habits habits habits we have all heard that word and we know the power of habits and that's what we're diving into today in particular five specific habits so welcome back to the fourth episode in our january series new beginnings redesigning your life in 2025 over the past few weeks we have laid a powerful
foundation for the year ahead we've created a roadmap built around the good life buckets, chosen some bold goals to pursue and explored how to build the confidence to pursue them, and also say yes to the tinier things that scare us every day, but also hold the potential for magic.
But here's the truth.
Even the best plans and the boldest dreams can fall apart if they're not supported by the right simple habits and discipline to stick with them.
Most of us kind of know what we need to do to create better lives.
Exercise, eat well, nurture relationships, focus on meaningful work, the challenge isn't knowing, it's doing consistently, especially when motivation fades and life gets busy.
And a lot of the tools that we have talked about already this month will really help.
But today I wanted to focus in on habits, but not just habits in general.
We've all heard many general conversations about habits.
We've had them right here on the Good Life Project podcast with people like Charles Duhigg and Gretchen Rubin and James Clear.
Today, I want to focus on five specific, transformational, yet totally doable good life habits that lead to not just powerful outcomes in your life, but also to shift in really on the level of identity to a person who does what they say they want to do and makes things happen.
So by the end of this session, you'll have the tools to build these five life -changing habits and sustain them for the long haul, along with practical ways to strengthen your resolve and really just make them a part of who you are.
This isn't about perfection or willpower.
It's about small, meaningful changes that align with the life that you want to live.
And remember, just like all of the episodes in our January New Beginning series, this one is accompanied by a simple one -page, five habits, cheat sheet, PDF that digests the ideas shared in this session and offers actionable tips and you can find a link to download that for free in the show notes so grab
a notebook if you want your favorite note -taking app and let's get started i'm jonathan fields and this is good life project from adt comes trusted neighbor the new standard in home access Through the ADT Plus app, easily grant and automate event -based or scheduled access for neighbors, friends, and helpers.
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What are we actually talking about when we use the word habit, and how is it different from things like behaviors or activities or rituals?
Well, habit kind of takes up a unique place in our psychic landscape of the things that we do, right?
There are things that we do intentionally, things that we say, I'm going to do this.
And then we go and do it.
And of course, there are things where we say, I'm going to do it and we never do it.
We procrastinate, but that's probably for a whole different episode.
When we talk about habit, we're talking about behaviors that happen fairly consistently, that effectively have moved beyond the point where we think about doing it, we're intentional in doing it, we're very focused on doing it, but they have somehow become pretty much automatic in our lives.
We wake up and every day there's this thing that we just do.
We don't think about it.
It just happens. Now, there's a reason that this is actually a really good thing.
The more intentional, the more we actually are using our brain to think, the more energy intensive that process becomes.
So our brain actually wants us to habitualize as much of the behaviors that we do on any given day as possible.
So from just a saving energy standpoint in our brain, it's a really important thing.
In fact, a surprisingly high percentage of our daily activities and behaviors, they're all habit.
We don't even think about it.
We don't realize that it's such a high percentage because it happens without us thinking about it.
It's completely automated.
There's a script that runs that just makes the thing happen.
So if you brush your teeth every morning at around the same time after the exact same sequence of activities when you get up, that's probably because over a period of years, if not decades, it has become a habit.
You don't think to yourself, oh, I'm up.
I've just done X, Y, and Z.
I think I'm going to brush my teeth now.
And then while I'm doing it, I'm brushing here and I'm brushing there and I'm brushing up and I'm brushing down and I'm using this type of thing.
It just happens. We don't think about it.
Now, the beautiful thing beyond saving energy for our brain is that when things that are constructive, that are healthy, that are flourishing and nourishing habits and behaviors enter our lives, that starts to give us the sort of the long -term compound effect of doing things little and large over a repeated
amount of time that slowly start to have an impact, even if the behavior itself that's part of the habit is pretty teeny.
It makes a real difference over time.
But what about those habits?
What about those things that we can turn from behaviors into habits that just happen automatically that potentially can change your lives without you even thinking about it and without it taking a lot of energy?
Well, that's kind of where we want to go today.
And what I want to do is share these five habits that are less about complicated multi -step processes or behaviors that take a lot of different things.
And they're fairly straightforward.
And for each one of them, I'm also probably going to share the most basic thing.
And then I'm going to invite you to say, well, what about this?
What if we kind of expanded a little bit?
What if we tried this?
Because I found that over time, once I plant the seed, so that the basic behavior happens over and over and over again, and then eventually becomes habit.
Well, then I actually kind of yearn to do a little bit more of it.
Because I start to notice that over time, it's had a really big impact on the way that I feel, the way that I relate to myself and others, and just the general way that I'm able to step into my life.
So, I'm going to invite you to explore some possible expansions of the basic habits as well.
These are things that are more involved and don't easily fall within your control, But you can slowly make them intentional in the beginning in the name of expanding and then sort of letting them weave into that automatic habit loop that you have going.
Now, if you've never heard of sort of the basic idea of creating habits, there are also two great books that you can read.
Sort of the original in this space and actually was, I believe, our very first conversation that I ever recorded for Good Life Project over 10 years ago.
We didn't air it as the first one.
I believe it was the second or third, was Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit, wrote a fantastic book that researched the science of habit.
And it's actually a fairly simple, straightforward habit loop.
A more recent treatment of sort of like the fundamentals of building or creating a habit or replacing a destructive habit with a newer constructive one, James Clear's Atomic Habits.
Those are two fantastic books.
They complement each other really well.
So if you're curious about sort of the behavioral mechanics of building habits, definitely strongly recommend that you check those out.
Okay, enough of the setup.
I think we all just want to dive in at this point and figure out, well, what are these five magical habits that you're talking about?
Now, some of them I'm guessing you may have heard of, but I probably have a bit of a different angle on them.
Some of them you may not have thought about at all or heard about.
And this first one may well be one of those things.
Now, I call it the morning hug.
That's a bit of a simplified name for it because it does start with a very simple behavior.
But as you'll see, I'm going to invite you to expand on or modify it.
And also, I want to be sure that this is accessible to those who may not feel like they have another being to hug or be hugged by.
So what we know is that human connection and in particular touch are critically important for physical and mental well -being, right?
When we have the experience of physical touch and emotional connection, and those can be conveyed simultaneously, that can be an incredibly simple, it can literally last just a couple of seconds, but it can be a really powerful way for you to come back to a feeling of calm, a feeling of ease, a feeling
of peace, and a feeling of connectedness.
And here's the cool thing, even if there is not another person or being who is with you, And I'll share what I mean by that.
But I want to dive in because this is sort of what I would call a two -part morning hug.
So my wife, Stephanie, and I, we do this pretty much every morning.
It has become a habit.
We usually start out by just standing, wrapping our arms around each other, closing our eyes, leaning to each other, and just hugging for maybe five, ten seconds, feeling each other in our arms, breathing and feeling our breath, and just knowing that we are there.
We are transmitting something to ourselves, to each other in this process.
And now we know that the research shows that there is a powerful psychological and physiological thing that happens, and it only takes a couple of seconds.
Now, you may be thinking, well, that sounds It's great for you, but what if I don't have that person?
Well, we know that almost any other being can actually give a similar effect.
If you have a pet, that's great.
It's partly about the feeling of interconnectedness that you have with another being.
The other part is literally the physical sensation of touch that gets built into this.
So what we also know is that even if you don't have another being at all, whether it's a person or a pet, you can still create your version of the morning hug.
There's a technique of self -touch that's actually called havening.
And part of that is literally embracing yourself.
Wrap your arms around yourself.
Interestingly, you closing your eyes, you can lie in bed, you can do it first thing in the morning, sit up on the edge, close your eyes, take a nice full breath in, a nice full exhale out of your mouth, just reach arms out and gently wrap your arms around yourself and maybe even rock for a few seconds
as you're hugging yourself.
Put gentle pressure on.
That actually makes a real difference.
A morning self -hug can be incredibly powerful.
We also know it doesn't even have to be a hug.
The act of touch can be incredibly powerful between beings.
But the research also shows that even self -touch can have a powerful effect that mimics to a large extent what we feel with another hug.
The simple act of hugging yourself or even taking one hand, placing it over your heart or one hand, placing it over your belly, close your eyes, breathe into that for a few seconds, has a very similar effect.
Now you kind of say to yourself, well, this is a little bit bizarre.
Or like I thought it was the fact that somebody else was showing to me that they loved me enough or some other being that they'd like were there for me and loved me unconditionally.
It was the hug from them that made the really big difference.
That absolutely adds to it.
I love the feeling of interconnectedness that I get when I know that people in my life, whether it's my wife first thing in the morning or my kid or a friend, and by the way, I'm a hugger, some people may not be, when I know that it's coming from them.
So it's not just the physical sensation, but it's the experience of emotional connectedness.
But what's fascinating to know is that the research shows that even self -hugging and self -touching, simply hand on heart or hand on a belly, can have really similar effects of lowering stress, anxiety, blood pressure, decreasing cortisol, decreasing heart rate, and increasing oxytocin, which is super
powerful because it makes this morning practice available and accessible to almost anyone.
Now that's kind of the first part of the physical side of the morning hug.
Now the second part of this, and again, you can make this a habit, the type of thing where you start to do it, you wake up, you get, open your eyes, you sit up in bed.
And whatever it is, whether it's another being, a pet, an animal, self, this is just the first thing that you do in the morning.
It takes a couple of seconds.
Now, if you happen to be fortunate enough to have another being in your life where you can extend the physical hug to an emotional or attentional hug and check -in, that is something that is sort of like one of the invitations to expand this morning habit, right?
So for me, very often what will happen after my wife and I do our morning hug is we'll check in with each other.
You know, we'll just take literally a minute or two and check in.
Like, how are you? How are you feeling?
Sometimes it's not even a verbal check -in.
We're literally just sitting there emotionally and being with each other and kind of sensing and feeling how we are observing.
How is our energy? How are our bodies looking today?
How are our emotional states?
What are we radiating to each other?
And then often we'll kind of say like, how are you?
Literally, how are you feeling?
How was your evening?
What are you up to today?
It doesn't have to be more than a few minutes.
Simply ask, how are you feeling this morning?
Listen and acknowledge what was shared.
So this is not about solving or offering feedback first thing in the morning.
That may be welcomed, but not always.
But it's more about just noticing each other, seeing each other.
because what we know is that we are wired to know others and be known by them, even in the smaller moments that matter.
And in fact, I would almost argue it is that smaller, seemingly innocuous passing moments where you catch a glimpse and you realize you're each observing and truly seeing each other and thinking about each other that matter the most.
Stephanie and I often do this after the morning hug.
We'll actually walk out onto our front porch, provided it's not freezing cold, and just have a coffee and do this for two minutes.
Years ago, in a fun full circle moment, one of the very earliest conversations we actually ever aired on Good Life Project back when we were filming a video in the early, I think it was around 2013.
It's almost a decade ago now.
We're actually up in the mountains in Colorado.
This was back when I was living in New York.
We flew out here to do a whole bunch of conversations.
We were sitting down in the home of Brad Feld, and he was describing to me this thing that he did with his wife, Amy, where every morning they would do their two minutes in the morning.
This came because in a prior relationship, in his prior marriage, he became so deeply immersed in work, so pulled away from the relationship, so distracted that that relationship came to an end.
He really wanted his marriage with Amy to be deep and long -lasting for life.
And they kind of realized that part of it means that every single morning they just had to touch in.
So they had this morning emotional hug, right?
And again, in two minutes, you're not going to solve big problems.
It's not about all, it's simply acknowledging, I see you, you're with me, I'm with you.
How are you as a human being in this particular moment?
Is there anything I can offer?
And then you go about your day.
It seems like it would be almost inconsequential, but it makes a genuinely large difference.
Now, what if you don't have another to speak with directly or in person?
Well, you know, if I was sharing these ideas with you two, three years ago, probably would have been much more challenging.
But what we now know is that technology, that beautiful double -edged sword of connectedness, now has sort of like moved everyone over the last few years to be so much more fluid, so much more native, so much more comfortable and open and feel safety in technological connection that we can use that much
more regularly. So whether it's a video call or a quick phone call or even a text, right?
Using technology to connect with friends, family, community members, it's fun to even create a bit of a morning hug rotation, if you don't have that one being right in front of you to do this with, right?
Where you can literally do like a video physical hug and then just check in.
That same question, how are you doing?
Right? Just a couple minutes in the morning.
So if you don't have that one person with you physically present, tap technology.
We all feel so much more comfortable, so much more at peace and so much more fluent with tech these days.
That has been one of the blessings that's come out of the last few years, that it flattens the world in terms of who you can now do this morning hug activity with.
Not just the physical part, you might even do the physical self hug and then log on to FaceTime, log on to Zoom, log on to whatever your video platform is, right?
And just do a two minute check -in.
If it's not just with the same person every morning, create a rotation where you can do it.
It's a really fun way to make these practices expansive and accessible, right?
Now, what if you feel like you even don't have the ability to do that, right?
What if that's not easily accessible to you?
Well, you can actually do your own the same way that we know that the self hug, the self -touch side of things actually makes a difference.
Spend a few minutes checking in with yourself, right?
So the morning hug can be entirely self -generated if that's what's available to you.
Check in with your thoughts and journal for just a few minutes.
If you don't have the ability to journal, then audio journal or thought journal.
But the important thing is to create just a few minutes to just pause before you launch into your day and check in and say, how am I doing today?
How am I feeling today?
How was my night? Am I tired?
Am I at peace? Am I energized?
What do I need as I move into my morning and day, right?
So the idea with the morning hug is we kind of have these two parts.
We have the actual physical touch part, right?
And then we have the emotional part, the emotional check -in.
Super powerful. That is good life habit number one, and it's made a big difference for me.
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So, good life habit number two, breathing.
The breath is incredibly powerful in our ability to live good lives and can affect our state of mind, our state of body in a matter of seconds.
So our breath, in particular, our rate of breathing is directly connected to the state of our nervous system.
and the state of our nervous system is directly connected to the state of our endocrine or chemistry set inside of our body.
And the state of our chemistry in our body, all the different chemicals that get sent out to the body, largely determines how we feel.
Everything from health to inflammation to cognitive function to emotional function to pretty much everything.
Breathing is this switch that allows us to upregulate and downregulate all of these different systems in a ripple effect, and in doing so, immediately change the way we feel.
Now, I learned this very early on.
In fact, my early exposure to more conscious harnessing of breath as a way to change the way I felt in a moment happened in a very past life when I was a lawyer in the late nineties, mid to late nineties, actually.
And I ended up in a large firm in Manhattan working tremendous hours under huge amounts of stress in a deal driven scenario where ridiculous amounts of money were on the line and we couldn't miss deadlines.
And I would pick up the phone and be on a conversation with a client who was often breathless with everything from urgency to anger, to joy, to everything.
But I started to get to a point where I just didn't want to pick up the phone, you know, because I knew that it was going to lead to this conversation that would potentially be adversarial and, and layer in crushing demands.
And I wasn't really well equipped to handle it.
I would get super anxious.
I would start to almost hyperventilate.
I could feel the stress levels almost exploding out of me.
And I needed something to be able to come back down to center, to reground fairly quickly.
And I started thinking and researching and exploring.
Now I've always been very somatically oriented, very much about my body.
But in those particular days, I was so overworked.
I basically just completely abandoned the connection between my mind and my body, which of course we know are one seamless thing.
But I started to look at two different ways to move again and came to yoga fairly quickly.
But the early practice in yoga that I came to was pranayama or breathing exercises.
And I started to learn that there are all sorts of different ways to breathe.
Each one of them has a very particular intended effect on our physiological and psychological state.
And the cool thing about it is that it's almost immediate.
And then I started to go deepening into the research.
And then I have stayed deep in the research on the relationship between breathing and physical and mental well -being.
And the volumes of research have certainly become larger and larger and larger over those decades.
And what we know is that certain types of breathing can up -regulate your nervous system or super -activate it.
Certain can down -regulate your nervous system or bring it down to a much calmer, more peaceful state.
And you can kind of pick and choose the ways to breathe to be able to almost immediately return to the state that you want.
So if you're feeling very anxious or stressed out, that would be your body saying, I am in a sympathetic nervous system state, hyper activated, fight, flight, freeze, or fall.
These are all feelings that we really don't want.
So how do we get back down to a centered, grounded place from that?
Turns out that extending your exhales can fairly quickly bring you down into a much calmer place.
Similarly, if you're just completely zapped and you don't have any energy and you feel like you need to actually become a bit more alert and energized, reversing that it's almost like shorter chest center breaths can bring you up into that state.
Now, again, whenever we're talking about breathing and we're talking about things that regulate your body system, if you have any concerns whatsoever, any questions at all, always recommend talk to your qualified healthcare provider because these can have powerful effects on your psychology and physiology.
So I have experimented with all sorts of different breaths.
And my second good life habit is a type of breathing that I have called teardrop breathing, simply because of the shape that it formed.
So for me, I will inhale for a certain amount of time.
I will pause for that same amount of time.
I will exhale for double that amount of time.
And I'll pause for that same double the amount of time.
So let's say, so if we start at the bottom of a teardrop, right?
And let's say we inhale for two and that takes us down to the bottom and then we exhale for two or we pause for two and then we exhale for four.
That's this longer thing up top and then we pause for four and it forms this angular teardrop shape.
What I've done over the years is I wake up first thing in the morning.
It's part of my morning practice.
It is a habit. I don't think about it anymore.
It's simply what I do because I found that first thing in the morning, I wake up, I'm maybe that weird person who wakes up without an alarm clock.
I wake up at about the same time every day, no matter when I go to bed, by the way, which is not always the best thing.
And what I'll do as part of my morning routine is I will do this particular type of breathing because sometimes I'll wake up and I'll have a lot on my mind.
Sometimes my mind will be a little bit spinny.
Sometimes I just feel like I want to start my day from a very peaceful, grounded place.
And regardless where my mind has been throughout the night, whether I slept well or didn't sleep well, whether I had dreams that were good or dreams that were upsetting, whatever's going on in my life around me, whatever I have that I know I'm going to be stepping into during the day, I want to start
my day in the most centered, grounded place possible.
So I will do about five minutes of this teardrop breathing.
Now for me, over a period of years, I have extended it out where i literally brought my breath rate down to two breaths a minute do not recommend that as somebody out of the gate this was very natural and it happens to work from my physiological state and my psychology right but you can start in a fairly
straightforward way so the same way that we're doing box breathing right and i was saying inhale one two pause one two exhale one two pause one, two.
Now the teardrop version of that, which extends the length of the exhales, it extends the pause after the exhale in the name of more rapidly down -regulating your nervous system.
An example of that would be something like this.
Inhale, one, two. Pause, one, two.
Exhale, one, two, three, four, pause, one, two, three, four.
So what we're doing is we're extending the exhale and we're extending the pause after the exhale.
Now, for me, this has become an incredibly centering habit that literally I don't think about it anymore.
This has moved from intentional thing.
It's moved from experimenting to find what really works best for me.
And it's moved to become habit.
It's just what I do when I get up in the morning, right?
These are the things that I do, by the way, before I do the morning hug, because I have some alone time first thing in the morning.
So that is what one of the things that I just immediately do.
So it's incredibly powerful for me.
So this is the second of my good life habits.
I would encourage you to experiment with your own.
if you want to really go a lot deeper into the science of breathing and what's going around, we'll post in the show notes here.
A couple of years back, we had a conversation with James Nestor, who wrote a book called Breathe, which is this extensive deep dive into the science and the history and the techniques of breathing, which is absolutely fascinating.
I strongly recommend it.
So let's move on to our third good life habit, and that is movement.
And there's incredible research on how moving our bodies affects every system, right?
These are the things that we do.
It literally is this trigger that changes everything.
It makes a lot of things easier.
It makes a lot of things better.
It has almost as rapid an effect as breathing, in my experience, in being able to up or down -regulate your nervous system, your state of mind.
And we also know that it has really powerful long -term effects on every system of our body, on our well -being, on our hormones, on our risk for illness, and capacity to access well -being.
Now, when we talk about this, I think it's also important to note that people will have different abilities to move their bodies.
And that's completely okay.
And it's also one of the reasons why, you know, I'm offering different ideas, different habits, different behaviors, different activities, because some may be more accessible to some people and others to other people.
To the extent that you can do even one of these, it can make a huge difference.
If you have the ability to adapt and make any of these yours, then I would invite you to think about like given who you are, given your current state, given what your body calls for and is able to do, think about how these might work for you.
So with exercise, for example, one person may be able to do it in a completely full body mobility way and another may be more limited, which is fine.
So you step into these imitations in a way that allows you to adapt them to whatever is appropriate for your level of ability and access.
What we know is that when we do have the ability to move our body and at a fairly high level of intensity, it can make a huge difference, both currently in our state of being and long -term in our state of well -being.
We also know that physical movement can have a really big effect on our brain, not just the behaviors, but on the physical state of our brain that it releases a chemical known as BDNF, which is brain -derived neurotropic factor.
And that effectively is sort of like fertilizer for growing new brain cells.
It's a very rough analogy, but it's one of the few chemicals that we know is involved in literally generating new cells in your brain, which was thought to be impossible in the not -too -distant past.
So when I think about movement, and I start with the idea of thinking about exercise, I'm asking myself, what is my body calling for?
I happen to use a device that also I get up in the morning and it's a little biohacking device.
It's a ring called the Oura Ring, which lets me see with metrics and data, so like how is my body doing?
And it tracks something called the heart rate variability, which we know now is a really powerful measure of recovery and readiness.
And it actually helps me understand how hard or not hard to push my physical body to exercise or pull back or just relax on any human day is.
So I feel like that is a really good guide for me.
If you have any kind of access to those sort of metrics, I think it can be super useful.
But even if not, just close your eyes and kind of just notice, how's my body feeling?
What does it need today?
And if it's calling to be gentle, be gentle.
If it's calling to say, like, I feel strong and alive, I'm going to push hard, then by all means, honor that as well.
Honor your current state of physical ability and also do it in a way that engages as much of not just your physical body, but your mental body.
And it's kind of weird to say mental body, but I really truly do believe that there's a seamless loop between your mind and your body.
We can't disconnect them anymore.
Literally, when you move your body, it changes your brain, but I almost feel like you almost can't distinguish between the two at certain states.
So engage your mind when you engage your body.
And sometimes the way that we do that is by choosing activities that by the very nature of the activity require our mind to be in it.
So an interesting example is the contrast between running on a treadmill and running or hiking on a trail outside.
On a treadmill, generally your mind checks out.
In fact, if it doesn't, you're going to become so bored because of the monotony that you'll probably quit way sooner than you wanted to.
This is why a lot of big facilities have all sorts of computers and internet and TVs and devices to distract you from how kind of monotonous it is because the fundamental nature of running on a treadmill for most people makes their brain check out.
It just doesn't have to be involved.
When you take that exact same activity and translate it to the outdoors and especially to a trail with tons of novelty, constantly changing outdoor environments, constantly changing ground beneath your feet, your brain must be fully engaged in the activity.
Not because you're intentionally thinking, look at this, look at this, look at this, change this, change this, but because the essential nature of the activity requires your mind to be hyper -focused on it.
When your body moves and the fundamental nature of an activity requires your mind to be attentionally present on a moment -to -moment basis in that activity, you experience that as play.
Play that often rises to the level of flow.
And that is kind of blissful.
So not only do you get this powerful state in terms of increasing health and muscle tone and wellness and longevity and decreasing risk for disease and decreasing inflammation and all these things in your body, but you translate what so many people dread and view as like, oh, I have to do this thing
into something that you yearn to do and love to do.
This is one of the reasons why I hike on a regular basis here.
And I often find myself when I'm hiking, it's kind of funny, a friend pointed this out to me not too long ago.
He's like, you know, it's literally like you're a little boy when you're out on the trail.
I was hiking and I was on the trail where there were a lot of rocks and jagged rocks.
And my mind immediately went like back to this time where it's sort of like, okay, I'm on a mountain.
The rocks are the safe place and everything in between it is lava and you've got to jump from rock to rock without touching the lava.
And I was literally going down a trail, almost hopping from rock to rock on the trail, not even realizing what I was doing because it was just so joyful.
My mind had to be in it.
The bigger message here is that movement really is powerful in so many different ways.
And if you want to elevate it to level play and flow and bliss, do something where the fundamental nature of the movement requires your mind to be engaged.
It will change the game for you.
A lot of people think, well, how do I turn exercise from something I have to do, a behavior, into a habit?
Something I just automatically do and I love doing.
And a big part of that transition is connecting those two things, physical movement with attentional focus.
Not because you're telling yourself to focus, but because the nature of the movement requires your mind to be in it, right?
So I do this on a regular basis and this has become like one of my powerful good life habits.
Interestingly, when a couple of years back we were living in New York City, even though I had access to central parking to the Hudson River and I would find myself out there on a regular basis, I felt like it was still a have for me.
Having access to a different physical location where I can be out in places, in hiking, and in trails, literally in my backyard, where it changes it into play, it's become a yearn.
It's become a get, not a have.
I get to do this, not I have to do it.
And that has allowed me to create the habit loop and to repeat it enough times where it's just automatic for me at this point.
And it's transformational.
So exercise, whatever form is available to you, we think about as a really powerful good life habit.
But again, I want to expand this a little bit and invite you to go a little bit further.
And that is movement is not just about those, you know, 20 to two hour segments during any given day where you devote yourself to quote capital E exercise.
It's also about how we move throughout the day.
What we know now is that if we exercise for one fairly fixed window, and then we're completely sedentary for the rest of the time, it's not great for us.
So to the extent that you can look at the way that you're spending your day and mobilize your workflow, mobilize your relationships, mobilize everything.
It can make a really big difference.
So the way that I look at my workflow, for example, I completely rewired the way that I do it to allow myself to be much more mobile.
So whenever I have in -person meetings and granted, none of us did for a while, but I think a lot of us are back to it.
But even for years before any in -person meeting I had, you know, instead of going to a place and sitting and talking, I would say, meet me at this place.
It was usually the coffee shop two doors down from me when I was in New York City.
We'd get a cup of coffee and we'd go walk and talk.
Every conversation I said, unless I have to be tethered to a screen, unless you have to show me something on a screen where we have to be doing it, we're going to be up, we're going to be outside and we're going to be moving while we're doing it.
And that allowed me to actually break that cycle of saying every time that I have to be in conversation, I have to be seated in an office and sedentary.
And I'll offer you the invitation too.
If you feel like going for a walk while we're talking too, we'll do a virtual walk and talk.
And this has become my default mode to help mobilize my workflow.
So these are some invitations, right?
To start to think about re -imagining the way that we work so that we can actually become as mobile as possible, so that we can interject movement to whatever extent it is available and accessible to us.
Adapt it in whatever ways we need to so that we can bring as much of it into our days as humanly possible.
So that is the third good life habit.
Let's get to those last two here.
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The fourth one is what I call nature immersion.
Now, what we know is that similar to breathing and movement, even physical touch, that nature, exposure to nature, has a powerful effect on human beings.
It also has the ability to down -regulate or up -regulate your nervous system.
It literally can affect the level of inflammation in your body.
It can affect your mood, your level of anxiety, depression.
It can affect your physiological and psychological states in really powerful ways.
So many of us have been in nature or around nature and thought to ourselves, I just feel good here.
We have research now that shows that you feel good because it literally is affecting your body's systems.
In Japan, there are entire forests that are designated as what they call Shinrin -yoku forests, translates roughly to forest bathing.
And they do this because studies have shown that when we regularly immerse ourselves in nature, especially walking through woods, walking through trees, walking through forests, or moving through them, even if we're doing it in an assisted way, simply being in a natural environment can have a profound
effect on us. Now, I know this intuitively.
When we were in New York, we lived in a place where two blocks in one direction was the incredible Central Park and two blocks in the other direction was the Hudson River.
I love nature and water is something that has always been a part of me as well.
And I would find myself regularly in those spaces.
Sometimes it was walking around, sometimes exercising, sometimes just being there.
It changed me. It made a huge difference.
So I have made not just a behavior, not just a commitment, but a habit of making sure that I have nature in my life.
Now, for me, we've literally moved 2000 miles away so that I'm immersed in the front range of the Rocky Mountains and I have access to incredible nature at every beat.
But you don't have to do that in order to have exposure to nature, to plants around you on a regular basis, right?
Simple trees on the block.
Sit outside. If you have the ability to do work during the day, and you can do either sitting inside, in an office, or in your home office, or wherever you may be, or you can be outside, whether it's a cafe, whether it's your backyard, whether it's your front porch, whatever it may be.
Choose the outdoor environment because simply being outside around plants and nature and animals can make a really big difference.
We don't think about it, but science tells us it really does matter.
The ability that you actually have to immerse yourself even more in any kind of natural environment, say yes to it.
And if you've never thought about doing this, scan your day and think to yourself of the different things that I have on my list, say do this today.
In fact, look at your calendar today or look at it tomorrow.
If it's the end of of the day when you're listening to this and ask yourself, okay, here are the things that I have to do.
Is there a way for me to slightly tweak or shift or reimagine any of these so that it will allow me to be exposed to nature in any meaningful way?
I could get the exact same thing accomplished, but I can do it in a way where I have more nature in the picture.
That can be transformational, Both in the moment and over the long term, we know that the well -being effects of long -term exposure to nature can be powerful.
So I have developed the habit of regularly on a daily basis ensuring that I have nature in my days and in my life.
Right? Whether it is walking outside, whether it is the mobilized walk and talks, whether it's hiking, whatever it is.
Now, we also know that even if you don't have the ability to be outside, that simply being inside and having windows that let you have exposure to natural environments can make a difference as well.
Fascinating research about hospitals and people who are recovering from surgery or from illness and what it shows that in a room where one person has a window where outside they can see trees and another person doesn't have any access to that natural light and to the trees.
Pain levels are reported as lower and recovery is faster simply by having a window that has natural light and exposure to foliage.
It makes a real difference.
We also know that let's say you're working in an office or a home office, literally bringing a plant or plants into that indoor environment where you can look at them, where you can see them.
Even that makes a difference in your psychological state, which then ripples into your physiological state.
So we have levels of exposure, of immersion in nature that we can say yes to.
And when we can't actually get out to them, we can even bring them in through the guise of a window or even bring things into our actual internal space that can give us some of that same effect, right?
So no one is excluded from this.
Just reimagine, do some thinking.
First, elevate this and say, this actually matters.
it matters more than I realize there's science behind that now how can I first go out into it and then how can I bring more of it inside to me those things can make a really big difference so I have a habit now of nature immersion on a daily basis I don't think about it I know how it affects me I thought
about it in the beginning until it became an automatic behavior but now it's just a part of what I do and the way that I live my life.
And that brings us to our final and fifth good life habit.
And again, you'll see that a lot of these start as intentional behaviors, but using the fundamental science of habit, repeating them over time in a loop, in a systematic way, builds them into habit, and they become automatic.
Okay. Number five. Now, this is not going to be new for most of you.
But I still have to put it out there because it has been transformational in my life.
And I absolutely did not come to it voluntarily.
And that is meditation.
And for me, my particular practice is something called mindfulness.
The mindfulness works on two levels.
One, as an actual dedicated practice.
This is something that's part of my morning, right, this is the early morning when I'm doing my breathing exercises, I also do a mindfulness practice.
But the mindfulness practice has this powerful ripple effect.
Over time, it starts to shift the way that you move into your day, the way that you relate to yourself, the way that you relate to your own internal chatter, the way that you relate to other human beings, it is, it literally infuses every part of your life.
And it has done so for me.
So part of it is mindfulness as a practice or a habit, but that has this long -term effect that literally changes the quality of your being on a persistent basis, 24 seven, as you move throughout your day and your life.
And in doing so, it changes the way that you relate to the world and the way that the world relates back to you in really powerful generative and generous ways that make life so much better.
So what then is a mindfulness practice?
Now, there are a lot of different approaches to meditation, and I think they all have value, and they affect us differently.
I'm drawn to mindfulness in part because it gives me a set of tools that allow me to be present in what I'm doing.
And I'm also drawn to it because of what led me to it.
So after years of teaching meditation and teaching yoga in a past life, my dirty little secret was that I really struggled with meditation myself, personally.
I could teach it, but I really struggled to make it a daily thing in my own life until I was diagnosed with tinnitus, a loud, high -pitched sound that I have in both ears.
It's actually not in my ears, it's in my brain that my brain generates.
And in the early days, it was brutalizing me.
I didn't know what to do about it.
I happened to be working on writing a book on uncertainty back then.
And I was researching how people deal with the uncertainty of chronic pain.
And I started to learn that there was a mindfulness -based approach to cognitive therapy that made a really big difference in people's lives when they were suffering with chronic pain.
In fact, it's even called mindfulness -based cognitive therapy.
And I started to wonder, well, could this make a difference for me in the sound in my head?
Like if this never goes away, the thought at that time was devastating to me.
But I started to wonder, could this practice, could this ritual, could this behavior over time rewire my brain so that if it didn't go away, I would be okay with it?
That I would just be able to just sort of keep on keeping on.
I could not imagine that would be possible when I was in the throes of it.
I was suffering so greatly.
And still I said, you know, there's no harm in trying this.
So I basically started to explore the practice and I started to make modifications.
And interestingly enough, I started to create a blended breathing practice to down -regulate anxiety.
And I blended that with a mindfulness -based practice, which allows me to just bring my focus to my breath, let go of thoughts, let go of other distractions, let go of the sound in my head.
And it took a while.
But over time, I started to realize that I was gaining the ability to not just have this sound consume me 24 -7, but actually just be there and not bother me.
And then eventually get to a place where it wasn't, even though at any given moment, as I have this conversation with you right now, if I look for it, it's there.
unless and until I'm looking for, it doesn't really exist in my experience of life.
And that is in no small part based on this blended practice of breath and mindfulness meditation.
It can really change the way that you deal with things in life can make you much more present to them, much more curious about them, much more open.
And more importantly, maybe than anything else, it teaches you how to identify where your mind is focused and let go of it.
So the practice is about focusing, noticing, letting go, and then coming back to a healthy, grounded focal point.
And over time doing this was profound to me.
So I came back to it because I was trying to see if this would make a difference in my life.
But what I found was that not only did it help tremendously with my tinnitus, which exists to this day, but I started to notice it was changing the way that I was moving into my day.
I was less reactive.
I was less stressed.
I was less anxious.
Now, the circumstances of my life didn't change.
All the things that would have made me reactive, all the things that would have made me stressed, all the things that would have made me anxious, they were all still weaving in and out of my experience.
I'm a maker. I'm a creator.
I'm an entrepreneur.
I'm a founder. I'm a dad, a husband.
I'm like, there are a lot of things where the stakes are high and I care about them and I don't have total control over the circumstances, those will always lead to the opportunity for anxiety, for stress, for suffering, right?
For surprise in directions you didn't want the surprise to go.
And what I found was that this practice really changed the way that I was able to relate to all of these things.
And it gave me the capacity to continue to say yes to possibility where the stakes were high, but the information was unknown.
So high stakes uncertainty plus possibility without suffering nearly as much as I used to.
And that gave me the skills to step into the mode of creation and building and service and impact on a completely different level.
A lot of it started from me saying yes to this one technique, not because I wanted to, but because I was suffering so greatly.
So let's talk about that seated technique for a moment, mindfulness.
The practice itself is very simple.
The instructions are super simple.
The practice takes time.
The instructions are basically to sit comfortably, right?
Whatever it is, like knows your body.
Now, unlike some other approaches to meditation or what you might've heard, there is no instruction that says you must eliminate all thoughts and just completely clear your mind.
Frankly, I don't know if that's possible.
I know it's not possible for me and I don't think I've ever met the person that can literally do that for more than a heartbeat.
What the instruction is, sit comfortably, find a place where your physical body is able to sustain itself for a short amount of time.
Whatever that looks like for you, whatever is accessible for you, whatever the physical way of placing your body is that allows you to be as at ease as you can be.
And then kind of drop your gaze a little bit.
And then the idea is to simply tune in to the sensation of your breath.
Now, there are different ways to do that that may be more accessible to people.
So for some, you can think about, well, let me notice the sensation of my breath as it enters my nose.
If you have the ability to just breathe through your nose, that tends to be more easeful.
Inhaling, you can notice, oh, the breath actually, there's a temperature change.
It's a little bit cooler as it moves into the tip of my nose.
Let me see how far down the back of my nose and maybe into my throat I can actually trace that sensation.
Now as I exhale, there's a very slight warming sensation at the tip of my nostrils when the breath comes back out of me.
Some people find it easier.
simply notice it there.
Maybe you'll notice the sensation of your breath because you'll feel your chest or your belly or your shoulders just slightly expand outward a little bit with the inhale and then slightly release back in a little bit with the exhale.
Maybe you notice it somewhere else in your body.
But the idea is to simply go through a couple of cycles of breath and try sort of like, well, let me tune into my nose.
Let me tune into my chest.
Let me tune into my belly.
If it's helpful, and I sometimes find this helpful, you can even place one hand on your chest and one hand on your belly and say like, where am I feeling like I'm breathing into the hand?
And I can almost sense it that way.
And the idea is that we use the breath as a bit of a light anchor for our attention.
And this is the training in directing your attention.
Now what's going to happen almost immediately within a few seconds is your mind will start to think about something else.
It will spin away from your breath and that is 100 % okay.
Over time, you'll start to be able to notice that your departure from your breath and your distraction to something else.
Your mind will start to notice that process as well and you'll say, huh, okay, thinking or feeling or whatever it may be.
And with the next breath, just bring it back to the sense of your breath.
So it's the process of focusing, noticing, like noticing when you drift away, noticing what the self -talk is, noticing what the chatter is, and then consciously dropping it, choosing to drop it, and then bringing your awareness back to the sensation of your breath.
So you may repeat this literally hundreds of times in a matter of five or 10 minutes.
And here's the cool thing.
When that happens, it doesn't mean that you're not doing it or doing it incorrectly or messing up.
It's just the nature of the practice.
I have literally been doing this for I believe over a dozen years now and my mind still spins off all the time.
The difference is I tend to notice it a lot faster.
I treat myself gently when I do.
There's no shame or blame or you're messing up or doing this wrong.
I just gently bring it back to my breath So this gives you the skill of noticing, of choosing where to focus your attention, choosing how to respond to it and to yourself, and then bringing it back to where you want it to be.
That, over time, is what becomes so transformative.
That is the game -changing element of this practice because it gives you control over your attention and allows you more control over how you respond to wherever your attention is and to draw it to wherever you want it to be.
I am a huge believer that in no small part, attention is life.
Wherever your attention is, That determines the nature and the quality of your experience of life in that moment.
And if your attention is constantly flitting all day, every day, over a period of weeks, days, months, years, decades, your whole life, that determines the nature and the quality of your entire life.
So the more you gain the ability to actually have some level of relationship and control over where your attention is, how you process it, and how you direct it, it changes profoundly your ability to live the life that you want to live, regardless of the circumstances you find yourself in, whether they're
glorious and alive and joyful or really hard and challenging.
You have the ability to bring your attention to where you want it to be.
And that is incredibly powerful.
So for me, that fifth good life habit, which like every other thing starts out as a behavior, it's intentional and willful and over a period of time through repetition and reinforcement becomes an automatic process that I just do every single morning and a habit that changes my life over time.
So those are the five good life habits, right?
So we talked about being gentle with yourself and really approaching each one of these in a way that fits you as best as it can, honoring who you are, what you're capable of, and adapting any of these to whatever way is most realistic and most effective for you.
We started with the morning hug, and remember we had a couple of different levels for that, and also remember you didn't actually have to be with other people in order to get the benefit of doing that.
We had breathing, we had movement, we had nature, and now we have mindfulness.
these things when woven together make absolutely huge difference in the way that you live your life.
Choose the one, scan that list of five and choose the one that feels like it would be the easiest to step into for you.
And then just commit to yourself.
Let me actually commit to spending a minute or two minutes or three minutes doing this every day.
Find the part of your day where it feels like it would be most natural.
Part of the habit building process is to anchor the behavior when you're doing it in the beginning before it becomes automatic to something that happens automatically every single day.
So for example, for me, I wake up in the morning, I brush my teeth, I immediately go over to the couch in my office and I sit and I do my breathing and my meditation.
Now I know that for me, I'm anchoring it to brushing my teeth because I know I'm going to do that, like have it automatic every single morning, right?
And the next thing that happens is meditation.
It's my mindfulness and breathing.
And over time, those three things now have just become automatic processes in my morning.
That's how I start my day.
So pick the one where it feels easiest for you to say yes to it on the most fundamental basic way.
See if you can link it to something that you do every day, just like clockwork anyway, that becomes the trigger that sort of like sets it up and then commit.
Say, can I do this for a week or for two weeks and then push it another week and another week.
And what you'll find is over time, it makes a huge difference.
And if you really want to go into the science of developing habits in general, um, again, two great books, the power of habit and atomic habits, definitely check them out.
Um, lots of learning around that.
You don't have to do that in order to start to say yes to the five ideas I've talked to.
I hope you've enjoyed this, found it useful.
There will be a free cheat sheet or downloadable with all the key elements in it.
You can access that.
We'll have a link in the show notes to be able to download that.
And as always, I hope you've enjoyed this part of our new beginnings series.
Be sure to follow the show so that you do not miss an episode of this powerful series.
I'll see you next time.
This episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers, Lindsey Fox, and me, Jonathan Fields.
Editing help by Alejandro Ramirez, Christopher Carter crafted our theme music.
And special thanks to Shelly Adele for her research on this episode.
And of course, if you haven't already done so, please go ahead and follow Good Life Project in your favorite listening app.
And if you found this conversation interesting or inspiring or valuable, and chances bizarre you did, since you're still listening here, would you do me a personal favor, a seven second favor and share it?
Maybe on social or by text or by email, even just with one person, just copy the link from the app you're using and tell those, you know, those you love those, you want to help navigate this thing called life a little better.
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Tell them to listen, then even invite them to talk about what you've both discovered because when podcasts become conversations and conversations, become action, that's how we all come alive together.
Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project.
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