Let's Get This Party Started

Each month, we will explore a new mental, physical or fiscal challenge, together. With beginner, intermediate and expert level tiers and built-in accountability, there will be something for everyone. It's time to uncouple our self worth from our net worth so we can all live a rich, happy and fulfilled life.

I’ve teamed up with my beautiful wife and friend, Taylor, to take on these challenges and experiment together. I should let you know, she is reluctant, slightly nervous and maybe a little annoyed about this whole thing. So, this should be a good time. We are committing to 12 months, 12 challenges, 21 days a piece. We are going to test new ways to live better, together.

So we hope you join us each week as we learn, improve and break things. We will take inspiration from many sources, but we’ve leaned on James Clear and his lessons from his book, “Atomic Habits” to guide us in constructing these challenges.

Starting next week, we will be announcing the first challenge. Here’s how this will work. We’ve modeled each challenge around the Habit Loop. There are 4 phases of the Habit Loop, The Cue, The Craving, The Response and The Reward. According to James, “The cue triggers a craving, which motivates a response, which provides a reward, which satisfies the craving and, ultimately, becomes associated with the cue. Together, these four steps form a neurological feedback loop—cue, craving, response, reward; cue, craving, response, reward—that ultimately allows you to create automatic habits.”

So, we will cue up a problem you likely face in your daily life, motivate you to crave a solution, develop the plan to respond to this problem with a solution and by accomplishing this response, reward you with a new habit! To be more specific, I’ll cover each week in more detail. We will use the first challenge we have planned, “Gratitude” as an example.

Week 1, we will setup and discuss practicing gratitude, how it works, how it applies to our lives, why it’s important, and various experts take on gratitude. This is known as the Cue. We will make it abundantly clear and obvious why adapting gratitude habits will be a good use of your time. We will discuss what we are looking forward to, our concerns, how you can join us, what, if anything, you’ll need to participate, and additional listening and reading opportunities on the topic at hand.

Week 2 will Cue the challenge, rules, specific levels (Beginner, Intermediate, Expert), tips and strategies and announce our personal plans for the challenge. We will also kick off the challenge on social and Stickk, our preferred accountability platform. This is the kickoff!

Week 3, we will bring in an expert or discuss our own findings, or both. We will cover how we feel, what’s working, what’s not, and ask you to weigh in as well!

Week 4, the final week, we’ll celebrate our success! Review our pros and cons, and decide whether to make it a habit or not, discuss what we’ve learned from the experience, how we’ve benefitted (or regressed). All the things! We will also share ways to continue with the challenge, and turn it into a lifestyle choice if you so choose.

Each challenge will run 21 days, with a week break in between. 21 days is widely misinterpreted as the length in which it takes to develop a habit. The reality is, a habit can be formed anywhere from 18 to 254 days, depending on the person, environment or habit in question. In other words, we likely won’t be developing these habits into action in 21 days. This whole experiment is meant to be a launching pad. I keep hearing about new ideas, trends, diets, practices that are designed to improve your life, but I often feel these go in one ear and out the other and end up as a stack of “I should be doing this”, eventually making me feel even worse about all the things I SHOULD be doing, but am not. This podcast is aimed to take that pressure off, and gives us a place to give those things a shot. Eventually, we hope to redefine ourselves as fear facing, norm busting badasses.

Join our Facebook Group at https://www.facebook.com/playingwithfire/

Create an account on Stickk at https://www.stickk.com/ and join us as we take monthly challenges head on!

Watch our documentary today!

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