Every Little Thing by April Jeppson

 

I recently spent a few days in Texas at a convention. We had four different presenters and they were all so good. I wanted to take a moment and share some of my favorite tidbits.

James Clear was our first presenter. He is the author of “Atomic Habits.” His entire presentation was built around the theory that in order for you to change yourself, you have to change your daily habits. It’s not the grandiose, obvious, yet rare gestures that make a person, but the day in and day out behaviors that ultimately create who you become.

“Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your new identity.” So if you’re trying to eat healthier, for instance, one salad will not make you skinny. The same way that one hamburger won’t make you fat. However, if you consistently reach for the salad (or the burger), over the course of a year there will be evidence of all those votes you made for what kind of body you wanted.

“The ultimate form of intrinsic motivation is when a habit becomes part of your identity. It’s one thing to say I’m the type of person who wants this. It’s something very different to say I’m the type of person who is this.” I loved this one. Basically you don’t say, “I want to be a runner, so I better go for a run today. You think, “I am a runner,” and then you go about your day making decisions based off the fact that you are a runner and this is how a runner acts.

Our second speaker was Amanda Gore. Her big message was that joy is an inside job. It is no one else’s responsibility to make us happy or fill a void. If we are unhappy with something in our lives, then we need to change or do something about it. Problem is, most of us don’t even realize how much negative self talk is happening inside our own heads.

She assigned us joy buddies and then encouraged us to remind our conference neighbors to wake up and be joyful. She told us to shake our joy buddies, then she gave us various positive phrases to say to them. A person who feels good about themselves can focus on making others feel good about themselves, and she encouraged us to be joy spots for others.

Colin O’Brady was the first person to cross Antarctica solo, unsupported and unaided. Basically, he didn’t use anyone to help him, he had to haul all his own stuff and there were no food or supply drops for him along the way. It took the 33-year-old 55 days to complete this epic journey. He talked about goal setting and pushing yourself out of your comfort zone.

“As humans, we have so much capacity” was one of my favorite quotes. It’s really true. How many of us wake up, go through a routine, go to work, routine, come home, routine, then off to bed. We are phoning it in so much. Doing things that are currently difficult for us is the only way we can grow and become better.

Think about what we could accomplish if we were more purposeful with our time and actually made an effort to try and do new things! I think about how much I’ve grown in the last five years — heck, even the last year! It really gets me excited to see all that I’ll be able to accomplish in the future. A mind set shift for sure, but it totally goes with what we learned in Amanda and James’ workshops about waking up, being present and making mindful choices in our day to day life.

Seth Godin is basically a marketing celebrity. Anyone in the business knows and respects him. My favorite gem from his talk was, “Winners quit all the time. They just quit the right stuff at the right time.” This totally goes against everything I’d ever heard growing up about winners never quit. There are many activities, a few jobs and even a relationship or two that I would have quit in my younger years had I been given the permission to do so. But, instead, I stuck it out longer than necessary because I didn’t want to be a quitter.

If you’ve never heard of these people or simply need a little motivation, I strongly encourage you to grab one of their books or look them up online. I paid for the training, so I wanna get as much use out of it as I can. And if this could possibly help any of you, then woohoo! Way to go joy buddy!

Albert Lean April Jeppson is a wife, mom, coach and encourager of dreams.