Making Space For Empowering Habits

What's keeping you from ingraining the positive habits you want to stick?

In this episode, we debunk the myth of morning people and night owls, revealing that it's all about the habits you form. We'll explore the importance of creating space for new, empowering habits by eliminating old, negative ones. Learn why most people fail to stick with new year's resolutions and discover practical exercises to identify and replace counterproductive habits in your life. Whether it's getting in shape, improving relationships, or achieving personal goals, this guide will help you create a lasting habit transformation.

00:00 The Myth of Morning People and Night Owls
00:53 Understanding Habit Formation
01:55 Why New Habits Fail
03:34 The Importance of Space for New Habits
04:51 Identifying and Replacing Negative Habits
06:52 Practical Exercise for Habit Change
14:07 Diet and Habit Formation
17:26 Creating Space for Empowering Habits
18:33 Conclusion and Call to Action

What is Leading With Force?

Welcome to Leading With Force — a podcast where seasoned entrepreneur Brian Force shares the invaluable lessons he's learned on his journey through this crazy, wonderful life. Having built several multimillion-dollar companies, Brian dives into the nuts and bolts of building successful teams, scaling businesses, and leading with passion and purpose.

Each episode offers practical tools to effectively cast your vision, build your team, boost productivity, and become the leader you were meant to be. Brian's mission is to inspire you to unlock the incredible power within yourself, achieve your goals, and make a meaningful impact on the world. Join us as we explore how to find your inner leader, empower others, and embrace your journey.

Let's dive deep on habit forming today, specifically how we can form [00:01:00] better habits and how we can make space for those better habits and how we can create awareness around the lack of space that we have in our world for those new habits to really take root.

Those positive habits to really take root. What most people miss when we're talking about forming new habits is that more often than not, the reason that our new habits don't stick Is because we haven't undone and gotten rid of the unproductive, negative habits, the counterproductive habits that are occupying that space in our mind, in our nervous system, in our routine that are simply taking up time in our physical world for our new habits to actually have a place.

Right, we're taking up brain power, taking up emotional energy, taking up energy inside of our nervous system. And they're keeping us from deeply ingraining those new positive habits into our daily lives.

This is by the way, one of the primary reasons why most [00:02:00] people do not stick with their new year's resolutions.

Research has shown that only 9 percent of people actually follow through on their new year's resolutions. In fact, 23 percent of people quit after the first week and 43 percent of people quit by the end of January, which means almost half. Of the people who go into the new year committed to a new habit, whatever goal it is, they're going to have to form a habit to get there, whether it's getting in better shape, diving deeper with their relationships, learning a new language, getting some sort of certification, starting a new business.

All of those are Based in some new habit that they don't currently have in their world. And by the end of January, almost half of the people that committed to forming a new habit have already given up on that. We've all probably experienced this in some way, shape, or form. One of the best examples is how busy the gym is on like [00:03:00] January 2nd or third versus how busy it is on Valentine's day by the middle of February.

So many people that had a new year's resolution to get back in the gym and start taking their health and fitness more seriously have completely given up on it. By the middle of February, and that's truly sad because those people deserve to have that habit in their lives. Those people deserve to have that meaningful tie to the outcome that they're trying to achieve.

The problem is we tend to set ourselves up for failure because we don't understand enough about our own psychology to create space in our world for empowering habits. The reason that we have to think deeply about the space that we have in our world is our lives are already full of habits. We are creatures of habit by nature.

Whether we watch the same shows, we eat at the same restaurants, we listen to the same songs. Is there a movie in your life that you've seen like a hundred times? Habits create repetition in our worlds. They create a sense of security. They create a sense of [00:04:00] certainty. One of the six basic human needs is our need for certainty.

And so our brains are hardwired to create patterns and patterns just manifest themselves in the form of habits. What we tend to do, we tend to continue to do. And so we already have A habit stack. It's the same thing as when we talk about going on a diet. I'm going to go on a diet.

Well, I have news for you. You're already on a diet. It just may or may not be an empowering diet. It may or may not be a diet that actually is good for your body. I certainly hope that it is, but when we talk about going on a diet, We're acting as if we're not already on one.

What we should be saying is that we want to eat a healthier diet. We want to incorporate better philosophies into our diet. We want to incorporate better ingredients into our diet. We're already on a diet and we already have habits.

So when we talk about creating new habits, the first thing that we need to do is acknowledge that we already have a full list, a [00:05:00] full stack of habits in our world. It's very difficult to just add new habits, especially as an adult, because we already have a way of doing things. We have a way of going about our day.

We have a way of navigating the world. We just may or may not have consciously built those habits. We may or may not. Have been deliberate about the way in which we interact with the world. We may or may not have been intentional about building empowering habits, but make no mistake. You already have a stack of habits that you abide by every single day.

And it's important to really notice that. Because adding a new habit without replacing an old habit is a surefire way that this new habit that's probably a little bit difficult in the beginning, that probably takes some real resilience and some real commitment and maybe a little grit on our part to really solidify, he's going to be the first habit to go when we realize that our plate is full.

When we don't [00:06:00] compromise, when we don't sacrifice any of the old habits in our stack, it becomes very difficult for us to really deeply ingrain a new habit into the fold. We have a finite amount of time in the day. We have a finite amount of energy and trust me, we have a finite amount of willpower.

And so when we're already exhausted because our habit stack is not empowering and we're already short on time, ingraining something that we know is good for us, but it's a little bit difficult in the beginning is going to be difficult for us. It's going to continue to get pushback. It's going to continue to be an all start next year.

It's going to continue to be the first thing we make excuses not to do when things are hard. So I want you to start to change your mind and change your philosophy around new empowering habits. What I'd like for you to do and this is a really great thought exercise is I'd like for you to make a list of [00:07:00] all of the new habits that you really want to ingrain in your day to day.

Things that you know you should be doing, things that you know will be good for you, things that you realize you will benefit greatly from when this version of you starts showing up every day. What are the habits that this version of you Really leans into what are the habits that are essentially unconscious for this version of you.

It's the way they navigate the world. And there might be one, there might be 10. There's probably some healthy number in the middle there, maybe three or four things that you really know that you need to make a habit, right? Perhaps one is exercising regularly, really taking care of your body, eating a cleaner diet, getting more sleep, more rest, reading more, learning more about the world around you and how you want to navigate it in a positive way.

Maybe breathwork or meditation, stretching or some form of [00:08:00] self care. Maybe it's just spending really intentional time with people that are close to you. Maybe you're a workaholic and you spend all of your time really focused on your career and you want to make a habit.

of spending more time with the people that you love, enjoying every moment that you can with the people that are truly a blessing in your life.

I want you to make a list of every one of those habits. Let's just say you have three to four really good ones. And then I want you to take a moment and I want you to draw a line down the center of a sheet of paper with those new habits on the right hand side. All of the new habits that you want to incorporate into your habit stack, into your life, just ingrain into your way of being.

And then I want you to take time and think deeply for a while. Think deeply around why you don't already possess those habits. Why aren't you already [00:09:00] exercising at the frequency that you would like to be if you had that habit fully ingrained, why are you not eating with the quality that you'd like to be?

If that habit were really ingrained, why aren't you spending more time intentionally with the people that you love? I want you to take that question deeper and deeper. That why, that why am I not already doing this? And I want you to consider that it's not a matter of you not having the motivation. It may not even be a matter of you not having the willpower.

Willpower is finite though. Motivation is incredibly finite. It's most likely a matter of space. For every single one of those habits that you've put down, I want you to think [00:10:00] deeply on what should go on the left hand side of that paper. And what should go on the left hand side of the paper is the habit that you currently possess that is getting in the way of you ingraining the new habit.

What is getting in the way and occupying the space where this empowering habit goes? When you make excuses not to exercise regularly, what most frequently is getting in the way? What most frequently is making that excuse really, really easy? Perhaps you want to exercise regularly, But you work really long days and by the time you get home from work, you've got a million things going on Your family's there.

You want to spend time with them. You've got to make dinner for everyone. You're still not quite wrapped up You might have a few emails you still need to send off [00:11:00] There's a whole lot going on and if you don't get your workout in in the morning Then you're probably not going to do it later on. Maybe that's just how your schedule works in that case It's very obvious what you need to do You need to be waking up energized every morning in order for you to get your exercise in at the beginning of the day.

And so now take that deeper. Why are you not getting up and working out every day and have an honest conversation with yourself? Are you spending too much time at night watching Netflix or scroll doom scrolling on your phone when you should be getting restful sleep? Because that's your habit. By the way, if you're staying up way late at night Blasting your eyes with blue light and completely just hammering your senses and not allowing yourself for restful sleep I can almost guarantee you your ability to get up [00:12:00] and exercise regularly in the mornings It's going to be entirely compromised.

You have a negative habit of staying up way too late and indulging in a practice that is going to totally destroy your circadian rhythm and make it difficult to get a good night's rest. And until you replace that habit.

Making space for you to get up and exercise regularly is going to be nearly impossible. This is just the bridge between our negative habits and our positive habits that we'd like to replace them with. It's just the excuse as to why we can't do the new thing,

and in that scenario, it's a very easy example. I know I haven't worked out in forever. I'm just not a morning person. And by the time I get home from work, I got a million other things going on.

So I just haven't been able to keep consistent. Well, no, you haven't created space in your world to stay consistent. You just acknowledge that you weren't a morning person. I have a secret for you. There are no such thing as morning people [00:13:00] or night owls. There are just habits. So you've made a habit of putting yourself in a situation where it's very difficult to wake up in the morning with energy.

If you were to change that negative habit or annihilate it entirely, you would have absolutely no trouble waking up rested and being excited to go exercise and being even more energetic when you were done exercising. It's not. The way you're wired. It's the way you're choosing to operate. It's your organic habit stack the stuff that just develops unconsciously over time You can use that same example for not spending enough time with your loved ones.

You obviously have a habit of Prioritizing work before everything else in your world and until you rid yourself of that habit You're going to be fighting an uphill battle to spend more time intentionally with the people that you love.

So you're starting to understand new habits. Don't just slide seamlessly [00:14:00] into the fold. They have to take space that is currently occupied by a disempowering habit. This is the exact same philosophy, by the way, as your diet, this is a wonderful example of how a lot of us treat our bodies.

If you want to be successful in getting your body, your health, your fitness to a place where it serves you, then what's way more important than the amount of healthy foods you eat is the reduction in junk food that you put into your body.

That is the long and short of it. I want to say that again. Dieting is so much more about what you don't eat than it is about what you do eat. There is a vast amount of really great nutritional food out there and the reality is every single one of us reacts to it a little bit differently. Right. There are some people who really do well on a vegan or vegetarian style diet.

There are some people that do really well with a [00:15:00] lot of seafood. There are people that are allergic to seafood, could die if they ate it. Right. Everybody reacts a little bit differently. But that's really not what dieting is about.

If you just get in the habit of generally eating nutritious food, you are going to be 99 percent of the way there. That's really not the problem for most people. The problem for most people with their diet is it goes something like this. They eat one or two clean meals a day. And then when it gets to dinner time, they go, Oh my gosh, I've been so good today.

I'm going to have X, Y, and Z and X, Y, and Z is not good. And then X, Y, and Z starts a whole empty carb cycle that has you eating poorly for that meal and then probably snacking a little bit later on.

And then by the end of the day, the amount of calories that you've ingested, 40 percent of them were from those two good meals. And the other 60 were from that really bad dinner and the couple of snacks that you had afterwards. And then you get further down the line and you start to get [00:16:00] frustrated that you're not getting in the shape that you want, that you're not feeling the energy that you want, that you're not feeling the effects of the healthy food that you ate. Well, it's not that you didn't need enough healthy food is that you didn't get rid of the junk food that you were still eating.

You still have 50 to 60 percent of your meals that are not serving you. They're working against you. And so at best you are standing still. But at worst, you're still slightly moving backwards. The key to an excellent diet isn't just to eat more healthy food.

It Is to reduce the amount of junk that you put into your body, the amount of toxins that you put in your body, the amount of things that don't serve you. You can see this as a direct example of how we form habits in order to form empowering habits. It's not just about doing the empowering thing, because at some point you're going to get full.

At some point I can only eat so much healthy food. If I haven't left room in my body for me to eat more healthy food because I filled it up [00:17:00] with junk. I'm not going to have space for that healthy food. I'm not going to have space for that food to come in and work its magic on my body, making me a more energetic, healthy, sharp minded human being that goes out into the world and does great things because I have the right fuel.

I'm not going to have the space. And if you still have disempowering habits in your life, you're not going to have space for the new habits. And so I want you to do this exercise and take it seriously. I want you to draw that line down the middle of the sheet of paper and think deeply around how what's on the left is taking up the space that you'll need to reserve for what's on the right. What do you need to get rid of in your world to create the space for the empowering habits that ingrain? The answers are normally very easy to uncover.

If you're staying up every night, having a couple of [00:18:00] beers, not getting to bed till midnight, and then making excuses as to how you're not a morning person, and that's why you can't ingrain the habit of exercising. You've got to make space. You got to get rid of those couple beers, or at least tone it down a little bit.

Get to bed earlier. Read a book instead of watching TV. It'll make you more tired. It'll give you better restful sleep. You'll wake up energized and ready to go. You can apply that to any one of the habits that you have struggled to ingrain.

Something else is taking up that space in your habit stack. I would love to hear the results that you get from this exercise and what you need to remove in your life to create space for the empowering habits that you want to implement. Drop a comment. Let me know. Get in touch with me. I appreciate you watching this episode and I look forward to talking to you soon.

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