Can You Change?

You want to change your habits and there are countless resources that make it sound easy. But you find, in reality, change is tough! So do we. In this conversation the Advice Column panel discusses how micro-changes may be the answer. Join us we share our personal struggles, information we've been studying, and our thoughts on how to blaze a trail to change.

Meet the Advice Column Panel

Justin Reden
Justin is a husband and the father of two wonderful daughters. He owns a law firm in San Diego, CA, and his many hobbies include mountain biking and beekeeping. Reden enjoys strategy, including pondering life and has a great love for people.
Justin's Website

Brad Tunis
Brad left his career as a hospital administrator to support people through his training as a highly sought after Hypnotherapist and Mindfulness Coach. He enjoys surfing and riding gravel bikes with his wife, Sarah.
Brad's Website

Lisa Liguori
The founder of the Advice Column Podcast, Lisa is an entrepreneur, philanthropist, and adventurer. She loves to host game nights, pilot a small plane, and write in her journal. She loves hearing what others are learning in their life's journey and to share what she is working through.
Lisa's Website

Rico Molden
The producer of Advice Column's live steam events, Rico is a filmmaker and storyteller. Rico and his wife have two young children and are actively involved in their church.
Rico's Website

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About Advice Column
Advice Column (a program of Happiness Adventure) is a nonprofit, 501(C)3. All content is provided as a free service for the public good. Our mission is to create a platform for you and our community to share life-learning with one another. We believe sharing will help you accelerate your growth and remember you aren't alone. 

Advice Column - Crowd-Sourced Ideas for Living with Intention. 

Transcript

Lisa Liguori: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to advice column where we share crowdsourced ideas for living with intention.

Welcome back to the panel. It's been a long time. I'm excited that we're back together. Nice to see you. So just a quick introduction of our panel members. Bradley or Bradford Tunis is a mindfulness coach and hypnotherapist. He'll be joining us in just a bit. Justin Reardon is an attorney and father. And behind the camera, we have Rico Molden, who is an amazing, our amazing production expert.

And I'm here in my capacity as a. So

today we of

topics to tee up the first of which is, well to the topics are flow state, which I've been thinking a lot about as I'm reading a book about it. And the other is habits and how they can become our [00:01:00] master, our servants. So you pick Justin, what you want to start with first? 

Justin Reden: Um, why don't we start with habits?

Okay. All right. And then we'll see where the flow state takes 

Lisa Liguori: us. What, what started you thinking about habits? 

Justin Reden: I think people are very habitual, whether they choose to be or not. I think we're always engaged in a habitual routine. And so, uh, I think it's, it could be advantageous if you are aware of your habit routine and then deliberately choose what habits you're gonna, you're gonna engage in or not.

Lisa Liguori: I think we both read atomic habits, right? Did you read that with your daughter? 

Justin Reden: I, we got like three quarters of the way through it and then, yeah. 

Lisa Liguori: Okay. I thought that 

Justin Reden: was a really interesting book. It is. Yeah, it is. It made a lot of sense to me. Your 

Lisa Liguori: habits must serve you well, because you seem like you've got it together.

Justin Reden: That that's a false sense of reality because we don't, but, um, [00:02:00] no, I, I think habits tie into determinability vision. What does determinability mean? Like doing something in a determined path or a deliberate way towards a goal. And so I think habits are a good way of. Not getting distracted from that journey, so to speak.

And if you have good habits that are in line with pursuing whatever that goal is, or that desire, whatever it is, it'll keep you on track. But if you don't deliberately have your good habits and try and follow them, then you'll develop some other habits that are going to take you away from that. 

Lisa Liguori: Perhaps you're non deliberate or whatever the word is habits.

Probably. What's the hardest habit for you? 

Justin Reden: Do you think, oh boy,

the [00:03:00] hardest habit, 

Lisa Liguori: I guess one that you really want to have, but it's hard for you to build 

Justin Reden: it, not getting distracted with other things that require attention. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, um, I think you're really good at not getting distracted. I don't know if you feel that way, but as an outsider watching you operate and do your businesses and your personal life.

I feel like I see you take really deliberate steps to try and stay on track with what your next habit or steps going to be. An example was, um, we were talking in my office about when you were, you were just on a A long trip to Africa, which I want to hear all about, but, um, my assistant had emailed you and got your email message back and she came in and told me about it.

She was like, this is the raddest thing I think I've [00:04:00] ever seen in a reply email. And your email was basically saying to everyone, Hey, I'm, I'm out doing X. Um, I'm staying focused on that. If. You know, I'm, I'm most likely not going to be replying to you and if, um, so you need to know that and please follow up with me after the state when I get back.

And I thought that was just a, a rad message to send out for you to deliberately stay on track with your trip. I'm 

Lisa Liguori: really glad that that didn't put you off. I was worried it might put people off. Hey Brad, you wanna join us? 

Justin Reden: We're talking about habits. 

Brad Tunis: Ah mm. I have a bad one. 

Justin Reden: Not necessarily showing up. , I'm sure you accomplished a lot of good things this morning.

It's not necessarily bad . 

Brad Tunis: Oh, right. Yeah. Getting ready to leave town again. 

Lisa Liguori: Oh, where are you going on your bike 

Brad Tunis: trip? No, gonna go bury my dad. Oh, 

Lisa Liguori: it's [00:05:00] okay. 

Brad Tunis: That's half hard. I'm ready to put the final stages to down, you know? Yeah. So, 

Lisa Liguori: yeah, it's okay. Are you doing the eulogy? 

Brad Tunis: I did it. So we have a service isn't gonna be like a family.

Um, we're just Putting it's, it's pretty funny. So he wanted to be cremated, but yet we're still putting them in the ground. Yeah. Oh, 

Lisa Liguori: you're going to bury the 

Brad Tunis: ashes. I guess it's all about what he wanted and him and my step mom figured out. But I, like, if he was alive, I'd like to have this conversation with 

Justin Reden: him.

Like, if we're doing the cremation, 

Brad Tunis: shouldn't we dump you in the lake of the Ozarks or something? Like, that's where we used to like to go. We're still taking up the earth space. 

Lisa Liguori: I want to dig in someday with you about all the end of life stuff that you do, because I think it's so interesting and it's stuff we don't really talk about, including wishes and things.

Brad Tunis: Right. [00:06:00] Yeah. It's interesting. But yeah, I've, I've had this internal struggle the last week or so where I'm like, what are we doing? 

Justin Reden: Like we're going to. 

Brad Tunis: And you paid for this and we're still taking up the airspace and I don't know, it doesn't make a ton. And then I found there's a guy in Escondido that you can take ashes and he blows them into like a little glass piece, anything you want.

And I thought, so I have a client that had part of her father blown into this beautiful pendant. And I'm like, Oh, that's a cool idea. Maybe the grandkids want something like that. So I called my sister and I said, Hey, what do you think about getting a, bring a plastic bag. We'll put some of my dad's ashes in there.

I'll bring them back to San Diego. I'll have this guy make us all little things. She said, Oh, I don't, I don't know if, you know, Sandy, my step mom, if she wants that to happen. And I'm like, [00:07:00] 

Justin Reden: Yeah. What are we doing here? The attorney in me is, my alarms are going off. I just want to see the trust that your dad left with his instructions and that's what you need to follow.

That's what we're doing. Yeah. So we're, we, that's, so that's what we're doing. I might represent your dad here. 

Lisa Liguori: Can I get? Are you guys allowed to talk right now? 

Brad Tunis: I have to 

Justin Reden: leave. Yeah. You know, doing estate planning, I see some. I see some interesting stuff with people with their end of life decisions and all across the board.

But 

Lisa Liguori: well, they offered us that we could shoot my dad's ashes into outer space. And I was like, this is getting crazy. Although I knowing my dad, I don't think he would have been opposed. You might've thought it was pretty cool, but it's just the, it's so in they

offer you, 

Justin Reden: I am your dad's attorney. How do you know that didn't happen?[00:08:00] 

I can't talk about it necessarily, 

Brad Tunis: but don't let me forget before we leave here today. I need to get your card. I need to do some estate planning. Sure. 

Justin Reden: Yeah. Or both.

Well, good luck with that topic change. Let's 

Brad Tunis: talk about that. 

Lisa Liguori: Wow. Yeah. We decided to start with habits, not having them talking about, right. So Justin was paying me a very nice compliment that I am focused and I actually feel so unfocused, but I think you have a lot of interests also. So it's easy to fall into the trap of trying to do everything instead of.

So I read this book called for, I think it's 4, 000 weeks or 2, 000 weeks, so average number of weeks a person lives. And the guy's premise was that we try to have it all. And that creates [00:09:00] anxiety because you literally can't. But if we realize and we cut off the option and just said, I'm not going to be able to do everything I want in life, we'd actually have more peace with the things that we do choose to do.

So I picked five. Focuses, and I'm trying not to be allowed to do anything else until those five things are done. That is cool. And I open it every morning, but I stray, but that's what I'm trying to work on. That's 

Justin Reden: really cool. I think it's going to work. I know you don't think you're super focused. You really are.

I mean, like people who are around, you can see that I know you don't feel that way internally or, well, I'm not saying how you feel internally, but yeah, but yeah, so I want to get an update on that. Yeah, I'll keep you 

Brad Tunis: posted daily thing 

Lisa Liguori: that the five things, for example, are, I think I have my, I don't think I have, I do have my end of life planning on there.

So [00:10:00] when that's done, I can remove that item and I can have another item that is in my current working on items, but until that one's. If that done, I can't start a new thing. 

Justin Reden: Yeah. 

Brad Tunis: That's good. Yeah. Yeah. I think that you take that on a micro or macro level daily, weekly, monthly 

Lisa Liguori: blow it up inside 

Justin Reden: out a habit.

Since we're talking about habits, I have a habit every morning where it doesn't happen every morning, but I try. And I try and do 1 thing like a home related task before I leave in the morning, just 1 tonight. I developed that to try and reduce anxiety because I, I'd have all these things building up at home that needed to be done.

But then I'm always at work and. So I said, you know what, in the morning while I'm like drinking my coffee, I'm going to, you know, put the new light cover on or [00:11:00] whatever it is. But, and I was in my garage this morning, kind of doing that. And I realized that my work bench in my garage and the surrounding areas, like my, my total truth teller on how well I'm doing on staying on task.

Cause I have all these partial projects sitting there. I mean, lots of them, way too many. And then I go out there and I'm like, Oh shoot, I need to get to that one. And I've left that one. And, and then it became the source of anxiety, which dovetails into what you're saying. I should probably limit my projects and not add one until I finish one.

Lisa Liguori: It's so hard though, at least for my personality. It is. There is some quote that my dad loved and it was, if you put on one brick every single day, pretty soon you'll have a cathedral. And. So I found this other quote recently and it said something like people underestimate what we can do. In a day, we underestimate what we can do in a day, but we overestimate what we can do in a [00:12:00] day, but we underestimate what we can do in a month, like with consistent a little bit, but staying consistent takes discipline.

And that's what I think you guys both have that I feel like I'm lacking. 

Brad Tunis: So I don't know how to like, it's a common theme with my clients. It's like, you know, if we're talking about behavior change, mental state. Bringing in awareness, appreciation, gratitude in the science and many things seems to keep pointing to the fact of it's not the quantity, it's the consistency in which you do things.

So meditation, for example. The neuroscience has shown through brain scans, it is not do 20 minutes a day. It's your two to three days a week. It's do five minutes a day every day. [00:13:00] And the changes in the brain and the consistency, this is just one example, are much more significant. So the consistency becomes the real kicker to sort of create these new habits and these new changes is lower the bar on your own expectations.

And just do it. And so that's one thing I guess I try and focus on. 

Lisa Liguori: Yeah. What's an example of something that you do small, 

Brad Tunis: but Recently, um, get up in the morning before I check my phone, do anything and get my dog. No coffee, no, nothing. This is something they've been talking about in the neuroscience, but get up in the morning, wake up, take five minutes to.

Almost like a mini meditation, clear the mind. You know how you wake up in the morning and all of a sudden the brain starts to go. Everything you got to do for [00:14:00] the day. I'm going to check my phone. I didn't see that. 

Justin Reden: Are you doing this while you're still in bed or do you get out 

Brad Tunis: early? I don't even, I'd stay in bed.

You know, a lot of people, I have it more. Formal meditation practice, but this is just five minutes in bed quieting the mind Get up get my dog and I do a 20 minute walk No sunglasses. You need the natural light in your eye and 20 minute walk to get the heart rate up Get the natural light in the eyes Then I come home have my coffee Do my workout, get into my day.

So I've been doing it now for five weeks. Part of it is trying to shift my rhythm so I can be more of a morning person. Cause I'm not a great morning person, which is when we said, 

Justin Reden: let's do 9am. I was like, Oh God, that's like 4am. Yeah. They're not going to want 

Brad Tunis: to talk to me at 9am. I'm better at 

Lisa Liguori: night. And I had to change the plan five times.

I [00:15:00] apologize. 

Brad Tunis: No, but it's great. So that is a habit. That I've been doing. So there's been some mornings where I'm like, I don't have 20 minutes. It's like, okay, we're going to get up. We're going to do one loop around the cul de sac, but I am going to stay consistent with this practice. I'm going to get out there and my body is going to say you did it because the time then becomes almost secondary.

To the act of going through the process to get out the door and do it. How 

Lisa Liguori: do you make yourself do it when you wake up? Because I feel like you need that little oomph to get that habit going. My flaw in a habit is, But I'm so tired, I'll start tomorrow. 

Justin Reden: It's the match to light it. Yeah. The 

Lisa Liguori: spark. And I feel kind of flawed as a person.

Like that, I know the formula of things that are good for me, but getting that energy to do it versus put it off another day is really challenging. 

Brad Tunis: For me, it's a practice in a little bit of playing [00:16:00] it, playing the tape forward in that. Who is the person that I want to be and looking forward is to what are these little things that seem so?

Insignificant, but I know are gonna lead me to that goal is one way I do it the other way and you and I may have talked about this on the side is

this idea of future pacing all the way to your deathbed and it doesn't have to be this Terrible thing. You could be 107 years old, dying the most peaceful, wonderful death ever. But what does that deathbed you say to you now at this intersection or this decision? Are you bummed 

Justin Reden: that you didn't go ahead and 

Brad Tunis: get up and maybe make this effort to be this, that's all gonna lead to be this person you want to be, or are you okay with [00:17:00] it?

And if there's even just a little bit of like contraction around that right there in that moment is your motivation to move forward into that thing, but you have to act on that as you do the little exercise. And this is a, this is a Phil Stutz. He's a psychiatrist and this is some of his work. You really got to go through this visualization as you go through the visualization of what is my deathbed person say to me when you get that sense of that's your motivation.

That's your sense of urgency move and you have to move.

It's a beautiful practice and a lot of people don't like to think of themselves on the deathbed and I'm like, 

Justin Reden: it's like, it's gonna happen. I bounce everything off that. I run it through the deathbed filter. Do you? Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's powerful. For sure. [00:18:00] Yeah. 

Lisa Liguori: That works for stressful things too. Cause sometimes I'll feel, well, yesterday there was an, I had an employee issue and I felt so upset.

And then I thought to myself in even a week, I'm not going to care. Yeah. Let alone the end of my life, right? It won't even be a flip. 

Justin Reden: Yeah, I, I feel like with like, how do you, how do you get that spark for me personally? You mentioned it, but I feel like a strong sense of commitment to myself. To be who I visualize, who I want to be, like, I want to be the guy that gets up at 5 30 and gets on the bike when it's dark.

And I don't really feel like it. Like, like, ideally, that's who I want to be. So I don't feel like that most of the time doing it. But then I have like, this packed with myself. Not anyone else. It's just like, no, you, [00:19:00] you committed to yourself that you would do that. And that's kind of what I use to get over the hump.

Not always. I fail a lot of the time, but. So for me, it's kind of with myself, 

Lisa Liguori: but at some point you must feel you're capable of matching that image you have of yourself. 

Justin Reden: I must. I don't feel like I ever achieve it, but yeah, I mean, I keep pursuing it. So I must feel that it's. Yeah. Otherwise I probably wouldn't pursue it.

Yeah. I would think. 

Brad Tunis: And maybe it's an illusion, but it doesn't really even matter. I 

Justin Reden: don't think it matters. If it keeps you striving. I think everything's an illusion. I 

Brad Tunis: mean, that's a deeper 

Justin Reden: hole. I dive into 

Brad Tunis: another day. We're actually not sitting here. Uh. But

yeah, I like that. Yeah. 

Justin Reden: Yeah. . It's hard [00:20:00] though. It is so hard when you don't want to do something. 

Lisa Liguori: I think doing hard things when I've done it, has proved to myself that I can though, and then it's motivating. 

Justin Reden: Yeah. Yeah. 

Brad Tunis: There's a quote, and I don't know who said it, but a lot of motivators say it, but you know what matters.

What are you doing? Nobody's looking. Mm-hmm. , 

Justin Reden: of course. Yeah. 

Brad Tunis: Yep. And so even if it's a sense of peacefulness with myself, My own internal sense of contentment and happiness, that's probably enough. 

Justin Reden: Yeah. Yeah. I think it's key to that. I see a lot of people that aren't able to achieve their own goals. And to me, there seems to be a pattern of.

They set the bar too high too soon and they didn't do the little incremental steps to [00:21:00] get there or develop the right habit towards the goal. Um, they, you know, you see people doing nothing for years and then getting the gym membership and then going five days a week and that lasts for three weeks and then it stops where maybe to your point earlier on the psychological.

Analysis you're providing if instead they started and just said for the 1st month, I'm just going to go once a week and then they achieve that and get that habit going. And then the next month, I'm going to increase it to 2 and then I'm never going to go more than 3 times a week because. I have a busy life and I know that'll just start creating stress and build up to that.

I feel like is a more sustainable pattern than the very legitimate goal of like, I want to, I want to change my physical health right away. And going too hard, too fast, and then it, it forces us to abandon it because it's just [00:22:00] too difficult to manage. 

Lisa Liguori: Yeah. I struggle with that, with those philosophies, which is kind of moderation and small wins, which I see tremendous value in both.

And my personality, I feel like once I get that taste, I've talked to Brad about my hot chocolate addiction. If I just say I'm not going to do it. It's almost easier for me than if I say I'm going to have it occasionally, because once I have it, I start thinking about it. I want another hot chocolate two in one day, and then I want one every time I don't feel like doing my work.

And it just escalates. So I wonder how to do what you're saying while at the same time, bucking my tendencies. Does that make sense? 

Justin Reden: Yeah. 

Brad Tunis: It's a possibly use it as a reward. May it's not daily. It's when you've achieved a, B, C and D. Um, but then I think there comes in the, the [00:23:00] discipline of, okay, this is a really nice reward.

I enjoyed it. I took time with it. And that's the other thing I think that kind of goes into both of these. Topics is our, we've our society with the phones and the technology is you want it and you want it. Now you need something, you need a new shirt, go on Amazon. It'll be there this afternoon. You know, we, our society we've built is actually rewarding us for the, we want it.

We want it now, but I don't know that I think that that's necessarily healthy or reasonable expectation that we're creating for ourselves. So. Yeah. I don't know what the answer to it is, so we have to take some personal level of responsibility. And in the end, is it deserving me? Mm 

Justin Reden: hmm. That's a good point.

Yeah. Yeah, the instant dopamine [00:24:00] satisfaction hit is... I haven't wrapped my brain around that one yet and where that's all going. I think as a society, we'll re socialize to it and the compass will right itself. I don't know what that looks like. But yeah, it's definitely a change when, you know, you can have it now you operate different, um, I might use a tool different in the garage and not worry if I break it because I'll have one primed to me in the morning.

Good point. I mean, you know, it's. 

Lisa Liguori: When I was in Africa, I did really didn't have my phone for two weeks. And when I got back, people kept saying to me, you're so peaceful. Yeah. And I didn't, at first I guess I was, I sort of had a twitch, like every time there was downtime I would think, oh let me get out my phone and look at something, but then I quickly got over that.

And it was really nice. 

Justin Reden: I hunt with my brother a lot. And we, we did this super remote hunt in Alaska years ago, and my brother has severe vertigo, constant from a [00:25:00] construction injury and it plagues him daily. And so. We go on the trip, and this is real remote, bush flights, you get dropped off in the middle of nowhere, there's no phones, nothing.

You have no communication with anyone for probably ten days. And by the third day, or the second day, he said all his vertigo was gone. Wow. Gone. And he was a completely different person. 

Lisa Liguori: When did it come back? 

Justin Reden: I don't know, because I don't think I followed up with him on that, but... I know it came back and I'm sure, 

Brad Tunis: but the idea there is what was the, you know, what was the variable?

I mean, I'd be jumping into all those variables, take me 

Justin Reden: back, but I, I found it was amazing. 

Lisa Liguori: So do you feel like we, we like what questions were [00:26:00] present in your mind when you were thinking about habits? 

Justin Reden: Um, my topic was incremental gains, which is actually another way of microhabit. I mean, it's stated microhabits really, it's really kind of the same thing in my mind.

Yeah. And. You mentioned your dad about building the cathedral with the bricks. That's exactly what I had in mind. Um, cause I watch, I watch all aspects of society for years. I've noticed this, these little incremental gains, and then all of a sudden you keep driving by a building, they, you know, skyscraper, they start building and a year later you drive by and there's people going in and out of it.

And you just go, whoa, how did that happen? And you, you look at it and you go, how, how that's, that's incredible that that could be built like that brick by brick or bucket of concrete by bucket of concrete, but like that, it's, it's up [00:27:00] and then you go downtown and you look at all the buildings and you go, wow, in 100 years, they put all these up incrementally.

I see it everywhere, but, and I think those incremental gains are just by a habit of whether it's whatever it is. 

Brad Tunis: And I think it's a, I was thinking about this a little last night cause I was feeling a little sense of overwhelm with some things I've got coming up, workshops, things like that, but going out of town, this clients, things I have to do the rest of the week before I go.

And the thing that I, my own tool that I really try and utilize is. Just this next thing, you know, we, we love to move forward and oh my God, how am I gonna get that done? And this, how's this going to look? And all that, that, that, that, that, that slow down, just the next thing. What's the next thing you need to do?[00:28:00] 

Put your focus there. So though I think in many instances, going to that 30, 000 foot view can be really helpful. Sometimes we need to have the ability to go back and forth to then. Kind of hyper focus back into this is next thing I'm doing, and let me pay attention to that. That's such a good point And this comes to terms with like what I think with the other topic we were talking about with I'm never going to have a hot chocolate again.

Justin Reden: Don't give up hot chocolate. Don't do that. Let's figure something else out. There's a reason 

Brad Tunis: in like, for instance, the AA program, they talk about, I'm not going to drink today. And that's why they don't say I'm a recovered alcoholic. You're not recovered. You're just not going to drink today. You worry about tomorrow, tomorrow.

And so it brings to light of slow down the [00:29:00] next thing. Just 

Justin Reden: now, yeah, we, we utilize that every day at work because when, when you're doing a legal analysis, a lot of times you're getting a really complicated, very messy fact pattern or something that happened in life and you just a lot of times to successfully accomplish whatever the client wants, you have to take it.

And break it up into, like, manageable or logical subparts. And then you have to put 90% of your focus into solving each of the subparts. And when you do that, there's no way you could put all your focus into the whole at once. It would never happen. It would just sit there and not get solved. But you break it into these sub parts and then you go to and then you prioritize each of those compartments and then you go in and you start working on the [00:30:00] first one.

And when you solve that riddle, you go to the next and the next and the next. And when you get to the end of that, you've basically solved the entire. I mean, I'm gross, I'm grossly simplifying it, but you have to break it down and then like you're talking about, focus all your energy into today on that particular issue and don't worry about all the other issues, you know, you have to solve for the next year on the case.

Let's solve the first one and then go to the next one. One of the most compelling. Stories I've heard, I think it's the X or the Navy seal. Marcus Latrell. He, he, I watched a podcast. He gave, he talks about when they got attacked and, and he found himself on the, on the verge of death and almost giving up.

He was by himself, broken back, tongue cut in half, can't walk, shot, et cetera. I, I don't know if I have all that right. But [00:31:00] he's, and he's laying there under a rock and he sees a, a town like, yeah. Five miles down the valley, and this is rough terrain, and he tells this story about how he chose to live and not die, and he says is what he did, and it'll give you the chills when you hear him, he says he's laying there, and he doesn't know what exactly to do, but he knows he's not going to give up, so he grabs a rock, and he draws a line, he reaches out on the dirt, and he draws a line in the dirt, And he says, my goal is to get to that line.

That does give me chills. Yeah. And then he gets to the line and he draws another line and he goes, my goal is to get to that line. And he did that repeatedly till he got to the town and got saved. Wow. Talk about just setting an incremental goal. And focusing on getting to that, and then that's all that gets him to the town.

Eventually such a simple concept, really. It's a brick, it's just [00:32:00] placing a brick, but it, it gets you there. Yeah. You hear a lot of 

Brad Tunis: endurance sports athletes, I guess, talk about that type of theory and there was a neuroscientist on an Andrew Huberman podcast that actually talked about that and how the brain actually works in those incremental goals that literally.

Almost visually see the next thing continues to create this sense of motivation. And then you get a dopamine hit when you hit that, because now they now know dopamine is more of a reward system. So that keeps you going. And so I think that all plays in. It's pretty neat. Yeah, 

Justin Reden: that's really neat. I've thought about this with the mountain bike racing, and I know that physiologically there's all sorts of things that wouldn't allow this to happen successfully.

That are way beyond my [00:33:00] knowledge base. But the concept I think about this all the time, I go, okay, I can look at any race history and know what the winner's pace was to win that race. Right. I can look at a race and go, Oh, you know, the average winning pace for the last five years, based on the stats is, is 15.

3 miles an hour, right? For the race, I could get on the course and day one, I could ride 15. 4 miles an hour for as long as I could go till I was no longer writing 15. 4. I could draw a line there the next day. I could go write it again and I will probably go at least an inch further. At that pace and it, and further and further.

And if you kept doing that philosophically, you would be at the winning pace by doing that incrementally each day, just enough for that. And then you go do the [00:34:00] whole race and you would theoretically win the race. 

Lisa Liguori: It's kind of like the tortoise and the hare in a way, because it's just, I keep going small steps.

Yeah. 

Justin Reden: Like be a hundred percent successful in each of the small steps and you add all those up and you're a hundred percent successful in the whole theoretically. Obviously there's a lot of factors that come in between that could derail that, but so there seems to be, that seems to be where there's a lot of human potential to me.

In the incremental steps, you get the outlying individuals who are the star athlete, they just have it there. They've been the fastest since day one. But if you're not that, and you're that like me, an average Joe, if you can incrementally perform at the high level on very small portions and then add them up, maybe you've completely increased your performance level.

Yeah. 

Brad Tunis: I think it's a [00:35:00] way also for us to approach the things that we think are unachievable. Totally. And make them achievable. And you hear a lot of top performers talk about this, this incrementally, you know, some people have a natural gift, a natural ability. Others have to put in more time, more work, and more effort.

Now, if the gifted athlete put in the same level of work as the average Joes, where would their performance be at? Who knows? But then 

Justin Reden: even that, you know what I mean? That's how we land on the moon. Exactly. Because those performers incrementally work together to do something and then pretty soon We're going to Mars when any one of them on their own wouldn't come up with the programming for the shuttle to get you there to begin with toward us 

Lisa Liguori: a really clear vision to which I think is neat.

Yeah. You know that story about the guy who was sweeping and JFK asked him, what are you doing? And he said, Mr. [00:36:00] President, I'm putting a man on the moon. It was like, it was like a janitor at NASA or something, but the point being that the culture was so inculcated of that. Yeah. They were a team working towards something.

And then I think there was a cleaning person in a hospital, they asked the same question. She said, um, they phrased it like you're, you're cleaning. And she said, no, I'm saving this child's life from infection. A hundred percent. It was that clear picture of a high purpose. That drove the effort, 

Justin Reden: right? Well, it's, it's true too, that, that cleaning she did that night could very much have saved someone's life just as much as the key surgeon in the hospital.

Yep. For sure. For sure. 

Lisa Liguori: But do you guys want to pick an incremental, something we're going to do incrementally before our next podcast? 

Justin Reden: Oh boy. I mean, I'm in, 

Brad Tunis: but I'm in, what are, so are we going to do it? Is it? Team 

Lisa Liguori: could be individual. We can just share with [00:37:00] each other. We could do it as a team.

Justin Reden: What do you have in mind? 

Lisa Liguori: I don't know. I don't have a team goal, but I would do an incremental thing like Walking two minutes a day or something 

Justin Reden: like that. I wouldn't mind exercise Should we do an exercise different exercise? Sure. Yeah, I'm in What's

it gonna be a hundred burpees I'm 

Lisa Liguori: kidding. I'm totally kidding. I was going to 

Brad Tunis: say, not all at once. I won't make it. But that would be a good one because you could do one extra burpee or two extra burpees a day. It needs to be something like very clear and measurable like that, I 

Justin Reden: think, too. Where we add one of the exercise a day.

Okay. I'm going to do pushups because I'm horrible at them. 

Brad Tunis: [00:38:00] I like pushups. I hate burpees, but so I'm going to go with the burpee thing. Oh, I think it's good. You're going to eat the frog. I'm going to eat the frog, but I don't want to start at like one, two. I think I can do that. And it needs to be a little bit.

I need to, I'm trying to think. 

Justin Reden: Well, I think we should go to almost our max to begin. So for me, that would be, this is embarrassing, but I'll say it. Like 10 pushups, I'm going to, do 10 pushups. No, I know I can do more. I can probably do 20, but I'll start with 10 and the next day, or maybe I'll do 15 for the first day.

And then I'm going to add one each day and see if I can continue adding one each day until we meet again. Don't 

Lisa Liguori: you have to let your muscles rest though? Can you add one every single day? 

Justin Reden: We're going to ignore all that stuff. There's a 

Brad Tunis: hundred push ups a day for a month. Uh, challenge I've done. You can do it.

You already know the results? 

Justin Reden: No. 

Brad Tunis: The [00:39:00] results are going to be individual because wherever I did it and when I did it it's going to be different from you. What are you going to do? 

Lisa Liguori: Mine's going to be wimpy. I'm going to walk for five minutes a day. But I'll increase it every day. I'll crease it by a minute, but what, what happens is if I go out for five minutes, I'll probably stay out for an hour, but it's hard for me to get out the door.

Okay. So if I have zero misses getting out the door, that will be a win for me. Do you think that that's clear or should I make it clearer? 

Justin Reden: I think that if that's what you have in mind, I think you should do it. Okay. 

Lisa Liguori: I'm going to do it. So I'm not going to miss a day, at least five minutes, but hopefully more.

Justin Reden: The overall goal, the end goal is to get you out the door each 

Lisa Liguori: day. To establish a habit or a small increment of moving. Yeah. Instead of going straight to my desk when I, after I wake up. Okay. 

Brad Tunis: Okay. Whether I do my morning walk or not, but I think I'm [00:40:00] gonna tag this onto my morning walk. Come back in the garage, before my coffee, I'm gonna immediately, I'm gonna start at

home. 20. That way I can kind of end at 20 burpees adding one a day. So at the end of the month, I'm at 50. 

Justin Reden: Rocco, we got this on video and audio, right? Okay, 

Brad Tunis: and this will be in addition too. 

Lisa Liguori: Okay. Awesome. That's awesome. I'm excited. 

Brad Tunis: I'll, I'll even take a video on the last day. , everybody's, 

Lisa Liguori: I'm gonna post it on, can I post it on social media?

You could. Brad doing his 

Brad Tunis: burpees. If anybody wants him, watch me do 50 burpees. That'd be great. That's 

Lisa Liguori: cool. So burpees, pushups? Mm-hmm. . Walking. 

Justin Reden: Walking. All right. Do we have time? Can I add a point on the habits? Yeah, of course. So [00:41:00] I feel like to successfully. Employ like a habit strategy, I feel like the first step though, is to know like the whole, like from 30, 000 foot, the journey and the end goal and have that in mind and then you, and then you reverse engineer what your habits are going to be to achieve that because I, I think if people don't have the vision of where they are going to end up or the, the path to get there, then, um, I don't feel like the habit thing works because you get more easily distracted and you get off course.

So I feel that a lot of time and thought and energy has to go into that, that soul searching of what is my ultimate goal here that I'm trying to achieve. Okay, I'm going to stick that stake in the ground, that [00:42:00] flag up on the hill and never lose sight of that. But I'm not going to try and achieve that. At any one point in time, I'm now going to go and build my little subcategories and my sub habits that I think will deliberately get me 

Lisa Liguori: there.

So what's your flag in the mountain for pushups? What is that a small piece of 

Justin Reden: the flag in the mountain for me is to be able to successfully add one pushup a day and not max out and then not be able to do more. Another day, so I don't know what that number is going to be because I don't know how many days till we're going to meet

It'll 

Lisa Liguori: be an incentive for us not to push the date out. You're going 

Brad Tunis: to know 

Justin Reden: who's struggling. Hey, can we get that on the calendar? Please.

Brad Tunis: Right. Awesome. 

Justin Reden: So 

Lisa Liguori: [00:43:00] thanks for that topic. I really liked 

Brad Tunis: that. 

Justin Reden: I think it's an important one and if people can employ it, I think it changes lives like really quickly. And 

Brad Tunis: I do think in my experience, It really is important to have an achievable, to kind of to your point right here, an achievable realistic goal of why are you doing this thing every day to bring in that sense of motivation to get out the door, to do the thing or to open the book or whatever it is, um, to see your ideal self, your true self, and then stop pushing that away.

So. It's easy to talk about, but to really stop pushing that away, so to bring in... A visual and felt sense. This brings in another interesting topic and I won't divert us, but, you know, [00:44:00] okay, we've all tried to think ourselves out of our problems, think ourselves to our goals and think ourselves to the things we need to do.

And that doesn't seem to work. And the science seems to show more and more that you really need to bring in a visual and a felt sense into how will I feel. How will I feel about myself, whether it's a sense of pride, whether it's a sense of fitness as it relates to our goals, bringing that into this sort of picture, as well as just the idea of it will only get you so far.

You need to be, you need to be able to 

Justin Reden: feel into it. Oh, wow. 

Brad Tunis: And so as people, whoever listens to this, thinks about this, I just want to throw in there. It's important. You really vivify. What will you see? How will you feel? You know, what will you think? Really see yourself in all those aspects. [00:45:00] And that can be much more powerful than just trying to think your way there.

Justin Reden: Yeah. That's a great point. Is that visualizing whatever, let, I'm just gonna use the ice cream, eating an ice cream cone for an example. You're trying to determine if you want it or not. It's probably a poor example, but so you want to visualize if I do this and I and I eat it What is it gonna do for me?

How is it gonna make me feel? That kind of thing. And then you determine whether you want to do it or not. Yes. Okay. Um, got it. If, if 

Brad Tunis: your goal is, is weight loss, well, that might be a negative visualization as to, okay, I'm going to eat this thing and it's going to be good in the moment, but after I do it, I'm going to feel guilt.

I'm going to feel shame. I'm going to have to work out extra hard the next day. I may not feel physically as well. All of that. Versus, you know, [00:46:00] the positive, what joy will this bring me? Is that a sense of joy that'll be worth enough to me to, to sacrifice, to go ahead and do the thing. So it can work both ways.

But that's important because we get so caught into the back to the now thing, but I want it 

Justin Reden: now. I wonder if. I'm just thinking about like a team sport and how you get that camaraderie with the teammates and how that might be triggering your emotion of how you're going to feel when you win the big game and makes you play harder because the other people around you are adding to that emotional positivity.

Brad Tunis: And I think that's where like a coach comes in where it's like really to focus everybody towards the same 

Justin Reden: goal to get your emotional side going of not, not just the zeros and ones of doing the task. 

Lisa Liguori: Brad, you might've heard of this thing called synchronicity. It's like, I think people who row are on rowing teams, [00:47:00] their neurochemistry is, it lights up in a very special way, or people who are in choreography, because they're doing something synchronized with other humans.

Yeah. And I wonder if it's along the lines of what you're talking about. I bet. Because there's that shared communal joy of pursuing something. 

Brad Tunis: There's been a lot of talk in different areas I've been involved in and this keeps coming up. And so I guess I'll throw it out there, but I guess when a Buffalo moves through a storm, a Buffalo on its own.

Does not manage a storm very well. So when a storm is a brewing, you will always see Buffalo in a herd and you want to get in the middle of that herd and, and the weakest get in the middle. And then it's a, it's a team effort to move through the storm. And so as it relates to team sports, I think it's, you know, you talk about the weakest link and all these things that kind of come up over and over and [00:48:00] it.

It makes sense. And then nature, well, we get a lot further as a team. And so bringing in that aspect to kind of a team sport and that is, and then I think the art is how do you get all these individuals with their own ideas all on board towards this 

Justin Reden: common. 

Brad Tunis: Yeah. 

Lisa Liguori: Something really cool. I have to tell you a tangent, the wild dogs that I saw in Africa, if you're in a lot of animals, if you get hurt, you're out, like you're going to be the one that gets killed.

But the wild dogs, if you're in a pack and you're hurt, they'll eat food and then they'll regurgitate it. They'll take it back to the one who can't run. Oh, wow. And you're... So you have such a better chance of survival if you're in a pack because they 

Justin Reden: take care of you. I wonder if that's why dogs domesticated with humans because humans are that way.

Yeah. It's really neat. Yeah. We just got a new dog. I should have named it Dingo.

Do you hear Laura [00:49:00] got a wiener dog? No. A mini wiener dog. Wow. What kind of mini wiener? A mini wiener. The thing is so cute and small. What did you name it? They named it Wiener. That's cute. It's a visual name is like Verdervener Schnitzel. The girls named it. I had no part in this. I came home and it was there and named.

That's cool. 

Lisa Liguori: Yeah. Well guys, do you think we should, um, it's, Oh, we only have six minutes. That went really fast. Okay. So I guess we'll wrap up and we can save flow for next time. Okay. Yeah. I would. Yeah. Well, this has been great guys. Thank you so much. And I look forward to us holding one another accountable to our goals.

Justin Reden: Thank you very much. It's been fun.

Lisa Liguori: Thank you for spending this time with us. My prayer is that this conversation gives you ideas and inspiration for [00:50:00] living the kind of life that is meaningful to you. See you in the next episode.

Brad Tunis: Yeah.