Transformation Tuesday: ALL STAR Habits

On this episode of the podcast we have our Transformation Tuesday webinar.
  
This week, we talked about how to build morning routines and consistent habits.

For more information, and to sign up for our private coaching, visit tesh.com

Our Hosts:
John Tesh: Instagram: @johntesh_ifyl facebook.com/JohnTesh
Gib Gerard: Instagram: @GibGerard facebook.com/GibGerard X: @GibGerard

Transcript

Unknown: 0:07

Gib, hello and welcome to the episode of the podcast. I'm Gib Gerard here with another special transformation Tuesday edition of the show. This is where we take audio from our weekly transformation Tuesday call where we we play it for you. You take it with you, put your pocket. But if you are interested in being a part of our trans of our transformation Tuesday community, if you are interested in being a part of this and watching us do this live, you can check us out@tesh.com Learn all about transformation Tuesday and our Thursday coaching call and be a part of it. Join the community. Come on. But here, without further ado, is last week's call with me and John Tesh. All right, everybody, hello and welcome to transformation Tuesday. I am I'm Gib Gerard. In a second, I think John will be joining us. So again, exciting, exciting day for those of you that missed last week, missed the fact that he was out last week, very cool situation. We got to, he got to perform round ball rock at the at the All Star game, the NBA All Star game. And it was huge success. You know, it was, it went. It went so unbelievably smoothly and well, and it was so exciting to get to be there and just to be in the room. And the games were good. They played a round robin tournament for the all star game this year. Anyway. All that to say that was where John was last week. It was an exhausting week for everybody involved, and he will be joining us today. So really, really good to have that, have that moment, and hopefully those of you that were able to watch that got to see that. So we're super proud of him. Is my point today, yesterday, we're going to be hearing from some old favorites and some new faces. We're going to be talking about some of the stuff that we've been leaning into with transformation Tuesday, which is right now, since we're still in the first part of the year, our theme, what is our theme for the year is that the habits that we form today create the US in six months. So the life that you, the person you are today, is the result of your last six months of habits, and your last six months of behavior. And the person that you will be in six months is the result of of what you do, what you do for these next six months. So we are, we are going to be focusing on that. Looks like John is joining us right now, but I don't have your camera on. We're so we're gonna be focusing on that a little bit today, focusing on on on how to build those habits, on how to build that routine that makes you the best version of yourself going forward. So April's asking in the chat if we have a recording from this weekend. We've been posting some of that stuff. I I put the behind the scenes rehearsal video in the transformation Tuesday Facebook group, so you can see that there. And then John has been posting videos of his, of the performance on his Instagram and Facebook. So you can find that stuff there. NBC Sports has the whole thing, I believe, on their social media page. I'll try to find it and post it into the transformation Tuesday Facebook group. John was just joining us for a second there, and Oh, here he is. He's back again. There we go. So anyway, that's, that's the housekeeping. Please welcome star of the NBA, all star game, John's hat, which I'm sure, I'm sure everybody on this call. No, a lot of people did, and we're, you know, people have been asking about it, and we looked at the behind the scenes video that was produced about the rehearsal process and stuff, and having gotten to be there with you and see how much work you were putting in, and get to see you have that moment, was really exciting. So we were just kind of dwelling on that you want to talk about. It was a fun family outing, yeah, you know, got matching jackets on. I mean, you want to talk about your your life today being the result of your last six months of habits, the the work that it takes, that it took in terms of dealing with NBA, NBC, all of that stuff, to get to the point where we are, or where you were on on on Sunday, is, is as actually a real testament to what we are focusing on this year. On transformation Tuesday, well, is my video really jumpy? It's a little, it's a the frame rates a little low, but it's, it's fun, but you can, you can hear me, though, right? Yes, okay, yeah. Yeah, I actually, I actually got taught a lesson. Let me plug my computer and I would never you, and I have done a lot of live events and live, either speaking or recording or whatever, I would never have rehearsed as much as as the NBA wanted us to rehearse. So you're talking about like, you know, 15 people, you know me and the band, and you're usually in that band and an orchestra, basically strings and brass, and then the, you know, the regular band guys, you know, guitars and stuff. And the reason we had to rehearse so much was because we were doing the player introductions and and so with the NBA, they or the all star game in particular, people would say, I can't do it's not their most important game, you know. So they're like people. I'm telling you something you already know, Gib, so people would pull out or, or there'd be an extra person, whatever. And so we had to tell you're playing three, four songs, really, with a reprise. But the timing had to all be, had to all be right. Well, this song had to start right. When LeBron James came and decided to start him, when Steph Curry came out. Well, Steph Curry was injured, so that way to pull that thing out. So there was, it was a timing issue, and you can't really when you're when you're doing, when you have an orchestra playing with you, and it's all charted out and everything, you can all of a sudden say, okay, take force four seconds or 30 seconds out of this piece. You know this doesn't work that way, because 30 seconds doesn't our bar, our measures and our bars and our tempo doesn't doesn't compute when you're talking about directors. They directors, you know, their language doesn't compute with us, you know. And so fortunately, we had a guy. His name is Adam Blackstone, actually a very famous music director. Tony Guerrero was our music director. We had a guy up there on stage, and he was, he couldn't see him, but he was reading the player, player names, and then he say in our ears, okay, we need, we need four more bars. And so he was the guy that was translating that. And so we rehearsed over and over again. So, you know, eight rehearsals back from our first, if we go back to our first rehearsal, bears no resemblance to what we played on the air on Sunday, you know. So it was a it was a lot of a lot of moving parts, a lot of math, which I'm not great at, and and so not that math anyway. And so we, I never would have rehearsed that much for for a show. So I was forced into rehearsing that me, just personally as a musician. And so by the time we got on stage in front of 18,000 people in that arena, and God knows how many people worldwide. I mean, was it the ratings were like, just in America, was like another 10 million people. I, I've just, was I? There's no, there's no room for stage fright or anything. And that's really, it says a lot to what you've been preaching about, Gib, which is that is that the enemy of of of inconsistency, the enemy of failure, the enemy of of butterflies, is rehearsal because, because it can't, it can't live in that ecosystem. Butterflies can't live in the ecosystem of being so rehearsed that it's just like, look, it's, it's like blinking your eyes, you know, your body just does it. I think, you know, look that transitions so nicely into what we're going to be talking about today. And I think it's important to recognize the fact that, and you've talked about this publicly a lot, that you used to struggle and still, I mean, I would say you still struggle with it, but you still have an element of stage fright. And your cure for that has been certain habits that I've witnessed over the years that help you combat, and one of them is you just, you, just you over practice, you and you practice failing, and then you and then you practice how it should go. Well. I mean, like we were, it was, I think, with Super Bowl Sunday, we were hanging out. And every once in a while you would just disappear and just go play piano for a little bit, because you're like, ah, next week I gotta, I gotta worry about this thing well. And most of it is, as you know, most of it is not even physical, because, you know, I've been playing these songs for the longest period of time now, for a concert pianist, it can be physical, because it's, it's far more demanding than the songs that I'm playing, but, but it's mental, you know? And it's like, I remember Oscar Peterson, the great jazz pianist, who every pianist you know tries to emulate. I mean, he, he was asked, you know, do you do you still do practice every day he goes, he goes, Well, you know, if I miss a day of of practice, I notice he goes, if I, if I, if I, if I miss two days of practice, the band notices if I miss three days of practice. Everybody notices, you know, but, but for just, just mental. Really, if you know you're then this must be, you know, with athletes to where, where they get quarterbacks, like, I'm just, I'm throwing to the 32nd the 32nd yard, if you know, two feet off of the line and then, and you're the receiver, you just get there in time, you know. But I'm doing my job, you know. So they removing as many variables as possible, and even in your life, to understanding that when a variable appears, what are you going to do? And that's what this coach taught me, was okay if you make a mistake, John, what are you going to do? Are you going to smile? Are you gonna play the same mistake over again? So it's jazz. Are you got? Are you going to are you going to freak out? And so he had a piano in there, in the room with, like an upright piano that he had rented. And he taught me, like you just said, taught me how to fail. What does that feel like? What? What is your okay? What's your and he would take my, my pulse rate, you know, and just what is your pulse rate so? And if your pulse rate in any situation just goes up by 10 20% the next thing that happens is cortisol. Right? Gib, and right when we have, when you have cortisol, you've seen kids go through this where, where they'll play a recital, and they'll get halfway through, and they'll, and this was me, and they'll, they'll hit a wrong note or something, and they don't, they don't have chic music in front of them, and they'll have to go back and start over, because they've never, they've never understood what to do if I fail, you know, at bar 32 so really, having, just having plans for everything is, is, and I did, you know, I just did, just on Sunday, what's gonna happen if, if the drummer drops a beat, or whatever is gonna happen, or what am I gonna say? What am I gonna do? And, and, and none of that happened because we were so rehearsed, yeah. I mean, look, you hit on something there, right? What routine does is it helps you overcome the mental blurring that happens when you when your body has a stress response, and routine and practice help you overcome that. I've experienced that I don't even know you know about this, but I was, I was in high school, and I was doing a vocal performance, a classical recital, and I had this. It was, I was doing a German opera, and I forgot the German and I just, I just had to make it up as I to finish this. I remember hearing it, I was like, I just it just went right out of my head. So let's start talking about how to combat those kind of moments. And here's Andrew Huberman talking about morning routine, because if you don't set your foundation, you cannot build the house. Tend to wake up sometime around 6am 630 and I write down the time in which I woke up. The second thing I do after I wake up is I make a beeline for sunlight. So getting outside for a 10 minute walk, or a 15 minute walk, is absolutely vital to mental and physical health. We get back. I purposely delay my caffeine intake to 90 minutes to 120 minutes after I wake up. So for me, I just drink water. I also put a little bit of sea salt in the water, and I also drink my athletic greens, which is compatible with fasting, so I don't eat anything until about 11am or 12 noon. Next I would do a 90 minute bout of work, and that's typically phone off and out of the room. You'd be amazed how much you can get done in 90 minutes if you are focused. After I finish, I do some form of physical exercise for about an hour, very last, but certainly not least, deliberate cold exposure, and that's what I do each morning. And I'm certain that these tools work. Yeah, the background video showing what it's like to do history, but I want to unpack some of that stuff for us. So a lot of what he is talking about there the idea of, first of all, we talk about this all the time, do yourself a favor, and get up at the same time every day, and get up earlier than you need to, because your relationship to your morning will shape your whole day. And if you start on your heels, you will spend the whole day on your heels. You'll play, spend the whole day playing catch up. So get up early, monitor what time you get up. So he uses, I mean, he literally just writes it down. There are apps that that will tell you you can wear a sleep track or whatever you need to do, but you need to know when you're waking up, get up earlier, get exposure to sunlight, get your body moving a little bit, delay caffeine. Do your focus work? And this is really key, because many of us, the first thing we do is reach for our phones. Keep that phone out of your hand for a while. It's tough. It's tough if you're, if there are kids in the picture, right for you, yeah, and also for and also for grandparents, you know, you got to have, I mean, I think that there's the VIP thing that you can do with your phone is good, where, where you can only your kids can break through, right only, or your wife, or whatever. And so I love it. The hardest thing for me is going to be, I love all these tips. I think I can do all of it. I think I can even do the cold shower thing, but I but, but delaying caffeine is going to be hard for me. So, all right, let's so I'm going to unpack two things. One is, do you guys know what he's talking about when he says the VIP thing? So every phone nowadays, most people have either an iPhone or an Android. What you can do is you can create contact groups, and you can set your phone to do not disturb, except for people in a certain contact group. So you set these VIPs. Apple has a way of doing it. Android has a way of doing it. And we, if you have any questions, you can post it in the in the Facebook group, and I'll try to explain how to do it, but what it does is it keeps all your notifications off, except for the because I use that. I have this all the time where I'm going, if I'm going out, and I don't want to be on my phone. But I also have children at home, and I have to deal with like a response from a babysitter or something. I can't have my phone on fully. Do Not Disturb so you allow certain people to get through it is a great tool for staying connected to the people you need to stay connected to without, without being overcome with the notifications that hack our dopamine, which is going to be actually the next thing that we talk about, but what he's talking about there is this idea of delaying caffeine. And the reason why, why that is useful is because your actual cortisol cycle, you actually get a sport spike in cortisol when you wake up is more benefited by have by drinking water and by getting outside and getting sun exposure at the same time every day than from the caffeine itself. And so what he's doing is he's taking his natural hormone cycle and benefiting from it, and then, once he's been awake for a while, supplementing that with caffeine. It is not easy to do. It is it takes a lot of discipline, because my first thing is to get up and and make a cup of coffee. But it is, it is he is trying to time, when I say he, Huberman is trying to time his caffeine intake with the tail end of that initial spike in cortisol, which is 90 to 120 minutes after he wakes up. You know, it's so important to as you, as you age, you really, really realize this just because you're older and wiser, but have more experience listening to your body the I discover stuff as an n of one, I discover things about my body every day. And so just today, actually, I was tired from a whole week of all this rehearsal and all, that stuff. The coffee machine was broken and and I was like, Okay, what am I going to do here? And so I tried instant. It was like, you know, and so I was drinking water and waiting for Connie to wake up, because she's the only one who said to fix the thing. And so, because it's Italian, it's Italian coffee machine, she speaks his language, she speaks in sign words. Yeah. So I realized that I needed to do some commercials early this morning before Gib got here for us to do his pieces and but my voice wasn't ready, so I had to do a had to do a warm up. And this is a kind of vocal warm up that I would not normally do for the radio show, but I do it if I'm going to be on stage, given I both do these warm ups, and it's basically is I sit at the piano and I play all my scales, but instead of singing or anything, I just go every key and the vibration. Sometimes I have to I sneeze because there's so much vibration in my nose. And then this one, which is you one, which is a lip trill, you know, all that stuff, and and all of a sudden I was just so awake and energized. And I'm thinking, Wait a second, I remember reading something with this. So I pulled this up because I wanted to read it to you. Vagus nerve stimulation, thanks to me, humming stimulates the vagus nerve, which vibrates in your throat in your chest, and boosts the parasympathetic nervous system. Vagus nerve tone and reduce reduce stress, will make you more awake and mentally clear when when you're groggy from also, most research highlights humming for relaxation, mood improvement, lower blood pressure, better sleep, even and stress relief, if you do it at night. So the tips are, you sit up, or you stand, take a deep breath in through your nose, and then exhale slowly while you're humming. We don't even have to do scales, and then maybe a little bit higher man, and you'll feel like you'll feel it's like vibrating. It obviously, because you're humming, and sometimes you have to like, you know. But it's ridiculous, because I'm thinking, How many times have I done this for another reason, right? But all of a sudden I got no coffee, and that's and that's coffee, but, but, but I was wide awake and ready to go because I, because I had been coming. Yeah. I mean. Additionally look the benefits of humming in terms of, again, stimulating the vagus nerve and the parasympathetic nervous system, waking you up, getting you, helping you focus. I mean, you they famously Matthew McConaughey does a version of it where he also hits himself on the chest and does the humming. And he does it before every take. And then Scorsese had him do it in character in Wolf of Wall Street, because he found it so interesting. And so that's sort of, it's sort of become immortalized in that moment where, you know, he starts doing it, and Leonardo DiCaprio doesn't know what to do with it's great anyway. Point being, yes, there are all kinds of benefits to it. You'll also find that it relaxes your soft palate, helps clear your sinuses a little bit, because the vibration loosens stuff up, and then will also, as a result, help with snoring. So it's something else that we've, we've we've reported on before. I want to circle back a little bit, and we talked about the VIP mode on your cell phone. We talked about why that's important for getting focused work done, and how, how that high? How, how important it is to get the notifications out of your face when you are trying to do deep work, which is what most of us need to be doing. So here is Dr Andrew Huberman again, talking about how our smartphones in particular, but phones in general, and being connected all the time, hijacks our dopamine system, and why it's important to figure out that VIP mode that we were just talking about, everything that we've talked about until now, sets up an explanation or an interpretation of why interacting with digital technology can potentially lead to disruptions or lowering in baseline levels of dopamine. I can use a personal example for this. I happen to really enjoy working out. I've always really enjoyed it, but in recent years, I noticed that if I was bringing my phone to my workouts, then not only was I a little bit more distracted and not focusing on what I was doing as much as I could have or should have, but also I started to lose interest in what I was doing. It wasn't as pleasureful I would feel like it just didn't have the same kind of oomph, and I was beginning to question my motivation. So what he's talking about when he talks about lowering our baseline dopamine is our phones give us these squirts of dopamine, right? And it gives us these small squirts of dopamine that mimic accomplishment, connection, all of the things that normally give us dopamine in our lives. So when you complete a task, when you do good work, when you finish, you know, recording a song, whatever that is, we get a shot of dopamine. Our phones give us little shoot, little shots, but they give us a lot of little shots. And what that does is it lowers our base rate of dopamine because we're like, oh, we're getting tons of dopamine, which means that it now requires more dopamine to give us the same sensation and we are. We are conditioned to have these small, intense bursts of dopamine, as opposed to the bigger, slower dopamine that we get from doing real tasks. It basically makes us more add. It gives us makes it gives us a harder time focusing. So he's talking about that with his workouts, right? He's not engaged in his workout for the whole time, but you see this in conversations. We are not getting the same sort of stimulation that we used to get from a conversation, because that baseline is lower and the response is not quick enough. So people reach for their phones, and they have to check it if you find yourself reaching for the Phantom phone. That is a sign that you have you have broken your dopamine cycle, and you need to fix it. That's good. So the way to do that is to limit the amount of notifications that you get, and VIP is a great way to do that. Do Not Disturb in general is a great way to do that. But VIP allows you to let the important phone calls through, like your kids, school or or your boss or whatever that, whatever that may be, so that you have access to the connection without being over stimulated with hijacking the dopamine cycle. Because when you do that, it makes it harder to build the habits that make you the person that you want to be. It makes it harder to become that, that thing that you have in your mind as to what for, like that cause you to sign up for this. In order to rebuild that dopamine cycle, we need to do the small things well. So we've talked about writing a to do list, and how when you write a physical to do list and physically cross it off, you get those dopamine jumps. We talked about starting with what's called an MVP, a minimum viable product for a habit. So here's BJ Fogg is going to talk about why those. Small habits are are needed to build the big changes in your life and how you can transition from those small dopamine spurts that we have been we've been conditioned to need into the real dopamine bursts that come with accomplishment. How does the tiny habits align with something if you have a big goal or you want to see great improvement, what you're designing for with tiny habits is consistency, consistency of the habit, not the size. Just like if you were planting a tree that's going to grow big, you wouldn't plant it in a spot right next to your home where it would outgrow its spot. So the idea is that the tiny habit is supposed to grow and expand, not to stay as a tiny habit. In other words, the tiny habit is the gateway into greater improvement and growth. Okay, right. So, the example that he used, we've interviewed him before, and the example that he used was one that I really like, which is he wanted to build a habit of going to the gym, but the idea of going and working out for an hour was too much. So BJ Fogg, who wrote tiny habits, just literally drove to the gym, checked in and left, which doesn't do anything, right? But what he did was he did that every single day, and eventually going to the gym and checking in turned into going to the gym, checking in and jumping on the elliptical for 20 minutes, and that turned into something bigger. Obviously, the goal was not to just physically walk to the gym. The goal was to get in better shape, but he had to create the small habit that then grew into the bigger habit. And that is, that is how we need to view our dopamine and habit system today, you have to give yourself the accomplishment of the small thing in order to build the big thing on top of it. Yeah, and you and I have both admitted to this where we going to the gym is like, Okay, going to the gym is, it's whatever 45 minutes, it's an hour, and I'm going to get there at x time, whatever, and all of a sudden, your kid comes home and and she's sick, or all of a sudden, you're like, there's an advertiser that needs something, you know, right away, and that window is gone. And so I've had to get to the to the point where I don't mourn that, that that loss. So I just, I have these bands everywhere. There's, there's two of them over here, there's, there's one in my bathroom. It drives Connie crazy. And so if that happens to me, I don't let a day go by without doing a wall sit or a couple of push ups or whatever, or, or, or the bands. But, but when you, when you get to the point where it's like, it's so it's that, that big habit, not the tiny habit, but the big habit is so big, then if you miss it, then you end up mourning it. And then sometimes that can end up being a being a cycle. So, like the Navy, like the Navy SEALs, what we want to do is we want to have an exit plan for for pretty much everything, and you can this. Can work with your relationships, too. If you can't make, can't make something, and how do you make it up and and and try not to mourn the lost opportunities we do this. I mean, I want to speak for everybody, but I know that you and I do this where we allow the perfect. We do this in every area of our life, and you brought up in relationships, I think this is a it's a good example where we allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good. Oh, I can't do a big romantic gesture today, so I am going to just ignore investing in the romance of my life, right? I can't. I can't right now. I can't go and go out to can't go into a fancy dinner and buy jewelry and do all of the things that sort of create an idea of romance. So I'm going to instead disconnect, instead of figuring out, how can I find small moments of connection that are maybe not the big romantic gesture, but build little intimate moments of romance in my life. In order to help my spousal relationship, I can't take my kid out today and have one on one time over milkshakes and do one of those core memories, but that I can check in with my kid. The same thing is true of a friend. You can't sit down and have the long conversation with a friend, but you can text them and check in and say, Hey, how you doing? We have to find ways to give ourselves those little wins, to build the habits that become the big, romantic gestures, the serious series of connections with our children, the the network of friendships that that allow us to thrive and age well, like all of that, builds on itself, and we need to be willing to hack our brain and this dopamine cycle that's being hacked by, you know, five different companies in your phone right now. They want your attention. They are hacking your dopamine cycle. You. You need to hack it back. Yeah. And I know we're running out of time. I want to say two things. One is, I'm still at 73 years old, trying to learn the process of of deciding which Hill I'm going to die on. Am I, you know? Yeah, you're great at this, because you get trained every day where you get you get presented with an with a hill, with an obstacle, from every one of your kids, from all of the all of the referees that you manage, from the kids that you coach and and if, if you're not, if, if you don't have that playing, say, okay, how am I going to deal with this right now? Which Hill am I going to die on? And then the other, the other part of this too is, there's three parts now. The other part of this too is, I always think, because I'm older, is, what are people how are people going to describe me, when, when, when I'm in the casket, right? What are they going to say? Are they going to say about me? And if they say, oh my gosh, he was just all over or, what are they thinking? Anyway, they may not say it, he's all over the place. He's just, every time he just, he just got lit up and everything. And it drove me, drove me crazy. Is that what they're they're thinking, and the other thing is, is that we've had, you know, off and on. We have people who will leave this coaching program, and I'll get the message and say, Hey, so and so has canceled their their thing, and I'll type back, or, or Chris gets high back. Hey, what happens? Or anything, we help you. Well, I feel like I've gotten got enough, and then then a month later, they'll go, Hey, can I get back in? You know, because what we're really doing is we're providing an opportunity for you to climb a tall tree. My pastor said this to me decades ago, like, like, the guy who, like, like the scout who leads the wagon train. Every now and then, he would circle the wagons, climb a tall tree or get on top of a big boulder and look around and see what danger or what opportunities were ahead that he would he would climb back down and either stay the course or reverse course or alter, alter the course we're here so that any any time that you need to, you can climb that tall tree and take a look around, and we'll help you do that. And then you can decide what, what course you want to take. And that's why Gib is finding all these videos from from experts. And then we have the lived experiences for you, yes, and you. And the way you do that is you pick your course and then you make small changes that are, you know, 1% 2% better every single day. I want to get in shape. Great. Sign up for a gym. I want to get in shape. Great. Buy some running shoes. Be invest in yourself. Put the running shoes on every day. You don't have to go for a 10 mile jog, but you put the running shoes on every day, and you build those, those structures in place so that eventually running becomes the default and not running becomes the thing that get. That makes you uncomfortable. We're out of time, but we appreciate you guys being here, and we appreciate you guys wanting to be better of building the habits that will make you, that will make you guys the people that you want to become, and yeah, so thank you, and we will see you next week. That's it for the show today. Thank you guys so much for listening. If you like the show, please rate comment and subscribe on Apple podcast. Spotify wherever you get your podcast. It helps us out a lot when you do that, we also try to respond to every mention the show, every DM about the show. You can tell us what you think about it, because ultimately, we do the show for you guys. So thank you so much for listening. You.