So last week Dion summarized everything that we've learned over the last 12 weeks and we have learned a lot so we do want you to continue using and implementing all of the incredible tools we've talked about.
So last week we all left the session with a cheat sheet that's going to summarize what we learned about things like shaping up work, power starting projects, creating powerful playbooks, and so much more.
So today I'm really excited we are talking all about the art of showing up, and how to do it well. So we'll be sharing some neuroscience secrets to transformative habits, and the key to showing up correctly is actually found in your identity so I can't
wait for Dion to talk a little bit more about that.
And just before we dive in today's pro tip is to recognize that not all of our work has to be so hard. I love when I heard this the first time, because I'm sure all of you guys know society always says that if we're not perpetually exhausted that we
can't be doing enough. But we know as brilliant leaders that making meaningful contributions does not have to come at the expense of our mental and physical health, thank goodness.
And so in week 12 we talked a lot about loving what we do at work we talked about Steve jobs and merging our productivity with our joy so we want to be operating in both of those.
And there is actually another concept will be learning in the near future, which is all about making work more effortless, and it's called essentialism and give you a sneak peek down we'll talk about this in the weeks to come but essentialism is all about
working on the right things, and the effortless part is about doing them in the right way. So for this week's challenge, try to begin identifying which tasks in your workflow are essential for moving the needle in your team and business, and I do encourage
you to go back and review our week 12 training, if you need some help with that. And in our future sessions we will talk a lot more about essential things and how to make them more effortless so as a reminder, be sure to add your questions your comments and your reactions
in the chat. As we're going through the material with Dion we do love to see how the concepts are resonating with each of you or even where you feel like you might be getting stuck.
We do want to be able to support you as best as we can. So, if everyone's ready to dive in. Dion, you are up.
Thank you so much Jalen hey everybody so good I love these sessions we get to do together.
I always love it. Jalen when you give your summaries because I know you that you implement every single thing you just said. That's true. She's not speaking theoretically.
I've been amazed at how you have so quickly upgraded all your own work habits so I want to talk about about today a little bit about that.
And I've called the topic, perfecting the art of showing up. And really this is the whole thing about how you can create habits powerful habits and so here's the big idea for today.
Your most powerful habits start when you create a new identity for yourself. And number two, when you then show up consistently every day in that identity.
So, it starts when you create a new identity for yourself.
And then secondly, when you shop every day in that new identity. So, little backstory of how I came to understand this or do this was when I was writing one of my books.
I've only written two so when I was writing the other book, the second one.
And when I was writing this book.
I had a problem because in my own head and identity, I kind of saw myself as, you know, I'm a person who likes a lot of like to think, and so I'm guy watching TED talks to relax that's how I unwind.
I will watch stuff that will stimulate my thinking I will watch stuff on physics I'll watch stuff on, you know, interesting history or anything that, because what it does it feels like when my mind expands my body relaxes.
I don't know if you're that person that's how I'm wired. And so when I was trying to write a book.
more as a sort of a thinker academic and not really somebody who writes a book anyone else will want to read, because my first book which was really a dissertation was just a walking down of my PhD, you know, you know PhDs are those things nobody ever reads
you know you, you know you think about a bachelor's degree, and you learn you know you learn quite a bit, you know, but and then you learn master's degree you learn you know more about less, and then you get all the way up to a PhD and you learn less
and less until you eventually you know everything about nothing, and then they give you a PhD. So when you get to that point, you know, and so that's why you don't tell people you have a PhD because then they think you can't do anything.
But the idea would be that, you know, and so I sort of saw myself in the wrong when I was writing the book.
really struggling. And I threw away the first few chapters. And
I knew I had over 30 years of research behind this book. And I
had given so many talks on this topic. And I was very taken by
the idea that I kept watching people struggle to grow. And I
was very interested as to why. And so the big breakthrough
came when I saw myself as a writer for everyone. And I
remember thinking it was such a small change, but it was apps.
Once I changed that identity, I changed. And I was it was so
weird, because the tactics became a lot easier. For
instance, I decided every Thursday morning, I'd write for
four hours, one deep work session, and I'd write for four
hours. But then because I changed my identity, to be a
writer for everyone, it immediately I my creativity
kicked in. And I thought, well, how would I talk to everyone, I
would just have a conversation. So how do I make it more
conversational. So I decided to get which I have still right
here in front of me, you know, a proper headset. So I got a
headset, got a dictation software thing going. And I
talked about the book instead of writing it. And so because I was
doing this for everyone, the headset and dictating to the
book put me in a whole different mindset. And guess what started
to happen? I started to have fun. Now, when I used to write
before was pure discipline. So as the guy, the eternal academic
who, you know, as you know, I've done several degrees and so on.
So I'm used to academic writing, I'm writing dissertations, I'm
used to writing papers and theses and all that stuff. But I
said thesis, by the way, thesis, just to be clear, that
don't mishear me. So the the tired as you can tell today. So
as I was going through this, this process, I had to imagine
myself speaking to an audience and, and I found that I didn't
have to discipline myself to do this. I found myself more and
more starting to look forward to this as the identity became real
for me, as I started to see myself as a writer for anyone,
or everyone. I suddenly found Thursday mornings coming in even
a little earlier, staying maybe an extra half an hour later, I
found that that truly that thing we talked about before, that
delight leads to discipline. I tell you, if you can discipline
yourself and try to think that leads to delight, it I mean, I
noticed is possible if you practice the piano every day for
you know, three hours, then maybe after 10, you know, 10
years, you can play any music you like, and that's a delight
to you. I suspect that all along you delighted in playing all
along. That's why you practiced as much as you did. But I don't
know that it works, or at least not sustainably, where
discipline drives delight. I just don't see that. And this is
a huge key in trying to make what Jalen was alluding to in
the beginning is part of making your work feel more effortless
is delight. So let me let me share with you, you know, a
couple of, you know, because maybe you're listening to this,
and you're saying, I don't know, does that really work to just
changing my identity will, will help me create new habits?
Absolutely. And the reason is, and this is secret number one,
or key number one, if you want to, if you're making notes,
changing your identity gives you permission. Because for most of
us, I think when we're trying to create new habits, we make the
mistake of trying to do too much, you know, we figure out
all the habits we want, instead of just picking one habit. So
I'm going to give you a strategy today on how you can very simply
put your a simple strategy for being able to initiate these
habits. So we try to do too much. And we focus on our
behavior, not our identity. I've used this is sort of the next
level up from the talk when we went through the idea of how
your identity gives you permission, is if you know,
somebody is trying to give up the habit of smoking, and then
somebody offers them a cigarette, they say, they can
have one of two responses, they can either say, No, I'm trying
to quit. What are they really saying my identities, I'm still
a smoker, but I'm a smoker trying to quit. Or you can say,
No, I don't smoke. I'm a non smoker. And so the non smoker is
more likely and very quickly able because of the permission of
the identity. If you're trying to become somebody who runs
every day, that is your problem. You're trying to become somebody
who runs every day, you're not a runner who runs every day, you
have to become a runner, you have to give yourself permission to
be a runner. And what do runners
do? They run. How often? Every day. So you can become, or you can even make it a little more
fine-tuned. I'm a daily runner. I'm a daily, even though you've never run every day ever in your
whole life, you are a daily runner. And this ability to change your identity that gives you
permission, it rewires your brain. It rewires the thing you feel like doing. And that's what gives
it the feeling of being more effortless. So from a neuroscience viewpoint, there's three
things in neuroscientists talk about when they always talk about habits. They talk about this
idea of compounding. And this idea of compounding is like much like if you think of how money
compounds interest on interest on interest, right? So if you, at the time that America was
discovered, if you go back to Christopher Columbus, and you take the original money,
and you deposited that, and you got 4% interest a year, then over the period of all that time,
guess how much that money would be worth today? About $22 trillion, the size of the US economy.
Just saying compounding is an incredibly powerful tool. And that's why young people can make so much
more money than, you know, than all people I used to when I used to teach finance to eighth graders,
which was one of the fun when we ran a school, I teach logic, and then I teach finance to eighth
graders, which was so much fun. So what I told the eighth graders, you're 14 years old, or you're 12
years old, or whatever, 13, how old the eighth grade is about 13, 14 years old, right? So let's
say you're 14 years old, and you take $1,000. And you put it on on it. And every year, you put in
$1,000. And you get, let's say, 10% return a year, compared to a doctor who is 40 years old,
and earns a million dollars a year, who will make the most money by the time they're 60?
Yeah, the kid, the kid will blow it away and do nothing for it, by the way, just money compounding.
Doctor will work his tail off for getting a million dollars a year and not beat the kid. Why?
Because the doctor only had 20 years to compound, whereas the kid had so many more years. So they
had 44 years or 45 years to compound. So compounding is an incredibly because so what we want to do
with our habits, is we want to compound our habits. So we want to start really small, like
the kids starting with $1,000. And let it build up interest on interest, let it compound. And we do
this, the key to doing this is by changing our identity gives us permission to start the little
investment and then the compounding. And in the same way that productivity compounds the same way,
when you start becoming a productive person, you become a more productive, more productive,
more productive. And, you know, some of you are still trying to get deep work as a, you know,
as a working habit, right? So any if you know, I wanted if I asked people on the team or people
listening to the replay, have you got deep work working as a habit? Well, because it's compounding
in my life, today's Wednesday, and I've just finished my fifth deep work session this week.
So I pound them out so far, and I don't even think there's such a delight to me that when I have to
lock in and go now, one of them was a deep work session together with Graham, we did it together
on Monday. And it wasn't quite four hours, just a little short of four hours, three and a half hours
we did together. But the compounding of productivity starts to happen. So it's not like, oh,
you must learn deep work, and it ends there. We told you that because we wanted to get you going.
But what we didn't tell you, which is the really amazing part is that productivity will compound.
And then knowledge compounds, right? One idea that makes you come up with a bright idea
compounded will turn you into a genius. So knowledge compounds, productivity compounds,
relationships compound too. When you start showing small kindnesses to your team,
that compounds into a whole impression that people have of you. It compounds into a reputation.
So you start with just being kind, thoughtful to others, doing small things for other people,
and that starts to relationally compound. So I want to give you this idea that these habits,
whether it's you showing small kindness at work, whether it's you going the extra mile for someone
and doing a bit of their work or taking over for them, I think that is one of the most powerful
mechanisms to create that kindness and that type of
approach or compound to a reputation of somebody who's very empowering and somebody you can depend
on, somebody who cares. So as a leader, as you're thinking of being, you know, as we always talk
about being, excuse me, a team of leaders, this is really important. So this permission, just
starting with the identity, I am the person, I am the thoughtful person at work. I'm not a person
trying to become more thoughtful. Notice the difference, the one's focused on behavior
and the other's focused on identity. I'm not trying to be, I'm not trying, you know,
I asked Graham one day about his sickness and he said, I'm not a sick person trying to get well,
I am a person who's fighting off, I'm a well person fighting off sickness.
Sounds like the same thing. The one is identity and the other is behavior or the fight. So
let me share with you, I know whenever we talk about habits, there's always somebody who goes,
yeah, I've tried so many, I've read all the habit books, I've done the habit thing,
nothing's changed. I tried to do the, you know, I tried to do, you know, I'm too old for this,
I'm too young for this, I've tried too many books, et cetera. Well, let's just put that
all aside for a second and realize the two keys I'm giving you. One is that by changing your
identity, that that leads to delight and that is joyful to you. If there isn't an immediate joyful
element, if there's not an immediate delight to you in the process, you probably didn't really
buy into the identity. And so the reason, the minute it feels like work, the minute it feels
like, and that's why you can't add a new habit every week and then 52 weeks later be a changed
person. That's why that doesn't work. You can read all the habit books you like and there's
some brilliant ones, you know. Atomic Habits is a great book. There are a lot of great habit books,
but it all comes down to this key thing of identity. When you net them all out, you know,
my delight is to study a lot of different sources of things and go and find the one
key idea that moves it all. The needle moving thing and then share with you.
Save you reading the 20 books or whatever it is I did to get there or the many, many TED talks or
whatever. So that's the key for us, right? Is that, so that is really key number two or secret number
two, if you like. It's not such a secret, but changing your identity leads to delight.
And then let me share with you the, you know, and maybe we think there's some other reason is I'm
not a naturally disciplined person, you know, or man, I really want, I wish I were more disciplined,
but I'm just not. I married, you know, to a person who is the most amazingly disciplined person
I know, you know, she's the sort of person who decided, you know, 30 years ago, I'm going to
exercise every day. And it doesn't matter the weather. And it doesn't matter what she gets up
early and exercise. She just decided one day and does it. I don't know how quickly she did that.
But when I speak to her, she says, but that's, but that's who I am. And that put me onto the idea of,
oh, she gets that the identity drives the delight, which drives the discipline. So the identity gives
permission, which drives delight, which drives discipline. So you don't start with a discipline,
because you'll become disciplined automatically. So that really is a big key. So we become
disciplined automatically. So when we become disciplined automatically, it's it's people look
at your life, when you get this compounding thing going, starting with identity, people look at you
and say, you're so disciplined, because what they're what they're not seeing is that you did this in
stages, each step, and you built one step after the other. So let me give you some real practical
tactics. And then we'll and then we're going to breakout session. So here's some practical steps,
three, three simple practical steps that you can use to do this for yourself. One, pick your new
identity, right? That's where it starts to make it thin slice, you know how to do thin slicing,
make it a thin slice. And I'll give an example. And then three, pick a trigger. The trigger is
the thing that caused you to show up. So let's talk about what what do we mean by that. So example,
number one could be stopped trying to be a person who'd runs every day, become a daily runner in
your mind, give yourself permission to be a runner, thin slice, you want to run every day at the end
of the day.
thin slice, put your shoes, put on your shoes and walk to the
end of the road the same time every weekday. That's the thin
slice. Notice there were actually no running involved.
Because this run is just going to walk to the end of the road,
you walk to the end of the road and back, that takes seven
minutes or six minutes or whatever it is, and you come
back. Because what we're starting with the thin slices,
what you're exercising is not the running, what you're
exercising is the identity. Does that make sense? Is that making
sense to you? What you're practicing is your new identity,
you're not practicing the behavior. You're practicing the
delight, not the discipline. And then after a while, it gets
longer, and then you'll run to the end of the road and back.
And then after that, you'll run a couple of blocks and back and
you'll be back in 10 minutes. And after that, you'll be off.
And soon you'll probably do marathons because that's what
runners do. But if you try to do the marathon up front, man,
you will do but this one, it's amazing. You see this with I
heard a dog will watch the documentary where they talked
about how actors who have to play a specific role and their
body has to be in a certain shape, all the exercise and the
trainers and it'll be like six hours a day and they'll go
through it and they will look amazing on the on the movie. But
within, you know, 3060 days, all that goes away. So what drove
that change? Think about this carefully. Why? Almost everybody
who goes through that exercise ends up not being the person
eat how many people that's why diets, by the way, don't work.
diets or behavior. So the reason diet but if you say I am a I am
a healthy eater, then healthy eat people do what they eat
healthily. And you don't start with everything you can say,
well, part of eating health is I don't eat sugar, or parties or I
have low carbs or whatever it is you want to do. But if you start
with a diet, which is behavior, even if you get to your goal,
wait, guess what happens six months later, you're back to
where you were worse. Right. And that's the reason that why
behavior never works. And it always the reason the actor
doesn't is for the delight of fitting the role, the delight of
doing their role while being in character looking the part.
That's what drives the discipline for the actor to go
through it. But when they're done, they weren't an exercise
in person, they weren't a gym person, they were just an actor
who delighted in the role. I hope this helps to see this is
this seems like a nuance, but it's actually I called it a
secret, which I rarely use that word, but I called it because it
seems to be not too obvious to most. So what's the trigger? I
said the thin slice put on my shoes, and walk at the end of
the to the end of the road, same time at the end of the day each
week. So the trigger could be when I turn off my computer, I
put on my shoes. When I finished my cup of coffee in the morning,
I put on my shoes. When I wake up, I go to the you know, I go
to the bathroom and I put on my shoes. Maybe I put my shoes in
the bathroom. Maybe I put my shoes next to my bed, but I
create a trigger. So identity, thin slice trigger, let's try
another one. Since I've already given you an example of the
writer, if you want to write, then do this, you are give
yourself the identity as a writer, write one line per day.
That's about as thin slice I think I can make it one line per
day. And when I make my coffee in the morning, I pick up my
journal and I write a line. And then I'll write two lines. And
then I'll write a paragraph. And then I'll write a chapter or I'll
write a page, you can see where it goes. Why does it keep going
because it will compound, compounding will kick in for
you. And it can't be driven from, I have to write a page
every day. And so so perfecting the art of showing up is the
art of showing up for yourself, not necessarily for others. And
when you show up for yourself first, others will be the
beneficiary. Was that helpful? Did that make sense to you? When
I've every every group of or any person who's ever helped people
in the in this productivity space, or in the in the personal
lifestyle space, all the gurus in the space, it always comes
down to identity. That's the key. So let me end up with then
your most powerful habits start when you create a new identity.
And then
consistently show up every day. Because, key number one, changing your identity gives you
permission. Key number two, changing your identity leads to delight. Key number three,
delight leads to discipline automatically. Compounding will happen. Do not set the behavioral
goal so high. You don't have to start with the marathon. And by the way, even if you did start
with, I'm going to run a marathon, and you ran the marathon, it'd be interesting to know what was
your identity that drove that. In many people's case, especially very driven people, the identity
was, I'm a person who can set a goal and do it. So they set the goal, they do it, and they're
still not a runner. Does that make sense? All right. I hope that was helpful. I hope it takes
the pressure off you. You're not a bad person, or a weak person, or too old, or too young.
There's no reason you cannot do this. Absolutely no reason whatsoever. So, over to you, Jaylen.
Yes, it looks like we have a question from Addie. She said, thinking of identity,
is it like putting a hat of whatever we claim to do?
It is. It is. It's not just a role, though. It's how you see yourself.
It's changing the way you think of yourself, the way you speak about yourself.
So the way you see yourself in the sense of, so I would put it down to seeing, thinking, speaking.
The way you see yourself, the way you think of yourself, the way you speak of yourself.
So when somebody says, you know, are you, do you exercise much? Oh yeah, I'm a runner.
Even though you're the person who walks to the end of the road every day for five minutes.
But because, you know, compounding will work for you. So that's the power of it. It's seeing
yourself think, it's like changing and giving yourself that permission. All the habits,
all the discipline, all that starts to kick in automatically. Did that help, Addie? Yeah.
Cool. All right. Well, it looks like we don't have any more questions at this time. So we're
going to go ahead and break out into our rooms now, and you'll have an opportunity to discuss
the material. So as a reminder, there is not a worksheet today. You'll have an opportunity just
to discuss these, this identity and new habits to form. And then solo leaders, you can join the room
called general, where you'll have the chance to interact together and engage with the material.
And of course, you'll all be given a 60 second reminder before it's time to come back into the
main meeting room. So we're going to open up the breakout rooms now and Dion, we'll see them back
here at 155. Yes. Okay. Perfect. And the breakout rooms are now live. Let us know if you need any
help getting to your team. And I know this, this part goes into the recording as well.
So if we, if you want, we can talk a minute on it so that those who are watching can get this
piece done as well. Yeah. I'm happy to. Yeah. I think the, I think the big thing, you know,
I wanted people to really get out of this is how many of these components are fairly effortless.
And identity one is little more work than one thinks, just saying, Oh, I'm a writer,
but it's not quite, it takes, it takes that changing the perception, the mindset and the
language. It does change that day. You have to change your lanes. You have to change your thinking
as well. You say brilliant, but once you start getting that going and started thin slicing it,
it does compound to be something bigger, especially if you keep the trigger consistent,
all the other stuff is fairly automatic. You know, the, the, the, the delight, the discipline
and so on. Yeah. I liked the part where you were making the distinction between
the nuance of the language from, I have to run to, I am a runner and that's what runners do.
I get up every day and I run. And it's interesting because just how you were saying that identity
takes some time to form. It's interesting because I feel like the first piece of the puzzle is the
changing of the language and not just the changing it, but the catching of it or the catching of the
mindsets of, Oh, this is a moment where I am not operating from identity. I'm operating or
trying to operate towards it. Hey Jenny. Hey Jenny. We were doing a bonus material
since we've learned to do that before. Okay. Back to you, Jaylen.
All right. Well, I hope that your time with your team was good and helpful and it's time for
question and answer. So if you have any questions or need some additional insight, do feel free to
raise your hand or.
post in the chat, and Dionne will answer your questions.
And you're also welcome to share anything
you discussed in your teams, anything you feel
will really help move the needle in your business
and leadership with those new habits and identity.
Well, so I dropped a little like cheat sheet from today.
I would love you, while you're thinking of your questions,
please just raise your hand.
There you go, Robin.
Yeah, if I may, we talk, we talk, we talk.
What can we do about this new identity?
And finally, at the end, I suggested
maybe we could all change our identity to everybody
that's on this call with NOAA, change their identity
to we're all innovators.
And it was like, well, that was the perfect word.
And everybody said, yeah, yeah, that's us.
We're innovators.
So I just came out of the blue, out of the sky,
out of the upstairs.
But anyway, I just thought I'd share that with everybody.
Oh, I love that.
Thanks, Robin.
I always appreciate that.
I did drop a little cheat sheet because so much of this
is automatic if we will be patient
and we go to the heart of the matter.
So I can drop that little cheat sheet again.
Let me see.
Somebody's copy.
Maybe because you guys weren't in at the time, I dropped it.
Is it there now?
Can you see a little like little red or pink thing,
little note?
OK.
So I just basically just dropped the,
I'll drop it also in text format.
Yeah, but that's great.
I love the corporate identity.
That's even better.
Also the way we see ourselves.
Yeah, very powerful.
Any other questions?
No?
Yeah, so it really does come down to,
let me see if I can just copy that for you
so that it will show up that way.
Let me see if I can do it as text, not as an image.
Does that help a bit?
There we go.
OK, so I mean, so that's the bottom line for us, right?
That there is the automatic power of habits
if we get the order right.
Change identity gives you permission
to see yourself differently, which
leads to delight, which leads to discipline.
That mechanism is fairly automatic.
So there's the first key.
The first genius is change your identity.
Second genius is start small as a way not to get new behavior,
but start small as a way to reinforce your new identity,
not your behavior.
And then three, automatically, that small start
will compound to build a powerful habit.
And that's the key.
That's the secret of we just saved
you reading a lot of habit books and so on.
We will get to a few more other little power toys
along the way that will help us a bit.
That's right, compounding is definitely a secret weapon.
Yeah, no question.
Well, thanks, everybody.
I appreciate it.
Back to you, Jalen.
All right.
Well, Dion, I was going to say, I
remember at the beginning of our sessions with the Edge,
you were saying that learning is kind of like turning the dial
up one degree every time.
So I hope you guys are starting to see
the ice melt in your team and the heat's up now.
So thank you all for joining us.
That is all for today.
And don't forget that when we close out this Zoom call,
there will be an end of call survey.
And we would love for you to fill that out.
Let us know how your learning is going
and if you have any additional questions.
And with that, we'll see you all next week.
And happy Wednesday.