Edition #5

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 61 amazing individuals who have joined us since last week. We have more than doubled in readers since the last edition and I am so grateful! Thanks for being here and welcome to the Never Idle team!

Read Time: 4 Minutes

Master Your Mindset

Failure is Your Friend

For 3 months of the year, I am a high school soccer coach. I have a saying derived from a Nelson Mandela quote that I tell my team all the time:

“We either win or we learn.”

The 1st time I say this each season I will usually have a freshman speak up and say, “ What do you mean coach? We just lost.”

My response goes something like this:

“No, we didn’t.

We can only lose if we fail to learn from our mistakes.

We can only lose if we fail to learn from this feeling of disappointment.

We can only lose if we let the lessons from this result fail to reach the training pitch tomorrow.”

You see, the only way to lose — Whether in sport or in life — is the failure to learn from your mistakes.

Making mistakes, trying and failing, taking risks that don’t pay off - None of these are bad IF you are willing to search for why you didn’t succeed (this time) and apply those lessons on your next attempt.

If you use them as learning opportunities, they are just steps to becoming a more well-rounded ‘YOU.’

This is where the mindset shift needs to take place.

Instead of dwelling on past failures and getting down on yourself, look for the lessons you can learn from them. Ask yourself:

• What could I have done differently?

• Was it my approach or my effort level?

• What did I do well that I can build upon?

• Who can I look to for support or insight to improve?

Use this knowledge to improve your future performance.

Add to this list. Develop your own set of questions. However you do it, reflection is essential to making failure your friend.

You are not defined by your failures. You are defined by how you react to them.

Hone Your Habits

Habit Stacking

Habit stacking is a tool that was first introduced by BJ Fogg from his Tiny Habits Program, which was further broken down by James Clear in Atomic Habits. When it comes to habits, these resources are invaluable so expect me to reference them many times and I encourage you to check them out yourself.

Okay, so what is habit stacking?

It involves 2 pieces (can be more but for simplicity let’s start with 2): A current habit and a new or desired habit. The idea is to tie your desired behavior to something that you already do on a daily basis.

The formula in the aforementioned resources is this:

After I [CURRENT HABIT], I will [NEW HABIT].

Let’s look at a few tangible examples:

• After I brush my teeth, I will do 5mins of stretching.

• After I finish eating lunch, I will take a 15min walk outside.

• After I put on my pajamas, I will set out my workout clothes for tomorrow.

Take a quick moment to brainstorm.

• What are some habits that you want to start?

• Make a list of 2 or 3

• Now, think about things you already do during your day.

• Where could you attach the new habits to your existing habits? What connections make the most sense?

Start with this. As you implement it and improve, a habit stack can get as large as you want (4, 5, 6 habits on top of each other).

If you read last week’s edition, you may remember a habit loop is made up of a:

• Cue

• Craving

• Response

• Reward

Habit stacking is so powerful because it makes your current habit the cue for your new, desired habit. In other words, you can use something you already do to kick off the habit loop for something new you want to start doing.

Reverse, Reverse

This tactic can also work in reverse, what I like to call Reverse Habit Stacking.

Instead of your new habit coming AFTER your current habit, flip it.

This is how I was able to implement journaling — a habit I had wanted to start for years — into my daily routine successfully.

I thought about what I do daily and roughly what time I wanted to fit journaling into my day (for me mid-morning was ideal). This is around the time I drink my coffee, so I thought:

Before I drink my coffee each day, I will journal for 5mins. Linking these 2 habits together and making that mental connection integrated journaling into my craving for coffee.

I have built this connection up to where even if I forget to journal before making my coffee, the 1st taste of coffee on my tongue generates thoughts of “oh right, time to journal.”

So to get started stacking habits:

• Create your 2 lists: one of desired habits (as I said earlier keep this short at first, 2-3 to start) and one of your current habits.

• Find connections between them

  • Frequency of current habits

  • Time of day

  • Feelings you get from them

  • etc

• Link one current habit to a new habit

• Pick an order: traditional habit stacking or reverse habit stacking

• Be consistent

If you fail to make the connections at 1st and don’t seamlessly integrate your new habits into your routine, don’t get discouraged. Remember from earlier, failure is simply a learning opportunity. Reflect and try again.

Get to stacking!

Words of Wisdom

You can complement this weekly newsletter with short reminders, ideas, and thoughts about personal development by following me on Twitter.

Thanks for reading! And always remember…

Slow and steady. Never Idle.

Until next week,

Austin Sargent