#327: 3 Steps to Create Habits Faster

3 Steps to Create Better Habits Faster

Here's a transcription of this episode:

Ever wonder why it is so difficult to create a new habit in your life? Well, it's not your imagination, usually it's because there are three things that you're not doing that are going to help you create that habit. Not only better, but it's gonna be faster than you ever imagined. So listen in to get these tips.

Hello, how are you today? You know, before I started this episode, it was so funny. I was thinking about like, gosh, don't you have like a funny story to share or anything like that at the beginning? And I was thinking about it and the funniest things that I have happen to me are on my walks.

They are always something with some cute little animal or something like that. Like I was walking Frankie the other day and that's my dog. We were walking towards a sprinkler that was going off and I saw this hummingbird. It was just in the sprinkler hovering up and down in the sprinkler, just enjoying getting a nice little shower.

And it's been, you know, 90, a hundred degrees here in Sacramento lately. So I can totally relate to this little hummingbird trying to get cooled off.

And that was probably just the most delightful thing that I have seen recently. I don't know that that's funny, but it is something that brings me joy when I can go out on my walks and be outside when it's quiet. And so I wanna offer that as a practice to you. If you're looking for a way to lower your blood pressure and to really take yourself away from so much of the, the news, right?

That we, we get so stuck to our phone, we start looking at the phone, we start getting caught up in what's going on in the news cycle and all the talking heads, and we've got these people making up stories about each other. And I just want to offer to you that none of that, when you're looking ahead, you know, in your lifetime and you're on your deathbed, you're not gonna look back and say, boy, I sure wish I had watched more of the news.

No. So I just wanna offer to you that you take care of yourself, that you really look after yourself because you know, I, that's exactly what I do, is yeah, I might look at the headlines, but I don't get emotionally involved in the headlines.

So if you notice your blood pressure going up when you're looking at social media or you are reading headlines, it's time to take a rest.

It's time to take a break. And we're actually gonna talk about how to notice some of that and how to create better habits surrounding anything you wanna do, including removing yourself from those areas of social media. If you want to do that. I highly encourage it. I know I am much happier not <laugh> getting myself emotionally involved in those things. So with that said, today we've got a great topic. I am really excited to share this with you because I've drawn from my client success stories and I've brought a lot of my clients onto this podcast.

If you want to get all of them in one place, you can go to dina cataldo.com/map and that will download a guide for you that has my best of episodes. So you'll have a ton of my client episodes there.

There are a couple that have not been updated on there yet. One is with Andrea, who I'm gonna talk a little bit about today, and Nancy who will likely come up today as well.

So I just wanna share with you that there are resources for you to dive into making any kind of improvement you want, but specifically in this episode, we are going to go into creating better habits for you faster.

And on that note, I wanna help you create habits that are going to help you reduce overwhelm. So in addition to this episode, what I wanna share with you is that I have a brand new masterclass called Call It's <laugh>, what is it called?

It's called the Busy Lawyer's Toolbox, calm, overwhelm, and really become a high performer in your law practice. What I'm gonna be offering you in this particular masterclass are tools that are gonna help you calm the overwhelm and become that high performer.

And some of there's gonna be some overlap. 'cause I'm gonna talk about one thing in particular that we're definitely gonna be talking about the masterclass in the masterclass in depth because it is so essential. But I want to make sure you understand that these masterclasses are no joke, right? So if you get a lot outta these podcasts, you are gonna get 10 times more in a masterclass and you're gonna get it in a shorter amount of time. So my masterclasses, they're usually about 75 to 90 minutes. This one's gonna be about 90 minutes. And that 90 minutes is an investment of time.

Imagine, you know, 10 episodes of this podcast times 30 minutes each at least, right? You're saving so much time when you come to a masterclass because you're getting this condensed version of information. And not only that, you are in an environment where you are entirely focused on what you are learning. Oftentimes when we're listening to a podcast, we're washing dishes, we're driving the car, we're taking care of something, you know, else happening in our world. And so our attention is divided.

But with a masterclass, I've designed these so that I can really bring your attention in and help you retain these more. And there's a few ways I do that. One is we block off this 90 minutes of time.

So this is a specific amount of time you and I are spending together live in this masterclass. And of course, when we're live, there's something about it where we just pay more attention.

It's like, oh my gosh, it's almost like we're in the room with somebody. And that's what I want the experience to be with you, because I want your engagement. I'm asking you questions, I'm looking for your responses, I'm reading your responses, you're totally anonymous there, but at the same time, you're a part of a community of people and we're all together learning these concepts.

So these concepts are ones that might be sprinkled over 10 episodes of this podcast, but you're getting 'em all in this one episode, this one masterclass.

And not only that, but if you have been somebody who's kind of visited the strategy page a dozen times and you've been thinking about working with me, but you're not sure if you wanna work with me, this is a beautiful opportunity for you to see if we resonate working together. Because you're gonna get a sense of my teaching style.

You're gonna get exactly like how I think about things and what I believe are the best ways in order to improve your performance to calm overwhelm. The proof is in the pudding, so to speak, with the the client testimonials that I have. But I wanna just share with you that when you sign up for a masterclass, you are telling yourself that you're all in on learning these concepts and integrating them into your life. You're all in on making change for yourself.

So if you are all in on making change for yourself and you are devoted to changing yourself, I want to invite you to August's Masterclass. Go to dina cataldo.com/august masterclass, or you can go to the show notes to sign up. And also, one more thing.

So in every masterclass I offer a special something to people who want to take action.

And I will give you that opportunity live during the masterclass, and you can only get the thing that I share.

It's different depending on the masterclass, in the masterclass when you show up live. So I wanna encourage you to show up live, and I wanna encourage you to take notes. Go to dina cataldo.com/august masterclass, and I hope to see you there. Okay, my friend.

So let's talk about creating some habits, shall we? So the way I look at creating habits is there's the way where we're grinding, we're white knuckling, we're forcing a habit into creation, which I've seen people do, but that's not a way that I choose to do things because I don't like how it feels. And also it doesn't tend to be something that feels right to me. And I want things to feel in alignment with my values and who I am. And when I'm thinking about habits, I look at habits as either coming from this white knuckling or from decision making and from devotion.

So I'm deciding what I want and then I am devoting my attention, my energy towards creating that habit. And I'm not doing it in a way where I'm forcing myself. I'm trying to put like a a square peg into a round hole. I'm doing it in a way that includes the three elements that I'm gonna share with you here today. I didn't always do it this way.

This was not my natural way of being. I was very much let me force the square peg into this circle because I'm sure I'll be able to force it in.

That didn't work for me.

I was stressed out, I was overwhelmed, and I felt like I was just exhausted all to the time. Which makes sense when I share with you this, this metaphor, I think it's called a metaphor, I'm pretty sure this is what this is called <laugh>.

So think of your brain as a Maserati. It's the most high tech machinery in the world that we're aware of in the universe, right? So our brain has this amazing power. And when we are feeding it mud, right? Like we're putting mud into the gas tank, mud's gonna come out, we're gonna get clogged up. It's not gonna feel good. We're not gonna have high performance. But if you have clean fuel, if you've really paid attention and started devoting yourself to something really using the principles I'm gonna share with you here today, then you're using clean energy. And when you use clean energy in your brain, it's gonna function better. It's kind of like if you were to eat potato chips all day long, you're not gonna function at your highest level. But if you ate salmon and salad all day long, you would function at a much higher level.

Very different fuels for our bodies, for our minds. And you will see the results, right? The proof in the pudding, so to speak, when you start to implement what I'm gonna share with you here today. So let's talk about this. Number one, the number one thing that we all need to do, I needed to do it. Every single one on the planet needs to do this before they change anything, before we create any new habit, is simply awareness of where we are without judgment. Awareness of what we are, are where we are right now without any judgment. Okay? This is incredibly important because whenever we judge ourselves, we block ourselves from change that is like putting up a big brick wall. And we don't want that. If you wanna create a habit, we've gotta have a lot of open space. We've gotta have like a blank slate that we're looking at so that we can make some decisions about what kinds of habits we wanna create and what habits we don't particularly like or aren't getting us the results that we want.

And that requires taking an honest look at who we are, what we're doing, all of those things. So having that awareness is important, but what can block us is the judgment.

And we judge ourselves for not waking up early in the morning. Are we judging ourselves for not reading as many books as we think we should be reading? Are we judging ourselves for not completing projects? Are we judging ourselves for not being a morning person? Like what are the things that you're judging yourself for? Gotta take that away and just notice it at first. We're not even, we don't even need to take away the judgment right now.

Let's just notice it at first.

This is step one.

This is where all my clients start, is simple awareness. Now imagine that a simple awareness without judgment, walking through your day, being aware of what's happening versus frantically rushing through your day without pausing to notice any of it.

The muddy fuel that enters into our brain is when we become frantic, when we become overwhelmed and we just rush through our day without noticing anything that's going on within ourselves, within our minds. If we don't notice these things, we can't change them.

That's one of the reasons why creating a habit is so hard, is because most of us simply don't pause to recognize what's going on. And one of the reasons why coaching is so effective is because you have designated time every week to have somebody help you notice those things, to help bring them out.

And that is one of the things that has really shown through in the years that I've been working with lawyers, is that this step of awareness, when they start getting clarity here, makes it so much easier to move forward. So let me give you a couple of examples.

So I remember, and, and Andrea still does this, Andrea will come to a session and we had a a, a podcast with her on recently, and she might have talked about this, but when she comes to a session, she has been thinking all week, not just about work, she's noticing what's been going on at work. She's been noticing how she feels, she's been noticing how she thinks, she's been noticing how she reacts, what are her triggers to certain things, what, what triggers anxiety, what triggers frustration. And she's noticing these things and she does it without judgment, which is why she can come to a coaching call, share it with me, and then we can work through it. But if you don't have that awareness, you can never question it. You can never do anything with it. 'cause You just don't have the awareness. I had another client who was on the podcast, Allison, and she would do the same thing.

She would bring realization.

She would say, ah, yeah, I noticed that I felt frustrated when this thing happened.

I felt anxiety when this thing happened or didn't happen the way I wanted it to.

And because she had that awareness, it made it so much easier to then move on to the next step.

And the next step is curiosity.

That's the clean fuel we wanna bring to creating a new habit. Being curious about what you're feeling and being curious about what you're thinking instead of, and here's the dirty fuel, assuming that you know what's happening, assuming that your brain is telling you the truth, assuming that your brain is right.

Now, this was a big learning thing for me because I walked through my life believing all the thoughts that popped into my head when my brain told me that guy's a jerk. My brain believed it when my brain told me I don't have time for this.

My brain believed it and because my brain believed those things, I was walking through life in constant reactionary mode. And you might relate to this, if you notice that you're constantly putting out fires because there's something going on in your brain right now, and maybe you have some awareness of it, maybe you've been a little curious about it. That is preventing you from planning is preventing you from taking a step back and getting that 10,000 foot view of your practice to gain a clearer awareness of what exactly is going on. What habits do I have of thinking? What habits do I have of doing in my practice that aren't serving me? And making that, that awareness without judgment. Now the judgment blocks us from change. So if we're putting out fires in our day, we might have the awareness of, boy, I need to manage my time better.

You know, but because we're judging ourselves for not managing our time and telling ourselves things like, you know, you should know better by now. Or this is, this is harder, this is harder than needs to be. And it's, it's your fault. You are not doing things right, there must be something wrong with you. Which was kind of a, a recording in my brain.

And I see it so often with the lawyers I talk to too.

That judgment blocks us from doing anything about it.

It blocks us from getting curious.

So in order to create a new habit, not only do we need to have that awareness without any judgment, but then once we remove the judgment, we can say, ah, let's just get curious.

Is it true that I don't have enough time? Or is it that I'm choosing not to do it because I'm tired?

Is it true that there's something wrong with me? Or maybe it's because the legal profession doesn't teach me the skills I need to manage my time. Is it really true that I am disorganized or is it that I simply haven't found what I need to be successful yet? I'm still trying things.

So there's, I'm not saying that that is always the case, but what I wanna share with you is, is that if we close off curiosity, we cannot think differently and we cannot create a new habit. We cannot do anything differently. 'cause Our brain just thinks, oh, I'm too busy. I don't have enough time.

Or that guy's a jerk.

And so we can never create a new habit where it's managing our time.

Or let's say, for example, a big one I see is, oh, I wanna start a new habit, like a workout routine.

And the thoughts about the workout routine are is are I can't do it. I don't have time. I'm too tired.

There's just so much to do. My family is depending on me. If I do this, I'm selfish. And if we just go through believing those thoughts, then we never make change.

So if we get curious about a thought, I'm just gonna pick one, which is, you know it's, it's bad if I do something for myself, which is something I see a lot of lawyers struggle with because they wanna spend time with their family, they wanna be present with their family, but they think it's selfish to do something for themselves.

Like, go take a workout, go for a walk, those kinds of things. And I wanna question that with, is that true? Is it true that it's selfish? 'cause Is there another perspective on that?

And the other perspective that I always see is, what if it's not?

Because when I take care of myself, I'm more energized and can be present with my family when I'm more energized, I can perform better at the office. When I perform better at the office, I make more time. When I make more time, I can do things for my family that I wouldn't otherwise be able to do. I can make time to go to events and all of those things. So I just wanna share that with you because it's massively important that we take care of ourselves. And yet we put blocks up in this kind of way. And I'm gonna be talking about this in the masterclass in depth, and I'm gonna give you some steps to really look for here. So go to dina cataldo.com/august masterclass, sign up for it, and we're gonna talk about those on this topic of curiosity.

Right now, I wanna share a couple extra tidbits. One is that when you hear, and you know if you're spiritual, great. If you're not, that's fine too. But when you hear things about spiritual masters, the spiritual masters became masters because they recognized that they knew nothing. They were in a constant state of curiosity. They were not judging anything around them. They weren't judging themselves, they weren't judging other people. They weren't judging anything as good or bad or right or wrong. What they were doing is they were observing. And that allowed them the space to just know nothing. And when you don't go in, assuming you know the truth, you become open to changing. You become open to seeing things differently. You also become more malleable to change habits. Okay? This is really important because if you wanna create a habit, you've gotta become malleable. You've gotta be able to shape yourself.

But if you're not doing these three things I'm talking about, it's gonna become really hard and ask me how. I know for years I tried it the hard way.

This is actually the easy way. Another thing I wanna share with you is what it looks like.

Because if you're noticing your feelings, right, the first step is awareness without judgment.

You notice your feelings and then you have this curiosity. So Jackie, she's been on the episode before, on the podcast before. I'm gonna link to all these episodes I'm mentioning in the podcast notes as well. So if you want to listen to them, you can. But Jackie would notice her feelings, for instance, anger. And not only would she notice it, she wouldn't judge it. She would just say, okay, here's anger, I see it, I feel it. And then she would get curious about what was really causing it.

And she talks about that in her episode where she's talking about she just needed to notice things. She needed to started noticing things. And when she was able to do that, she could get curious for just long enough to stop the reaction.

So in the context of creating a new habit, let's go back to starting a new workout routine.

Let's say you feel guilty, it's the, it's the end of the workday. It's four o'clock, you wanna go to yoga, and that's at four 30 and yoga ends at six and you won't get home till six 30.

There's gonna be part of you. Your brain is gonna say, oh my gosh, I should just go home and I should make dinner for my family, or I should do this, or I should do that. I should be with them. And you're going to feel guilty. Now instead of just believing your brain and saying like, yes, you should go home just to pause and notice, have that awareness that you feel guilty and notice it without judgment.

You're not a bad person, you're just noticing it. Oh yeah, that's that feeling of guilt. And then from there you can ask yourself, ah, what do I want to do with this? Right? What's really causing this? Okay, my brain is telling me I shouldn't be doing this thing because my family's important, but I also know that in order for me to be at my best around them and to be able to make more time when I'm at the office, I need to recharge my battery and yoga recharges my battery. So I'm actually a better person and I'm better for everybody around me and I'm serving my family better when I go to yoga. That curiosity allows you to begin seeing things from a new perspective.

I'm gonna link to another couple episodes that I think are really helpful here. Episode 3 0 9, how to Handle Difficult Opposing Counsel.

That one was a really good one. We talked about emotion there. And episode two 50, thinking versus Worrying That episode's another really good one to talk about this particular area. Alright, so now we've talked about number one, you've gotta have awareness without judgment to create a new habit. Number two, you have to be curious about what you're feeling and thinking.

And then number three, you've got to acknowledge your accomplishments. I do this by celebrating with my clients.

Every single week wins. So here's what I mean by this. Acknowledging your accomplishments, that's the clean energy. So let's look at what the dirty energy might look like. It might look like you telling yourself, well, I only did that mediation, or I didn't do the whole hearing, or I didn't do the whole motion, right? Or, there must be something wrong with me because I never finish what I start.

Those kinds of thoughts are dirty fuel. And when you're thinking, I only did, you're minimizing what you did. So let's say for example, in the mediation, a mediation could have taken you six hours, could have taken you four hours, whatever it is. But it wasn't just a mediation, it was client preparation, it was reviewing case files, it was having witnesses prepared if needed. It was having documentation prepared, it was getting, getting the evidence in order. It was doing all the little things. It was writing out your statement to the mediator. It was doing all of these things. But so often what we do is we look at our calendar, you know, we usually just put our appointments on it. We don't put anything else on there. And we say, oh my gosh, the only thing I did was that mediation. Well, I know for a fact that it's not only anything.

And so I wanna offer to you that when you go through your day, instead of filling your tank with dirty energy, that mud, you wanna go through your day acknowledging your accomplishments. And I kind of take it to the extreme with my clients. Sometimes I'm like, okay, I want you to acknowledge every little thing you do as amazing. I don't care how simple it is. You know, you took that paperclip off without cutting yourself.

You, you know, did this amazing thing. You went on that walk. I want you to acknowledge everything that you're doing in your life because when you do, it makes it so much easier to create a habit. Let's go back to the workout habit. So the habit is you wanna workout at 4:00 PM but you feel guilty, okay?

And, and you maybe you're looking at your workload and you're saying, oh my gosh, I did not get everything done that I needed to get done.

This is just too much going on today. I really shouldn't go to the gym. I should really just finish this project up and you feel a little guilty 'cause you didn't do the work. I want you to apply exactly what you're hearing here in this episode. One, be aware of what's going on in your brain.

And that means you've gotta listen to what your brain is saying. I'm not saying you believe it, but I'm saying you listen to it and you hear it, you listen and you hear it, and you do it without judgment. You do not believe it. You just observe it like you're a third party observer, <laugh> like you're a mediator.

And then the second thing you're gonna do is you're gonna get curious about it.

You're gonna say, okay, let me get curious about this. I, I know I didn't accomplish everything I wanna do accomplish today, but is it absolutely necessary that I do this thing by eight o'clock tomorrow morning because I'm coming to the office at 8:00 AM Is it something I can do at 8:00 AM Usually the answer is yes.

Sometimes it's not. But it's important to at least question your thoughts and ask yourself, okay, what is it that I want? What is most important to me right now? What is absolutely essential? Is there something that's going on that needs to happen by eight o'clock tomorrow morning?

Or is it something that I can just say, ah, yes, I'm feeling guilty and that's okay. I'm gonna go ahead and I'm gonna go to the gym because I know that I function better when I feel more rejuvenated, when I feel strong. And that's incredibly important.

So the way to get there, or one way to get there is to acknowledge everything that you did during your day. Ah, when I got to the office, I checked my emails, and then I went to this office and I talked to a lawyer about this particular problem. And I called this client and I went to court.

Then I came back and I worked on a motion, and then I went and I did this other thing and I did discovery and so on and so on and so on. Instead of going straight to I didn't do enough, I didn't finish this thing, I should finish this thing. I'm bad because I didn't finish this thing. It's really important. It's a really big difference. And when you have habits, you wanna create, like working out, getting eight hours of sleep waking up early in the morning, eating healthier. If we are beating ourselves up about every cookie that we eat, if we're beating ourselves up about every project we didn't finish, if we're beating ourselves up about every time we didn't wake up or hit the snooze alarm when we didn't want to, it is going to make it so much harder to create a habit.

It's gonna take so much longer. So I really want you to take this to heart. These are the three things. I'm gonna go through 'em again. Number one, have awareness of your brain and of your feelings in your body without any judgment. Okay? Don't judge anything. It's, it's like being that impartial third view, right? We want that impartial viewer of what's happening in your life. Like you're a crow in the sky and you are just observing what's going on below you. No emotions, attachments or anything like that. You just wanna observe. What am I thinking? Oh, I, I'm thinking I'm gonna feel bad if I don't go home right now and have dinner with my family.

Oh, okay, well what is actually gonna serve you best? Right?

That's the next step.

Two, being curious. Is this really going to serve my family if I don't go to the gym?

Ah, well no, I'm gonna go to the gym, right?

And then when you come up against those things that tell you, oh, you shouldn't do this habit, this new habit, you shouldn't go to the gym. You've gotta acknowledge your accomplishments. You've gotta say, wait a minute, look at all the things I did accomplish today. Just because my brain is telling me I didn't do enough or I should be working, doesn't mean I have to listen to it. Let's just pay attention to it, notice it, get curious, and then acknowledge myself for the things that I did accomplish, right? So when we stay in that clean energy, it makes it so much easier to create the habits that you want. Alright, my friend, if you want to implement this, if you wanna have somebody who's on your side helping you step by step, implement everything that you're learning here in this episode, in all the episodes in the master classes, I am here for you.

Go to dina cataldo.com/strategy session. Book a strategy session with me. You and I will have a conversation about what working with me one-on-one will look like. And it's gonna be a little bit different for everybody, but the good news is, is that I've heard it all, so I can definitely help you. So go to dina cataldo.com/strategy session and we'll talk about working together. Alright my friend, I hope you have a fabulous rest of your week. I hope to see you with the masterclass and I will talk to you next week. Bye.