Ep. 58 Why Your New Year’s Resolutions Fail – How to Create Habits that Stick

Why Your New Year’s Resolutions Fail – How to Create Habits that Stick

Every year we see everyone screaming “New Year, New Me” – ready to take on a laundry list of new goals for the year. The problem is, it’s February now, and your resolutions failed. So how do you reach your goals and create new habits that last?

Torie Mathis and her cohost Sean go over how to finally create habits that stick and set goals in a way you can reach them every time. If you’re tired of failing to reach your goals and are ready to create long-lasting habits this one is for you.

We’ll cover:
Why New Year’s resolutions are set to fail How to create good habits easily
How to make habits stick
Why it’s not just working on your productivity How to beat a lack of disciple and motivation How to reach big goals
How to build on more good habits

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Kartra https://toriemathis.com/kartra​
WP-Engine https://toriemathis.com/wpengine
Grammarly https://toriemathis.com/grammarly​

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION –

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SAF 58

Torie: [00:00:00] Go don’t fall into that new year. New you trap because you don’t have to go gung ho into everything all at one time.

Hey. Hey, welcome to Smart AF I’m your host Torie Mathis. We’ve got a great show for you today. So let’s get started. What’s up, guys? It’s Torie Mathis. Welcome to the show. I’m here with the one and only Sean Mathis founder of Miles Through Time Automotive Museum. 

Sean: [00:00:35] What’s going on. 

Torie: [00:00:36] What’s up everybody. So January over and, you know, everywhere. I keep seeing people still posting about all of these goals and habits they’re trying to do for the new year. And, you know, I kind of feel about new year’s habits. Like I do about anniversary flowers. I would rather have anniversary flowers on a random Tuesday. It doesn’t have to be a special day. I don’t think that you need the new year to start new habits.

Sean: [00:01:06] So Torie gets flowers and when I see them on sale. 

Torie: [00:01:09] I get them all the time and I think that’s awesome. And it’s not for something like you have to do it at this time. It’s just, it’s something that’s it’s it means a little bit more, I don’t know. So I think about that way with habits too. I think that you can set goals all year and I think you can, at any time start great new habits for yourself.

Sean: [00:01:28] And I think people like. Overzealous with the habits that they, they are the goals. What the hell are we talking about? Goals and habits. Holy shit. I’m into habits and goals. 

Torie: [00:01:42] I think because, at new year’s time, I think both of those things kind of go hand in hand. 

Sean: [00:01:46] Yeah. And I’ve always had a problem with like, doing something so unrealistic, like crazy diets. Right. I don’t want to do anything. I don’t see myself just doing forever. I don’t really want to do anything unless, unless that, that habit, that goal, or is like 75 hard it’s only for a certain amount of time in which case it’s completely different. But as far as like some Atkins diet or being vegan or something like that, if I don’t want to live like that forever, why would I do it for a short amount of time?

And so I think it’s, it’s better if you start. With some sort of habit that like, you can maintain it forever. Even if it’s, if it’s just walking or something like that, you can always go out and walk. 

Torie: [00:02:30] Well, you see people start the new year and they’re like new year new me. And it’s like, man, that’s a lot in one day. And all of a sudden you’re going to be a new person, like that’s too much to me. So, yes, if you’re going to start some new habits and it doesn’t matter if it’s the new year when it is, I think the first thing definitely is, is doing things that are realistic and it’s okay to start small, get that habit to stick because really that’s the big thing with any type of goal is, is getting into the groove and then you can start adding some more things to it rather than trying to go all out. And like the first is when people fail. 

Sean: [00:03:05] My habit this year read 37 books. 

Torie: [00:03:08] But I’ve never read one in my life since high school or the other. Right. 

Sean: [00:03:12] And it’d be like if you read 30 books a year normally, and you’re like, this year, my goal is 37 and you’re like, all right, you could probably do it. But if you don’t read the books, like start with one man, like knock that one out easy when you did it now, let’s, let’s double the goal.

That’s a read to your goal was to read one book a year, but you got two done. That’s awesome. Next year you could read four books, right? 

Torie: [00:03:36] Cause it’s fine. If you go up and over it, I kind of like how 75 hard did it though. I did 75 hard last year. And it was a cool experience and I’m a big reader anyway, I read most days, but they say 10 pages a day. And so I think, you know, if somebody’s starting to, you could easily read a lot more than that a day, but just starting with 10 pages, like maybe even five pages, like that’s a good place to. 

Sean: [00:03:59] Well, you just said not too long ago that you actually read more during that 75 days of that challenge than you have recently.

Torie: [00:04:09] I have, I have kind of gotten off reading yeah, for about like a month and a half or so after it, I don’t know if it was like, I was like, so in and so intense for 75 days that I kind of did back up a little bit and I hadn’t been reading it all. So I’ve been trying to bring it back and at least get a couple of pages in. And maybe it’s something I need to schedule because that’s damn near. For the rest of our lives, if it wasn’t so cold outside with that outdoor wall. Yeah. So 75 hard had two workouts per day, 45 minutes each, they had to be a couple of hours apart, but one of them had to be outside. So I mean, doing that for 75 days and kind of going through like, because it’s a lot.

Embracing the suck like sometimes you’re gonna have things that you need to do and people are so easy to give up. Like it makes you really have to plan around things that are gonna make you uncomfortable because especially like being a business owner, you’re going to be put into some uncomfortable positions and he just quit or give up like he got to keep going. So I think that that’s. Is really helpful for 75 days. But I agree like if you wanted to do that forever like it’s, it’s pretty intense. It might be a little bit too much. 

Sean: [00:05:14] Yeah. I mean like no breaks every single day. The two workouts, which isn’t that big of a deal, but I hate the cold. Absolutely hit it.

Torie: [00:05:24] Yeah. It was hard though, even in the heat, some of those days that we had. 

Sean: [00:05:27] It was hot then just in general too, like, that’s, it, it’s not a whole lot, but when you’re talking on a daily basis to make sure that stuff like it, it does become a challenge, even though it doesn’t seem like it is. I mean, it’s not like we sit around all day, twiddling our thumbs looking for something to do. Like you have to. Work to fit that kind of stuff in for that 75 days. 

Torie: [00:05:49] Are trying to get habits like that to really stick. I think something that makes that so unique and so fun is that it is a game. There’s an app. You have to click off every single thing. And if you don’t check off every single thing every single day, like you fail and start over.

So once you have time in there, you’re invested, you know, you don’t want to fail 50 days in and have to start over. And I think I love that kind of stuff that makes things a game and makes it a challenge. And, and being able to keep that promise to yourself day after day. Like I thought it was pretty cool.

Sean: [00:06:24] That’s what we’re working on with Riley. We’ve got one of those stealth fitness boards and it, you know, it’s a, it’s a game that you play with your, an app on your phone and you just balance on it. It’s planks. So you balance in a plank position up in like a pushup position. Yeah. I’m trying to, trying to get him to do pushups.

Some planks every day by himself without any kind of game associated to it. Isn’t very appealing to him. Therefore, it’s not very easy to get him to do it. Where are you? Get it? Like go, go pull out the board and, you know, play three minutes on there. He’s doing it that way now.

Torie: [00:07:01] Let’s see who can get better and like trying to challenge it and make it so that it’s a little bit more fun.

Sean: [00:07:07] I mean, it’s a challenge to still try to make it a habit, but that’s, that’s one of my, our habits that we’re trying to work on right now and get that solidified. Yeah. 

Torie: [00:07:17] Because I want summertime abs. So if I can do it too, I told them both of us summertime. With the stealth trainer. We’ll see, we’ll see how it goes, but making it a little bit fun, hopefully, we’ll get a little bit further than we may have otherwise. I think something that that has helped us is making the easy thing to have it. Like you don’t have to make whatever the habit is. Whatever you want to get done, what the habit is, you make it like the easy part, the habit. So when we wake up in the morning, we put gym clothes on because every Workday we go to the gym.

Very first, we get an hour or so of work done. And then we go to the gym, but the habit really isn’t like going to the gym and staying there for an hour. The habit is putting our gym clothes on. I mean, not like sets the tone, that’s what we’re going to do. 

Sean: [00:08:04] And then it works out to when we get to take her away to school. And then it’s just, you know, instead of going back home, we go straight to the gym. 

Torie: [00:08:13] So we’ve not only made the easy part, the habit, but we’ve attached it to something that we have to do. Like the kids got to go to school. So since we have to drive him to school, we might as well make that the exact same time.

And that works out really well, that we don’t miss days because of that, because it’s just kind of ingrained into those things and it’s become more than a habit. It’s just, it’s not just what we do. 

Sean: [00:08:34] When it’s convenient, as far as like, as convenient as it can be for the location of where our gym is. It’s, we’re not really going out of our way to go to the gym at that point.

Cause we’ve woken up. We’ve gotten our clothes on. We’re ready to go to the gym right off the bat. Then it’s just a matter of taking Rilley to school, which he has to do. And from there we’re already out of the house were already dressed for the gym. Turning right. And going to the gym instead of going straight home. 

Torie: [00:09:01] You know, we used to go to the gym in the evening and I think it was a lot harder to go. So consistently, even when I think I was doing a class at that time, I was doing the evening weightlifting class. And I think even then, like, it was, it was hard to get going because then we have the kids that we had to get going and after school and after work and like things come up. So I think making it more convenient.

Whatever these things are that you’re trying to do definitely helps to get those habits to really stick so that you can reach the goals that you. I was saying that, that we have a habit. We have a really good one that every single night at dinner, we make a huge tray of fresh fruit and vegetables, and we cut them all up in it. This blue cutting board that we use, we use the exact same one every day. And it’s always completely filled with fruit and vegetables. Nobody really eats salads, but me, so trying to get everybody to like, get that healthy, raw fruit and vegetable type things. It’s not easy, but I found that the kids will eat all kinds of vegetables if I cut them up and put them on the board.

Right? Like it’s some of the things that they’ve eaten, I’ve actually been surprised at. And so it’s a really good way that we’ve made sure that everybody did it. But the habit isn’t eating fruit and vegetables every day, every night, the habit is pulling out the blue cutting board. Like every night the blue cutting board comes out and that’s just like that trigger that that’s what we’re going to do.

And now the kids don’t even want to go out to eat for dinner ever because they don’t. Where’s the fruit and vegetables. So funny, we went to Australia a couple of years ago, and that was like the one thing they’re like, we had to go to the store and get stuff so that at night we could have fruit and vegetables there.

So we went to the grocery store and, and made sure that we were all stocked full of. I bet we can have it. 

Sean: [00:10:48] It’s a decent size tray of fruit. But it’s not massive. Like it’s, you know, an apple, a pear, some carrots, peppers, celery, grapes, grapes. 

Torie: [00:11:01] It’s a decent amount of stuff. 

Sean: [00:11:04] But we finish it every single night for sure. It’s, it’s super easy. It’s not even, I mean, we go to all the most of the time and the fruit’s super affordable, so like anyone could go and get a couple of things of fruit and do something similar. 

Torie: [00:11:21] I like to post pictures of it. Cause it’s always so pretty. So have you seen follow me on social media? You’ll probably see it every once in a while because. And it’s you know, it’s something that makes me happy. It makes me happy everybody’s eating fried vegetables daily. So but you know, yeah. If I tried to do that a, in a difficult way, if I tried to say, okay, let’s do it. I’m going to make you put them in your lunches or, you know, if there’s ways that I could have tried to do it, then it just wouldn’t have worked as well to get everybody to, to eat this well and to eat all of this stuff, every single and it’s every single day, there’s every day. Right. This is it just, it made it easy. So now it’s, it’s just a part of what we do. 

Sean: [00:11:58] I don’t even remember it being intentional either. It just has kind of morphed into happening and, and, and it is every single day. 

Torie: [00:12:07] And now it’s like when we go to the grocery store like usually that’s what we run out of is like one of the things that goes on our board and that’s what, like, it makes us have to go to the grocery store to get whatever it is. So all of those items are always stocked and some things come in and out is like seasonally. We always have those items on hand, because if you can prepare for habits, then you’re going to be better off in actually getting those habits to stick and actually going through them. Like I couldn’t, we couldn’t do a thing of fruit and vegetables for everybody.

If we didn’t always have fruit and vegetables available. So that part is always taken care of. So when it comes time to do it, everything else is easy. It’s already, it’s ready. It’s ready to go pull out the blue cutting board and you know, here we go. Thank you. That works. What else did I hear? Another thing that works really well for us is scheduling things that we want to get done.

We’ve scheduled the gym and we schedule things that we want to make sure that happens. If you don’t, it’s easy to let other things override what you want to do. There’s a bazillion things I could do every single morning. Work-wise I get a couple of hours of work done, and then we go to the gym. I could keep working every single day.

Every day, if it wasn’t scheduled and if it wasn’t in my calendar and if I wasn’t and I actually make a commitment to other people that I go to a class or I have stuff scheduled that I work out with somebody else, like, it’s, non-negotiable like, it’s going to happen no matter what. 

Sean: [00:13:34] You’d almost say you got some accountability buddies.

Torie: [00:13:38] Yeah. And it kind of, it wasn’t intentional, but now even like on Fridays, I don’t have a class that I go to, but one of the, the ladies that I work out with, we go and work out every Friday. And it’s, it’s been, you know, she’s the same as me that we want to go in there and, and keep getting better and getting stronger.

And so I kind of found that person that is just perfect for me to work out with. 

Sean: [00:14:00] Really easy, to talk yourself out of doing something that they don’t really a hundred percent want to go do all the time. Or you could be a little bit tired. You got a little extra work to do you know, you’re sore or whatever the case may be. And you’re, and you’re thinking of all these reasons to not do it. Even though, you know, you should, and you’re trying to justify in your head not to do it because that would be easier. But when somebody else’s expecting you, it’s a lot harder than be like, nah, I’m not going to do it today. And, and therefore you, you wind up going and then you’re always at the, and you’re like, wow, I’m glad I went. And didn’t, you know, skip this one. 

Torie: [00:14:39] There’s so many days that I’m like, man, I’m sore. I like all those things. 

Sean: [00:14:44] Every Monday is the hardest day of the week for us for the gym because it’s not first thing in the morning. It’s one 30. 

Torie: [00:14:52] Yeah. That’s the one day right now that’s different and it is harder because it’s. First thing, but you know what, it’s a commitment and we still go, yeah. 

Sean: [00:15:00] Yeah they still make that habit of, you know, what we do during the day work-wise and how we eat and, you know, drinking the coffee, you know, whatever the case may be to where it’s still at about that. Know, one 20 time we got to go and head towards the gym. It’s the same, every single week. It just winds up, you know, where we are at, you know, in our work is what varies, which then makes it a little bit more challenging. But I don’t think we’ve missed any still. No, we haven’t. 

Torie: [00:15:30] But if we started. When we first started going to this particular gym, if we were like, we’re going five days a week and we’re going to, like, it wouldn’t have worked that way. It’s kind of morphed into this. It’s not, you know, new year, new you type of thing. It’s building on what works, starting with what works and then adding something else to it. Yeah. 

Sean: [00:15:52] We didn’t start the gym and was just like instantly, we’re going four times a week. It was. Hit and miss a little bit at the beginning, trying to find a groove and try to fit it into the schedule as best as possible without actually having a specific plan of when we’re going to be able to go do things.

And it just, it kind of morphed. And then it went to, I think we were making sure that we to the gym twice a week. And then it worked into three times a week and it, the four times a week is relatively recent, has been months now, but it’s it wasn’t from the beginning. So I think people get discouraged a lot of times when they just, can’t jump straight into something that they’d like to see themselves doing at that given time.

Torie: [00:16:36] I’ll tell you something honestly, too, though. I actually, and this happens to me a lot. I feel bad for going to the gym at nine o’clock in the morning. I feel sometimes like I should be working. I should be doing other things. But I don’t know why that always like gets in there, like who am I to be at the gym at nine o’clock like, you see these people, like, who are these? Shouldn’t they be at work and it’s hard to do you ever have that? Like, I should be, I could be doing these emails or this project, this needs to be done, but you know, There’s always enough time and things will maneuver. Things will go into space. You give them. If you give yourself all day to do things you will take all day. If you give yourself a little bit less time, like take an hour out to go to the gym, like all the stuff still gets done. And so sometimes, like, I feel guilty that I should be working and I don’t know why my brain wants to do that. And I have to tell me no like this is important. This needs to be taken care of. Like, that is what keeps me sane. That’s what keeps me de-stressed, it’s what keeps me healthy. So there’s all these other benefits that if I didn’t take that hour out of every day to go to the gym and do those things, I would probably do a shittier job at my job. Do you, you probably don’t have that to you? 

Sean: [00:17:58] Personally know the only thing I have, it can be a bit of a mental trap really? Cause every once in a while, like I do have, I don’t feel guilty for going to the gym by any means. But I do get to where like, I want to get the work done. And I feel like going to the gym then disrupts me being able to get it done, even though it’s still gets done.

And there’s no ness, there’s a necessarily a time limit for when it needs to be done. But in my mind, I like it is hard to, to get up and leave in the middle of something when I know. In that same amount of time of working out, I could have finished that project, but with that being said, you know, I can finish it when I get back as well.

Torie: [00:18:41] Do you think though that maybe some of it is that I do not touch my phone the entire time I’m at the gym? I don’t answer texts. I don’t answer phone calls. I don’t answer emails. My phone is there. Just in case there’s something with the kids or whatever. I will answer that, but I don’t. I see you though, in between sets and stuff, you’re answering emails, you’re doing stuff.

So you’re still kind of working. 

Sean: [00:19:03] Yeah. Do you think that helps? I don’t know. Maybe. But yeah, you definitely don’t and, and, and I, I answered museum phone calls still, and if I can answer an email while I’m there, you know, catching my breath, I totally do. I don’t know if I should or not, but you know, I really don’t care. Who’s judging. 

Torie: [00:19:19] Well, I don’t think it’s judging. I think I’m just trying to figure out, like, there’s definitely a difference there that I have that weird guilt sometimes. Yeah. I wonder if that’s why though because I detach myself from work from everything so completely while I’m there, which I have to do.

Like, I think it’s necessary for me. I always joke that it’s like my no thinking time I go there. I don’t even like counting my own sets because I just, I want to, I want to just get into the groove and not have to think, not have to make decisions, not have to, to do any of that stuff. 

Sean: [00:19:50] It might make a difference to that. Like what you work on versus what I work on. A lot different a lot of times. And so like, if I need to just send an email or forward something or invoice something like it, it doesn’t really matter. Data entry type stuff. You’re actually like creating stuff from nothing and molding piles that do into statutes.

Torie: [00:20:15] Possibly those statues come out pretty nice. 

Sean: [00:20:18] I don’t know, I mean, there’s, there’s all kinds of things, but ultimately the main thing is we still go. 

Torie: [00:20:25] We still go, yeah. The guilt, those fields. So even if you have feelings of guilt for any of these things that you’re doing, That doesn’t mean that that can stop you. That’s just like, I don’t know why we do that. Why do we do that to ourselves? Sometimes it’s so easy to talk yourself out. 

Sean: [00:20:39] You didn’t finish the work you needed to do, and you were going to the gym. There’d be a bit of a problem there, but because you just take a little bit of time out for yourself to do what you should be doing to keep yourself healthy and well, mentally and physically and all those things. And then you go back and you’re able to finish it. I see no reason you should ever feel guilty or anybody else for, taking care of themselves. 

Torie: [00:21:01] You’ll think they don’t have enough time. Like, that’s always bullshit because everybody has the exact same amount of time. And like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk and Oprah and, and whoever, like they get an immense amount of stuff done.

And if they can do it, like, there’s no reason that you can’t take an hour to take care of yourself every day. Right. Time is a problem. Then like time audit yourself, like every 30 minutes for a couple of days, like write down what you’re doing at that time. And add up those check and Facebook or playing a game or daydream, whatever those things are.

There’s going to be a lot of time that is not being used very well, that you can reallocate to do something right. You know, maybe your TV time at night is getting a little bit longer than it should be. And maybe you don’t even realize how long that is. I think some people watch a lot of TV. Netflix. I see how much like people are. Like, I already watched this show in the show. Somebody the other day was talking about the Mandalorian. I’m like we haven’t had time to watch it yet. Like you guys gotta be doing something, watching all these damn shows so quick. So maybe a little bit of reallocation of time. If you’re having a hard time fitting in the habits and the goals that you want to do. 

Sean: [00:22:18] Start easy, start simple. Don’t go overzealous about what it is you think you want to do. Work into it. There’s no shame in that. And however long it takes to, to get to that optimum level of whatever your expectation is, then that’s how long it takes. At least you’re going to be consistent and you’ll, you’ll get it done.

Torie: [00:22:36] Don’t go, don’t fall into that new year, new you trap because you don’t have to go gung ho into everything all at one time. Every day can be a new year. You can get flowers on Tuesdays randomly. You don’t need something special to take care of yourself. You don’t need a special day to do something nice for people.

If you want to create some new habits, I hope that these are good ideas that you could use to get things done. And if you’d like the show, we would appreciate it. If you would subscribe and like this video, and if you know someone that needs to hear this, share it with them, they might like it too. 

Sean: [00:23:16] So, yeah.

Torie: [00:23:17] See, on the next one you. 

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