The Connected Yoga Teacher Podcast
Ep 123: Habits for Health & Business with James Clear
Description:
How do you cultivate good habits that improve your life, and break bad habits that hold you back? On this episode, James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, reveals more about why habits are so crucial to your success and how to create, change and break habits that impact your business and life.
Apart from being a New York Times-bestselling author, James is the creator of Habits Academy, and international speaker. He combines ideas from a wide range of disciplines to create self-improvement tips for habits, decision-making, and continuous improvement, all based on proven scientific research.
James dives into the nitty-gritty of everything to do with habits - how they are formed, why they have such a huge impact on your health and business, and his tried-and-tested strategies for making small changes that will transform your habits and deliver remarkable results. He also shares hacks to help you reduce your social media usage and stop procrastination!
If you’ve been wanting to make your own yoga practice a habit, or if you need help creating routines to run your business better, this episode is full of tips that you can put into practice immediately.
Key Takeaways:
[5:57] Shannon introduces her guest for this episode - James Clear.
[7:09] When did James' work with habits begin?
[8:43] What is a habit?
[12:59] Shannon and James discuss an example of how to create a habit that comes before a ritual or practice.
[00:15:14] Do habits need to happen at the same time every day, and do they need to be a daily practice?
[18:16] How can you hold on to your habits when you are traveling and the context is entirely different? Habit stacking can help!
[21:13] James gets a lot of website traffic and book sales around the New Year as people use their momentum of the fresh start to try to change their habits. What is his advice for people who want to change everything, and get overwhelmed?
[25:41] How does James approach failing to build habits or falling away from a practice?
[29:12] Perfectionism or wanting your habit to be perfect can kill your progress. James has some strategies to get past that, and how that ties in to identity-based habits.
[35:03] How can yoga teachers build habits in their businesses, particularly in areas like accounting or marketing?
[40:55] What kind of goals does James help people achieve?
[42:58] What are James' tips for people who tend to procrastinate?
[48:14] Shannon and James discuss rewards as a way to build habits, and if that could potentially turn into something negative.
[52:20] What can help people focus in the age of social media, email and constant distractions?
[57:53] Check out James' work and his book, Atomic Habits, at his websites.
[58:26] What is a habit James is struggling with right now?
[59:44] Shannon's biggest takeaway from this interview is the idea of casting a vote for who you are as a person through your actions. What's yours?
Links:
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Quotes from this episode:
"Time is just one element of context, and so habits are linked to a particular context."
"One reason why people sometimes struggle to build a new habit is that they're trying to build a new habit in their old environment."
"It's almost never the first mistake that ruins you. It's the spiral of repeated mistakes that follows from that."
"Every action you take is a vote for the kind of person you want to become."
"Just knowing your numbers gives you confidence in your ability to run the business side of it."