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Erik Orton
Last week we talked about how to upgrade your identity and we were talking about the question of how do you do that? Today we're going to just get into that a little bit more. How do you upgrade your identity? Welcome to the work of Great podcast. My name is Erik Orton.
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Emily Orton
I'm Emily Orton.
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Erik Orton
And here we talk about personal growth, family connection and raising our kids and sailing. Let's be honest. Okay,
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Erik Orton
we're just kind of rehashing or revisiting this book, Atomic Habits by James Clear my word for the year. This year is atomic. And so it's fitting.
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Emily Orton
My words are reset and refined. So I think it's also fitting we're talking about upgrading.
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Erik Orton
All right.
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Erik Orton
When you're already so refined.
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Emily Orton
These have been great words because I'm always doing it right. Like if I try something and I fall off and my word is reset, hey, I am doing my word. It's very encouraging.
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Erik Orton
I've always thought you were fine and now you're just, like, refined. Okay, so I'm on page 36. If you've got a hard copy
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Erik Orton
your identity emerges out of your habits, you are not born with preset beliefs. Every belief, including those about yourself, is learned and conditioned through experience. He talks about the Latin word that we use for identity was originally derived from “essentitas”
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Erik Orton
which means being and “identidem” which means repeatedly. So repeated beingness going to jump down. This is page 37.
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Erik Orton
Your habits are not the only actions that influence your identity, but by virtue of their frequency they are usually the most important ones. Each experience in life modifies your self-image, but it's unlikely. Would you consider yourself a soccer player because you kicked a ball once or an artist because you scribbled a picture as you repeat these actions, however, the evidence accumulates and your self-image begins to change.
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Erik Orton
The effect of one off experiences tends to fade away, while the effect of habits gets reinforced with time, which means your habits contribute most of the evidence that shapes your identity. In this way, the process of building habits is actually the process of becoming yourself. All right. So we're going to loop back to some of this in a minute, but.
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Emily Orton
I love it. I already want to push back just a little bit.
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Erik Orton
Okay. Let's let's have this debate, this conversation.
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Emily Orton
Just some additional context. As the mother of five, I definitely don't believe that these kids come as a blank slate. There's just things about their personality that are not put into them by us or the environment that they're in. There's some things that I truly believe they just come with. And I do agree, though, that as they decide what they want to participate in and how they want to show up in the world, those habits can they can create an identity that way.
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Emily Orton
And sometimes it can happen by default without much thinking. And I like how we're talking about giving it a little more thought. And the second thing I would want to push back on is the idea that if you only do it one time, you don't necessarily consider that your identity. And I would say one exception to that is our youngest daughter, Lily.
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Erik Orton
she's the best in the world.
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Emily Orton
Who has Down syndrome. And she has a unique perspective on the world and on her identity. And she can see somebody else doing something and immediately identify as that way. So, for example, the first time we were in California and we saw surfers her first time ever seeing surfers, she immediately said, I am a surfer, like I'm a surfer girl.
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Erik Orton
And she proceeded to wade out into the water in her swimsuit like she's going to go take one of their boards.
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Emily Orton
Yeah, I'm ready to step into I'm ready.
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Erik Orton
To do what they're doing because that's what I am.
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Emily Orton
And if she can see, like four words in Spanish, she tells people, I speak Spanish, you know, but she does technically speak Spanish words. I wouldn't call it the same thing. And maybe other people wouldn't agree with her. But she definitely she thinks she speaks like four languages and she thinks she's like a world Cup champion soccer player because she watched Brazil last year.
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Emily Orton
So anyway, I actually love her as a case study and an example. One thing that I do think is true about every body that's born is that we do not come into the world insecure. I think we're born confident and we learn insecurity as we move through the world. And we're just hopefully through some of James clears ideas.
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Emily Orton
We can learn how to reclaim some of that confidence on purpose.
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Erik Orton
Well, let me read a little bit more here, because he talks about because I think confidence is actually the key. Before I read more, I'm going to say this. I think what habits do is they either create or they restore our confidence, because when we get in the habit of doing something, we start to believe ourselves. I mean, you and I talk about this all of the time when we talk about three kinds of confidence.
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Erik Orton
There's competence, credibility and calm. And the credibility one is when you do what you say, you will do, trust arrives.
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Emily Orton
You know.
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Erik Orton
People trust you when you say what you're going to do. More importantly, you trust yourself. And I think when you when when I trust myself, I believe myself. And I'm able to accept things about myself, about my identity.
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Emily Orton
And move forward and.
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Erik Orton
Move forward.
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Emily Orton
I took a breath because I do have one more thing to say. If you had something to say before you get into the next thing, you're going to read from James Clear in Atomic Habits is that the idea is kind of escaping me now.
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Erik Orton
You took a breath. I know. It all started with the breath. Can you tell we don't rehearse this Do like these are not this practice podcast.
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Emily Orton
It's just. It's about you recording confidence.
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Erik Orton
Confidence, credibility, income, habits. People trust you. You trust yourself.
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Emily Orton
She said it was about the repeatability of it. Okay? And that is that a lot of a lot of people say it takes 21 days to form a habit. And I know what you just read from James Clear. He's talking about over time. And I do believe that it typically occurs over time. But I did hear from another success expert, which if I think of it, I'll put in the show notes.
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Emily Orton
But if I don't, you'll just have to take it as a grain of salt or as a gold nugget of truth, but that we actually establish habits based on the success feeling that we get from the habit. And so if you really want a habit to stick, acknowledge it as a win every time that you do it and see like, Hey, I did where I said I was going to do good for me, whatever it was, large or small habit that you're trying to change, that it's actually the feeling of success that makes us want to keep repeating it over time.
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Emily Orton
Just doing it 21 days in a row doesn't build it into our identity.
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Erik Orton
So just feeling successful reinforces that feeling of success. Reinforces the habit. More than six.
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Emily Orton
Yeah.
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Erik Orton
Than just hitting a certain number.
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Emily Orton
Yeah. And I think it's true even for bad habits, right? Like for me it's that handful of chocolate at quarter to four, maybe later. I don't like how it feels, but in that moment I'm like, yeah, I love having this chocolate right now. I get my little dopamine hit. Probably going to do this again tomorrow.
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Erik Orton
Okay, so reading back to story time, putting this all together is page 38. You can see that habits are the path to changing your identity. The most practical way to change who you are is to change what you do. Each time you write a page, you are a writer. Each time you practice the violin, you are a musician.
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Erik Orton
Each time you start a workout, you are an athlete. Each time you encourage your employees, you are a leader. Each habit not only gets results, but also teaches you something far more important to trust yourself. You start to believe you can actually accomplish these things when the votes mount up and the evidence begins to change the story, you tell your the story you tell yourself begins to change as well.
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Erik Orton
And I love this idea of mounting evidence because I think one of the reasons I'll talk myself out of things and I I'll say in this, but I'm not that because I have I have a lot of evidence to prove one to both to prove both cases. And the great thing about Lily, our daughter, is that she doesn't need any evidence.
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Erik Orton
She's just like I am this thing. Because the idea has occurred to me, and for us lesser mortals, we need a little bit more reassurance. And I would aspire to have her level of confidence. But I just like this idea. And the thing is, and he talks a lot about about votes and democracy and things like that. He says, to win, you don't need to be perfect.
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Erik Orton
You don't need a you don't need a unanimous vote to win an election. You need a majority. And so if you do something more times than you don't do it, you're probably going to believe yourself anyway. But if you don't do something more than you do it, I know if I'm saying it very clear, do something.
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Emily Orton
The majority of the time.
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Erik Orton
That's the story you're going to believe.
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Emily Orton
Then you're and you win as far as that being part of your identity. And so it wins a spot in your identity.
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Erik Orton
I talk about this a lot. I track how many numbers I how many words I write every day. I have a lot of zeros. But I can look back on five, eight years of data to see all the days that I wrote, all the days that I didn't write, all the words that I've written and I've written millions of words.
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Erik Orton
I believe I'm a writer because I have evidence that backs it up. Am I going to continue to be a writer? I plan to. I'm doing a little bit more talking than writing these days, which which is fine, but there's something powerful about the evidence and having the evidence for yourself so that you can't you can't deny it.
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Erik Orton
You can't lie to yourself. In fact, I got this whole idea from who's the author, the like the adventure author guy from like the thirties and forties.
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Emily Orton
I know you're talking about book. We'll come back to it.
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Erik Orton
Come back in the comments. If you know who.
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Emily Orton
He is, you might be over 50.
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Erik Orton
Hey, hey.
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Emily Orton
Hey, hey, hey.
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Erik Orton
Anyway, he's one of these famous authors that you read in English classes, and he said he would track his writing every day as to not fool himself because we can trick ourselves into thinking that we're something that we're not. And we can also talk ourselves out of believing that we are something that we actually are. So build a case for yourself, build evidence.
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Erik Orton
Are looking at.
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Emily Orton
Hemingway.
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Erik Orton
It was Ernest Hemingway. He's the adventurer and hemming and hawing my way to.
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Emily Orton
The answer two.
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Erik Orton
Answers. Okay. New identities require new evidence. If you keep casting the same votes, you've always cast, you're going to get the same results you've always had. If nothing changes, nothing is going to change. Okay. And this is where he gives a two step, two step process for changing your identity. So you ready for this? Pull out your pencils.
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Erik Orton
This is the simple, simple two step process. One decide the type of person you want to be to prove it to yourself. With small wins, step one is decide the type of person you want to be in. Step two is prove it to yourself with small wins. And Emily and I are big believers in small wins. The importance of just taking atomic microscopic actions that are easy to do.
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Erik Orton
Easy like. Like, like painfully easy wins. And our our favorite example of this is to get fit. Our goal is we're going to put on our shoes and step outside. That's where we started to put on our walking. Or they were, I guess, any shoes, but putting on your shoes and walking out, stepping outside, that was our first step, knowing, well, when we're here in manageable.
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Emily Orton
Across the street.
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Erik Orton
Cross the street anyway and it builds from there. You've heard us talk about this before, perhaps, but making it just so easy to succeed. And then every day I put it, we put on our shoes and step outside. It's a win every day and everything beyond that is just extra. And then we created credibility with ourselves. And here we are.
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Erik Orton
I'm going to say like what, seven or eight years later, we went for a walk again today, like we do every day, because it's our habit. It's who we are. We walk in the morning.
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Emily Orton
And we feel a benefit from it.
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Erik Orton
I love it. I love it. Yeah. One of my favorite parts of the day.
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Emily Orton
I like what you're saying. Last week we talked more about belief and how behavior follows belief, but it sounds like there's actually a circular relationship. Whether you're going to start with belief or you're going to start with behavior, those will really affect each other. And they need to keep repeating the belief, needs to keep repeating and the behavior needs to keep repeating to really establish that as your upgraded identity for it to become a paved road instead of, you know, the first time offroading through, you know, the brush or something.
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Emily Orton
It's it becomes established through repetition, the belief and the behavior.
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Erik Orton
And I just love this idea that you trust yourself. And, you know, we teach about credibility and how the size of your dreams is proportionate to the amount that you trust yourself as you trust yourself in more and more areas of your life and at bigger and bigger scales. The the scope of things that you will let yourself contemplate and consider for yourself grows in proportion to that level of trust.
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Erik Orton
So when you don't trust yourself, when you don't believe that you're going to pay the bills or stick to your you're.
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Emily Orton
Drinking enough water, whatever.
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Erik Orton
It is, you know, whatever it is. But when you do, then you say, okay, if I can do that, what else can I do? And that's where the magic starts to happen. And so if you're feeling discouraged and you feel like nothing that you're doing is working, find a small, simple way to find success. And James clear, he talks about, look, you know if you need to one of the ways that we start building trust with ourselves when we're young is let's just say you learn to tie your shoes, you learn to tie your shoes, and you do that every day and it becomes automatic.
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Erik Orton
And you just know you can do it. You don't even think about, Can I take my shoes? It's just part of who you are. Once you learn how to tie your shoes, if you can do that, what else can you do? And just go up from there? And I think we're always looking for bigger and bigger puzzles to solve bigger and bigger challenges because we if you're if you have a growth mindset and I think.
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Emily Orton
If you're here, you probably.
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Erik Orton
If you do, you probably if you're here, you probably do. And if you and if you don't, I believe you can get one. If you decide that you want to be a growth minded person. So anyway, that's, that's, that's it. I think it's important to trust yourself because the more you trust yourself, the bigger your dreams become and the more rich, full, satisfying, happy, fun and beneficial your life becomes.
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Erik Orton
That's my take on it.
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Emily Orton
I agree with you. No pushback.
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Erik Orton
No pushback.
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Emily Orton
For the first time in this episode, no pushback.
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Erik Orton
Awesome. Well, hey, guys, thanks for listening. Atomic habits, That's what we're talking about. And what could go right?
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Emily Orton
What could go right is if you are interested in trying something new, something different, maybe you have a little experience, but not much. You may want to find out what it's like to live on a sailboat. We did it for a whole year with our five kids and now we help other people cross that threshold, See yourself in a new way, learn some new skills, go to some new places, kind of stretch and grow in the most fun, friendly way possible and come see what it's like to try living on a sailboat for a week.
00:17:26:19 - 00:17:48:16
Emily Orton
And Erik will teach you everything that you want to know about living on a sailboat, about how a sailboat runs. By the end of most weeks, the crew is is running the sailboat because they have learned how to steer, how to navigate, how to raise and lower sales, how to raise and drop anchor, all the things. And I make your meal plan.
00:17:48:16 - 00:18:04:22
Emily Orton
So all you have to do is follow the recipe. And it's a it's a it's a it's been life changing for some of these people. Just a complete reset for the second half of life and making new friends and just opening up new horizons. So if you're ready to upgrade your identity.
00:18:05:00 - 00:18:18:17
Erik Orton
It's a great way to upgrade your identity. I'll probably throw in some videos from previous sailing trips in here so you can hear what people have to say on their own. But it really, if you want to fill in the blank that says I'm the type of person that sails or goes sailing.
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Emily Orton
Tries new things, tries.
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Erik Orton
New things, I'm the guy. I'm the type of person that is adventurous or curious. This might be part of what you want to look at. So anyway, you could to go to the show notes and there will be a link there where you can chat with us. I like to talk with everybody that's interested in coming on a trip and answering your questions.
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Erik Orton
And if one of our trips later this year or early 2025 is a fit, then you know, we could go we could go sailing there, which would be cool.
00:18:48:15 - 00:18:50:10
Erik Orton
All right. Thanks for listening.
00:18:50:10 - 00:18:54:18
Erik Orton
first of all, what made you want to come on this trip? Actually, that's a new question.
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Melissa Leonard
gosh. It's like all the stars align and things just kind of worked out and it's something I've always wanted to try and just kind of get out of my comfort zone and and go for it.
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Erik Orton
I love it. I'm so happy you did. Thanks for trusting me. Yes. Like pretty much a stranger, right?
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Melissa Leonard
It was such a wonderful experience.
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Erik Orton
All right. So what were some of your favorites? Some highlights.
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Melissa Leonard
Favorites. Just sailing a wide open on with the sails up an open ocean. And I love getting to see the sea lions in person that are just on TV in their natural environment. That was that was a lot of fun.
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Erik Orton
That was okay. If you had you're picking three words to describe this great trip, what would you say?
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Melissa Leonard
Gosh,
00:19:46:23 - 00:19:55:21
Melissa Leonard
dreamy. Very challenging, but worth it. And
00:19:55:21 - 00:20:01:22
Melissa Leonard
just just unbelievable. It was a wonderful experience. The highlight of my year so far.
