The "I'm Ready Now!" Podcast
Ideas to help you when you're ready for change.
The "I'm Ready Now!" Podcast
EP 21: Questioning Habits for Positive Transformation (Time for a Change!)
Imagine discovering that a seemingly pointless tradition could last for centuries without question. This episode of the I'm Ready Now podcast, hosted by me, Isaac Sanchez, explores this fascinating notion through a story about a bench in the Winter Palace Park.
Expect a thought-provoking conversation as we explore the transformative impact of positive lifestyle changes, sparked by my personal journey from being inactive to embracing fitness and healthier nutrition. These changes opened new social doors for my wife and me, leading us to inspiring role models who share similar values. Drawing on wisdom from Dan Miller and Dr. Stephen Covey, we discuss the importance of intentional habit evaluation to seize opportunities for growth.
Welcome to the I'm Ready Now podcast ideas to help you when you're ready for change. I'm your host, isaac Sanchez, here I share my musings on whatever it is I am reading at the moment, as well as any other ideas that I believe will help you break free from a standstill in your thinking in order to get you dreaming again. Thank you for joining me today. Well, I'm ready now. How about you? Excellent, so let's get started. Hello everyone, and welcome back to the I'm Ready Now podcast. Thank you for joining me. It's exciting that we are together again To me, it's exciting. It's great to be back with you this week. Let's get through the housekeeping. Here are my standard reminders I'd like to share with you. Right at the top. First, there are the chapter markers on this podcast, so if you want to get straight to the content, use those markers to skip right ahead. No harm, no foul, I understand. Also, remember that in the description of this episode there's a link you can tap to text me. There. You can leave your feedback on the topics we're addressing as well. You can always email me at IsaacSanchez, at Maccom. I look forward to hearing from you, and I did get a message from a listener which I really appreciate, out from Michigan. I will say more about that in the next episode. So I'm excited about that. Thank you for reaching out and let's have some more conversation here. So what's up in your world? Well here. End of the first semester of teaching this year, so it's the end of the semester one. We got one more week technically this year, so it's the end of the semester one. We got one more week technically and everyone wants to pass all of a sudden. So I teach freshman English at a high school here and I'm just asking where was that attitude even three weeks ago? It's so funny to see some of these kids come up to me and say that they need a C. In my class, particularly, these two boys have done a whole lot of nothing but now want something. Of course there's a group of kids who are working hard to get through the course. There always is. They want to get the grade and get the credit for English one semester one. I'm very proud of them.
Speaker 1:We're finishing with an ebook of seven stories and 1800 plus words. We basically take a template from Canvacom this website and create their ebook complete with their picture, author picture and a brief bio on the back, that's their author bio. It's really cool. We use a book called the House on Mongo Street by Sandra Cisneros as our model. The protagonist is a young teen named Esperanza. She's about 13 to 14 years old and this is a coming of age book rich with figurative language. And so the author has said that these stories have kernels of truth in them, in terms of whether these stories have happened or not to her, to others. You know where she got these stories from, but she's manipulated them a lot in order for it to become the experience of her protagonist. So we're doing the same thing. They're getting their stories in their lives that apply to types of stories that she has in their book. So we're inspired by her stories. They're called vignettes and then we write about them.
Speaker 1:The kids do, so I know they're going to be proud of their work when it's done. Every time I've done this assignment, students are just kind of blown away by what they've done. Already, when we started writing on a couple of the pieces before, students were just saying I've never written this much before in my life, mr Sanchez. So that's great. If we can get that to happen, that's wonderful. But I really do know they're going to be proud of their work. Kids always are by the time we finish this assignment, their work. Kids always are by the time we finish this assignment. So back to my kids, who suddenly want to pass.
Speaker 1:I understand them well because, unfortunately, I can be the same way in life, sometimes Trying to get something for nothing. Reach a goal or a particular outcome without the commensurate effort, you know, nah, not going to happen. Life doesn't let that happen, so I guess I understand these kids a bit too much. To be clear, there is a way to get credit, but it involves a base of work that will test how serious they are now about getting the grade. It's a bit of work that I've created that would make me feel good and make them feel good about getting credit, and so no free meals here, no sari. So we'll see how this plays out for these kids in about a week. What this all really means, though, is that we are halfway through the school year, and that's a good thing, okay. Well, let's get into our work today. Let's go to Russia. What do you say? At least that's where we're going through a story that Dan Miller shares with us as he helps us with our daily mindset Dan Miller opens today with the story taken from Russian history.
Speaker 1:I bet you didn't see that coming. It's a wonderful story, so it goes as such. In St Petersburg Winter Palace Park, back in the day of the Tsars, there was a bench that was guarded by two guards, one on each side. They would change these guards every three hours. Well, one day one of the younger guards asked questions about their task, and so, in pursuit of his query, one of the younger guards asked questions about their task, and so, in pursuit of his query, he finds the palace historian and asks his question. And so the historian does remember the story of the guarded bench. And this was the answer in a nutshell 200 years prior, during Peter the Great's reign, the bench was newly painted and, for fear that the ladies-in-waiting might get paint on their dresses, ordered the bench to be guarded. And that order was never rescinded. Well, in 1908, in the midst of the fear of revolution, all guards of the palace were doubled. So guess what else got doubled? Yep, the bench got another guard as well. And there has been two guards at that bench ever since.
Speaker 1:Dan basically kind of has us ponder a question. He walks us through an obvious application of this particular story. We should ask sometimes why am I doing this? He talks about a 44-year-old client who said at one point I'm tired of living my life based on decisions that were made by an 18-year-old. Dan himself continues. Most people evaluate their lives in retrospect. They simply look back from 70 and wonder how they got there, boy. When you think about it that way, what he just said, that's a compelling reason why we should take his direction pretty seriously today. So again, looking at the idea of living life through decisions made by an 18-year-old and then living as a seven-year-old or more, looking back and wondering how did this even happen? Now, we should look at this seriously. The stakes are high and the consequences are far-reaching. So how should we begin to do that?
Speaker 1:There is a wonderful quote Dan Miller places before us today. It's an old proverb. Here it is If you want to know your past, look into your present conditions. If you want to know your future, look into your present actions. That quote made me think a lot.
Speaker 1:So here, in response to the second half of it, which is if you want to know your future, look into your present actions, let me turn once again to Dr Stephen Covey's book Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. To drive home the point today, it comes from a section in his book called Principles of Personal Management. Right at the beginning of that chapter, he asks two questions which have always been very profound to me. Question one what one thing could you do you aren't doing now that, if you did on a regular basis, would make a tremendous positive difference in your personal life? Question two what one thing in your business or professional life would bring similar results? Without skipping a beat and with the most sincerity and honesty to yourself, take a moment and answer those two questions now. If you need to pause the podcast to write these things down, do so. It will be well worth your time. It's worth the time because it gets to the heart of what Dan Miller is proffering us today.
Speaker 1:What is an important tweak you can make today that can make a massive impact on your life? Because up to this point you've been doing things a certain way without an ounce of thought that it just might not be the right thing for you anymore, both professionally and personally. One time for me, in regards to my personal choices, it had to do with my fitness, and on another occasion it had to do with my nutrition. I made corrections in both of these areas and have not been the same since I've grown so much in these areas, even as I've yet to grow more. To go back to that Russian story, why the heck am I still guarding that bench when the paint on that thing dried days ago, years ago, decades ago? Why are you still in that same place in life? Why, for me?
Speaker 1:Regarding question one, I made a decision for my health. For years, I believed that when I got home from work teaching, I deserved the sofa, tv and a diet of junk food. Because I was so exhausted from work I was too tired to do anything else, just too tired to do anything for myself, and because I needed rest, I didn't have time to do any kind of workout routine for my health. None, none, except one day I decided to get home and make the change lace up, get out, go take a walk. That decision changed my life forever. Now I love my walks. Soon, my walks led to group workout classes at the local gym. In other words, one decision one day moved me from an inactive lifestyle to an active one. Today, I'm married to a woman who loves the gym and loves lifting weights, something I feared for my ignorance. Lydia has been a wonderful help to me in this area, and fitness is a value we both share. I'm so excited about this part of my life.
Speaker 1:Now Let me give you a more recent example of how my wife and I questioned our trajectory for our own health and how that was going. This matters a great deal to us and how we treat our bodies, but there was more that we could bring out of that, so this came in the form of how our decision to be more sociable at the gym got us to meet new friends, and so we joined this group workout in the mornings. And here we are with people with the same mindset, around our age. You know you have plus and minus a little bit. There's a couple of younger guns in there, but everyone gets along splendidly and you know the common mindset here is we work hard on our mind and our body. These are people wanting to be better, both in the gym and out. We'd go on hikes together, we eat together, of course, we exercise together, and in all this, a lot of these different conversations among these common values start to happen and we get closer because of it.
Speaker 1:And just on a hike today, me and one of the guys started on a conversation that I got to know a lot more about him and he got to know more about myself. I know my wife has been hanging with some of the ladies during the week and here on the hike chatting it up, so that kind of stuff has worked itself out because of this decision. More specifically, this has got even tighter. There's one of the ladies there that's a bit older and we got to meet her husband and through a common meal after a hike earlier and then again today. Well, we ended up in their home afterwards getting a tour of a home that they're very proud of, an older home that they've done a lot of work to have a lot of fruit on the grounds and some chickens, and it's been wonderful getting to know them.
Speaker 1:But we admire their marriage. There's a lot that we see, but we admire their marriage. There's a lot that we see and I think we admire because we know it's not perfect, but boy do they model for us a wonderful way of how to get along. We admire their fitness and they must be about I don't know early 70s, but they are on these hikes. She goes to the workouts. On these hikes he does really well One of the first ones up to the peak and down the peak. So we admire their marriage. We admire their fitness and also being at their home, seeing what they were doing with this home that they bought in 2018, the work that they're doing. We love their sense of living. We admire that, and that consists of their home, their attitude about decisions they're making about their home, their home decor just all kinds of things that we saw on this little tour of their home. So that happened today, and that happened because we made a couple decisions before in that line of reasoning what could we do better about our health? Yes, we're going to the gym, but for group accountability purposes, we should join a group of people that are working out, and so that's kind of how that has played out to getting to know a group of people better, but then getting to know this couple a lot better.
Speaker 1:So, going back to the questions that Dr Stephen Covey asked us to consider, what is that one thing that you are not doing now that, if you did, would have a positive impact on your well-being, both personally and professionally? He's asking us, as Dan Miller is, to challenge what has been, in order to accommodate what can be. It's an exciting process to walk through. Well, it's time to wrap up and apply what Dan Miller has placed before us. So grab your notes and create some action in order to make use of what we have learned Today. Dan asks us the following question what activities are you doing today that are more a result of habits than of well thought out thinking? This is a very important thought exercise. You can stay at the surface on this one and still get some great results, no doubt, or you can go very deep and be willing to challenge years, even decades, of habits and our activity and realize that you really must make a change before you end up at that very end of your life with that opportunity for change gone forever. Let's absolutely not let that happen while we still have the opportunity to execute change.
Speaker 1:Have you heard this before? A man with a toothache cannot be in love. Well, you better call your dentist. Call him now. What does a toothache, your chances of falling in love and your mindset have anything to do with each other and your personal success in life? Well, dan Miller will put this all together for us next week. I hope you will join me.
Speaker 1:Okay, let me send you away with a quote Things that matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least. We get that from Goethe. That's it. That's the quote. Think about it, act on it. Have an amazing week, friends, and thank you for hanging out I really do appreciate that and thank you for communicating with me and keeping the conversation going. Let's do this again next week. Thank you for listening.
Speaker 1:If you found this time together useful, please consider following this podcast and leaving an excellent rating. If you feel you can't do that yet, please reach out to me and let me know what I can do to get you to leave a top rating. If you are already excited about what you've heard, please consider sharing this podcast with a friend. I really would appreciate it. Also, I'd love your feedback, both on today's topic as well as what you'd like to hear me address in the future. I would really appreciate that input. Again, I'm your host, isaac Sanchez. I hope today's thought serves you the way it has served me. Remember, your next move is just one inside away. Have an amazing rest of your day. I'll see you next time.