Change Starts When You Notice Yourself [Raw Session]

00:00 — Admiring people who can change

Hey, welcome back to Slow Builds. So this one's a little bit different where I keep coming back with the same idea of like one of the things I admire most about people is when I see people that have the ability to change.

And I don't just mean the obvious outside stuff that we see. Yes, losing weight, getting in shape are very difficult, making a lot of money, turning your financial situation around, changing jobs, dressing different and changing your look, and just being healthier in general or just changing your demeanor.

What I mean is the deeper kind of changes, the kind where someone starts reacting differently, the kind where someone who has been one way basically as long as you've ever known them for their entire lives and they start noticing how they think, how they react, where their focus goes, what they assume, what they keep repeating, what kind of person they are slowly becoming.

That kind of change is impressive to me because it's not loud.

Most of the time, nobody sees it happening.

They only see the result later, but the real work starts way before anyone ever notices that these things are happening.

This person has become aware of what they're doing.

01:20 — Awareness is the biggest part

And it's the awareness is probably the biggest part of it because you can change anything, but you just have to notice it.

You have to notice the habit.

You have to notice your reactions.

You have to notice the little shift in your mind when something happens.

For me, I can react quickly, especially at home and family and situations like that.

Sometimes I'm way too fast with my responses.

And something happens when I can feel myself move almost instantly into frustration, anger, defensiveness, impatience, and always assuming the worst.

And in that moment, it doesn't feel like a choice.

It feels like reality.

It feels like this happened, so this is how I feel.

But I'm starting to think that fast reaction is not always the truth.

Sometimes it's just a path your mind is used to taking.

And if your mind has taken the path for years, it starts to feel personal.

You start saying, "That's just who I am."

But maybe it's not.

Maybe it's just what you've practiced all your life.

It's what you've trained yourself to become.

02:33 — Learning from the pause

And then my wife is a complete contrast to that.

Now, she's quick to anger. She'll yell first before she does anything.

But for the big things is what I'm talking about.

The big decisions, the change reactions in life, the big moments.

And this is where she acts different than me.

She processes things way different.

She takes her time, she analyzes it, she overanalyzes it, she goes so deep.

She thinks through every single detail possible.

And I'll be honest, sometimes that can drive me absolutely crazy because I want to get to the point.

I want the answer, I want the thing solved, and I want to move forward.

But the older I get and the more these situations arise with family, kids getting older, a career, like just things in general, the more I can see there's more value in taking the pause.

There's something valuable in not reacting right away, in giving yourself space before you decide what something really means.

And that's probably something I need more of because when you react instantly, you don't want to respond to what actually happened.

And when you react instantly, it's sort of, you're putting your foot down.

You're putting your, this is where I stand.

And it makes it a little bit harder to claw back and reevaluate.

Sometimes you respond to what you assumed happened, what you were afraid happened, or was going to happen, what it reminded you of, what your mood was already carrying, and what your ego wanted to protect.

But the pause matters.

That pause might be where the real change begins.

04:17 — Where your focus goes

Now, a big part of this is noticing where your focus goes because your mind can turn something into a whole story really quick.

Something small happens and suddenly you're thinking, this is bad, this always happens to me.

Nothing ever works out.

I knew this would go wrong.

This is going to be the worst case scenario guaranteed.

I can't deal with this right now.

And maybe some of that is true.

Sometimes things are bad, life is hard.

I don't want this to sound like fake positivity.

I don't think you can just smile your way through everything and put on a cheery demeanor.

You can't just be happy, pretend everything is going to be okay because what you focus on starts shaping what you notice and what you notice starts shaping what you do and what you do over and over starts shaping your life.

So if your mind always looks for the worst version of something it will probably find it.

If your mind always looks for a reason to be angry you're probably going to be angry a lot.

If your mind always looks for proof that things are hopeless it will probably find that also.

But the opposite can be true.

You can train yourself to ask, is this actually as bad as I'm making it out to be?

Is there another way to see this?

What is one useful thing I can do here?

What kind of person do I want to be in this moment?

Am I reacting or am I choosing?

And that doesn't fix everything, but it gives you space and space really matters.

05:55 — Choosing happiness

I think I did a video before, like you have to choose happiness.

We all assume that it's just part of life and other people, some people are happier than others just because they have a better life or things work out for them.

But the more, like in that other video where I talked about it, like you read about it and research it you find out like happiness does happen, but you have to look for it.

You have to make a conscious effort.

You don't artificially create it, but you have to look for it and you have to try to find the happiness and the positivity because if you look for the negativity you're going to find it because there's a lot more of that out there.

06:40 — Depression, being stuck, and direction

And this goes, this gets heavier when you think about people already depressed or stuck.

And I want to be careful with this one because it's not a simple saying just think positive.

That's not helpful when someone feels like they're in a hole.

When you're in that place, sometimes you're not even thinking about how to get out.

You're just thinking about where you are.

You're thinking about how you got there, what went wrong, why things feel impossible and how it might get worse.

How tired you are all the time, how far away everything better feels.

And when your mind is locked onto that, the hole becomes your entire life, the whole picture.

Not because it is the entire picture of your life, but because it's the only thing you can see.

So maybe part of change is slowly rebuilding the ability to look beyond where you are.

Not pretending the hole isn't real because you're in it.

You're going through it and you're not pretending the pain isn't real because you're feeling that.

But start asking where do I want to go?

What would one better day look like?

What is one small thing I can aim and try to achieve at this moment?

What kind of person am I trying to become?

What am I trying to move away from?

And that direction matters because without direction you're just surviving the current moment and sometimes survival is all you can do.

But eventually if you can you need something to move forward.

A goal, a priority, a reason, even a blurry version of where you want to be.

08:13 — The Secret, focus, and attraction

I remember when The Secret was a big thing.

I read the book, watched the movie, the idea of the law of attraction, attracting what you think about.

I know people look at it all different.

Some of it can sound too clean, too magical, like fake, like a pyramid scheme somehow, somewhere, like if you just think about something hard enough the universe drops it in your lap.

I don't know if I believe it 100% that way, but I do believe there's something real underneath it.

Your thoughts matter because your focus matters and your focus changes what you notice, what you ignore, what you tolerate, what you aim at, what you repeat, and what you slowly become.

If you keep focusing on the person you don't want to be you can stay trapped in that.

But if you start focusing on where you want to go even a little tiny bit your mind starts looking for steps.

Not giant steps.

Not overnight transformation.

Just steps.

And sometimes that's enough to begin.

09:16 — Journaling and vision boards

And like that's a reason why journaling is a great thing.

Vision boards.

Like because you're putting yourself in those situations.

You're focusing on where you want to go with the journal, with the vision board.

Obviously your point, you're only looking at things that you want to aspire to have or be.

And then with the journaling you're also putting your goals and things and you're putting the steps that you did to get there.

You're putting your current situation.

So you're evaluating your life through the journaling and through the meditation and things and that helps you refocus and regain your footing properly.

09:50 — Preparation removes the decision

And the other part of this is preparation because awareness by itself isn't always enough.

You can know you want to change.

You can know what the problem is.

You can know the better choice.

But for the moment, if the moment comes and everything is still set up the old way, you probably do the old thing.

And that's why people always say if you want to work out, lay your clothes out the night before, have your shoes ready, know what time you're going, have the plan already made.

And it sounds extremely basic, almost too easy to even imagine that just laying your stuff out the night before is going to help you out of bed to go do your workout.

But it works because you're removing that decision.

You're removing the part where your mind starts negotiating because once your mind starts negotiating it usually goes back to what it knows.

And what it knows is comfort, delay, couch, snacks, just excuses, I'll start tomorrow, I already did enough, I worked out yesterday.

So part of change is not trusting yourself to be heroic in the hardest moments.

Part of change is setting things up before that moment even arrives.

11:05 — Food, surroundings, and making better choices easier

And same with eating.

If you know you're going to eat the bag of chips, which I do a lot of, but I've stopped because I don't bring them home.

I don't go to the places where I know I can gorge on them and eat as many as I want.

Or I also have other things now.

I put other things in place of chips to make sure I don't overindulge in those.

Because at night when you're tired or bored or stressed, you probably won't become some perfect disciplined version of yourself.

You'll reach for what's easy.

So make the better thing easy.

That means your surroundings matter.

The stuff in your house matters.

The people you spend your time with matters.

The places you go make a big difference, what apps you have open, and your routines and what you repeat make a big difference.

You can't always change everything around you, but you can start shaping some of it.

You can ask, what am I making easy?

What am I making hard?

What keeps pulling me backwards?

What points me toward the person I'm trying to become?

What do I need to remove?

What do I need to prepare?

And it's not dramatic, but it's very real.

12:19 — Running and the voice of resistance

And running is probably the clearest example for me.

I remember when running felt huge.

At first it wasn't even about 5K.

It was can I do five minutes?

Then it was can I do 10, 20, try to hit 30.

And every time there was that voice, that little resistance saying I did it yesterday, I don't need to do it today, I'm tired, I did enough, maybe I'll skip this one, I'll just do it later.

And the annoying part is that voice can sound very reasonable.

You can talk yourself pretty much into anything if you really wanted to.

It doesn't always sound lazy.

Sometimes it sounds logical.

But now, after so long and doing it continuously, 5K doesn't feel like a huge thing.

It's still 5K.

The distance didn't change, but my mind changed.

Now it feels normal.

Now I almost feel worse if I don't do it.

And that's the weird part to me because it shows that the thing itself might not be the only problem.

Sometimes the problem is what your mind is attached to the thing.

13:24 — Workouts and the first rep

And I'm trying to get workouts to that place too, because I still get that resistance sometimes.

I don't want to go downstairs.

I don't want to lift.

I just don't want to start.

But I know something now.

Most of the dread is before the thing.

Once I go downstairs and do the first lift, my mind changes.

It goes from, I don't want to do this, to this isn't too bad.

And sometimes even, I hope I'm not down here too long because now I'm into it.

Now I'm doing it, so I'm going to finish it.

I'm going to do my best.

That first rep matters, not because it solves everything, but because it breaks the spell.

It proves the resistance was not the whole truth.

14:03 — Cold showers and the flinch

And I'll give another example of this, is cold showers.

Cold showers are like that.

The worst part is the first hit of cold, that first flinch, that first moment where your body says, nope, get out, fight or flight.

But then something changes.

The cold is still cold.

Temperature didn't change, but your body adjusted, your mind adjusted.

After a little bit, it almost doesn't feel the same.

That's the thing I keep thinking about.

You can't always trust the flinch.

The flinch is real, the dread is real, the resistance is real, but it's not always the full truth.

Sometimes the flinch is just the old version of you trying to keep the old routine alive.

And before I get in the shower, I know it's cold.

I know I'm going to hate it.

But I also know that after like two seconds or 10 seconds, I'm actually going to think it's not cold enough.

So I try to put myself in that place before it hits my body.

So I don't get as much of a flinch.

So I'm preparing myself ahead of time.

15:06 — Quiet people who actually change

And that's why I admire the quiet people who actually change.

Not the loud version, not the person, person, person.

Not the person constantly talking about who they're going to become.

I mean, the person in the background actually doing it.

The person who starts walking, running, eating better, stops buying junk, starts pausing before reacting, starts catching their own thoughts, stops assuming stuff, starts changing who they spend time around, starts shaping their house, schedule, and habits around where they want to go.

That is slow work.

Most of it is completely invisible to everyone around them.

And it takes a lot of small building blocks, but eventually those small things start changing what feels normal.

At first, running feels impossible, then it becomes normal.

First, eating better feels restrictive, but then it becomes how you shop.

At first, pausing before reacting feels unnatural.

Then it becomes proof that you're not trapped inside the old version of yourself.

That's the kind of change I respect.

16:13 — Change starts earlier than we think

So maybe change starts earlier than we think.

Not when the outside looks different.

Not when people notice, not when the habit is fully fixed.

Maybe it starts when you notice yourself, when you notice where your mind goes, what you keep repeating, what you're avoiding, what you're making easy, what you're making hard.

Because if you make things hard, then you're not going to want to do them.

So those things that are bad for you, if you make it difficult to do them, you're going to not want to do it.

You naturally want to do the easier thing.

So make the good things easy and the bad things hard.

And then you change what you're aiming for, what version of yourself keeps showing up.

And then you create one small gap between the reaction and the response, between the dread and the action, between the flinch and the decision, between the old version of you and the next one.

The gap might not look like much, but maybe that's where the whole thing starts.

Not overnight, not perfectly, not loudly, just one small moment where you notice the old path and choose not to go all the way down it again.

17:20 — Why I wanted to talk about this

I really wanted to do this one because I really admire people that notice themselves, notice what they see, how they talk, what they put their attention to, what they focus on and they're able to adjust, they're able to tweak, like personality tweaks, lifestyle tweaks.

Not easy to do, it's extremely difficult.

And people that can do that are very, it's very admirable to watch and it's very inspiring.

And it makes a big difference.

And thanks for watching.

Bye.