34. How you can lead a happier life with “habits”.

Hi everyone and welcome to Project Mindset, the channel for all those who know that with the right mindset, anything is possible in life. Today I thought I’d briefly introduce myself again, as we’re gaining more and more new subscribers and listeners, which I’m incredibly happy about. I’m not even sure if everyone knows who I am, or if everyone listened to the first few episodes where I introduced myself and explained a bit about why I started a podcast in the first place.

Therefore, before we begin with today’s topic, a few words about myself. My name is Reza, I’m 37 years old, turning 38 in a few days, happily married, have two sweet little children, am a proud father of a boy and a girl, and yes, I’ve been exploring the topic of mindset for some time now. There’s a reason for this, because in my younger years I wasn’t fully aware that the right mindset is essential for approaching life in the right way.

Experiences from our own founding days

If you have the wrong mindset, then many things simply seem difficult, hard, everything is so connected with a lot of impatience, with a lot of unavailability, and especially when I had my company from 2015 to 2018, at the beginning I was totally hyped, had a lot of fun, the company was growing and unfortunately it turned out differently than I had hoped, the company had to close, many people, including some friends of mine who were in the company, unfortunately had to leave as well, as did I myself, I had to find a new attitude and at that time I was really, you could say, devastated.

I also didn’t see what the situation could possibly have, anything good at all. My mindset was really all wrong. It wasn’t until after 2018, you could say, that I started to really engage with the topic of mindset, to understand that there are different perspectives in every situation, that there are good things in every bad situation. With my startup, for example, I gained an incredible amount of experience, met so many new people, found new companions, and understood what to do and what not to do..

So, in every fail or every time you fall flat on your face, there are things you can learn from it, and over time I’ve understood that I have to completely change my mindset if I want to be happy in life someday, because my happiness shouldn’t depend on external circumstances; I have to manage to be happy from within.

Why I share my knowledge in the podcast

And that’s exactly why I started the podcast, once I personally understood what mindset means, what happiness means, how to approach happiness. I found it incredibly important, or rather, I always find it incredibly important, to share my knowledge. That’s why I started the podcast. I also said in the first episode that I love sharing my knowledge. So I’m happy about every listener, but at the end of the day, if no one listens, I’ll still make the podcast so that my children, they have to listen to it. So that my children know how their old dad works and ticks.

Nevertheless, I am of course happy about every listener, and as I said, I’ve seen in the online statistics that we are steadily growing. I also have a parallel YouTube channel where I conduct interviews with truly inspiring people about their mindset, how they approached their lives, how they became successful. Success can be defined in different ways, but for me, success primarily means that they have the opportunity to pursue the things they truly enjoy and that make them truly happy.

Further impulses and the introduction to habits

So you can also check out my YouTube channel or my new website.www.projectmindset.de,There’s also a lot of information there about mindset that I’ve gathered, and I’d be delighted if you checked it out. That’s all for now about me. I think I’ll start doing these little intros more often, especially for new guests, and I hope you’ll stick around. Now, on to today’s topic: I want to talk about habits, routines, or whatever you want to call them. Habits have a very special place in my life, habits I’ve developed over time.

I’ve also noticed that habits, well-chosen habits, contribute enormously to my own happiness, to my happiness account. What are habits? Well, I think, to put it simply, they’re certain rules or routines that one has, consciously or unconsciously. They don’t necessarily have to be daily routines—I usually talk about daily routines—but they can also be something one does weekly or annually. Of course, there are also good and bad habits, and that’s what I want to talk about today.

How habits boost self-confidence

But first and foremost, I want to say that building habits for myself, especially for my own sake, has an incredible advantage: it greatly strengthens my mindset and self-confidence, particularly when I consciously cultivate my positive habits. And what are my positive habits? I’ll give you a few examples in a moment, and perhaps afterwards, if you have any other ideas for positive habits, you could simply send me an email and say, “Hey Reza, this and that is also a pretty cool habit, have you ever thought about it?”

So, I’m always open to incorporating new habits. I try to keep them somewhat in check, meaning I don’t want to develop too many habits at once. I think I’m currently at about six or seven rules or habits a day that I follow. That’s a good number for now. But I can imagine it increasing a bit. Let’s start with my first and arguably most important habit of all: my gratitude routine. I talked about it in another podcast episode.

Start the day with gratitude

For me, gratitude is extremely important. I think that if you go through life with gratitude, you truly understand the value of life itself, and someone else actually gave me this idea. Someone on Instagram once said, “Hey, try this for 30 days, morning and evening: take two minutes each day to think about everything you’re grateful for, and after 30 days, I promise you, your life will be completely different.” I thought, “Hey, it doesn’t cost anything, I can give it a try,” so I made a calendar entry for it, relatively early in the morning and relatively late in the evening—always shortly after waking up and just before going to sleep.

For two minutes a day, I really focused on myself, thinking about what I was grateful for. At first, of course, the standard things came up, like being grateful for my health, having a great family, and so on. But eventually, before it gets too boring, you discover other things you’re grateful for, and sometimes really strange things come up, to be honest. I’m even out of touch with some of them. I was talking to a friend of mine recently. He said you become so grateful that your duvet is so soft, for example, or that your smartphone works so well.

Discovering gratitude in everyday life

You might find this strange. But it’s true: the longer you engage with the topic of gratitude, the more imaginative you become about all the things you’re actually grateful for. And when you see this multitude of things you’re grateful for, you realize, wow, life is truly beautiful and wonderful. There are so many things to be grateful for. So, one of my most important habits—I would even say the most important habit I’ve discovered for myself—is gratitude.

I can only recommend that you try it out. I do it with calendar entries. When I see on my phone or watch, “Okay, now I have to do my gratitude routine,” I actually take a minute or two to think about something I’m extremely grateful for. It has truly changed my life completely—it was a game-changer for me. Another habit I like to use is very simple: getting up in the morning and drinking lots of water. I’ve made it a habit to do this right after waking up. I have a Brita filter at home—this isn’t a paid advertisement; I don’t get any money from Brita. But it works really well—and I pump out a glass or two of water.

My experiences with the drinking routine

I’ve also noticed that when you stay hydrated throughout the day, headaches almost never happen anymore, and you feel fitter overall. It’s also incredibly beneficial for the skin, so I feel better overall, fewer pimples and so on. So I can really recommend making drinking water a habit. I drank carbonated water for years until I realized, no, that’s not actually good for me. Then I switched to a Brita filter, and every time I go into the kitchen, I drink at least one glass of water. I actually gulp it all down in one go, and it’s become a very good habit.

Then a third habit I use in the mornings is journaling, so basically a kind of diary writing. I do this almost daily. To be honest, I don’t do it every single day, but every two days, sometimes even only every three days. But it has incredible value for me in terms of mindset, because when I write down my thoughts. I usually do that in the morning, I’m a bit calmer mentally, everything is a bit more relaxed. When you write down your thoughts, what did I experience yesterday, what important insights did I have yesterday, when you write it down and really express it out loud, it becomes visual again in front of your eyes. You can remember it better.

Record findings in the journal

In the long run, you also benefit more from writing things down, and for me it’s not just that I’ve written something down once, done my journaling, but at the end of the month I even summarize the most important insights for myself.

I also talked about this in another podcast episode; feel free to listen if you want to know all the details about journaling. But journaling works incredibly well for me when it comes to insights and revisiting those insights. So I’m incredibly grateful when, at the end of the year, I read through my May summary, for example, and see, wow, that insight I had was really, really good. Or sometimes I even see that I was able to validate an insight, and it’s actually no longer valid for me.

So I can really recommend journaling to everyone as often as possible. Like I said, I try to do it every day, but usually it ends up being every two days. And then it’s not just about writing it down and that’s it, but also about regularly reading it through or making a summary so that it’s constantly brought back to mind. Another habit I really love is meditation. I also have a separate podcast episode about it.

Meditation as a conscious pause

Meditation—I started relatively late, and I don’t do anything particularly special in my meditation practice. I talk about it a bit more in the podcast episode. It’s basically just focusing on your breathing, closing your eyes, and sitting comfortably, or the four-point meditation, which is also a very simple way to meditate. So, inhaling is one point, holding the breath is another, exhaling is another, and the last point is simply letting the breath out..

It works incredibly well for me, and I especially meditate when things are particularly stressful for me. That sounds strange, but sometimes I have so many things to do, whether from work or personal matters, and when everything comes together and I have absolutely no idea what task to tackle next, then I meditate even more.

Three minutes for conscious reflection

I usually only do it for 3 minutes; I have a timer on my watch, which I click to meditate for 3 minutes. I don’t often do it for much longer because then there’s a risk of me dozing off. And yes, I do try to keep my power naps in check, even though they’re healthy. But 3 minutes is a good amount of time to focus on breathing. I also notice every time I’ve been really stressed beforehand, after I’ve meditated for 3 minutes, that the next task is actually much easier for me, or it becomes much clearer to me what the next task should even be.

Then another habit I’ve acquired over time is related to nutrition: no alcohol and no dessert during the week..

About two weeks ago, I think I was out with some friends, we had a bite to eat, and as is often the case, some friends ordered just a beer. I ordered something non-alcoholic, and of course, the first question came up: “Hey, no beer? What’s wrong with you?” I explained, “Hey, I don’t drink alcohol during the week. There are reasons for that.” My friends asked more questions. I explained that I think it’s so easy to consume alcohol these days that you really have to be careful that it doesn’t become a habit. And I personally have simply made it a habit not to drink alcohol.

Personal rules for alcohol consumption

Of course, I enjoy a drink on the weekends. But I also realize that I used to drink regularly. I don’t need it at all anymore. It’s almost like peer pressure to drink alcohol on the weekends. Of course, it’s fun to have a beer now and then, but there are hardly any reasons why one should drink alcohol. I’ve read that it takes up to 40 days for the last drop of alcohol, or any trace of it, to disappear from the body. And yes, I think it’s simply healthier not to do it, knowing full well that a few drinks, a nice glass of wine, can be quite good now and then. But yeah, I’ve made it a habit, and I try to stick to it.

And here’s something I’m particularly proud of: when I’m out with friends during the week and everyone’s having a drink. I’ve stuck to my habit, stuck to my habit, then I’m especially proud of myself for having followed through. It really boosts my self-confidence when I stick to my own rules, my own habits that I’ve set for myself.

My dessert habits

The issue of no dessert is quite simple: I’m someone who can’t resist a burger or a piece of cake and I instantly gain two kilograms. So I’ve gotten into the habit of simply skipping it during the week. Of course, if it’s someone’s birthday, then I would eat a piece of cake. But I usually only have dessert or a piece of cake on Sundays. I have to say, that’s kind of my guarantee against gaining weight.

My experience is that before I started thinking about desserts, I worked for an employer who had a bakery nearby. We would stop by there almost every day after lunch, have a pastry or a piece of cake. I actually gained several kilos without realizing it. I wasn’t even aware of why I had gained the weight until I realized, “Oh, of course, that’s 300 or 400 extra calories a day, and if I don’t compensate with more exercise or less food, well, it’s going to stick.”

This means that these two habits are partly about abstinence in this case. But I am also particularly proud when I don’t drink anything, i.e., don’t drink alcoholic beverages or don’t have dessert..

Maintain your native language regularly

Then I have another habit that I do especially in the evenings, just before going to sleep. It has something to do with my mother tongue; I’m a native Persian, a native Iranian. I’ve somehow noticed over the years, in recent years, that my Farsi, my Persian, has gotten worse. And then I thought to myself, wow, how can I stop this decline? So I got into the habit of simply reading just three or four lines from a Persian book every evening. I think I’ve been doing that for two years now. It’s worked wonders, to be honest, my Persian has actually improved.

So, I not only stopped the decline, but by reading very little – and yes, I think it’s called the compounding effect, a kind of compound interest effect – making something very consistent over a longer period and building on it, then the thing you’ve set out to do can only get better. I can recommend it to everyone: in the evenings, for example, when you’re just about to go to sleep, just do something small that you’ve firmly resolved to do for a long time, be it learning a language, or, as in my case, further developing your native language skills.

Integrate small routines into your day

A few lines a day are really enough to at least maintain a certain level. So, I think that was six habits, let me check, exactly, there were six, those are my standard habits. It might sound very time-consuming at first glance, but it’s not as time-consuming as it sounds. These gratitude routines, I really enjoy them. Drinking water, yes, that’s part of it, you have to drink water. The only thing I do differently is actually pump out the water and be practically energized by mid-morning.

Journaling does take a bit of effort, of course, but I’ve never once thought, “Ugh, journaling was awful today.” Every time I do it, every time I write in my diary, I feel better afterward. Meditation is something that’s incredibly good for me and doesn’t take much time either. No alcohol, no dessert—it doesn’t take up any time at all, just a little bit of willpower sometimes. And reading a few lines of Persian in the evening is just a few minutes a day that I invest in that.

The absolute advantage, of course, is that if I stick to these few things, it contributes incredibly to my happiness. I simply feel good about having done these basic things. Unfortunately, I also have a few bad habits that I still need to break, and I’d like to briefly address those. Perhaps you have some tips for me afterward on how I can overcome them. It’s actually easy to break them, but somehow I always fall back into old patterns.

Question your own mobile phone usage

I manage to stick to it for a while, to not do it, but then I do it again. I have no idea why. So, my first bad habit is checking my phone early in the morning and late at night. I have to say, it’s practically the last thing I see at night and the first thing I see in the morning. I really don’t like doing that. Reading emails immediately means checking what has or hasn’t arrived. That’s a habit I know I need to break.

Doing absolutely nothing for a while is something I can manage now. I think I probably just need to put my phone in another room, and unfortunately, I also use it as an alarm clock. A bad excuse, I know, but I really need to figure out how to stick to this bad habit. Then there’s another habit I find a bit annoying, which is eating way too fast. I don’t know why, it’s just become a habit. I basically eat all at once, way too fast, without a break, and I need to break that habit too.

Recognize bad habits too

I don’t particularly like it either. Another challenge is chewing 30 times before swallowing, for example. I need to think about that. To be honest, I don’t really enjoy how I can just get rid of this bad habit. There are certainly many other habits as well. I’ve really thought about it a lot. I think you have to differentiate a bit between different character traits. For example, impatience is unfortunately not a very good character trait for me.

I can’t say it’s a habit, a set of habits, but rather simply a character trait. I’ve identified many character traits I’d like to improve. Regarding habits, there are certainly a few more. We couldn’t think of any more off the top of our heads. And as I mentioned at the beginning, there are undoubtedly unconscious routines, rules, and habits that we all follow without even realizing it. And yes, I’d need to think a bit more about what other bad habits I might have.

Exactly, there are two ultimate advantages when I think about the topic of habits, and I’ve already talked about one of them. Sticking to my own rules, simply following them, gives me incredible self-confidence, knowing that I’ve adhered to the things I set for myself. It feels incredibly good to be truly mentally strong, to say, “Hey, I actually abstained from alcohol, even though it was a good opportunity to, say, have a beer.”

Valuing conscious decisions

Or I said no to the cake even though I really wanted some. And when you consciously realize that, you feel mentally stronger, because you know, hey, if I set my mind to something, then I can stick to it. And when you have that, that’s the second advantage, building this mental strength. The first advantage, building this mental strength, is that you then know exactly what to do when facing other challenges, tasks, situations, difficulties, whatever it may be, in all the issues you have in life.

With this mental strength, you can approach things very effectively. There’s practically nothing you can’t do. So, for me, those are the ultimate advantages of having habits, if you follow them, and not just for, say, six months or a year, but for several years. And at some point, you internalize it so strongly that you know it’s actually easy. So, if I do something new now, it’s actually easy for me. I can stick to it. If I decide to make saving a habit, for example, putting aside 50 euros once a week, I can follow through.

Choose suitable habits without overwhelming the patient

I also have other habits that I practice and stick to. That’s why I can really recommend that you develop a few habits for yourselves. I’m trying not to let the number of habits grow too much right now, because at some point it could become a burden. If you say, “Hey, I have up to 15 rules a day that I have to follow,” or even 20 rules a day, then yes, that sounds like a lot at first. It could happen that you just don’t enjoy it anymore. That’s why I try to keep the number small, but really stick to the things that are important to me.

Alright everyone, that brings us to the end of today’s episode. I hope you enjoyed it. Hopefully, habits make a little more sense now. I can honestly say, give them a try. Habits help me tremendously in bringing a certain inner peace and security to my everyday life. And they help me become a little better every day, especially with my mental strength. I highly recommend them to everyone. As always, one last little request: if you enjoyed the episode, please let me know.

End of the episode

So please leave a like, subscribe to the channel, and tell your friends about it, because that’s the only way the channel can continue to grow. Thank you for listening, and I wish you a wonderful day. Until next time, and don’t forget, mindset is everything.