[00:00] What would happen if you raise your child alongside a chimpanzee? Could the chimp pick up the habits of a human? Well, one scientist did exactly this experiment with his own child and the results are more bizarre than you might imagine.

[00:21] Welcome to another episode of Success for the Athletic Minded Man. Real talk on harnessing your athletic drive for clarity, consistency, and focus in business and life. This is your host, Jim Harshaw, Jr. And today we’re talking about how to break bad habits and build better ones. in 30 days. I’ve worked with hundreds of clients and I’ve helped them break bad habits, create new ones.

[00:42] I’ve spoken with hundreds of world class performers on this podcast and I’ve used these strategies in my own life. So, um, bring those to you, crystallize those and put those into this episode and into the action plan. And by the end of this, episode, you’re going to have a plan and a framework for breaking old habits and building new habits in 30 days.

[01:04] Um, even going to provide you a worksheet where you can go through, answer the questions that you need to answer, and then have a tracking sheet so you can track this and break your own habits and build new ones in 30 days. So figure out what that one critical habit is for you, and we’re going to help you get there.

[01:19] Break that, build new ones in 30 days. So the plan is this first, I’m going to share with you some of the fundamentals of habits, things that just sort of fundamentally you have to understand going into the conversation. Second, I’m going to share seven strategies for breaking old habits, creating new ones.

[01:35] And then third, I’m going to give you a plan and a worksheet to help you do this in 30 days. So, um, here’s the key. I encourage you to take action on this and the best way to do that to get some accountability and even some free coaching is to join me in the weekly conversation. Over in our free community.

[01:52] If you go to JimHarshawJr.com/free, you can join our free community. We’re having a conversation on these episodes on these topics every single week. I’m in there. My other coaches are in there. There’s others in there. There’s a building growing community of podcast listeners who are in there.

[02:11] Listening to this stuff each week, want to take action, want to have a conversation around this stuff and it’s free, it’s literally free. You can jump in there. I look forward to interacting with you, talking with you. And this platform also hosts my seven day course, which is called seven days to clarity.

[02:29] And that again is absolutely free as well. Again, just go to JimHarshawJr.com/free. Now let’s dive into the first of the three segments I talked about. First segment is talking about. The fundamentals of habits. The second one is about the seven strategies. And then that’s kind of the bulk of this episode.

[02:46] And then third will be the plan and how to get that worksheet and what that worksheet is going to include to help you do this on your own in 30 days. Actually, I should take it back. Not on your own. Join us in the community so you don’t have to do this on your own. All right. So there’s a great quote that I came across and I’ve heard this before.

[03:04] You’ve probably heard this before, but it is this. Show me your habits and I’ll show you. I’m not sure who said it first, but the best I could find, it was credited to Mark Batterson. He’s a pastor and an author of a big church in the Washington DC area. And I look back on my life and in around 2012, I could see my habits.

[03:25] And if I could show myself my future, I could see into my future. And it wasn’t going the right way. I had stopped coaching and therefore I had all but stopped working out. And for me, wrestling was just something I did since I was six years old and I’ve just worked out wrestling. And then when I went, still was done wrestling, I got into coaching and as a coach, it’s one of the weird things about wrestling is coaches actually wrestle.

[03:48] Football coaches aren’t out there playing football. Basketball coaches might be playing a little bit, but wrestling coaches are actually going full out. 100 percent like actually doing live wrestling and a lot of the practices. And so for me, when I was coaching, it’s just what I did. Wrestled every day. I lifted when the team lifted.

[04:04] And it’s just kind of how I got my workouts in. And then I got out of coaching and I pretty much stopped working out. The first thing I had to figure out was why. Like why do I need to work out? I don’t really have any need to work out at this point. Like I’m done wrestling. Like wrestling was why I worked out.

[04:19] So some of these things that I’m about to share with you, I applied to my own life and it changed my own habits. So I’m going to share with you. How I did that, how I got back into the habit of working out. So let’s talk a little bit about the fundamentals here. First, I want to share with you a concept from a great book called The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg.

[04:42] Great book, great read. If you haven’t read it, again, The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg. He talks about cue. Routine. Reward. And this has been talked about in other books, like James Clear talked about it in Atomic Habits, he actually referenced Charles Duhigg in his book. But an example of cue, routine, reward would be this.

[05:01] A notification pops up on your phone or on your computer telling you you have a new email or a new text message. The routine is you immediately stop what you’re doing. You check the email, you check the text message, and that often leads to a chain reaction of you’re replying and then jumping into maybe the next email that popped up or getting stuck in your inbox for a while, return a few more emails.

[05:26] And then the reward is you feel a temporary sense of accomplishment or relief for addressing something that felt urgent. Even though it’s quite possible and quite likely that it wasn’t the priority, but you followed the cue. The cue is the notification pops up. And by the way, if you’re watching on YouTube, my enormous cat just jumped up on the desk behind me.

[05:47] If you’re not, it’s a sight to behold. He’s a big cat. He’s not fat. He’s just a big one. By the way, subscribe over on YouTube if you’re not already over there, but back to the conversation at hand here, cue, routine, reward. The cue is that notification pops up. The routine is you check the email. The reward is the sense of accomplishment, but we all know that that is not really where the best work that we do gets done.

[06:10] So the idea here is to change the cue. Notifications and then replace the routine with something different when you feel the urge to check emails instead. Make a note or block it off on your calendar or put it on like I do on my to do list here, where I actually have 25 minutes of email, emo Pomodoro.

[06:28] If you’re familiar with the Pomodoro technique, productivity technique, where you set an alarm for 25 minutes. I have an emo Pomodoro written down. Typically on my day, I have that, like that’s the routine. And then the reward is different. The reward is I’m actually getting things done. And then I have a compartment of my day, Where I work on the email.

[06:48] Okay. So that’s cue routine reward. So for me, going back to this workout thing, when I stopped working out, the old cue was simply, this is just part of my job. The routine was go to practice, go to the team lift, go to wrestling practice. And the reward was. Get to keep the job that I love, right? And I get to work out with my guys and that was great.

[07:07] Now to change that, the Q became waking up in the morning and going to do my workout. That was the Q and having my workout gear out. The routine was to do the workout and the reward was the confidence and the endorphins and the energy and the fitness that comes with getting your workouts in. Like you just feel better after doing the workout.

[07:24] And so that was the Q routine reward change that I had to do. Okay. So Q routine reward, you have to think about that. And then the second thing is, and I want to share with you is this. And this is a fascinating thing to understand about habits. So this chimpanzee experiment, I want to talk about that. In the 1930s, there was a psychologist by the name of Winthrop Kellogg, and he conducted this experiment with his son, Donald, and a baby chimpanzee.

[07:48] And the goal was to see if you could raise a chimpanzee in a human environment. And would that chimp take on human like behavior, right? Would it adopt the habits of a human? Well, for several months, when the child was a baby, they would treat both the chimp and the baby as equals, right? They ate the same food.

[08:09] They wore the same clothes, like similar clothes. They were exposed to the same stimuli and the same environments. And the idea was this chimp would develop human traits because of the environmental influence. But. The outcome was shocking, to say the least. Instead of the chimp becoming more human like, The baby, Donald was his name, began to act more like a chimp and exhibit chimp behaviors.

[08:35] He was like mimic the sounds and the gestures of the chimp. And of course the scientists who led this, he terminated the experiment way earlier than planned because it went the opposite of his plan. And so the idea here is that. Our environment has a huge influence on us and that influence is, by default, you would drift to the bottom.

[09:00] The chimp didn’t get pulled up and act more like the human, it was the opposite. The human got pulled down and acted more like a chimp. So we have to be very aware That our environment is really, really critical. And this is not just the people you’re around, but the environment that you create in your workspace and in your home.

[09:21] So those are a couple of things that I want to bring up before we talk about these seven strategies. So I told you there are three parts of this conversation today. The first was to talk about the fundamentals of habits. We did that. Second, I want to talk about seven strategies for breaking old habits, creating new ones.

[09:36] I’m going to give you seven strategies here. Number one is. You have to understand why, like, why do you actually want to do this? If it’s because you saw it on social media or your parents want you to do that or something, that’s not a strong enough reason why you have to have a powerful reason. And for me, I had to really think about like, what is the reason actually I want to start working?

[09:56] I would need to work out. Cause really, to be honest, I don’t need to work out anymore. My why is gone. And I had to rethink that. I started noticing that people who are really successful in business, They tend to be fit. They tend to work out, like they tend to prioritize that. And I’m like, okay, that’s what I want.

[10:15] I want to be successful in business. But what correlation does working out and being successful in business have? Well, I realized that, you know, you get all these great endorphins you get from working out. You tend to be more energized, not less energized after you work out. And it brings confidence, especially as men, we feel more confident when we work out.

[10:34] And so these were my whys, right? I wanted these. My business to grow and I wanted to provide for my family in order to do that. Fitness, exercising, that was a critical piece of it. So my why was abundance, wealth, family, all of that. To get there, there’s this habit that I need to instill and that was working out regularly.

[10:58] And I’ll be honest, listen, For some of you, and myself included, some of this is just identity. Well, I want to have the identity of somebody who’s fit or somebody who, I don’t know, drives a Maserati or somebody who is a great father. Like whatever those things are, whatever identity it is that you want to carry and put out to the world, that can be your why as well.

[11:21] Because when you adopt that identity, you tend to do the things that that type of person does. Okay. That’s number one, one of seven is identify why, like, what’s the purpose behind this? And it may be some big grand thing about like, you know, family and, or maybe even legacy, that kind of thing. Or it may be just something smaller and something simpler.

[11:40] Okay. You might want to look good in your bathing suit next summer. So that’s number one. Number two, start small. And I learned this from a friend of mine named Jake Herbert, who is an Olympian world silver medalist wrestler. And he was on a call with my inner circle clients or one of our mastermind calls once several years ago.

[11:57] And someone said, yeah, I’m trying to read a half an hour a day, read a book half an hour a day. And, and he’s like, I just can’t get myself to do it. And Jake said, Well, lower your goal. This is an Olympian saying this. Lower your goal. What do you mean lower your goal? Like, you’re an Olympian. Olympians don’t lower their goals.

[12:11] He said, make it small, make it winnable. Make it five minutes. Read five minutes a day. Because a lot of times, it’s the start that stops us, right? If it’s 30 minutes, it’s like, well That’s a big commitment. Let me do this other stuff first, but if it’s five minutes, Oh, I can do that. And once you’re into it for five minutes, you’ve already got the momentum and you can keep going.

[12:29] So for you and for you to listen, or it might be, listen, I’m making five sales calls per day. I need to make 50. No, that you’re going to set yourself up to fail likely. Maybe you, maybe not, but you might want to go from five to 10 or maybe another example is, you know, you’re like results oriented and driven and you don’t do a good job of really building rapport and relationships and checking in with your direct reports and to like, man, I never really check in on them about their kids and family and personal stuff.

[12:58] And I’m going to do this twice a day, every morning, every night it’s like, or every afternoon. Well, maybe that’s too big of a jump. Maybe it’s like. Once a day, maybe it’s once a week, right? Whatever that is for you and your situation, lower your goal, right? Start small, make it winnable. And that builds traction, it builds confidence, it builds momentum.

[13:18] All right, so number one is understanding your why. Number two is starting small. Number three is replacing it with a better habit. Replacing the old habit with a new habit. For me, I used to enjoy coming home from work and having a beer or two in the evening. You know, that was the cue, the habit, you know, the cue was work is done.

[13:36] I’m thirsty, kind of hungry, have a beer. And that would just satiate me. You know, that was the cue, have a beer, you know, work was done. The routine was to drink the beer. And the reward was feel satiated and feel good, but long term, you know, like an hour later, I’d feel sluggish and tired and didn’t feel good all evening.

[13:55] And so replace that, replace the beer with kombucha or seltzer water. And that’s the new routine. And the reward is I still feel satiated and I don’t get the bad feeling, right? I feel better sort of psychologically knowing I made a better decision and I better feel better physically and, you know, get better sleep and all of that.

[14:17] Right. So, so many better things happen. So you can replace your old routine with something new, something different. That brings you the same or similar reward. Okay. So that’s number three, replace the old one with the new one. Number four is to use friction to your advantage, use friction to your advantage.

[14:38] Let’s just go back to the alcohol example. You might want to put one cold beer in the fridge. That’s it. You put one beer in the fridge, everything else is warm and you don’t like to drink warm beer. So after work. You drink the one beer and that’s all you get. And, or, you know, if you want to drink another one, it’s going to be warm.

[14:55] And that’s just a way to increase friction. All right. An example of decreasing friction, decreasing friction to start a new routine would be, well, in the kombucha example, same example is like have a cold kombucha in the fridge or a cold seltzer water, uh, another way to, to decrease friction, say for, for working out is.

[15:17] To lay out your workout clothes. I’m going to give you another one to go back to the sales call example. Matter of fact, I recorded a, it’s like a three minute video. I’m going to put this in the action plan. It’s a really, really good video. It’s a, it’s a conversation I had with a client recently who was struggling.

[15:33] He, he wanted to make, in order for him to live totally, you know, like to, to build financial freedom in time, freedom and independence. He has to get like one coffee per week, like with a prospective client. And we kept breaking this down, reverse engineering. Why can’t you get the one coffee per week? Well, I’m not making the daily phone calls.

[15:53] How many daily phone calls you make? I like, uh, if I just made five daily phone calls, okay. Why aren’t you making the five daily phone calls? Well, I’m not making it because, you know, it’s hard for me to get started and I get busy and minutiae and like, okay, well, what do you, what would help you make those five phone calls easier?

[16:06] And we kept breaking this down, like three more levels to this one Really, really simple catalyst. And I’m going to put that, so grab it. It’s in the action plan. The link to that is in the action plan. So make sure you grab that. I’m also going to put that in the free community. I’m going to put that over in the classroom area in the free community.

[16:24] So keep an eye out for that. Whenever you join the free community, JimHarshawJr.com/free. Like I said, it’s like a two or two or three minute video, very short, but it walks you through how to break this down, how to, this is all about reducing friction. For him to get started. All right, so that’s number four.

[16:39] Again, number one, start figuring out your why. Number two, starting small. Number three, replacing one habit with another. Number four is using friction to your advantage. Maybe you increase or decrease it. Number five is commit to something. Don’t think about something. Don’t wait until you feel like doing it.

[16:56] Just make the damn commitment, right? Whatever that is for you. For me lately, here’s an example for me lately. I’ve been working without. Learning enough, like really investing into like learning from others, learning from experts that, yes, I have a business coach and. I had an opportunity to pay a thousand bucks and join a three month mastermind where we have a call once a week with this great, amazing group of entrepreneurs.

[17:25] And I just paid the thousand bucks. I didn’t think about it. Like, you know, they used to be like 500 bucks or seven 50. Um, they’re a thousand bucks. It was like, not even a question. Just do it. Just paid the thousand bucks. And I paid another thousand dollars recently. Now I think about it too, to do three calls with this one particular coach that is specific to something I’m working on with my community and just pay Pay the freaking money, right?

[17:47] Just, just do the thing. There’s a return on that. Another example is like when I signed up for a marathon several years ago, and actually 20, uh, 2019, I signed up for it. And the marathon was 2020, got canceled. It was in Pittsburgh during, got canceled during COVID, but, but I signed up for the marathon. I just.

[18:03] Paid. I signed up, put it on my calendar. And when you make the commitment without even thinking about it, without even feeling, you know, waiting, like, quick, I’m going to wait till I’m motivated. Then really, no, just make the freaking commitment, make the commitment. And that will force you to do the habits, right?

[18:21] It’ll force you to start the right habits, stop the bad habits, um, build the new ones. That’s number five. Commit to something. Number six is Buy the thing, make the investment. So here’s an example. I know I talked about a little bit about the commitment is similar to number five and commit to something that commitment and number five doesn’t necessarily mean money, but number six is, is about money.

[18:43] It’s about making the investment. Here’s an example. Like, if you’re like, Hey, I just drink too much caffeine during the day, drink too much coffee, drink too much caffeine. I know I’m not supposed to drink it at certain points of the day. And I mean, it keeps me up at night and I don’t, I’m probably not getting as good of sleep as I could get.

[18:58] Buy the best replacement that you could possibly buy. Whatever that thing is, it would be awesome for you. Maybe it’s like the best decaf you could buy, or it’s like mushroom coffee or some healthy drink that you would prefer to drink over coffee, but it costs a little bit much and I got a coffee. I can, you know, it’s cheaper.

[19:15] Just pay the money, just pay the money. That’s for breaking an old habit. If you want to build new habits, like more exercise, for example, buy the treadmill desk, pay for the gym membership, just pay for it. Just make the investment. This is an investment. If you’re trying to make the sales calls and you’re not doing it, pay for the freaking accountability, get a coach, there’s a return on that.

[19:37] You’re like, I should be able to do this on my own. No, you can’t. If you could, you’d have been doing it by now. And can you do a certain level? Of course you can. Can you achieve at an even higher level with accountability? Absolutely. Everybody can. Everybody. Everybody. This is why the LeBron Jameses and Tom Brady’s of the world hire people, pay people.

[20:01] To make them better. There are way to the second gym. They’re already great. Why would they need to hire people to get even better, to be the best version of themselves, pay the freaking money, buy the thing, hire the person, you know, sign up for the gym membership, pay for the course, whatever it is, that’s number six.

[20:19] Number seven, we talked about environment earlier, get around people doing the right habits. If you want to break old habits for me, it’s, it’s sometimes thinking small. And I want to get around big thinkers. That’s part of the reason why I joined this mastermind group is to get around these big thinkers who are doing big things.

[20:36] You got to find ways to get around other people like that. If you’re trying to reduce alcohol, go back to that example, get around other people who don’t drink. If you want to break the habit of sleeping in, hire a personal trainer who can only do your workouts at 6am. Get around other people who are doing those different habits.

[20:57] Join a, uh, sign up for a class at the gym. Pay for it in advance, you know, combining a couple of these, these seven strategies here, pay for it in advance. And then you’re, there’s some accountability there. Like you’re around other people who are doing different things. Like when I trained at the Olympic training center, I was around world class athletes.

[21:15] You just. Adopt their habits by osmosis. You start breaking old ones and starting new ones just by osmosis. I started a Bible study in our coaching program. We have a, every two weeks, 30 minutes, simple. It’s a Bible study. I want to be around people who are strong in their faith or, or even if they’re not, they’re invested in it.

[21:39] They want to grow in their faith. I want to break old habits of not having the habit of really being in touch with God as much as I want other than Sundays and then checking my Bible app now and then and praying with my kids at night. Like I want to do more of that. So I want to build, you know, break old habits and build new ones.

[21:57] Right. Another one about getting around the right people is I work out with this group called F3 Fitness Fellowship and Faith for all the men out there. Find a local F3. There’s probably one in your town. If there’s not reach out to me and I can help you figure out how to start one. Cause we have an, we actually have, I’m on the national board.

[22:15] We have a way to help you start these where they’re free men’s workout groups. Always open all open all men. Always outside and they are awesome. And if you want to start one in your town, I can help you. I can get you connected to the right guys who can get one started there, but just go to F3Nation. com and you can click find a workout and you can find one.

[22:33] Like when you start getting around these kinds of people, you build different habits, like I go to bed earlier. Just because I know I’m getting up at 5 a. m. And if that scares you, you’re like, Oh, 5 a. m. I’m not getting up at 5 a. m. I’m, I was going to do that F3 thing that Jim talked about, but now I’m not, listen, I’m not a morning person and I just do it.

[22:52] I just do it anyway, because this is going back to my, why, why I work out. It’s for my family. It’s for our abundance. It’s for the quality time I want with my family and the experiences and the legacy and the philanthropy goes back to my core values. I’ve done that work and I hope you have too. If you’re, if you want to start doing that work, that’s actually what this seven day course is about in the free platform.

[23:15] Go to JimHarshawJr.com/free. By the end of that seven days, you’ll have defined your core values. It’s amazing. I put my best stuff into that. You should check it out. So, all right. So I told you there’s three parts to this episode. We covered the first two. First one is talking about the fundamentals of habits.

[23:30] Second was the seven strategies. Third, and this is last, last part here very quickly. How are you going to do this in 30 days? You’ve got to create your plan. Pick one habit, just one you want to work on. Download the action plan. Go to JimHarshawJr.com/action. If you are already on my email list, you got this in your inbox on Monday morning, and you have access to this worksheet.

[23:49] If not, if you’ve already signed up before, there’s a link. Go back to the first email. I sent you, I send you a link. Every week that action plan gets added to that page that, so grab that link. It’s going to walk you through how to figure out your why, how do I start small? What are some options for me to replace?

[24:06] You know, I’m just going through these step, these seven strategies here. How do I replace it? How can I use a friction or increase or decrease it, et cetera, et cetera. It’s a worksheet that’s going to walk you through this. Okay. It’s going to have questions around each of these. And there is a tracking tool there.

[24:20] Print this out. Physical is great. Having a physical tracking form where you can literally check it off. There’s like a little dopamine rush you get every time you check off the day. It’s a 30 day, just basically a table for tracking your habits over the next 30 days. And so if you, if you want to do it with just a spreadsheet online, you can do that too.

[24:39] But make sure you gotta make sure it’s easy to find a, you gotta have it bookmarked so you can’t, if you’re going to go, have to go looking for it. There’s too much friction there. You got to reduce the friction to making it easy for you to track your habit over this, these 30 days. All right. And really critically.

[24:54] You’ve got to join the community. It is so simple. So it’s literally totally free. There’s zero strings attached. It’s my way of giving back to the world and giving this away to people who can’t maybe afford what we offer, or they just don’t aren’t into paying for a coach yet. Maybe they’re not into paying for something like this.

[25:12] You are going to get so much value out of this. And lastly, you know, if you do have the means, consider hiring a coach. It doesn’t have to be us going back to the quote. I started out with is show me your habits and I’ll show you your future. What are your habits? What are the things that you’re doing that either are holding you back or going to help you get to where you want to get to in life, financially, Career wise in your marriage, in your fitness, what is your future worth to you?

[25:43] Are you willing to invest in it? Are you willing to invest the time, the energy, potentially even the money? Take action on this. What is that worth to you? What is it worth to you to look back 30 days from now, six months, a year from now, 10 years from now and go. I did it right. I provided for my family. I lived my best life.

[26:04] I’m doing things right. What is that worth to you? Think about it. Take action. I look forward to seeing you in the community.

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