Atomic Habits: How to Get 1% Better Every Day

0:00 Welcome to the Unapologetic Man Podcast. The only podcast that's all about self-improvement, confidence, success, women, and being a man without making any apologies for it. What's up guys, Mark Sing here. Thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of the UMP and today we are going to talk about atomic habits. Creating habits that lead to long-term change. So in today's society, we like to get infatuated with the idea of overnight success. We like the idea of just waking up and being a millionaire. Or we like to blame people's success on luck or taking advantage of others or just having it been given to them by their parents.

0:48 But when it all boils down for the vast majority of successful people, it is not an overnight success. It's something that they've worked on consistently and it's something that they did over a long period of time. A good analogy for this is if you have a plane take off from Los Angeles flying to New York and if the nose is simply one degree off and when it takes off that's simply like a quarter inch to the left, then instead of arriving in New York, it'll arrive in Washington, D.C.

1:17 And that analogy points to the fact that little changes over a long period of time amount to great differences. I know for me, when I was in my early 20s, I was horrible with women. I couldn't get a date if I had $100 bills strapped to my cock and I was in a Mexican whorehouse. But today, I would, under all intents and purposes, call myself a girl magnet. Not because I woke up that way, not because I simply got lucky, but because every day for the past 10 to 15 years, I've been working on myself little by little, improving with women, making that one degree change every single day.

1:57 If you change one degree today, it's not going to look like much. But if you change one degree every day for the next 30 days, that's 30 degrees of change or 30% improvement. So this whole concept of atomic habits comes from the word atomic, which is small. And then habits are things that you habitually do without thinking about it. So many people, and maybe even some of you guys have some bad habits. Maybe you smoke, maybe you drink, maybe you eat too much shitty food. Whatever it is, it's because you set up an environment where it happens unconsciously.

2:26 And that's a big key of this is your environment. And we're going to touch on that in a second. But the first thing I want to talk about is your identity. Okay, the way you identify yourself is one of the most important things to dictate your behavior. If you identify yourself as a girl magnet, and you really believe yourself that way, and you actually take pride in it, then you're going to do things that make you into a girl magnet. You're going to practice opening and ejecting, like I talked about in a previous episode, you're going to go out, you're going to be on all the dating apps, you're going to be texting all kinds of girls, because that's your identity.

3:03 That's how you think of yourself. If you feel like you're ripped, and you have epic biceps, and you're really proud of your biceps, then you're going to form habits around continuing to be ripped and to have epic biceps is because it's become your identity. It's become something you're proud of. But it also works the other way. If you're fat, and you look like a chicken mcnugget with tits, and that's the way you think of yourself, oh, I'm fat. And you literally say that to yourself, you literally program it into your psychology.

3:28 I'm fat. Yeah, you're going to be fat. If you say to yourself, I'm not good with women, you're right, you're not good with women. It's because you've identified with it. So part of this is also changing your identity. And that starts with changing your thoughts. All right, so there are four steps to creating a new habit that's good for you, and getting rid of a bad habit that's bad for you. Those four steps are make it obvious, make it attractive, make it easy, and make it satisfying.

3:57 Now flipping that on its head to get rid of a bad habit, you make it not obvious, you make it unattractive, you make it difficult, and you make it unsatisfying. Okay, so for the first one, make it obvious. Okay, people with great self-control, they've done a study on this, and they found that people with great discipline actually don't have much more self-discipline than people with no discipline whatsoever. So if you put somebody with great discipline, a guy who's completely ripped, it looks like his diet is completely pinned, and you make him live in a house where there's a bowl of cookies on the island in the kitchen every day, just a bowl of Oreo cookies, he's going to have just as much chance of eating those Oreo cookies as the person with no self-discipline.

4:40 But what's the difference? Well, the big difference is, is that people with good discipline, people who create good habits, they create their environment to be conducive to creating these habits. And that's the big point, is you have to surround yourself with the kind of habits that you want to make. So if you want to eat healthy, well, it's obvious, isn't it? Don't buy the shitty food. Don't have it in your house. And if it is in your house, if you just bought $500 worth of food to prep for the end of the world as we know it, then you want to hide it from yourself.

5:12 Make it difficult to get. Put it on the very top shelf in the back and make the healthy food easier. One of the reasons I'm ripped, one of the reasons I'm 43 and I have a six pack is simply because I meal prep. And meal prep is cooking your food up front, cooking your food on one day, and actually just meal prep today, putting it in Tupperwares, in this case, glass Tupperwares, because if you listen to my episode about testosterone, you know that plastic is bad for you.

5:39 So I got all these glass Tupperwares. And those glass Tupperwares are filled with a little meal. And I eat five meals, five to six meals each day. So when I'm confronted with what to eat, if I have a hunger going on, all I got to do is grab one of those Tupperwares, pop it into the pan, heat it up real quick, add some carbs, boom, I'm done. Whereas if I didn't do that, and there's a tub of ice cream there, and I'm looking in the freezer and I have to cook a tilapia, I have to steam some vegetables, I have to cook some rice in order to have that kind of meal, I'm going to be way more motivated just to eat the ice cream because it's easier.

6:17 So when you make it obvious, you are creating for yourself an easy pathway to go through. So here, it's just easy. I'm just going to heat the shit up, done. And then coincidentally, you get ripped. Coincidentally, you have a six pack. But if you look like a chicken McNugget with tits, which is the way I used to look, it's probably because you set up your environment to make you look that way. So the first step is to change the environment. Another good way to create a new habit that you want to have is to stack it after a current habit.

6:51 So if you do something every day, like let's say you get up and you take a shower, but you really want to stretch. Well, what you do is after you take a shower, and let's say after you, I don't know, put on your deodorant, you say, okay, I'm going to stretch. Now, another component of this is to schedule it into your schedule, and point out the time and place you're going to do it is really important. So in your schedule, you say, okay, after my shower at about 815, I'm going to stretch for five minutes, and I'm going to stretch for five minutes next to my bed in my bedroom, and I'm going to do it right here.

7:26 And here's the three stretches that I'm going to do. I picked this example because I myself did this. I meditate every day. And so I said to myself, okay, after I meditate, I'm going to stretch for five minutes. I'm going to do all the stretches my physical therapist gave me for my bad hip, and I'm going to do those stretches. And ever since I did that, and I stacked it on the back of meditation, it's just after I get off the meditation pillow, boom, I just roll over and start doing my stretches.

7:51 Easy peasy. So I've made it obvious by stacking it behind a habit that I already do, and I make it easy, and I've committed to it by scheduling it into my schedule. On that note, changing a bad habit, we want to make it not obvious. So let's say, for example, that you're like so many people, and you're just absolutely addicted to beating off. You love spanking the monkey, you love polishing the dolphin. Well, let's make it less obvious. Rather than having a freaking 200-gallon tube of Vaseline from Costco next to your desk, like just this big old fucking tube Vaseline with Costco printed on the side, and then you have Pornhub just in your bookmarks where all you got to do is click a bookmark and bing-bing, your favorite porn video comes up.

8:36 Delete the bookmark. Put the 200-pound tub of Vaseline up in the attic or hide it from yourself. Make it less obvious so you don't get the cue. Because the second you look at that tub, boy, you're going to go for it. You're going to dip your entire hand in, get a big old glob of that shit, and just go after it. But if you want to slow down on that, make it less obvious. Make it more difficult. It's like if you play video games too much.

9:01 You want to hide the controller from yourself. You want to unplug the video game console and stick it in the garage so that every time you want to play video games, you got to go to the garage, you got to plug it in, you got to go find the console, you got to plug that in, and then you can play video games. So you're making it less obvious. You're making it more difficult on yourself. All right. The second step is to make it attractive. One good way to do this is to surround yourself with people where your desired behavior is the norm of the group.

9:30 So in this group, for example, we are the unapologetic man tribe. We put self-development as number one. And because of that, you're going to do things that put self-development as number one is because you're identifying with this tribe. It's attractive for you to change your behavior, to meet with those people around you. Well, it's the same with your friends. If you have a friend who smokes, plays video games, and also has that 200-pound tub of Vaseline next to his desk, you're probably going to do the same thing.

10:00 So making new friends, surrounding yourself with people who do the things you want to do. For example, surrounding yourself with people who are hella into fitness if you want to get into shape is one of the best things you can do because then you're going to model your behavior after them. On the flip side, to break a bad habit is to make it unattractive for yourself. And this is where accountability comes in. So in the book, they talk about how a guy wants to wake up at 5 a.m.

10:25 every morning. Well, at 5.30, his Twitter is automatically programmed to tweet out, hey guys, I'm trying to wake up at 5 every morning. It's 5.30 now. I obviously didn't wake up in time to stop this tweet. So if you reply to this before 6 a.m., I'll send you $20. Something like that. So you make it unattractive for yourself to do the bad habit. Or you say, look, I want to meditate every day for the next five days. If I fail to do that, I'm going to send Mark Singh $100 due immediately.

10:57 I'll go ahead and help you out with that. I'm that kind of guy. I'm very nice. I'm very friendly. Send me $100 if you don't meditate. All right. The next step is to make it easy. You want to create an environment where doing the right thing is as easy as possible. If you want to eat better, then instead of having a bowl of cookies out on the island in the kitchen, you want to have a bowl of apples. Or you want to have a bowl of blueberries.

11:18 Or whatever it is that you're trying to eat, you want to make it as easy for you as possible. I meditate every morning. And it's very important to me that I do that. And I like to lean back against my bed when I do it. So right there next to my bed, I have my meditation pillow, I have my blanket, and I have my peppermint oil right there waiting. So that the second I get out of bed, it's like I just plop down onto that meditation pillow and it's easy for me to do it.

11:45 It's enjoyable for me to do it because I don't have to struggle. I don't have to go into the attic to find my meditation stuff. It's right there waiting for me. Okay. So on the flip side, you want to increase the friction associated with bad behaviors. When friction is high, habits are difficult. For example, if you're a smoker and you always stop by the 7-Eleven on your way to work because it's your route that you go on, let's say you're walking to work, you're in the city, well then take a different route.

12:13 Make it so you can't buy those cigarettes. Make it more difficult for yourself to get the thing that you do with a bad habit. There's also something called the two-minute rule. So in NLP, we call this chunking, which is making things into small chunks. So you say to yourself, look, I want to go to the gym. So all I'm going to do is I'm going to put on my gym clothes and that's it. That's the only mission. Okay. I get home from work. I'm simply going to put on my gym clothes and put on my shoes.

12:39 Then once you accomplish that, you say, okay, I'm going to get in the car now and I'm going to drive to the gym. Then once you get to the gym, you say, okay, I'm only going to work out for two minutes, two minutes. That's it. Then you work out for two minutes. And according to this book, he says, go home, literally work out for two minutes, then go home. And he says, it's not important for you to do the whole workout. It's important for you to create the habit of simply showing up.

13:05 And from an NLP perspective, if you can program your mind that you accomplished your goal, which was simply to show up rather than actually do the workout, then you'll have good feelings around accomplishing that goal. And then you'll do it again. And then the next time you get there, you work out for five minutes. Next time you get there, you work out for 10 minutes before you know it, you're working out for an hour, five days a week, and you're starting to get into shape. And then you want to tie it up into your identity.

13:35 You want to have pride around it. And that's a big component of this is ripped guys are ripped is because they're prideful about it. It's part of their identity. They feel like a ripped guy. If you say I'm fat, then yes, you're going to be fat. It's because it's part of your identity. But if you say that I'm a champion, I'm ripped, I'm a girl magnet, then that's how you're going to behave to substantiate your belief about yourself that that's who you are. All right. The fourth one is to make it satisfying.

14:00 And one of the ways to make it satisfying is to congratulate yourself on a job well done. So one way to do this is to mark it on your calendar. I know every time I go to jujitsu class, I mark it down on my calendar and it feels really good. It feels like one step closer to achieving my ultimate goal of getting my blue belt. I get a shot of dopamine every time I do that. And it motivates me to go to the next class like, Oh, I get to go to another class and I'm going to get like, you know, my 30th session over the over the last two months.

14:26 That's pretty dope. And I write it down. I read 28, 29, 30, 31, 32. And it feels good because I'm hitting those marks and I'm marking it down. I'm congratulating myself. I'm getting the hit of dopamine and it highly motivates me to continue the habit of going to jujitsu. You can also get an accountability partner. That's why it's good to have a coach like me. I will keep you accountable. How many girls did you open and eject from this week? I know one guy who was doing sales calls. He had a bunch of paper clips in one cup, like a hundred paper clips in one cup.

15:00 And each time he made a sales call, he moved that paper clip over from the left cup to the right cup. And by the time all the paper clips were over to the right cup, he knows that he made a hundred sales calls and then he would be done for the day. So it's that motivation. It's going to keep him picking up that phone because each one, he gets to the right cup. It feels good. He rewards himself and he's one step closer to reaching his goal for the day.

15:24 All right. So a few other habits that you can do. You can automate your habits like an automatic savings plan. Just have your accounts move over maybe 10 to 15% of your monthly paycheck each month into a savings plan. That's automation. You can also say out loud the bad consequences of a habit. So if you're about to eat a cookie and you're really trying to get dialed in, you say out loud, look, I'm about to eat this cookie and eating this cookie will make me fat, but I'm going to eat it.

15:53 And then surprisingly, if you do that, you probably won't eat it because it puts the bad consequence right out there on the table. And then you'll be less likely to do it. You put the cookie down and hopefully you'll reach for that apple. You also want to have an implementation intention. So you want to state the time in place that you will do a specific action and you're far more likely to actually do it. Like I said, I am going to stretch at this time at this place.

16:14 And because you say that to yourself, you're probably going to do it. They did this with voters. They said, Hey, are you going to come vote? And they said, yes. Where and when are you going to vote? And when they had the voters fill out where and when they're going to vote, the voter turnout went up significantly. All right. So small changes implemented each day eventually erupt into a gigantic change. You can hit a rock with a hammer a hundred times and nothing will happen, but it's that hundred and first hit that breaks it.

16:46 And while it looks like it broke on the hundred and first hit, it was actually the accumulation of all those hits that made it break. And the same thing is going to happen with your habits. So do all these things. Most importantly, change your identity to think of yourself as how you want to be. Create your environment to make good habits easy and bad habits hard. Make it attractive, make it satisfying and make it so that you're actually going to stick with it. And once again, that all comes down to your identity.

17:18 Think of yourself as how you want to be. I am a girl magnet billionaire, like literally visualize yourself as that man. Think of yourself as that guy and you will start doing habits that will turn you into that guy. And remember a 1% change every day amounts to gigantic change over the long run. All right, guys, I thank you so much for listening to this podcast and I will see you in the next episode.

This transcript was made automatically, so a few words may be off.