361: James Clear | How to Truly Change Your Identity

James Clear is the world-renowned author and speaker who focuses on habits, decision making, and continuous improvement.  He’s the author of the New York Times Best-Seller “Atomic Habits.” He’s been featured in numerous publications and his website receives millions of visitors each month.  We discuss if entrepreneurs should or shouldn’t suck at school, how to truly change your identity, and how long it actually takes to get a book deal.

 

Episode Highlights:

 

  • James’ background and journey through school and beyond.
  • Benefits of a smaller community.
  • Combating the need to perform.
  • The Entrepreneurship vs. School debate: a different perspective.
  • Concentric Circles: the best way to change the world.
  • The importance of developing habits of reflection and review.
  • 2 ways for developing habits. 
  • What it took to finally get a book deal, after writing 2 articles a week.
  • The “Incubation period”: what it takes to develop habits for the long haul.
  • “Lagging Measures”: how to not get restless when developing habits.
  • Signals of progress: balancing expectations with results.
  • Why every person should have a period of reflection and review.
  • The “common denominator” habits for high-level performers.
  • Who you know or what you know? Historically, who you know.  As time goes on, what you know.
  • The Random Round: a quick-hit question and answer session.

 

3 Key Points:

  1. Role modeling behavior is the key to sharing how and why things should change.
  2. You have to be able to put ideas into practice to understand what the struggle is really like to implement into daily life.
  3. Focus your time on higher level “identity-based” tasks that help you develop into the type of person you want to become.

 

Tweetable Quotes:

 

  • “Where you’re at in life is where you’re living, so might as well make the most of every situation you have.” – James Clear
  • “We all need a continual sense of reflection, review, and self-reflection.” – James Clear
  • “It’s not the last sentence that writes the book, it’s all the ones that come before.” – James Clear
  • “Your results are a lagging measure of your habits.” – James Clear
  • “Once you start to assign an identity to yourself…you’re not pursuing behavior change anymore, you’re acting in alignment with the type of person you already see yourself to be.” – James Clear

Resources Mentioned:

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