#311 Habit Building Masterclass
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Hello everybody, welcome back to the Level Up English podcast. The best place to come to practice the English language, learn about the British accent, while looking at lots of random fun topics. With me, your host, Michael Lavers. I hope you're all having a fantastic week so far. I, for one, am very, very happy because...

The air quality has finally improved. It may be short-lived, which means it may not be permanent, but the last week or so in Thailand, the air quality has been terrible to the point where it hasn't been a good idea to go outside. So I've barely gone outside this past week or so.

Today it's finally improved so I'm very excited today to maybe this afternoon head outside, go for a walk, a bike ride, we'll just see what I'm in the mood for. I'm very excited for that. So that's made a big difference to my mood as you can tell. I'm also very happy today because we are talking about a topic that I am deeply passionate about. I really, really love this topic and it's

Maybe the long-term listeners of the podcast who have been with me since the beginning will know that one of my favourite things to talk about is habit building. And I'm going to explain a little bit why today. I know for some people that word, that phrase can sound a little bit boring, maybe putting you to sleep, maybe. But I really do believe strongly that

once you get the hang of creating habits successfully in your life, this is when you will see success in all these different areas. You know, English learning, health, career, whatever you're doing. I think the key to succeeding in all of them is having healthy habits. So I've been practicing this for...

many years now, you know, over a decade, let's say. And I feel like I've got fairly good at this. So I'm going to talk more about that today. But I feel like I've got to a place where I can talk quite confidently and, dare I say it, knowledgeably about this topic. So I'll see what I can do today. But when this podcast comes out, it will have been

There's a good future perfect tense sentence there. It will have been several weeks since the new year. So I think this could be a timely episode. In other words, a good time to come out and

Because maybe some of you made some New Year's resolutions. So how are you doing with them? I think there are some of you who are still going strong. You are seeing a lot of success with your resolutions so far.

I imagine there are some of you who have experienced some level of failures on your resolutions. Like me, I still haven't got the hang of my going to bed early resolution. Every year I have it, every year I fail. So maybe you're like me in some areas. And of course, I'm sure there are many of you as well who did not make resolutions and that is also fine. So no problem with that. But you know that I like to make them.

So because of that, I think it's a perfect time to talk about habits because it's reminding you that you can kind of keep these resolutions going strong throughout the year, despite any failures or setbacks. I think setback is a nice word because it's less strong than failing. Failing sounds very permanent for me, like forever. Setback is like temporary, right? Not forever. Right.

So despite any setbacks you may have had, it doesn't mean you have to give up. So that's kind of what I want to talk about today. I want to talk about how to keep new habits and goals without missing a day, if that's your goal as well. The importance of tracking your goals, how to go easy on yourself and not be too strict with your new habits and

And also some nice reminders on what you can do to keep or to stay positive about the whole experience. So much packed into today's episode. I also want to talk about bad habits too. So things that you can do to avoid slipping into, which means accidentally getting into bad habits.

So let's avoid slipping into those bad habits. I think the best habit that you could have is continue listening to this episode. See if you can do that with me. So for this first section, I want to talk about how to stick to your habits. And I predict this may be a longer episode because, as I said, it's something I love to talk about. So let's see how brief I can be.

But yeah, just to give a quick introduction, I believe that setting habits is one of the most important things that we can do in life. So many parts of our day are habits, right? So many things that we do each day are habits, from the obvious things such as going to the gym in the morning, that's a good healthy habit if you have that one, to the less obvious things like

The way that you sit in your chair, you know, your posture in your chair or the way that you stir your coffee. You know, you may not really think about it, but the way that you stir, maybe you stir your coffee with your teaspoon four times and then you tap the spoon and you put it on the sink, right? That's kind of a habit that you have picked up for some reason. And now you likely you do the same thing or a similar thing every day, right?

So all these things are habits and I think these are all good things because without habits we would have to wake up and think about every decision we make in the day. Can you imagine doing that? You wake up and you just sit on the side of your bed and think, "Huh, okay, what should I do now? I just woke up. Should I brush my teeth? Have a shower?

go for a walk? What should I do? Imagine waking up like that. You have no idea what to do because you have to make a decision about everything. And it's a very inefficient way of living. So this is the importance of habits because I guess it's the brain's way to automate things. That means make things automatic. And I imagine it uses less energy, right? Because you do it

automatically without thinking. So the more habits you have, the more you can preserve, keep your energy. I might go so far as to say, if you have to make a decision within the first hour of waking up, there's a chance that you might be doing something wrong. I haven't considered every possibility, but I think generally,

You don't want to be making too many decisions in the morning. If you can automate things and turn things into habits, that's going to make your mornings much easier. Because I think many of us will agree that the mornings might be the hardest part of the day. You know, waking up and preparing for the day. We need a lot of motivation to do that sometimes. So I think that's why habits can be good there.

So when it comes to making a habit, here are the basics. And actually, this was kind of inspired by the conversation I had with teacher Zdenek. I think that might be coming out next week. So there's a preview of next week's episode, but that was recorded before this one. So, yeah, listen out for that one next week.

When making a habit, first of all, think about what you want to succeed in. That's step one. In what area do you want to seek success? Let's say it's becoming fluent in English. That's one that many of you will have, I'm sure. Step two is to carefully plan what steps you need to take to reach that success.

So this might take even a few hours of consideration and planning. But think of it this way. You are spending time now planning to save time in the future. It's investing in your future. It may just take 30 minutes, 20 minutes. It doesn't have to take long, but you know.

We will be right back to the Level Up English podcast after a short break. I would like to take just one minute to tell you about a new free mini course that I have available that you could try today. This is called Level Up Your English, the mini series. So, this is again a free course that you could take. It should take about one week to complete. I

I've made this course to be super accessible and easy to start. So once you sign up, you get sent an email with a 10 minute video lesson from me. And in this lesson, we'll be learning a little bit about grammar in a really fun way, I promise. And we'll be learning everything in context so it's more enjoyable and easier to learn.

Once you finish the first lesson, you'll be sent another lesson a couple days later, each lesson about 10 minutes long, so very manageable. And once again, it's totally free. So if you're interested in levelling up your English with me and you'd like to try, then you've got nothing to lose. Sign up today. There will be a link in your podcast description wherever you're listening to this episode, where you can click and join the free course today.

Hope you find it useful. Thank you so much. It's whatever works for you. So yeah, you could sit down and with a pen and paper or your iPad or whatever and write down...

okay, I want to get better at English. Write down what you find difficult with English. I find speaking difficult. So therefore, on a daily basis, I need to practice speaking. You can, for example, talk to yourself or record yourself, do a podcast on your own, practice your speaking in these ways, and maybe just say, okay, 10 minutes every day. That's my goal. And that will get me, hopefully, to my

idea of success in the future. So you want to break down your goal into really small, achievable daily steps. So really think about that. Don't look at the big picture. You need to make really small daily things that you can do. And then one by one, that's key here. This is step three. One by one, turning those tasks into daily habits so that you don't need to think about them consciously anymore.

And yeah, I said one by one because when we are adding new habits into our lives, it's very difficult to add more than one at the same time. So focus on one habit. If you don't have any English studying routine, then just say, okay, five minutes speaking practice every day.

If that goes well for three or four weeks, then you can add something else, like add a writing habit as well. And slowly, bit by bit, make it a little bit more complex and longer, perhaps. So, for example, I'm going to talk a bit more about my own examples today, but the first one is my walking habit. Every single day, I go outside for a walk. And I'll talk about this more in a minute, but basically...

I guess it was like five years ago now, I decided that, well, I should say I realised that if I don't go for a walk every day, I feel quite down. I feel a bit low and depressed. I feel not as good if I don't go outside. And that makes sense, right? We're kind of made to go outside. We're not creatures who are supposed to spend all their time inside, right?

So when I realized that, I decided to make a habit, which was just every day go for a walk. So now on my habit tracking app, I have go for a walk. When I do it every day, I tick off the box and it's completed.

Okay, so I now have the daily habit of going for a walk and I no longer have to think about the reason why. I don't have to think about my motivation every day. Like, should I go for a walk? Would it be good for me? Or is it better to stay inside? And I don't have to really take these things into consideration. And that's because past Michael, five years ago, already made that decision for me. It doesn't mean I can't change, but...

I have to kind of trust that that was a good decision and I'm going to keep doing that habit so I don't need to think about it every day. Does that make sense? I hope so. Hopefully that's clear. But yeah, as I said, I do think it can be necessary to tweak your routine sometimes. To tweak means to make a small change, right? Not change completely, just change a little bit.

So this could be on a regular basis, like what I love to do, of course, is every year at New Year's, I will review my goals and my habits. And if something isn't going so well, I will tweak it a little bit and try to improve it. So every year, year by year, I'm getting a little bit better, which is a good feeling as well.

But yeah, at this point, if you don't know me so well, you may be wondering or maybe questioning like why...

Michael, why are you talking about this? Why are you a good person to tell me about this? And I'm not necessarily an expert. I'm not necessarily the best person to ask, but I do feel quite confident because I have a very long streak in my studies. If you don't know, by the way, this word streak is a noun and it means doing something like day after day without a break.

So if you study for 10 days in a row, that is also known as a 10 day study streak. So if I ask you, how is your study streak? You can tell me how many days you have studied without taking a break. Okay. So I'm not against taking a break, but at the moment I have a study streak of about 1,800 days. It's coming up to 2,000 days and that's

many years. I'm not going to count the years, but that's quite a few years there. So that means for those almost 2000 days, I've never missed a day of language study. I think for my daily walks, it's been about 800 days and I have a few more, for example, like meditation. That has been a challenge for me, but at the moment I've got a 30 day meditation streak, which means I've done it every day so far in 2025.

So that's kind of going okay. It's not the longest, but I'm quite pleased with that one too. I even have one for flossing my teeth, right? I think I'm on like day 300 of flossing without missing a day. So I think having these streets can be quite fun.

By the way, if you're curious, the app that I use is called, I think it's just called Habit Tracker. It's a very simple app where you can track your habits and it shows you on a calendar all the days you've completed your habits. So it's quite a simple app, but there's many more like it as well. I recommend you use something like that that works for you. And it's a fun way to track too. So for this next section, I want to talk about

specifically how you can keep a habit or how you can create and keep a habit. So I have a lot of ideas. I've got a list in front of me here of all different ways that you can stick to your habits and not give up on them. And it's kind of random, like a random list, but I just kind of wrote down everything that I could think of. It's quite a bit.

So I will try my best to talk calmly and not get too excited and speak too quickly. But let's see how I do, because, you know, I think it's natural when we talk about topics that we like, we tend to talk faster, don't we? So if I am going fast today, I apologize. We'll just see.

So my first tip is, I'll just mention it again very briefly, it's tracking your streaks. If you track your study streaks, it's very motivating to see that because as humans we like patterns and we like symmetry and we like completion.

It's the same reason why if I sing you a song, but I don't sing the last line of the last word of that song, you have like the urge, the feeling to complete the song and finish the song with me because it's kind of annoying. It's frustrating when things are not complete.

And that's just how the human mind works. So another way you can track your streaks is on paper, like a paper calendar. And whenever you complete your day, you can put a nice green cross on that day.

and every day it can join up to the next day. So when you do it and by the end of the month, you hopefully will have a nice chain of green crosses that fill out the entire page on the calendar. And that's a really good feeling. But

Conversely, on the opposite side, if you miss a day, it's going to be really annoying because you're going to have an entire page of green crosses, but then one empty square where you forgot to do it.

So I think this can be quite motivating at the beginning of a habit when you don't want to ruin your study streak. So that's important. And if you use apps like Duolingo or other study apps, many of them will have a study streak built in to the app as well, which can be nice. This next tip is a huge one, and this is something known as habit stacking.

To stack something is to put something on top of another object. If you stack cans, you know, cans of beans on top of each other, you've got one can, another can on top, and there's like a tower of beans because they're stacked on one another. Habit stacking is kind of similar. It's an effective way to introduce a new habit into your life.

I can give you an example of when I struggled to do this because last year, one of my goals was to review my language progress every day. So any words I would learn in the morning, I would review them in the evening. But my big problem here is that I didn't have many habits or many pre-existing habits in the afternoon. So I couldn't stack this new habit on anything before.

So I found that very difficult. So it's much easier to add a new habit directly after an existing habit. So for example, if you always do something at the same time, then after that is a good time to add in a new habit. So brushing teeth is a great example because we do it every day, hopefully at least twice, right? Twice a day. And brushing

Usually this is at the same time as well. So maybe you could say, okay, after I brush my teeth, I'm going to study English. That's going to be my English study time. For the first couple weeks, it might take some conscious effort to do that, which could be something simple. It could be like you leave your notebook next to your toothbrush, right? To kind of trigger that

that memory that you have to do this new habit, something like that. But then eventually you're going to do it without thinking. The moment you put down your toothbrush, your body, your legs and your arms will automatically move towards your desk, pick out your English study materials and start studying.

And that's what I do. You know, I usually go for a walk in the morning and then after my walk, I come back and start studying and I don't have to think about it. We can call it a subconscious decision. Subconscious means below your top level of thinking. You're not really aware of why you're doing it. So,

So that's a successful habit there. Another example is with my meditation. It's one of the first things I do in the morning. When I leave my bedroom, I immediately walk over to what I call my meditation chair and I sit down and I pull out my phone and get to my meditation app. And all of this is done without thinking. I'm not planning on what I'm doing. I just kind of automatically sit down and do it.

And I've been doing it for so long at this point that it's become an automatic habit. And I think maybe just to give you some more ideas, I can tell you how I found success with my reviewing habits.

So as I said just now, it was quite difficult for me to study languages in the afternoon because mainly my routine would differ from day to day. It wasn't the same. So there was no trigger in my mind to remind me to do that new habit. By the way, a trigger is something that causes something else to happen. You might talk about, you know, what was the trigger of World War II? What started World War II? What caused it to happen?

So every habit generally requires a trigger to get you started. And I think the best trigger, as we said, is a previous habit.

So what I found success in, at least this year, it's a new habit for me, is every afternoon I go to a cafe, which was an existing habit I had anyway. I always have a coffee in the afternoon, the early afternoon. It's been my habit for many years. And since I've come to Bangkok, there are so many good cafes here, very cheap as well, that I decided to go outside for my afternoon coffee. So that was an existing habit. And the reason...

I have kept that up is because it's fun. It's enjoyable, right? I realized if I want to study languages in the afternoon, I can also do that in the cafe. So I bring my language book or my laptop to the cafe and I study in the cafe. So I'm stacking that studying habit on top of my existing cafe habit, or if you like, cafe addiction. Yeah.

So that was successful for me. You know, I stacked it on top of an existing one. So maybe see or think about what that could be for you. I think another key to success is making your habits as easy to follow as possible because the brain or the human body will do anything it can to avoid hyperactivity.

hard work. I think we're naturally quite lazy. Just like water in a river, we take the path of least resistance, which means we will do whatever is easiest unless we consciously, with effort, try to change that.

So that's the goal here. And I think it can really help to make things easier. So one example for me with my language study, in the morning, I do it every morning at my table, not at this desk, but another table. The chair on that table is really not very comfortable. So I find when I'm in that chair, I'm not very focused. So in the evening, before I go to bed, I take this chair.

chair that I'm using now, which is my desk chair, my office chair, and I carry it into the other room. So in the morning, I just have to sit down and study. There's no other stuff I have to set up. I don't have to prepare anything. Everything is ready to go.

So yeah, make it as easy as you can so you don't have to think about things too much. Another example of that is going to the gym. I did a lot of research at the beginning before going to the gym just to make sure I was reaching my goals correctly and doing what I wanted to.

And yeah, basically I, you know, with the help of some research online, I made a simple gym workout plan. So this one, then this one, then this one, very specific how many reps, which means repetitions and how many sets, like how many groups of those repetitions with each exercise and

So I know exactly what I have to do each day. I don't go to the gym like I see some people doing and just kind of deciding what to do once I'm in the gym. That's not...

a good key to success there. That's not a good way to see success. So that's another example. And here's one that a lot of people really struggle with, this mindset, because I think one of the biggest problems with habit creation is giving up, maybe because it's too difficult, it's overwhelming, or whatever the reason. And I'm a really strong believer that at the beginning of habit creation, it needs to be

focused on just that. It needs to be focused on creating the habit. So don't focus on how much you improve, but focus on whether you are completing your goal.

So when you're first beginning to learn English, it can be quite unhelpful to ask yourself the question, OK, how much have I improved this week? Because that can be quite demotivating and it's not always the best way to measure your success at the beginning. So instead of that, make it really, really specific on what you want to do.

So it could be something so, so small. Let's say you want to start a yoga practice. You want to do yoga every day. And rather than saying, I'm going to do 45 minutes of yoga every day, just have the goal, I'm going to sit on the yoga mat for one minute. That's it, right? And it's not saying that's all you have to do. It's just saying that is the minimum, right? So you...

Get the yoga mat out. You sit on the mat for one minute. If you've completed that, you can tick off the habit for the day. If you have energy and time, then maybe do some yoga as well. Do some stretching, 5, 10, even 30 minutes. It doesn't really matter how long, but the key is to define what success means to you.

That's really important. And at the beginning, make it as small and achievable as possible. You need to think about every day of your week and think, is there something that can happen on a weekend, for example, that might stop me from my goal? If so, you have to make your goal even smaller. So for a writing habit or study habit, it could be opening your book and writing one word.

Right. That's it. If you've done that, you've completed your goal. And again, hopefully you can do more, but don't feel like you failed otherwise, because I think that's the key, right? If you have the goal, I'm going to write two pages of English. It's quite a lot to do that. And imagine you're feeling sick, you're tired, you're stressed. It's likely that you will not complete your goal for that day.

And as a result of that, you might also miss it the next day and it becomes a habit of not doing it. So the most important thing is to keep that habit. And then gradually, let's say like review once a month, you know, not too often. I think once a month can be quite good.

each month review how things are going and then increase right so if you have got to 30 days of you know sitting on your yoga mat for one minute every day some days you did more some days you didn't after 30 days you can then say okay that was a success well done me i can i can feel good about that and then extend it a bit more change the definition of success in your goal

So you could say, okay, for this month, my definition of success is five minutes of yoga, five minutes of stretching.

It's just an example, but you can see how we're slowly increasing that threshold. Because I think after one month, the habit is more automatic and you don't have to think about it so much. So then you can start focusing more on your progress rather than the habit itself.

Does that make sense? So here is a success story from me. Because at the moment, I'm studying languages every day for at least one hour.

Some days even more, like three hours maybe. And this is just language study spent doing it on my own. I'm really enjoying it. It's really fun and it's a daily habit. However, that's very different to how it was at the beginning. Even last year, last year, I had many days where I only studied for like 10 minutes or so.

So this year my study has gone up so much because I'm much more motivated and I have a really good routine in place and it wasn't so organised last year. So I think that just goes to show once you have the habit, you can then work on increasing it.

But if you started from day one with a two hour goal to study English, you're very unlikely to succeed. So don't try too hard. It's really, really important to take baby, baby steps at the beginning. So it might feel too slow, but I think it's worth it in the long term. And on that note, it's also a good reminder that

A small change on a regular basis can amount to a huge change over a period of time. And I think this is something that a lot of people speak about, but the best way to imagine this is like the trajectory of a plane.

The trajectory is the planned route that a plane will take. When the plane takes off from one airport, it knows where it's going to go to get to the next airport. And if the plane is, let's say, facing 1% more, or at one degree more to the right,

At the beginning that's nothing. One degree is nothing, it makes no difference. But if you're traveling 1,000 miles then at the end of that journey that one degree will eventually be a huge change. You'll be maybe hundreds of miles away from your destination airport.

So think about that analogy, that idea, and compare it to your life. If you can make 1% change in your life today, it's quite small. But if you can repeat that change and keep doing it for the rest of your life, it's going to

not the change, but the impact of the change will grow and grow and grow each time. And this is quite obvious when we think about things like going to the gym, muscle training. If you do 10 minutes of lifting weights every day, that's a 1% change, we could say. And it's not a big difference, but over time you get more muscle, you can lift heavier weights, you feel healthier and better. And the impact of that change grows over time. It compounds, right?

So don't underestimate the power of small and regular changes.

Another thing that I like to talk about is priorities. And I think this is where we have to get really honest with ourselves because many of us want to try to do everything. And it's really important to be clear on our priorities. In fact, I've said this before and I always feel like it might be controversial, but I haven't been proven wrong yet. But

And I really do believe that everyone has the time to learn English. I know there are many of us who are working incredibly long days. We have big families. We have many things to do. But hear me out. Let me finish what I want to say before you get mad. I do believe everyone has the time to learn English because many people will say, I don't have the time. And I kind of think that's not true.

I think a more accurate excuse would be, "English is not my priority." Sometimes that is a really good idea. If you've just had triplets, triplets are three babies at the same time. You have triplets, you're looking after your kids, you're very, very busy. Maybe you're a single mum, you don't have any help. So you're full-time looking after three kids, trying to provide for them.

Of course, raising those kids is your main priority. And in that circumstance, if you don't have time for English, of course, that's understandable. I think the key thing in that situation is not trying to raise your kids and study English and then feeling bad about failing with English. Like, why can't I learn English? I'm so bad. I'm so stupid. I wish I had a better, you know, I wish I was a better student.

And if you take a step back and look at your life, I think anyone would say you're being too hard on yourself. Of course, your kids are your priority. Maybe just take a step back, reduce your time on English, change your priorities and just accept that for a while. Right. And some of us may be different. We may have a lot of time and yet not much of our time is spent on English.

I see this a lot. I'm not judging anyone because I see it in myself as well. But people say this a lot with speaking. They say, oh, English speaking is so difficult. My speaking skills are so bad. I've been studying for many years, but my speaking is not improving. And then if I ask them, how much time do you spend speaking every week? Maybe they'll say, yeah, maybe like 30 minutes. Not not that much, really.

And then it's kind of like a minute of silence. Well, not a minute, a second of silence where they realize what they just said. Right. So, of course, if you're not speaking much, then you're not going to improve. It's very obvious. But in that case,

speaking is clearly not their priority. And it's really important to be aware of that. So once you're aware that it's not your priority, you have two choices. You could either accept it and say, okay, actually, I would love to learn English, but right now, my children are my priority or whatever else. Or the other option is to say,

Okay, I would love to learn English and I am determined to make it my priority. Right, that's one thing that I'm doing this year, for example, with my speaking. Because I really want to improve my speaking, but I never speak.

So this year I'm determined to do more speaking and I've got a goal and habit in place to get my speaking practice. So I took a step back and I looked at my priorities and I realised that my priorities and my actions were not aligned.

They weren't matching up. It's really important to question that in yourself. There is a fantastic phrase that I love, which is quite motivational. It's, you can have anything you want, but you can't have everything you want. I think to some extent that's true, isn't it? If you focus on one thing, only one thing, you can have success there, right?

In a really extreme way, if you only focused on learning English and you didn't care about your health, your family, your friends, your work, if it was only English, of course, you could get very good at English. But realistically, we have many priorities. So just think about that for yourself. If you're trying to do everything, it's going to be much harder to succeed in one thing. That's the key idea here.

So I guess the question you have to ask yourself is, do I need to sacrifice something else to see success in this area? For me, for example, I love to do as many healthy habits as I can. I'm quite interested in healthy eating, exercise, language study. But I also know in my mind which one is more important for me.

I love learning languages, but I have decided that my health is my priority. So if ever I have to choose between health and language learning, I'm going to choose health. I will rather go to the gym than study a language. Right. I think usually you don't have this choice to do both, but let's say I do have the choice. It's important to know what I would choose.

I also think that language learning comes above meditation for me at the moment. I know they're both important for me. I like meditating. I like being having like a clear, calm mind.

But I think I prefer learning a language. It's more enjoyable and rewarding for me. So therefore, I decided to sacrifice my meditation time. There was a time like five years ago where I was meditating for like one hour every day. And these days I meditate for 10 minutes a day, which is much more manageable. And it means I can

have time for what's really important for me so it's really a good idea if you can like even write down your priorities really think consciously about what is a priority for you and if you need to sacrifice some area of your life to get success okay a little bit long-winded there long-winded means

using a lot of words to say not much, basically. But hopefully that was not too boring and it helped you as well. But I'm almost done on this list now, not too much more to go. Another tip that I would say is to see if your habits can be more fun. What can you do to make your habit fun?

And this was a big thing for me with my language learning. I used to struggle with this a lot because I found it quite boring to kind of get just to sit down and study my languages. So over time, I've tweaked. Remember that word tweak? I've tweaked my study routine and I've made things more fun. So one thing I realized is that instead of

sitting through a lesson about grammar, I quite enjoy transcribing things. This is where you can watch one minute from a podcast or TV series and just write down what you hear. And I found that not only very useful for me, but also quite fun. Another way that I do it is

Well, I think another realisation I had is that I just don't like watching TV shows to learn a language. I find it quite boring for me. But of course, listening practice is important.

So I realised that I, of course, I love walking. I love getting outside. So now I put on a podcast and go for a walk. And sometimes I even talk out loud because I think in a big city, no one really cares if you look a bit weird. So I'm kind of practising my Chinese while I'm going for a walk and I'm enjoying it. It's a fun way to learn. So for me, this is quite a nice way to change my habit and make it fun.

Many things you could do, just think about what that would be for you. Two more things here now. One of them is to note down, I think noting down can be helpful, like physically writing it down. Note down what problems you might face or you might encounter that stop you from achieving your goal or your habit. So think about all of the things that could go wrong and get in the way of your new habit.

For example, I'll try to think of some from my own life. One of my long-term habits now is recording a podcast or releasing a podcast every week.

And one of the problems that could go wrong is what if I'm sick? What if I'm too sick and I can't record a podcast? And I have thought about this before. My solution is to record one more week in advance, which I always do now. I think it's a good idea so that when I am sick, like I was a few weeks ago, I can release the podcast I recorded last week. So I've always got like one week buffer.

And that is exactly why I've never missed a week of the podcast, because I thought about this possible problem. Another example, which maybe you're making a study goal for English. And one problem you might have is maybe you will not have an internet connection one day for some reason. So think about a solution for that is always bring a book with you. So you never have an excuse not to fulfill your habit.

Right. I've done that before. I had a week without Internet last year and I just took a notebook with me and I was writing down notes in Chinese and that was my study for the day. So, yeah, think about what could go wrong as well and plan for those emergencies in advance.

The final tip here, this is a long list of tips, I will try to make it clear and chaptered, you know, time stamped on the website so you can easily see each area in each section. But yeah, the final tip is to really, really focus on that feeling you get, the warm, fuzzy feeling of success after completing one day of your habit.

So rather than just tick it off and then forget about it, really try to be aware of how that makes you feel. And this small feeling will push you to keep going.

This is the same for many things when we're learning a language or whatever like that. Focus on those really small happy feelings. It's really motivational. So when you tick off your day, you look at that green tick or the green smile or whatever and you feel it, you feel success, you feel happy. And this is an example of what we call positive reinforcement.

Which means you're more likely to do it again because of a good feeling you had last time you did it. That's another key thing you could do. And just two reminders I'd like to give you now is...

remember that change is gradual. Gradual means slow. Good things in life tend to happen slowly. They say bad things happen quickly, good things happen slowly, but good things do happen and that includes your goals, your habits, whatever you want to do in life. So just trust the process and also

also enjoy the process as well. I think with most things in life, you will never arrive. There will never be a point where you finish English. There'll never be a point where you complete your workout training in the gym. You're always working. There's always more to do. I think

That can sound a bit depressing, but with the right attitude, I think it can be quite exciting. There's always more. Because any of us who play video games know the most depressing part of a video game is getting to the end of the game and realising there's nothing more to do. And life is never like that. With life, there's always more to do, which I think can be a really exciting thing. But we just have to remind ourselves that

We need to enjoy the process each day. Learning a language is not something we finish, not unless you're doing it for an exam or something.

So, try to enjoy each day. If it's not enjoyable, you need to make a change. And also, we learn better when we're having fun, so why not make it fun anyway? I also had the idea now to talk about some of my own habits to give you examples. I don't know how much value I can offer here, but I'll see what I can think of. I've already mentioned a few habits, like my language study habit of course,

my gym habit which is more recent to be fair I've got a gym in my building which makes it so much easier especially at the beginning when building the habit I think now it's become a daily habit for me even if there wasn't a gym I would still go and make the effort to go somewhere else and

But that's just become part of my day and I look forward to it now. I might listen to a podcast or music, go to the gym, and that's become kind of a fun part of my day as well. And just like I just said, I really focus on the feeling I get after going to the gym. I feel energised and healthy and my muscles feel sore, but in a good way. I focus on that feeling and that really motivates me to keep going day after day.

The other one I mentioned is my podcast recording habit. Again, I've never missed a week. And I think a big reason, well, two reasons. One is because I really enjoy it. I love making this podcast, so I never really consider missing it unless I'm sick, of course. And also here's another key thing. People are expecting it.

If I don't record a podcast today, I think many of you will contact me like, "Michael, where is the podcast today? Have I missed something? What's going on? Are you okay? I'm going to get loads of emails from everyone." And that can be really motivating because I feel like I would let people down if I didn't record one. And this is something you could do as well. This is known as holding someone accountable.

or someone holding you accountable. This is kind of a collocation, an expression. If someone holds you accountable, that means they're making sure you do what you said you would do. If you don't do it, they will question you. Hey, where is this thing?

So it's really nice if people can hold you accountable. So maybe if you have a habit that you're working on, tell someone else about it and make sure that that person will question you. If you don't do your habit, they will question you. Another way that I imagine people hold me accountable is with social media, I guess you could say.

One habit I've started in the past couple weeks is a running habit. I used to run on the weekend. Now I run, I guess, four times a week. Yeah, I think four times a week throughout the week. Just very short run just to kind of build up my stamina when I'm running.

And one of the ways I hold myself accountable is I post my runs on Strava. If you don't know, Strava is kind of like social media for fitness. You can track your fitness on this app. And I've got a few friends on there who are seeing my runs. And honestly, if I don't do anything, I don't think they will ask me. They won't question me. But because I know people are watching me on the app,

I feel more motivated to complete my runs because I promised, I wrote down, I am going to run four days a week from now on. If I don't do that, maybe people will notice that. So I'm more motivated. That's just one idea of what you could do as well. Here's another one that I think I could talk about. This is my walking habit. I mentioned before, I've walked every day for around 800 days. I think

Before 800 days, it was longer, but I was really sick and I missed one day and I felt terrible about missing it, honestly. But my definition of success has changed a lot since starting this goal. Five years ago or so, I used to have the definition of 10,000 steps every day.

And that year I did so many steps. I think my average step count for the whole year was 16,000 steps per day. So it's a lot. That's my average. That's a big average. And

Anyone who knew me at that time will tell you how crazy I was, how silly I was being, because sometimes I would leave my house right before bedtime, like 10pm, and go for a walk for one hour, just because I hadn't reached my step goal yet.

On my even crazier days, I would be lying in bed at 11 o'clock at night and realise I'm only on 9,500. So I'd get out of bed and I would walk circles around my living room until I reached 10,000. And it took me a little while to realise that this is not a healthy way to approach a habit. I was feeling stressed, I was busy. It's not a good idea. So

I realized this walking habit is a good idea. I do think it's a good idea, but my definition of success is not good. So what I did, I changed 10,000 steps to 45 minutes. I have to walk outside for at least 45 minutes.

Another thing that did is it means I didn't have to walk quickly. That could be a really slow walk or a quick walk or even a run. It doesn't matter how quick I'm walking, the time is always the same. So that was definitely an improvement. However, I still sometimes had the same problem where I've been working all day, I haven't had time to go for a walk. So I would have to go out and do a walk in the evening when I was stressed and busy and tired.

it wasn't always a good idea either. What I have finally changed to was changing my mindset to a very healthy one, which was walk as much as I'm able to. This really required me to be honest with myself. You can't lie to yourself now.

So basically, if I'm feeling healthy and calm, not stressed, I can walk for two hours outside. I didn't time myself. I didn't count my steps. I just walked for what I felt like I was able to. And I was honest with myself. And at the end of the day, I would ask myself, did I succeed? And I would honestly say, yes, I did.

However, there were some days where I was really sick. Like one day, one week, I had COVID. I think I had COVID. I felt horrible. I just felt very weak and tired. But I wanted to keep my habit. And I think even when you're sick, getting outside and feeling the wind can be beneficial to some extent.

So during that week where I was very sick, I put on my mask and I walked up the road and then back down. And I think it was like two minutes in total, two minute walk. But on that day, expecting to walk 45 minutes was just so unreasonable. So I knew that that two minutes was as much as I could do kind of healthfully and

on that day. So I considered that day a success as well. So that is how I've been able to reach 800 days walking streak because I have changed my definition of success to be more in line with my health and my stress and my lifestyle. So that's, I think that's an important lesson there, not to set a standard that you can't keep every day.

Here's one more habit that I do. I'll just share this one because I think it's quite funny and it might give you an idea of some small things you can do. There's many times in the day when we can multitask. Multitask is do two things, two different things at the same time. And

One thing I like to do is stretch for health reasons. It also feels good if I stretch in the evening. I think I sleep better as well. And one thing that I'm working on is my squat, which is where you put your feet flat on the ground. You squat down. You kind of bend your knees and your your bum is very close to the ground, but you're not sitting down. All your weight is on your legs. So that's a squat.

In Asia, very common, people can squat here quite easily. For a lot of Westerners, it's more difficult. We're not accustomed to squatting. However, it does feel amazing. When I squat, my legs feel so good. It's like a really nice stretch for me.

So when I'm brushing my teeth, I have the habit now, this is habit stacking again, I have the habit of stretching my legs. So sometimes I'll put my legs very wide, I'll stretch one backwards like that. So it's just kind of stretching gently when I'm brushing my teeth. Very nice, simple thing to do. Then I floss my teeth and while I'm flossing, I squat down. So I squat down on the floor, stretching my legs and flossing my teeth.

So it's kind of a funny one. Maybe that's giving you a funny image in your head, but that's a way that I've done two things and merged those habits together or stacked those habits on top of one another. Maybe that will give you some ideas as well. Speaking of that, if you do have some habits that you're trying to work on right now, let me know. I'd love to hear what you come up with or what you're trying to work on and if you're successful with that as well.

Okay, this is a super long episode, but I think I'm going to go right to the end. I don't want to cut the episode short, so if you listen to the end, let me know. That would be very impressive. But I want to talk about two more things today. One of these is giving yourself a break. And this will be not too long now. But I think this is important to mention in this habit masterclass because...

you know, it can be a lot of stress, a lot of pressure to put on yourself to do something every day. And it could be how often you do it or just the amount of time you spend doing it. Both of those can be quite stressful. One rule that I've heard before is allowing yourself to miss one day, but never miss two days in a row. And I think that can work for some people. Uh,

Some people, they have to miss a day for whatever reason, but if you miss two days in a row, then it becomes a habit of not doing that thing.

Personally, I'm not a fan of this. Just for me, again, it's a very personal decision, but I'm a kind of all or nothing kind of person. So if I miss a day, I would feel quite demotivated and quite sad. And I know that about myself. So I prefer to find a way to keep going every day.

which may not be, it may not work for everyone, but that works for me. Okay. So I'm not going to repeat myself. I think my first tip would be exactly what I said about my walking habit, which is redefine what success means to you. So if one hour of walking a day is too much, change your definition and make it doable so you don't need to miss a day, right?

And my other final tip here would be don't make your habits boring. If they're boring to the point where you want to have a break, then focus on making it more fun. Because again, habits is...

almost everything in life. We do habits every day. And because these are long-term habits that we're creating, why make them boring? It doesn't need to be boring. That's why many podcasters take a break recording episodes. Nothing wrong with that, of course. That works for some people. But for me,

I don't want to take a break because I enjoy them so much. It's not boring for me to record these. So I want to keep going. Same with my language study. I enjoy studying so much now because I've tweaked it. I know what I enjoy. So I don't want to miss a day. I never feel like I want to skip a day. It's actually quite enjoyable for me. So yeah, just think about what you could do to make it more fun as well.

And finally, the last section. Now, this is avoiding bad habits. This is really just the reverse of getting good habits. We want to get rid of those bad habits. And that can be just as impactful as, of course, the good ones. So the main question to ask yourself is what triggered the bad habit? Here's that word trigger again. Notice that?

In other words, what caused the bad habit. Usually when we do something bad or we consider bad, it's caused by something that comes before. This is exactly the same idea as habit stacking, just in reverse. So I'll give you some of my own examples of bad habits. I'm going to get very personal and tell you what I've struggled with before and then give you some solutions for each one.

One of my bad habits that I had for many years on and off, which was having a sweet drink before bed, a sweet sugary drink. And I realized this came about, this was caused by my habit of having a drink after dinner.

I don't know when it started. It's been here my whole adult life. In the evening, I like to have a hot drink before I sleep. Maybe two hours before I sleep, not right before I sleep. But I've always enjoyed that. So that was my habit there.

Another one is biting my nails, which I've done for many years. And I realized the trigger, like for many of us, is when I feel anxious. I'm busy, I'm stressed, I'm nervous, and I bite my nails without thinking, right? Another huge problem I had before was watching YouTube videos before lunch.

For me that was a problem because in the morning is when I do most of my things like study, work, so I don't want to get distracted with YouTube. And during my language study time I realised that the trigger for watching these videos was anytime I found something very difficult. It was a really funny moment when I realised that when

I would do my flashcards for example and then there was a really difficult sentence and my fingers would automatically go over to YouTube and click on a video to watch. And sometimes that would be 10-15 minutes. It would really ruin my language study session and also take a lot of time, waste a lot of time. So the trigger for watching YouTube was facing a difficulty in my studies.

And here's another small one which I've tried to fix because I have had knee problems in the past and I think sometimes this can be caused because we always stand with all of our weight on one leg. It's much healthier, I think, to spread your weight over both legs evenly, right? So yeah, one of my bad habits was leaning weight into one of my legs when I'm standing.

And one of my triggers for this was again brushing my teeth. I don't know why, but every time I brush my teeth, I would always lean on my left leg. And it's something I really noticed. It took a long time to notice, but when a doctor mentioned this idea to me, it became more obvious. So those are the triggers for me. Looking at these triggers can help us fix these bad habits.

So let's go through one by one the sweet drinks, right? Sweet drinks before bed. One I love here in Thailand, it's like a sweet sesame flavoured, black sesame flavoured soy milk drink. Really nice, but yes, very sugary. If it had less sugar, maybe it would be OK.

But the solution to this one is quite simple for me. And this is just don't have sweet drinks available in the house. If there are sweet drinks in the cupboards, I think I will always get it. I will always get one out because I will find a reason to. So don't have that. But also just removing it may not be enough because we don't want to punish ourselves. So rather than remove it, I replace it with a healthy drink.

So now I always have chamomile tea in the cupboard, which is a nice caffeine-free drink to have in the evening. It also makes me very sleepy, which is good. So instead of having my sweet sugary drink, I will have a hot mug of chamomile tea in the evening, which is very, very relaxing. So that is one bad habit solved, right?

Biting my nails, you may have to think creatively with some of these. With this one, I think it's not easy to stop biting your nails. We get anxious many times in the day, so it's hard to be aware every time that happens. My solution was to cut my nails very short. So if I did put them near my mouth, there would be no nail to bite. It's not long enough to bite anything, right?

I think another aspect of that is my nails are now very smooth. So when I do feel them, I realize how nice they look and I don't want to ruin them by biting them. There's another element there.

and one of my habits that I introduced to help with this was to put nail clippers or nail cutters on my sink in my view so maybe after I have a shower I can cut my nails and it's there it reminds me to do that so I've replaced the bad habit by implementing which means adding a good habit. YouTube before lunch watching videos

One of the things I did to stop this was to go to a public place. This worked really well for me where I would take my language study to a cafe outside every morning and

you know, in public, I am much less likely to get distracted and procrastinate because I feel like people might be watching me. And it's a bit embarrassing to get distracted in public, right? So I did that for a few months, maybe six months. I went into a cafe and studied in the morning. Now I have the habit of studying without YouTube. So actually, I don't need to go to the cafe anymore because I have kicked the habit.

So that's a good expression there. Kick the habit means remove the habit, to get rid of the habit.

So I successfully kicked the habit. So I no longer need to go to the cafe. That's a good one for me. And the final one with putting my weight into one leg. I think just being aware of my trigger really helped me here. So then whenever I went to brush my teeth, I would remember that, oh, this is a trigger for my bad habit. So then I try to introduce a positive habit, which I mentioned already, which was stretching my legs while brushing my teeth.

It's a lot better than leaning into one knee, you know. So yeah, replacing the bad habit with a good one directly worked well for me there. I think that's basically all I wanted to say. This is a huge, huge episode. One of the longest ones I've done on my own. But if you have listened up until this point, thank you so much. I know in my Taiwan cycling episode from a few weeks ago,

I said the same thing and I was very, very surprised and pleased to see how many of you listened until the end. So if you're still here, thank you so much. And please leave a comment, whether that is, you know, wherever you listen on the website, wherever you want to leave a comment, there's many places.

Tell me about your habits. What habits are you trying to work on? What bad habits are you trying to get rid of? Let me know all of your ideas in the comments. Maybe you're inspired to make a change as well. Just let me know. And also,

Also, let me know if you have found anything in this episode useful. As I said, I love this topic, but I just really hope that it helps other people in some way as well. I think in the interest of time, I'm not going to say any thank yous today. I'll leave it until next week. But I do just want to remind people that if you want to see more from me, if you want to join my group classes, go ahead.

get transcripts for these podcasts, bonus materials, quizzes, courses, many things like that, and join our nice, friendly, and global community, you can sign up at Level Up English Members. There's a link in your podcast app or wherever you're listening now.

And if you click there, you can find out more and see if it will be suitable for you. But it really is a nice place where everyone comes together. We all have the same goal of learning a language and we share ideas. People give their writing practice. I give them corrections and feedback. There's a lot of nice stuff going on over there. So if that sounds interesting for you, once again, link in the description or go to levelupenglish.school. Hopefully that can help you as well.

But yeah, I think I'll just end with a quote now to end this huge episode. And this is a quote from Aristotle, who said, We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. I may have read this one before, but it is a really good one. I'll try to explain it. We are what we repeatedly do.

So that means who we are, in my call, let's say, I am my habits. What I do day after day, that makes who I am, right? So being excellent or being successful or whatever word you want to use here is not an action that you do, but it's a habit, right? If you have the habit of doing great things, you will be a great person. That's what it means to me anyway.

But with that, I will leave it there. Thank you so, so much for listening until this point. If you are, you are a true fan and it means so much to me. So thank you. And I will see you next week for maybe a slightly shorter episode. Have a good week. See you then.

Thanks for listening.