The steps will depend on the goal but what doesn’t change is you show up every day. You put consistency into practice and the outcome will take care of itself.

Most people fail to achieve their goals because they don’t see results quickly enough and quit. They were on the right path but just didn’t remain consistent.

But this isn’t going to be you. You now understand that consistency is your superpower. It will create its own momentum. It will drive your sense of purpose. It will break down barriers that have stood in your way for years.

Be consistent with what you do. Take that small step toward greatness every single day. Become ‘The Consistador.’ Ahhh! Still working on the name. If I’m consistent with it, I’ll think of a good one 😉

Hone Your Habits

Habit Loops: Breaking Down the Components

What is a habit loop? Well, if you have ever read Atomic Habits by James Clear you surely know. But whether you have or not, let’s break down the components so you can start using them to build world-class habits today.

A habit loop is the 4 steps we all go through (whether consciously or more often subconsciously) that make up the habit-building process.

Step #1: Cue

The loop starts with a cue, which is the trigger that tells your brain to initiate a behavior. This is a tiny bit of information that your brain uses to predict the reward it will receive (more on rewards later). All of your behaviors are with the intent of obtaining a reward, whether for your benefit or your demise.

Positive Example: You brush your teeth and the clean sensation causes a craving for the runner’s high you get from your morning runs.

Negative Example: You get home from work and sit on the couch. The comfort on your derrière sparks the craving for entertainment. (I’m not saying to never watch TV, but making this a habit is not a good use of your time).

Step #2: Craving

The craving is the motivational piece behind your habits. A feeling of motivation or desire is required so you have a reason to act. The important thing to understand with cravings is you do not crave the habit, you crave the state you will be in after you perform it.

You don’t crave journaling, you crave the mental clarity it provides you. You aren’t motivated to eat junk food, you are motivated by the short-term dopamine your body produces when eating these types of food.

Cravings will vary by what motivates you but we all experience them, for better or worse.

Step #3: Response

The response step is the actual habit or behavior you perform. The amount of motivation you have during the craving step and the amount of friction between you and the behavior will determine if you actually perform it or not.

If you get motivated to run but you’re in your work clothes, your running shoes are in the car, and it’s raining outside — there could be too much friction for you to expend the energy to get ready and go run.

Alternatively, if you get motivated to run and you are already in athletic clothes with your running shoes on from just walking the dog on a beautiful sunny day, your physical and mental effort will be much less to get the run started.

As you start to get better at building habits you will understand reducing friction is a major force in building positive habits. We all only have so much willpower we can rely on.

Step #4: Reward

Finally, the reward. Where all the other steps stem from:

The cue notices the reward.

The craving wants the reward.

The response obtains the reward.

You strive for rewards so you can:

1. Feel satisfied

2. Obtain feedback for your brain to use in the future

I like to think of these as the immediate reward and the delayed reward. The immediate reward of working out is the feeling of satisfaction of crushing your workout:

The delayed reward is the feedback your brain uses to determine if the action (working out) is worth doing again in the future. This feedback will be different for each individual. If you think, “How am I not jacked? I worked out 1 whole time,” you might register this as disappointment and quit.

But if you think “That feeling after I worked out last time was amazing, I get to feel that and work towards my ideal physique, let’s go again,'“ then you will register a feeling of pleasure and see it as a useful action to repeat.

Now you know the 4 steps of a habit loop. If any stage is insufficient your behavior won’t become a habit.

Eliminate the cue and the habit never begins. Eliminate the craving and you have no motivation to act. Put too much friction between you and the behavior and you won’t do it. Remove the reward and there is no reason for the action to be repeated.

Habits can be a force for good or your greatest enemy. You can now be more aware of what triggers your actions, what causes your cravings, and what gets you to act or not.

Being aware is the 1st step in getting habits to work for you instead of against you.

Words of Wisdom

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Thanks for reading! And always remember…

Slow and steady. Never Idle.

Until next week,

Austin Sargent