Breaking Free from the 75% Thought Loop: and building habits for your future self faster

Do you ever feel like you're stuck in a loop, making the same decisions day after day despite your best intentions to change?

You're not alone.  

In this episode we'll explore this fascinating fact how 75% of our daily thoughts are nearly identical to yesterday's, creating a cycle that keeps us living in our past rather than growing into our future. 

Discover groundbreaking research that shows people with a close, friendship-like relationship with their future self make demonstrably better decisions today. Brain scans reveal that different neural pathways activate when we think about our future self as a friend rather than a stranger. This connection translates into healthier eating, better financial choices, and greater life satisfaction. I share insights from John Sonney's powerful "The Bridge" meditation technique that helps strengthen this crucial connection between your present and future selves. 

The key to meaningful change, bringing our future selves into the present sooner lies in understanding the psychology of habit formation.  

Whether you're struggling with health goals, productivity habits, or leadership development, these evidence-based techniques will help you bring your future self into your present reality much faster.  

Ready to break free from recycling your past and start embodying who you're truly meant to become? Listen now and share this episode with someone who needs to hear this message.  

Transcript

Welcome to Change Wired Podcast

Speaker 1 0:00

Hey guys, and welcome back to another episode of Change Wired Podcast, the podcast where we explore what it really takes to grow, change, lead and never stop changing in a world that never stops moving. I'm your host, angela Shurina, executive Coach 360, body Mind Work and change leadership consultant, someone who is really, really passionate about changing for the better, growing and spending more times in our present as our future self, not as our recycled past, as John Sonne would probably say and you'll learn who's John Sonne and why I'm talking about him in a moment. But first, guys, did you know that 75% 75% according to research of our thoughts that we have every day? 75% of those thoughts are almost identical to what we had yesterday, to what we had the day before and the day before that? And that means, because thoughts drive our actions, that what we feel is pretty much the same day after day after day, and feelings drive our decisions. So we make the same decisions, we make the same choices and then we take the same actions and we end up reliving recycling our past lives instead of growing into the future that we say we want. Plus, future always feels like, you know, that new suit or new pair of sneakers that are just not right until you make them right and wear them many, many times, so that future self always feels like uncomfortable, awkward, like that new suit or new pair of sneakers. And past self feels like those sneakers that we've worn many times and we're going to love them, but also we know that they might not work anymore for us and we need a new pair of shoes or a new suit.

Future Self Research & Benefits

Speaker 1 2:03

Today we're talking about getting're getting personal with our future self, not with who we've been, but with who you are becoming guys. Why I'm talking about future self so much today? Well, first of all, according to research and data, people who have better relationships with their future self. They literally scanned people's brain different people, different brains and they scanned a lot of brains and they learned that people who have better relationship with their future self, almost like a friendship, different parts of their brains lit up when they think about their future self. And people who seem to think about their future self more like a close friend than a neighbor you never say hello to people who have closer, friendship-like relationship with their future self tend to make better decisions for their future, tend to eat healthier, do more fitness, make better decisions about saving their money for the future, about prioritizing future, just making choices that their future self your future self will be more proud of. Like you know that future image that you say you want and you know you can become that person. People who have closer relationship with their future self make better choices in the present and they're more satisfied with where their life is headed Future Self.

The Bridge: John Sanei's Meditation

Speaker 1 3:45

Yesterday I attended a book launch with Eric Kruger, john Sonney. They have an amazing podcast, awards-winning podcast, expensive, and they just released. And yesterday was the book launch a new book, expensive, based on the contents of their podcast 250 episodes of their podcast. They're based here in South Africa where I've been spending a lot of time. So book launch.

Speaker 1 4:21

And again during that book launch, there was a lot of conversation about change and who we are becoming and how to make this becoming more guided, more towards the future and the selves that we want. And today I wanted to share with you a couple of tools that will help your future self, to help your present self better, to act more often and more consistently, more effectively on behalf of that future self, whether that's a new health and fitness habit you're trying to build, or perhaps money-making habit or business-making habit or new relationship habit habit how do you actually act on those intentions that you know are good and needed to build to bring into life that future self that you want? Yesterday, at the event, john Sonney, one of the co-authors, shared a meditation the bridge. He called it the bridge All about feeling, thinking, envisioning and bringing more often into life your future self, feeling them into the present. So John talked about this meditation, the bridge that he released, and I decided that is such a cool tool and I want to do that more often because I do feel like I'm moving too slow into the future self that I want to create. And I decided okay, from now on, before falling asleep, I'm going to put on my headphones and going to listen to the meditation and then going to go to sleep, and that's what I did yesterday and I know I'm really great at building habits and because of that I am faster at creating the future self that I want than a lot of people, and that's what I also teach my clients. But first I want to share with you where my clients struggle the most and where I also struggle more when I don't do that. So how can you, just like I did yesterday with John Sannes Meditation, just like I did yesterday with John Sunnys meditation.

Speaker 1 6:44

Build habits, routines, take actions, make decisions for your future self. How can you do that more successfully, more often, more consistently, right now, into your present, versus just forgetting or pushing it back? You know when I have time, when I remember and then forgetting and not doing it ever. When I start working with my clients on their lifestyle or their productivity habits, on their leadership habits, they have this baggage almost like a whole suitcase of unlived inspirations or aspirations that they never get to doing. And when they come to me, they often would say something like well, you know. And when they come to me, they often would say something like well, you know, I know I got to do it, but I haven't been doing it and I don't think I can manage to do it on myself. That's why I need a coach and what we often discover is the reason why leaders, amazing people like yourself, guys, the reason why we don't follow through on our aspirations can be as simple as not setting up one core, essential element of behavior, of forming new habits, of taking new actions consistently.

Speaker 1 8:03

What am I talking about here? I'm talking about triggers. There is one famous behavior change model or just behavior model. Actually, bj Fogg in Stanford created the simple model behavior equals motivation, ability, prompt. What basically means?

Speaker 1 8:23

In order for any behavior to happen, there has to be before it becomes a habit. There has to be motivation. You need to want it, you need to understand why it's important and it has to be quite strong, depending on how hard the action is. The harder the action, the more motivation you need to create to facilitate in yourself. Then you have ability. How easy is that? Do you have all the resources? Do you have all the means? Did you create the systems? Sorry, guys, drinking some water making my voice work. So then we have motivation, we have ability. How easy it is? Do we have all the tools? Do we have the right systems set up for ease of execution? And we have prompt, which is trigger, which is some sort of reminder, whether that's externally created, like an alarm, or you put your vitamins by your coffee machine when you start taking your supplements so you never forget, or it's something internal that doesn't have necessarily any reminders in your environment, but a feeling like when I get hungry or when I get sad, I'm going to go for a walk to restart my emotional balance to refresh, to make it more positive. Right Walks help you to feel better, help you elevate your mental, physical, emotional state, or it can be a trigger, can be a routine, like me and meditation. Every time when I'm gonna go to bed and about to fall asleep, I'm gonna put on my headphones and listen to this John Sunday's meditation.

Speaker 1 10:07

They also call this principle of creating recipes, so to speak, in your mind, walking you through exact routine of when this happens. I'm going to do X at this place, using this, this exact recipe of actions linked together, linked to another habit or another routine. When you create these recipes, the follow-through percentage goes way up. They call it implementation intention in behavioral psychology. One of the examples that I like to bring is they used it for voting campaigns calling people up who signed up to vote and asking them to tell exactly when, where, how, they're going to go and vote, and the percentage of people who actually followed through with actions grew by a lot significantly. Limitation and intention one of the most effective ways to make yourself follow through.

Linking Triggers to Existing Routines

Speaker 1 11:09

But an important thing here about trigger it has to be linked to something. There has to be simply some reminder for you to take new action and that's why many of my clients and that's why I myself, when I fail to take action, I realize that something is missing. Remember this BJ Falk behavior model behavior equals motivation ability, prompt, prompt Is there a prompt? If it's a new action, what's going to remind you that you need to take that action at that specific moment where you have the ability, where it's convenient, like when I'm falling asleep. This is the time when I know I'm going to be falling asleep at some point and I downloaded the meditation so I don't have to go anywhere online. So I downloaded the meditation. It's on my phone, it's available. Ability is there Motivation? I want to get better at bringing my future self into my present. I want to get better, faster at it and to grow and to develop as much of my potential as possible. That's my why, that's my motivation. So behavior equals motivation ability prone.

Speaker 1 12:23

I already gave you example how, with my clients, we start taking supplements on a regular basis, especially with clients who are overwhelmed by all the things they got to take care of, whether that's a busy mom or busy executive and they're like I always forget. There are so many things I have to juggle in my life. I also love helping clients to develop this what they call habit-sticking routine. When, just like I do with my falling asleep and my night routine, a lot of my clients find it a lot, a lot easier when we think through a better morning routine or a lunch routine, because they're already going to have breakfast, they're already going to brush their teeth, do something like shower. We all have some sort of morning routine. Now, it might not be well thought through morning routine of I don't know some high performer, but you already have a morning routine. You're probably already going to have breakfast, or at least your cup of coffee. So how many things can you link to that? How many things can you habit stack in order to wire in a new behavior, a new habit, faster?

Speaker 1 13:32

So with a lot of my clients, we either link a lot of things, creating this beautiful new flow that allows them to bring more of their future self into the present faster. So we link stuff around their breakfast, we link stuff around their lunch, we link stuff around their dinner, like one of the other habits that I love helping my clients develop is walking after dinner by themselves to listen to a podcast, to reflect on their day, or with their loved ones with their family, building bonds, connections, adding steps in, because a lot of us are busy and we often don't, we stop walking. There is commute, there's a car, there's I don't know a lot of work in front of our computer, and so we need to figure out how to get steps in to maintain this beautiful machine, our body. So one of the habits that I love helping my clients to develop is walking after dinner, because they are going to be eating dinner at some point, so they might as well start walking. And if they have business dinner, why not walk together? When we walk together, we think together dinner. Why not walk together? When we walk together, we think together, we make more mutually beneficial decisions and choices and it's much easier to come to an agreement.

Creating Systems for Success

Speaker 1 14:49

But all of that again back to the idea that any new behavior that you want to do because you want to bring that future self into the present faster, and without action there is no change. Now, yes, initially you got to think about that, you got to create certain decisions and emotions, but if you don't take any action further, your future self will die right then. And there, without action, there is no change. And so how do we take more actions forward, more aligned with our future selves. We build new habits. The effect will compound. But how do we build new habits when we don't have them and we are already busy and overwhelmed? They say that it takes on average 18 to 254 days to build a new habit, and I'm personally convinced, based on my 17 years in coaching, that you build habits faster by using proven formulas, proven by researchers and a lot of experiments and studies and research.

Speaker 1 16:05

Like one of the great models, all of the behavior models have some sort of trigger and prompt. So when you're trying to take new action, to build new habit, at first you need to manufacture that prompt, that trigger, without which new behavior is a lot, a lot, a lot less likely to happen ever. That's why every behavior model has some sort of prompt and trigger. What is it that's going to make you think about this new habit, this new behavior that you want to start doing in your environment, internally, in your day? What other routines and habits people alarms? Something in your environment, like vitamins by your coffee machine? What is it that's going to prompt you, that's going to trigger you, that's going to remind you to take this new action which is aligned with your future self, the future self that you want to become more and more and more of. Instead of living reliving recycling, as John Sane would say, your past, living reliving recycling, as John Sané would say, your past.

Speaker 1 17:12

The core idea, to sum it up, of today's podcast, guys, is when you decide to take on new action, build new habits.

Speaker 1 17:27

If you want to be faster and more towards the 18 days of forming new habits not 254, like almost a year if you want to do that, think about good prompts, good triggers, good reminders that are going to be effective at helping you remember to do this new thing that you know you got to do, you want to do, to bring your future self into your present sooner.

Speaker 1 17:50

That's it for today, guys. Hope you found this podcast episode useful, fun, relevant and more future-bringing and change-promoting. Don't forget, guys, to share this podcast episode with at least one other person who might need this podcast to grow and to develop themselves, and also who'd be fun to talk about this concept and help each other to build more triggers, more prompts, more reminders so, again, you can take more actions towards your future self. Thank you, guys, for listening rate, review, share. That's how we create more change agents and high performance into the world and make the world better a couple of years at a time. Thank you for listening and until next time, keep changing and keep building that relationship with your future self.