How Simple Habits Changed My Life

Good Morning Ya'll,

Today, I want to share a tool I've utilized over the past few months that has resulted in me feeling as if I'm in my best shape, physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

Before we start, I want to share with you the struggles.

I STRUGGLED FOR YEARS

For the past 10 years of my life, I've loved self-improvement.

Seeing glimpses of progress in areas of life such as health, business, and relationships made me feel so fulfilled and excited to wake up in the morning.

The problem was, I could never stick to a schedule, habit, or routine that could allow my efforts to compound into something great.

A few years ago, I stumbled upon this program that guaranteed to unlock a level of self-discipline where I could accomplish anything.

This program, called 75 Hard, was popularized by an entrepreneur who I once idolized, Andy Frisella.

It consisted of doing the following actions, every day, for 75 days straight:

• Follow a diet with no cheat meals

• Drink 1 gallon of water a day

• Take a progress picture

• Read 10 pages of a personal development book

• Complete two, 45-minute workouts, one must be outdoors
  

I had attempted this program nearly a dozen times, but was never able to get past about 3 weeks.

Sadly, every time I failed, it reaffirmed the story I created around being undisciplined.

This wrecked my self-image.

In doing so, I often disappointed myself and those around me when it came to commitments, regardless of how big or small they were.

What saddened me the most was that the tasks that I needed to complete were incredibly simple and straightforward.

It just required the discipline to wake up every day and do them.

Discipline I did not believe I had.

This led me to self-sabotage the challenge, over and over again.

Because I associated it with the concept of "Hard" (due to its name, 75 Hard), my mind was deceived into believing that it was difficult.

I FOUND A BETTER WAY

I was facing a lot of inner turmoil in my life...

I had many big goals, but I knew I wasn't disciplined enough to reach them.

(By the way, this is what all the haters on the internet have in common. Haha)

I knew I had to evolve.

One night, during a dream, I got the message to create a program that I now coin, "Habit Stacking".

Habit stacking is an easy way to build ourselves into the person we've always wanted to be.

The person our loved ones deserve.

HABIT STACKING EXAMPLE

Imagine we're someone who's 40 years old,

• We live in our mother's basement,

• We wake up at 2pm, and don't go to sleep until 4 am.

• We play video games for 16 hours a day,

• We order fast food for every meal,

• We drink a 6-pack of Bud Lights every day,

• We don't have any friends and never reach out to family.

We're starting at the bottom.

If we were at this stage in our life, and we tried to do 75 Hard, sign up for a marathon, or stick to a strict diet, it simply won't happen.

Our subconscious mind won't allow us to make such a drastic behavioral switch, away from habits it has memorized for decades.

This, just like it did for me, would only lead to inevitable defeat, worsening the way we view ourselves.

We'd tell ourselves "yet again, another failure."

Instead, let's try this...

We choose a wake-up time that we can stick to for a week.

Instead of waking up at 2 PM, we wake up at 9 AM.

Not 4 AM like all of the Instagram influencers… 9 AM.

Waking up at 9 AM is now our ONLY task for the week.

We can continue to eat fast food and play video games all day, but we need to start at 9 AM.

The vast majority of people have at least enough self-belief to do one simple task for a week.

We will purposely brand this habit as "Easy Wake Up".

Because it's our only focus in life at the moment, we complete it.

We wake up at 9 am for seven days straight, the entirety of week 1.

Now we've built a little bit of momentum. Our "Belief in Oneself" meter has slightly gone up.

Now that it's time for week 2, it's time to add another habit.

We keep waking up at 9 am (by now our body has adjusted).

We now add a habit that we'll do immediately after the first.

Right after waking up at 9 am, we go outside for a 15-minute walk.

That's it.

Right after we're done with that 9 am walk, we can go back to playing Zelda and eating Cheetos.

Another week rolls around, and we've successfully completed our only two tasks.

It's time to start a new habit. This time, it's a specific time in which you'll be in bed, ready to go to sleep.

We make sure that if we're waking up at 9 am, we give ourselves a healthy 8-9 hours of sleep time, so we make our curfew at midnight.

We do that for a week.

Now we're 3 weeks in, and we've successfully reset our circadian rhythm.

We've also built more momentum and belief in ourselves than ever before.

Next week we add something else to our night routine.

The week after that, other than daily goals, we add a weekly goal.

A weekly goal can include calling one family member, or cooking one meal every Saturday.

Whatever it is, we're patient with ourselves.

We give ourselves the time to build belief in ourselves.

Other than labeling "75 Hard", we call everything we're doing "Easy".

We trick our mind into believing that these actions are nearly effortless.

Over 12 weeks, we've built 12 new healthy habits.

We feel like a completely different person, and we did it easily.

It felt like we were playing a game with ourselves. It feels sustainable.

MY OWN LIFE

Over the past few months, I've been able to enjoy the process of building habits that make myself into the person I've always wanted to be.

I feel like a completely different person from who I was 6 months ago, and I'll feel the same way 6 months from now.

The highest ROI habit, by far, has been Solitude 60.

Every day, for the past 70 days, I've been sitting in Solitude, completely alone with my thoughts, for an hour a day.

It's erased all of my anxiety and has allowed me to feel a sense of calmness for the rest of the day.

If you want more info on that, you can learn more about Solitude 60 here.

NEXT HABITS

I feel really good about my habits when it comes to my health and relationships.

The next few habits will be focused on building social media.

A few weeks ago, the habit was to start these daily Love Letters (definitely the biggest commitment so far).

Today marks the first day of creating an Instagram Reel every day, telling the world "You are loved, and you are enough".

A few weeks from now, I'll have multiple daily and weekly tasks that will compound over time to reach a large audience.

It’s that simple.

It’s that easy.

CONCLUSION

Now, the entirety of my day, besides meetings, is spent following through on the habits I've built to promote my health, business, and relationships.

All these "easy" habits make my days feel enjoyable.

As long as I continue with these habits, I will compound my life in such a way that I will easily achieve my highest potential.

I hope this empowers you to do the same.

That's it for today.

More tools to promote our Self Improvement journey will be in future Love Letters.

See you tomorrow,

I love you all.

-Cameron Hogan