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Emily Orton
When it comes to habits, are you a small changes baby steps person or are you a massive action person? Today we're going to be giving you our take on James Clear's bestselling book Atomic Habits. We're actually going to take one idea to three examples. Welcome to the What Could Go Right podcast. I'm Emily Orton.
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Erik Orton
I am Erik Orton.
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Emily Orton
And here we like to talk about personal growth mostly, but also
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Emily Orton
family relationships and
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Emily Orton
parenting adult kids. We just want to help you grow as a person, a partner and a parent. So let's get into it. Erik has been reading Atomic habits. I've been reading atomic habits
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Emily Orton
and one thing we know for sure is that as humans, we are creatures of habit. If you can just do a quick audit of yourself and say, here are some things I do that I don't like and I think I need to change. All those things are probably habits, and if you can form that habit, I believe you can form good habits.
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Emily Orton
The question is how do we go about it? And we have some ideas here. So we're going to let him take the lead.
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Erik Orton
I love this book and I've heard about it for a long time and I just picked it up. My mom gave it to me for a perfect gift. All right. Christmas gift. Anyway, in my year, the word for my year is atomic. Did you know.
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Emily Orton
That? I didn't use that word before you get the book.
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Erik Orton
At the same time.
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Emily Orton
Wow.
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Erik Orton
Yeah, because I love that. It's about things that are just infinitesimally small, Like we can just make microscopic progress, but also that huge explosive things can happen in our lives. So my word for the year is atomic. So I read this already and I'm going to underline are you going to share some of my favorite bits? If you've got a copy, I'm on page 32 and he says, Behind every system of action is a system of beliefs.
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Erik Orton
Behavior that is incongruent with the self will not last. You you may want more money, but if your identity is someone who consumes rather than creates, then you'll continue to be pulled towards spending rather than earning. You may want better health, but if you continue to prioritize comfort over accomplishment, you'll be drawn to relaxing, running and training. It's hard to change your habits if you never change the underlying beliefs that led to your past behavior.
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Erik Orton
You have a new goal and a new plan, but you haven't changed who you are. The ultimate form of intrinsic motivation is when it becomes part of your identity. And he gives an example of this The person that says, I'm trying to quit smoking, that's one identity. The other person might say, I'm not a smoker. It can be the same person, same action being taken.
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Erik Orton
But the identity is one that says, I'm a smoker who's trying to quit, and the other says that I'm not a smoker, therefore I don't smoke.
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Emily Orton
So might be like, Yeah, I used to be a smoker. I wasn't smoker, but now I'm not a smoker.
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Erik Orton
Right? So true behavior change is identity change. When your behavior and your identity are fully aligned, you are no longer pursuing behavior change. You are simply acting like the type of person you are. You need yourself to be. And I've gone through several identity changes and one that I share often with them when I speak is this idea of seeing myself in a new way.
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Erik Orton
When it came to sailing, I felt like sailing was for other people. It was for rich people, for connected people, for people that grew up around sailing, which wasn't true for me. And I had to create an identity shift before I was able to really inhabit this new activity or habit, this interesting habit, and inhabit sea. Anyway. So identity change for me was that and so that's one example.
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Emily Orton
And I wonder, you didn't immediately say to yourself, I am a sailor and so therefore I will now sail. But you had to open the door to the possibility that you could become a sailor.
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Erik Orton
Yeah.
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Emily Orton
And then that allowed you to cross the threshold into sailing life.
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Erik Orton
I think it was gradual because it was. First of all, I'm the person. I'm the kind of person who can learn how to sail.
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Emily Orton
Yes.
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Erik Orton
And then it was a long time before I felt comfortable saying it, but sometimes we just shut ourselves off to certain opportunities. We couldn't say, I'm I'm not you feeling boy. So you had a couple of examples of where you want to talk a lot more about the
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Emily Orton
It's more about you. It's something I was just thinking this, thinking that you went from saying Sailing is not for people like me to I'm someone who could learn how to sail to I am a sailor to now sort of declaring to all our children that if they have children who like for them to fight you. Captain. So I think I think we've come a long way.
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Erik Orton
Made some serious progress.
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Emily Orton
And I want to give a couple of more examples of this. I guess for me, the classic example is I'm not a water person. I didn't start out feeling that way, but then I got scared of water as a child and just decided I wasn't a water person and I could do plenty of fun. Great things on land, large bodies of water in my life to have a good time.
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Emily Orton
And then when I came face to face with that and you sailboat for years family, you know, a lot of things I loved about everything really, except the water part. And I still avoided it for a couple of years. But finally it came to the point where I said, Let me just try this. And then I and I tried snorkeling and I loved it.
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Emily Orton
And for me, it was actually very quickly my identity shifted as a curious person and as a person who loves to learn new things, snorkeling. That first time opened up an entirely for me to discover and explore, and it was an experience I imagined it to be. I immediately said, This is what I am actually a water person.
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Emily Orton
And for me, I've come so far as to say about four years of family and just snorkeling, swimming and scuba certified and and still, after all this time, I consider myself a beginner surfer because I'm like way better than any other time surfing experience. But some other things that I. I really love this idea that it's your identity that shifts and that your behavior will follow your beliefs and it can happen to permanently.
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Emily Orton
I could change you could become something additional for me. I just think about how I was such a worrier that I worried so much that worry was actually a habit. And I, I as we ask on this podcast, what could go right and start asking what can go right? I can shift into somebody who is more adventurous or wants to take risks, more willing to see the upside, more optimistic.
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Emily Orton
And that has allowed me to feel more calm and a lot more fun. So that's one of the things that people might not always see as a habit that you that you might subconsciously just believe. This is who I am, this part of my personality.
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Erik Orton
I worry I'm going to call it an emotional habit because I think there are obvious habits, like I brush my teeth every morning or I go for a walk every day or three meals a day in the church on Sunday. Those can be physical, visual, tactile habits. But then there can be habits of this is how I verbally respond in these kinds of situations, or this is how I emotionally respond, or this is how I emotionally start my day or finish making it.
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Erik Orton
Those can be habits that might be harder to recognize, but you have just control them.
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Emily Orton
So yeah, once we recognize them, I know for me I, I had the habit of responding with anger to situations that I couldn't control, and I spent a year studying that out and trying to understand more about that and work into a different response system. Right. As in her beliefs about myself and different beliefs about how much I needed to control and, you know, it's not that I never get angry, but I'm pretty chill here.
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Erik Orton
So here's my question.
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Emily Orton
So that's another topic.
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Erik Orton
How do we change our beliefs? How do we change? You say behavior, false beliefs, and that's like Liz Y is the first person that said that way so succinctly. So. Liz Wiseman, we hope to have you on the podcast someday. You're listening behavior followers, beliefs. And that just could be like right between the eyes. And so and I don't have my thoughts gathered together.
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Erik Orton
How do we actually change our beliefs? Because, you know, the classic example is that's like somebody changing from one place to another, like a religious faith. That's one way of changing attitudes. How do we change our beliefs about ourselves, about each other world?
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Emily Orton
Yeah, well, I think that's the whole reason that we have this as the title for our podcast. What could go right? Because it's just acknowledging that most of the time most people are thinking about what could go wrong or trying to soften the downside, like protect the downside rather than saying like, how much can I grow, how much fun can and how much impact can I have?
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Emily Orton
It's more it's more downside to than looking at what all of the upside could possibly be. So the first step, I think, is just being aware of that, just opening up to asking some new questions. And like you said, the idea of selling came up and you immediately had a predisposition towards it. That was for certain people. And it doesn't even really matter where those ideas came from, but just to be aware that they are there and then say, are they true, is that true?
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Emily Orton
Is it true that only people who grew up around the sale? Is it true that only rich people still know? None of those things are true? And so it's good to kind of recognize I have this feeling around that especially fear can be a good way or resistance. Why my resistance? Why do I feel afraid of is it real?
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Emily Orton
Is it true? And so that first step is awareness and then asking some of these other questions.
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Erik Orton
So can I jump in here? Let's say maybe step one is to write down what you believe. And I think maybe.
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Emily Orton
Even speaking it out loud and ready to.
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Erik Orton
Tell you, saying it out loud or writing it down. And I think also trying to get at some of those subconscious things, maybe ask yourself some questions like what do I believe about my health, what I believe about money? I'll talk to you about the afterlife, which I believe about what I'm capable of.
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Emily Orton
Yeah, what things I'm allowed to participate in. I feel like there are things that aren't for me that I wish I could do.
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Erik Orton
Okay, so that's good. And then.
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Emily Orton
That's atomic, because it's a very much at the very smallest level of the unit of thought and then recognizing to the small things to.
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Erik Orton
What's going on. Because then I'm thinking, what if the next step is to say, well, I just said, what if what if I thought something differently here where we actually say, What if I thought something different? What if I thought about my health in this other way? What if I thought about money would lie about the afterlife in some way?
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Erik Orton
You know, whatever those. What if I thought what if I thought about my career prospects or my relationship with my kids or anything? What if I thought about it differently? Say this is one of my favorites and show you the movie?
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Emily Orton
I love to know what if?
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Erik Orton
What if it could be easy? Because that's Greg McEwan. He talks about Effortless in his book Effortless. So kind of like bouncing book clubs Today he talks about doing things that feel easier, doing them in a way that feels easy. And so one of the questions that we've kind of latched on to in the family is why make it hard when you can make it easy?
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Erik Orton
What are so many people tell us like, this is hard, this requires hard work. This is this is going to be an uphill battle. This is going to be a real slog. That's their belief. They're trying to tell me that. And, you know, maybe they love me. They're trying to manage my expectations. But what if they said, this is very doable, this is well within your capability, You'll enjoy the process.
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Erik Orton
It can be the same action, the same steps, the same process. But I can have a whole different experience going through it. So maybe asking what if.
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Emily Orton
I have one example of this one where we talked about what is the right question? What is what would be fun? You know, that was another sort of question that came from what could go right. And one of our clients took that back to his team. He was the leader of a big team and they started their conversation with what is all right and what would be fun.
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Emily Orton
What it be cool if we could, what, fill in the blanks inside his team? And he'd been working with them for years and they said he told us that they said that was the most enjoyable and most fruitful meaning they had really ever had.
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Erik Orton
He took it into a government setting.
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Emily Orton
Yeah, he turned it into.
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Erik Orton
A simple job.
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Emily Orton
Into a government setting. And I mean, he's different. So if you're if you're feeling brave, if you're feeling curious, if you're feeling like you want the world to look more optimistic to you, maybe try this out. You don't have to read the whole book all at once. We highly recommend it. But you can just start looking at some of the things that maybe you read some of the stories that you are in the habit of telling yourself.
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Emily Orton
And think about what? What if it were different? What if I can learn something else? What if I could say a different way?
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Erik Orton
Okay, I'm going to wrap this up. If it's all right with this final quote here. Progress requires unlearning, becoming the best version of yourself requires you to continuously edit your beliefs and to upgrade and expand your identity. What if we upgraded our identities often as we are freeing the operating system from phone computer?
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Emily Orton
So what could go right?
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Erik Orton
What could go right?
00:16:05:20 - 00:16:16:16
Erik Orton
Hey, it's Erik. Thanks for listening, guys. Stay tuned. Here's a quick conversation with my friend Ken, who went sailing with me in Mexico last month. And he's sharing some of his takeaways.
00:16:16:16 - 00:16:23:23
Erik Orton
if you're interested in going sailing with us, just go to the awesome factory Dot NYC Forward Slash Sailing 2024
00:16:23:23 - 00:16:24:17
Erik Orton
to get the lowdown.
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Erik Orton
Hope to see you aboard.
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Erik Orton
here to describe this, where you first you came with the team with your son? Yes. Good bonding experience. Just what I wanted
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Erik Orton
I think it's adventurous. I think it's unique. And I think it's opportunity to forge relationships with people. It's great. Get a little sun or a lot of sun, which is exactly what I
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Erik Orton
We are in tight quarters, so you're definitely spending a lot of time with people. And, you know, obviously that has not for everybody. But I think if you come with the right expectations, you're going to be very happy. Enjoy every moment except for maybe, you know, watching Erik fix everything is the best.
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Erik Orton
I'm really good, right?
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Erik Orton
You're like MacGyver. It's so much fun to watch.
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Erik Orton
I think if you are adventurous and a little bit of, you know, willing to adapt, it's the best experience you can have.
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Erik Orton
you get everything of this type of experience, but it's not the experience that is packaged. You know, there's not like regiment regiments, the schedules you're going to have to roll with the punches and that's awesome.
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Erik Orton
So for me, it's of course my perfect type of experience. And for people like me, it's their perfect type of experience and everybody's just like me. So
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Erik Orton
aren't we all
