Underachiever to Millionaire: My 5 Habits for Massive Success

You become your habits. So if you want to have anything good happen in life, you want to make it habitual. And that should be one of your goals where people come up and they start saying, wow, you're different. I can really see a difference in you. That's the power of habits.

Welcome to the Growth Lab Podcast where we uncover the science of how to grow yourself, your health, your wealth, and take your career and relationships to the next level. I'm your host, Dr. Josh Axe. I'm a graduate of Johns Hopkins University. I'm the founder of Ancient Nutrition and Leaders.com. And on today's episode, we're gonna talk through the 5 habits that helped radically change my life.

And if you're a person saying, I wanna transform, I wanna grow, I wanna experience a breakthrough, habits are absolutely essential. And there was a study recently done at Duke University and they said that habits account for approximately 40% of our behaviors each and every day. Aristotle believed that number was closer to 90%.

And Will Durant, a famous philosopher, said, paraphrased Aristotle, basically saying, we are what we repeatedly do. So your habits become you, and essentially that becomes your identity. And so your habits are absolutely essential for you to become who you want to be.

So if you're saying to yourself, you know what, I want to eventually achieve something, I want to accomplish something, or you want to become a certain type of person, habits are those essential ingredients that help you create that life that you've always dreamed of.

You know, I first became conscious of habits when I was in high school and my dad sat me down, I remember once, and he said, you know, Josh, he said, if you're going to grow at anything, habits are important. And so one thing my dad did is he said, I'm gonna have you start doing pull-ups and push-ups before you walk into the house each day.

So he said, 5 days a week before you walk in the door, I'm gonna have you start doing 1 set at least of pull-ups and push-ups. And so I started doing this every day. I walked into— I got home from school, would get off the school bus, and I would walk into the garage. My dad had put up a pull-up bar and I would do 1 set of pull-ups. And then I would do 1 set of pushups.

By the way, by the end of high school, I was able to do over 30 pullups. And I'm talking about very, very strict pullups. And it was because I was focused on just getting a little bit better every day. I had this habit. By the way, this habit took me about 1 minute to do pullups, 1 minute to do pushups, and I could do, you know, well over 100 pushups and over 30 pullups.

Habits are even more important in other areas of your life. Now we're gonna talk about habits in 5 different areas, one of those being health, another being, your getting better in your career skill. We're gonna talk about character, we're gonna talk about spirituality, and we're gonna talk about another really vital area of habits as well.

But again, habits are essential for you to improve your health, your relationships, your career, your wealth, your spiritual life. You need habits. Now, there's some good research on habits, and there are 2 specific studies I wanna go over right now. One is out of the European Journal of Social Psychology, and another is out of the British Journal of health psychology.

In both of these studies, they looked at over 100 people over the period of 12 weeks. And each participant in these groups said, I'm going to pick one habit that I'm going to look to make automatic over time. And so the study was really looking at how long does it take for a habit to become automatic?

And what they found in the study was it takes approximately 59 to 66 days, so around 60 days, around 2 months, is how long it takes in order to make a habit automatic. Now, I think there's been different research over the years. By the way, I've seen everything from 30 days to 150 days, but these 2 studies are very accurate. About 60 days it takes in order for you to, to really solidify a habit.

And it's important to understand that you become your habits. So if you want to have anything good happen in life, you want to make it habitual. You know, I think all the way back to the ancient monks, okay? And monks would recite, uh, certain meditations. In fact, one thing I read recently is that monks would oftentimes go through the Psalms, a book in the Bible.

And by the way, the Buddhist monks did a very similar thing where they would recite some form of scripture, uh, every day. And that is really what allowed them to grow in their character, because when what they were reciting over and over and over, which typically would be connected to God or growing in some form of character or virtue, actually became them.

You know, and you may notice that if you ever get around certain priests or pastors or monks, you may notice— or rabbis— you may notice there's a way about them in terms of their calmness and their discernment and their— and I'm not saying all of them, but a lot of them because they've meditated and recited, they've made a habit out of memorizing scriptures that are really connected to virtue and character.

And it's the same thing in business. You look at the most successful people in business of all time, whether it be Elon Musk or Warren Buffett or John Rockefeller, these people were very, very conscious of their habits.

In fact, I was reading some articles online recently talking about the similarities between the habits of Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, and the world's billionaires. And they said there are certain things that are very different. For instance, what time they wake up in the morning.

Some of them were waking up at 4 and 5 in the morning, and some were sleeping in until around 8:00 AM. And so you really see some differences in there, but one of the things they all had in common is that the first part of their day, most of them read for nearly 2 hours. And so they were learners. Every day they had the habit of reading at least 1 hour a day.

You know, Elon Musk, they said one of his habits is he wakes up in the morning and he spends about 40 minutes in the shower where he thinks and innovates. He says it's when his mind is the freshest. And that, he said, the earlier in the day it is, the more innovative he is. And so one of his goals is to be more innovative.

So he takes that first part of his day, spends time innovating, And then what he'll do is he will spend time reading and learning, and then he'll go into his most important meetings of the day. He says if something is a priority, he says, I do it first thing in that first half of the day. Now this reminds me of something one of my mentors taught me.

So I shared with you the first time I really became conscious of my habits was with my dad. And then when I started working on my doctorate, I started going in and learning from From a physician who became a mentor of mine. And he had this thing that he said very consistently, and it was, win the morning, win the day.

And he said, your habits are literally the number one thing that it takes to be successful, is being conscious of your habits and getting growing and growing and getting better habits. So think about this, win the morning, win the day. Win the morning, win the day. And I started to realize this. I started waking up at 5:00 AM in the morning and I would spend time on— in growing.

I'd spend time with God. So I'd spend an— I did what I call a spiritual triathlon. So I would spend about 20 minutes in gratitude saying everything I'm grateful for, and then I would read something for about 20 minutes, and then I would spend another 20 minutes in prayer and meditation. And then right after that, I would get a workout in. And then I would have a superfood smoothie.

And by the time 8:00 AM rolled around, when a lot of people were waking up, I spent 3 hours in learning and growth and getting better. I already had my workout in, had a healthy meal, connected with God. All of these things happened. And so I literally felt around 8:00 AM that I could do nothing else the rest of the day. And I had won the day.

And you want to have that sort of mindset about what are those habits that you can implement that will change your life. Because I found that, that it wasn't after 1 day or 2 days or 1 week or sometimes even a year, but after years and years of having a good habit, it literally changed who I am.

And in one of those habits I'm going to talk about, I had people coming up to me and saying, Josh, you're different. There's something different about you. And that should be one of your goals where people come up and they start saying, wow, you're different. I can really see a difference in you. That's the power of habits. Now, there's some good research around habits we're gonna get into.

Before I get into that though, I wanna go through the biggest habit destroyers. So when I look at people who have good and bad habits, Let me say this as well. All of our day, you may not realize that you have habits, but most of us, again, according to Duke research, 40% of our day you're doing something that's a habit, habitual. And it's either a good habit or bad habit.

So oftentimes with habits, you're not necessarily— it doesn't take more time. You're replacing something bad with something good. But here are the biggest habit destroyers. Number one, a poor social circle.

If your social circle and your inner circle of friends are people with poor character, it is the number one thing that will destroy good habits because they're always trying to suck you into doing something that's unhealthy. So for instance, you go out with friends that are constantly eating food that's conventional and very unhealthy.

There's an example versus you go out with friends and you go over to their house and they're making a healthy meal, right? There's an example. Or you have a friend that's very disciplined and they're working out. By the way, there's scientific studies showing that if you hang out with people that work out, you're more likely to work out. So the number one habit destroyer is your inner circle.

Who are the people you're hanging out with? The second biggest habit destroyer are busy lifestyles. We're saying, I'm too busy. You're kind of on the go, rushing around all the time, and that's because you typically have— And the second point here is you've had poor prioritization and time management.

So you haven't said to yourself and written down, what are the most important things in my life, and become very aware of what matters most in life. When you become aware of what matters most and then you write down and put in your schedule spending time on those things that matter, that's essential. And that's, that's important. That's Time management is really a big part of habits.

So I'll give you an example. For myself, when I said I spent 5:00 AM to 8:00 AM working out, building my faith, so building my faith and my fitness and my mindset, when I did that, I had to schedule it.

And so every morning I knew my alarm went off at 5:00 AM and then I did A, B, and C. So time management is a key part, but if you are not scheduling and putting in your schedule, These habits, that'll destroy it. Number 4 is your lack of purpose and identity.

If you don't have a purpose in life, if you're not motivated and inspired to wake up, oftentimes you'll hit the snooze button and you won't get up. I found for myself, at one point in my life, I didn't have as much of a purpose. And I found myself sort of not excited to get up in the morning. I remember, you know, I'm thinking about the first year of college.

I didn't know what I wanted to do as a degree. I didn't necessarily have this goal to change the world. And so I would miss class. I would click the snooze button. I just wasn't all that motivated. Versus the next year I realized that, you know what, I wanna learn about natural medicine and I wanna learn about leadership.

I started learning about, I started realizing what I wanted to do in the future and I started waking up in the morning pretty excited to go to class, excited to go to certain extracurricular activities where I knew I could grow and transform and get better. So lack of purpose is a habit destroyer, and so is lack of identity.

When you know your identity of who you are in terms of your life has meaning and it really helps build and strengthen your self-worth, it's really, really important. For instance, one of the things I've noticed is, is that when somebody's identity is— when they feel like their identity is important and they— it's meaningful to society, they tend to have better habits.

So to give you an example, this tends to be tied to what is your role. So for myself as a dad, I know that, you know, being a dad to my daughter Arwen, that's a really important role and responsibility. You know, I need to love her. I need to challenge her to grow. I need to make sure she's eating healthy, right?

And so all of these things help build in me— I understand that that what I say to my daughter now these first few years of life will affect the rest of her life. So all that being said, when you know your purpose and your identity, it's so important for habits. But if you don't have a big purpose and identity, it hurts your habits.

The last thing that really hurts your habits is a lack of self-discipline. And that also can be tied to your purpose and identity, but really saying to yourself and realizing, you know what, you're a person that always shows up when the alarm goes off. You get up. If you set a time and you say you're gonna be somewhere, you be there. And if you fall off a little bit, you jump right back on it.

But lack of discipline is a habit destroyer. So basically it looks like this. If you have a weak identity, you have a weak purpose. If you have a weak purpose, you have weak values. If you have weak values, then you tend to not have good habits, and then you have bad outcomes, right? And that's a big thing to understand as well, is that your habits more than anything affect your outcomes.

You know, James Clear wrote a fantastic book called Atomic Habits, and in the book he really challenges people that habits help you get 1% better every single day. And that's the truth about habits, is after one day of working out, you're not going to look in the mirror and feel and see, wow, my physique has totally changed.

You're not going to read oftentimes one chapter of a book and say, you know what, I'm I am much smarter now. But if you do that for year after year after year, you will see you will become a changed person. You know, I noticed this about myself. I never liked to read.

When I was in high school, by the way, I don't know that I actually— this is kind of a secret, but I don't know that I ever read an entire book in high school. I would buy Cliff Notes. I would read some of those. And I didn't do that. I did very, very poorly in high school. When I got to college, someone gave me a book. It was actually the book The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien.

And it was the first time I actually read a full book because I liked it so much. And then I started reading more and more and more. And then I stopped— I kept reading some fictional novels, but then I started saying, well, I want to grow as a leader. And so I said, I'm going to try and read a book a month. And I read a book a month. And after reading the first book, I got a little bit better.

But then after reading 12 books in a year, I said, wow, I can tell I've changed. But then after reading a book on growth and leadership every month for 5 years, I'd read 60 books on growth and leadership. I felt like I was an expert. And so it's really important that you understand that if you can make certain things your habits now, it's not what's gonna happen tomorrow.

It's gonna help you become the person you wanna be 1 year or even 10 years from now. Now identity is so closely tied to the habits we adopt, and you want to adopt what I call identity habits, and you wanna use that type of language. I'm gonna give you an example of this.

Rather than saying, I need to lose 20 pounds, that's not identity-based, that's sort of a task you have in the future, it's a goal, I wanna lose 20. And by the way, it's not even— it's just, I want, or I need to. What you want to say instead is, I'm committed. I'm committed to working out. That's more identity-based. Like, I'm a triathlete, or I'm a swimmer, or I'm a runner.

You want to say something in terms of, this is who I am. And the psychology shows is that you have a greater chance of succeeding when you start identifying as that person you wanna become. So you think about your habits, but those habits become— help you become a certain type of person, and that type of person has those habits.

And so you might even say to yourself, well, I wanna lose 20 pounds and I wanna get ripped. If that's you, you need to ask the question, what does a— what would a healthy person do? That person that's really fit and really healthy, you know, Dwayne Johnson. Dwayne Johnson. Johnson, The Rock, or Mark Wahlberg, or, you know, Carrie Underwood, or, you know, or whoever it is, Jennifer Garner.

These people that we know, we see in the spotlight that are really healthy and fit, what did they do? What are their habits? And you just model those habits. So now I wanna dive into the top 5 habits that changed my life. And the first is health habits. Now I want to start with exercise, and there's a great study done that I want to go through here.

And it was a study published in the Journal of— in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. And basically, this is a big study, had 30,000 participants, and the researchers found that physical activity greatly improved the symptoms of depression, distress, anxiety. And it found that it takes less than 12 weeks to see improvements and make something a habit.

And there's another study that I mentioned earlier that found that the number one determining factor in somebody creating a healthy habit and sticking with something long-term was their friend group. If someone got around a friend group that was really into health and fitness, that greatly increased their health and fitness and improved their habits.

If somebody spent time around a group that wasn't into health and fitness, they were not likely to stick with their habits. So again, the research shows that your friend group and the people you spend time with is incredibly important to you building good habits.

Now, when we're talking about exercise, some of the best forms of exercise to create as a habit could be high-intensity interval training, weight training, cardio, stability exercise like barre, Pilates, or yoga. But even walking is good. I would say whatever you can enjoy and find a group that you can do some sort of exercise with, there's a greater chance you'll stick to it.

So again, when it comes to exercising daily, and this is a habit that has completely changed my life, let me tell you why I exercise so consistently. Number one, because my dad did. If it wasn't for my dad, I don't know that I would have worked out every day. But my dad would have me come in when he was working out and work out with him.

My wife Chelsea and I have our daughter who's 3 years old, Arwen, She works out when we're working out, you know, and so she'll get down and do burpees or her version of them. She'll do pull-ups. We have her on the bar and helping her do pull-ups. And so we're teaching our daughter early on how to exercise.

And I truly believe the biggest reason— I've seen this with so many people— the biggest reason a lot of people exercise is because their parents did growing up and it became a habit and a lifestyle for them.

In a very similar fashion, you Your friend group right now, if you have a group, an inner circle, and they're really not into health and wellness, if you wanna get fit, start pursuing friendships with people that are into fitness. Now, after my dad, I had a man and woman I met who were really into health and fitness in college, and I would go and work out with them very consistently.

And then again, for the rest of my life, I kept working out. But change your friend group. And listen, you may say to yourself, well, I don't, You know, I'm just not into working out. Well, then do this. At the very least, start walking twice a day for 20 minutes.

If you wake up first thing when you wake up in the morning, if you walk, and if you do that around lunch, you know, so right after you eat, you go for a 20-minute walk, it will do wonders for your health. But really, I'm not here to prescribe an exact form of diet. Whether you do weight training or cardio or HIIT, whatever it is, just do it consistently That's the key.

You know, diet is really the other really important factor when it comes to creating health habits. It tends to be our eating habits. Now I do want to go over some other 7 health habits that I think would also benefit you immensely. But one of the things that I found was, is that when it comes to diet, that the idea there was, is not to be perfect, but it's just to get better.

So I want to go through these 7 health habits now, but when it comes to diet, the first health habit is eat a healthy breakfast. Or if you're into intermittent fasting, have your first meal, try and make it healthy. And oftentimes when that happens, it's easier to eat a healthier lunch and dinner.

And what I started doing when I was working on my doctorate was I started doing a superfood smoothie every morning for breakfast. Basically, I did a cup of berries, A little bit of— today I do collagen protein, and I would do some sort of healthy fat like coconut milk. So 3 ingredients in a blender: berries, collagen, coconut milk. And think about this.

We talk about getting 1% better a day as a habit. Well, if you started changing your breakfast every day and started eating a really healthy breakfast, that's 1/3 of your diet. That's not a 1%, that's a 33% improvement immediately. And so if you can start doing a superfood smoothie for breakfast, you've changed 33% of your diet. That's health habit number 1.

Health habit number 2, as I mentioned, workout. You don't need to work out an hour a day, but at least 3 days a week for 20 minutes. If you could do that, maybe get a Peloton bike or a Carol bike, something like that, and you just do 20 minutes 3 times a week. That alone would make a tremendous difference if you're not working out.

But whatever your workout habits are now, figure out what's ideal for you, get it scheduled. And here's the other big thing: get a partner who can hold you accountable. Who can you go to a workout class with, whether it's Orangetheory or CrossFit or your favorite barre class? But get those scheduled and ideally schedule it with a friend at least one day a week.

Here's another one: walk daily, twice a day. Now, I want to mention walking first thing in the morning. It's one of the healthiest things you can do, especially outside, because when you get outside first thing in the morning and walk, you start getting your circulatory system moving.

The other thing is whether the sun is out or not, whether the sun is behind the clouds or not, it starts resetting your circadian rhythms. And so now all of a sudden, your cortisol and melatonin and hormones start to get balanced. And secreting the time of day and the amounts they should be secreted.

So walking first thing in the morning, what I like to do is wake up and either drink some lemon water or have my smoothie and immediately go for a walk for 20 minutes. By the way, you can do habit combining, which I'll talk about in a little bit, where you combine multiple habits together. So that's number 3 is walk twice a day. Drink a half a gallon of water with electrolytes.

Now that's a really simple one to do, But drinking more water with electrolytes will hydrate you. You know, I saw a survey recently that said, where over 80— when people asked, a group was asked, are you, you know, do you get really tired during the day or more fatigued than you believe you should be?

The number was over 80% of people said, yes, I get more tired and fatigued than I believe I should be. You know, one of the symptoms of feeling fatigued is dehydration. So if you drink half a gallon of water and you put in one pack of healthy electrolytes, I have an electrolyte pack by a company where they use coconut water and some natural electrolytes, and I'll drink that throughout the day.

I noticed even though I eat incredibly healthy, I noticed my energy went up a notch. So drinking clean filtered water with electrolytes is an incredible health habit that's so, so easy. Another big one is Making sure you're getting that 20 minutes of sunshine a day. Now you can combine walking with getting that 20 minutes of sunshine and you've got a few good habits in one. Here's another big one.

Take supplements that address your nutritional deficiencies. If you can tell you've got inflammation in your body, take turmeric and collagen. If you know you need support with your brain, take ginkgo biloba and lion's mane mushroom. But whatever you have, start taking your daily supplements and take them first thing in the morning.

And last but not least, as a health habit, try and get 8 hours of quality sleep a night. Some of the habits that help me sleep better are making sure my room is dark, so I have blackout curtains, also making sure my room is cold at night, and then I have a weighted blanket.

And then another thing, after dinner, if my wife and I are gonna watch, let's say, a show on TV, I'll put on my orange, my blue blocker sunglasses, So these are all habits I have to help me sleep better. The clinical studies on sleep and how important it is for not catching the common cold or any illness, but especially for your immune system, is really tremendous.

And so these are some of the top health habits you can implement. You know, one of the things I've noticed over the years is that people that are successful share similar habits. You know, I was thinking about a friend of mine, Carrie Underwood Fisher. You all know her. She's an incredible singer.

And my wife and I have been really blessed to be able to sit down with Carrie and her husband Mike and do dinner. And I've been out to their houses several times, and they have the most incredible garden and greenhouse you've ever seen. But, you know, I started— you know, I've read this about Carrie, but I've also watched in her life, she has some really incredible habits.

And so does someone like Mark Wahlberg. You know, I bring up those 2 in particular because I recently was thinking about them and read an article. On Mark that said he wakes up at 4 AM in the morning to start his workouts and his day. But I thought about Mark and Carey just as an example of 2 people that are very successful. One is an actor and one is a musician.

And, you know, both of them wake up in the morning and they work out. They both have a healthy meal. They both work on their spiritual growth, and they both spend time with family.

Across the board, and so like I saw an Instagram post with Carrie, and she had a mug in her hand, and it said something like, "I run on Jesus and coffee." And so she sat there; she sits there with a mug in her hand of her coffee in the morning. That's a habit. She has her her coffee, probably with something like some collagen and coconut milk or something like that in it.

And then she sits down and she reads her Bible. And then she'll get a workout in and then she'll spend time with her kids. So you'll see that, and the same with Mark Wahlberg. I saw he just moved from LA to Nevada because it was a healthier family environment. He wanted to spend time around people that shared more of his family values.

Same thing, he works out, works on his spiritual life, eats a healthy meal, then he spends time with his family. Successful people all share these common habits. And so again, the number one habit that has really transformed my life are these health habits. Implement just a few, and I believe it's gonna transform your life in a big way.

The second type of habit that I've started implementing that has really improved my life are habits related to my career and growing in a certain skill set. And the specific one I mentioned earlier, but I'm gonna bring up again, is being a reader. I decided that I wanted to improve my ability to communicate and grow in my leadership skills.

And so what I did is I mentioned I started reading one book a month. And this did tremendous things for me. And then I said, okay, I don't know, I not only want to grow in my ability to lead, but I also want to grow in my ability, ability to communicate. And I really realized this when I started doing a radio show.

So I used to have a radio show in Nashville that was 3 hours on Sunday nights, and I would go in, it was a call-in show. I was inspired by Dave Ramsey. I heard him answering, answering financial questions. And I thought to myself, you know what, I think I can do a similar type show only answering health questions.

And early on we were in Nashville and then eventually it was syndicated into Kansas City and West Palm Beach, Florida and Minneapolis and Knoxville, Tennessee and a number of markets. And then I decided actually over time that I just wanted to do a podcast and it was more effective in YouTube videos and so I went that route instead.

All that being said, when I first listened to myself do a radio show, I said, you know what, I wanna improve and become a better communicator. I went and listened to myself and I was horrified. I sounded like a stick in the mud. I mean, it was something like, welcome to Health Today by Josh Axe. I mean, it was so boring, I couldn't even listen to myself.

And so I realized, I needed to grow in my career in a specific skill, and that skill was communication. Now listen, I still have a lot of room to improve on communication. I tend to be a little bit more of a raw communicator.

You know, when I watch someone like John Maxwell, who is so clean and perfect in the way he communicates, but I have worked on being better at connecting with people over the years in my communication skills. So here's what I did. I said, okay, I wanna create a system to grow in my ability to communicate. And so what I did was I wrote down all the areas I needed to improve.

I needed to improve the amount of times I said um. I needed to improve my ability to tell a good story.

I needed to also become more conversational and less sort of lab coat and dry and cold and just more warm and connecting, more conversational, 'cause sometimes at first, now it's more natural for me now because really when I'm speaking right now, I'm connecting with you, one person right now, whether you're watching video or just listening to the podcast on audio right now, but it's just like I'm talking to my wife right now or one of my closest friends, it's just having a conversation.

So I realised I needed to improve in those areas. And so I would go and watch myself in the mirror and I would practice what I was going to say. And then I would listen to the podcast and work on getting better at it. But I made it, I started working and making it a habit to work on my communication skills. And so you really wanna spend time right now. Here's what I would challenge you to do.

Write down 3 skills you're good at that you wanna become great at. And so I did this for myself. I said, okay, I'm a good communicator, but I want to be a great communicator. And I said, I feel like I could be good at being a leader, but I want to be better at a leader. And, and, and so I started reading more and then presenting and teaching more to grow my leadership skills.

And I started working on my opens and closes and reducing my ums and all these things to grow as a communicator. But if you want to radically change your life, and again, this is a habit that really improved my life. Working on my skills. But that— the number one skill for me really was growing as a leader, and it was reading one book a month. That improved my life in such a phenomenal way.

The third habit that improved my life in an incredible way was starting what I call a virtue habit. And virtue is what makes up your character. So when you hear somebody has really strong and good character, what does that mean exactly? It means this. It means that somebody has a lot of good virtues and very few vices.

So a virtue would be— now, the 7 virtues are typically known as— and these virtues are a combination of the Greek virtues by Aristotle, Socrates, and Plato, combined with what are known as the theological virtues, which are faith, hope, and love. You combine those together, they're known as the 7 divine or heavenly virtues.

That people have really recognized over time are the most transformational virtues. Those virtues are wisdom, courage, justice, self-control, and then faith, hope, and love, which is also oftentimes the form of love is charity, which is tied to generosity. And so those are these virtues.

And so if you think about somebody and you say, well, that person has character, you think, well, that person is courageous. That person is loving and kind. That person has integrity. They always show up and keep their promises. So, so that's what a virtue habit is. And so I recognized when I was in school that I had a— I needed to grow in character. I noticed that I was grumpy.

I wasn't an encourager. And so I thought, you know what, I need to improve in these areas. So I wrote down the top 3 virtues I needed to grow in those top 3 areas of character. And I realized this when I was reading a book. So remember, I read one book every single month for years. And one of the first books I read was Today Matters by John Maxwell.

And in the book, in one of the chapters, he talks about growing in character, and he discusses or recommends creating character cards. So I took these character cards and basically what I did on them was I picked 3 virtues. And I remember at the time one was encouragement. I wanted to encourage people. Number 2 was generosity. And number 3 was— I'm trying to remember what number 3 was.

I think it was possibly patience. But let's start off here talking about encouragement. Some of the first one I worked on was becoming more of an encourager. And so I wrote down on this card some Bible verses and some famous quotes by the Stoics and other people about about encouragement.

And then I asked myself a question and I gave myself a challenge where the challenge was every person that I have a conversation with, encourage them in some way. And I would look at this character card at breakfast, lunch, and dinner. That was the habit. Have a character card, read through it, and be conscious of it throughout the day, but read it breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

And so I remember the first person I came across When I was with this challenge, it was actually a friend of mine. Her name was Katie, and Katie and her husband Josh are still friends of mine today. And so I needed to encourage her. And so, I mean, this was so hard for me. And by the way, sometimes this could even be awkward.

But I remember with Katie, I was having the conversation with Katie and I thought, what is something nice I could say about Katie? And I think I said something like, hey Katie, I like your hair today. And she said, Well, thanks, Josh.

And so, I mean, that— and at first I'm like, okay, I think I need to, rather than complimenting, you know, you know, the hair of women, I need to probably do a better job maybe complimenting, you know, maybe a character quality I notice in them. And there's a lot of great characteristics with Katie. She was super kind to people and really compassionate.

So later on I might have said, Katie, you know, I really respect how compassionate you are, or hey, I noticed this about you, or just saying something to encourage them in some way. And, and I started doing that. And then the next one I worked on was generosity. And so one of my points of generosity is look how I could financially support somebody, even if it's a small amount.

So if I was going out to dinner with somebody and I knew I was in a more financially blessed position, I would pay for their meal. And these things just became natural habits where I started encouraging people more and finding the best in them and looking for how I could give charity to people. It became part of who I was. You know, there are even studies on character growth.

In fact, there was a study done, and this was a study done in the US and in Switzerland.

And basically the study, they looked at a lot of different character qualities and strengths, but in particular, they looked at and they found That the character qualities of love, hope, curiosity, and zest— by the way, zest is sort of this vigor for life and excitement for life— were the most closely linked to overall life fulfillment.

So for you to feel like, I'm living a really good life, my life is meaningful, if those people embodied love, they were loving towards others, they were hopeful about their future, they were curious and they wanted to learn and grow, and if they were excited about life.

Those people had the highest level of what was called life satisfaction, or feeling like they were fulfilled and significant and living a meaningful life. Now, among U.S. adults, one other quality was big in terms of somebody feeling like they were living a meaningful life. I want to say the number one overall was gratitude. If somebody was grateful, that meant that they had a satisfying life.

And in Switzerland, it was actually very different— was perseverance. If somebody— if, if a— if an adult in Switzerland knew that they were resilient and they persevered through hardship, they could look at themselves with pride saying, you know what, I'm living a meaningful life. I've made it through suffering and difficult situations. Here's the point.

Think through, write down, what are those top 3 character qualities that you want to grow in? And if you can't think of what those are, where you need to grow, ask a friend, ask a spouse, ask a mentor. Or another option is look at someone that you greatly admire, someone you could say, you know what, I want to be more like them.

And then write down what their top characteristics and qualities are and start working on growing in those virtues and character in that way. But I'm telling you right now, doing those character cards— and here's what I write down. I write down quotes of famous people, Bible verses, and if you're religious, you could write down something else or a different scripture for whatever religion you are.

But again, I write down quotes, I write down scripture verses. I write down questions, and I write down what is the challenge? What is that one thing, that one way or two ways I'm going to display that habit? So, for instance, I'm going to say things every conversation.

I'm going to say something encouraging to somebody, or when I go out to meals, I'm going to pay for somebody, especially if they're not in as good a financial situation as I am, or even if we're in an equal situation. And what I did is I basically went in and Went on a Word doc, typed it out on an index card that would fit in my pocket. I got it laminated and I just carried it around with me.

Now you could even do this on your phone, but I think there's something about having a hard copy in your pocket that would go a long way. You know, I, I look back at my life when I was in high school going into college. When I graduated high school, I had a 2.3 GPA. I hardly got into college. In fact, I had to go to summer school to get into the school I went to. I had a lot of self-doubt.

I was diagnosed with ADHD and felt like I was stupid. I really did. I felt like I was not smart. In fact, I had a teacher tell me that they didn't think I would even get into the college to do what I wanted to do. I wanted to get in the health field. She said, you'll never get in. And I really kind of felt depressed and Really didn't believe in myself.

And so remember, like, I didn't grow up like— now, I had good health habits, but my habits regarding my personal growth and self-development and career and all those things, those kind of felt like those were in the gutter. They didn't feel very good.

But when I started learning about the power of habits and I started reading more and improving my friend group and working on things like spiritual growth, I had a breakthrough. And you might just be one habit away from experiencing a radical breakthrough in your life. One single habit.

And so you really want to think through what is that one habit that you can start doing today that will help you experience a breakthrough where if you started this habit now, think through where you want to be in 5 years. And that's another important thing to think about. Here's what I thought about. I started thinking about who do I, who does Josh Axe want to be 5 years from now?

And I, and I sat down and did this back many years ago. And I sat down and I looked at people I really admire. For instance, I wrote down John Maxwell as one of those people. I wrote down Dave Ramsey. I wrote down a doctor who I really aspired to be like. I wrote down those people.

And I said, okay, in order for me to be more like them, in order for me to have more wisdom, that was one of the characteristics I wrote down. This was later on. Years later, after after I did character cards with encouragement and generosity, I said, "Okay, I want to be more wise." And then I wrote down the word leadership, and I wrote down some others.

But I thought about, "Okay, what do I need to do in order to become more like them?" I need to read even more, and I need to teach more, and I need to. So there were certain things I needed to do, and that's one of the ways I think that's so important is think about who do you want to be in five in five years.

And then write down what are the habits you'd have to live out in order to become that person, and then start start moving towards that. Another habit that really radically improved my life were my spiritual habits. You know, I was really blessed to have grown up in a in a household with parents that prioritized morals and ethics and spirituality, and where we went to church. Every single week.

In fact, we didn't only go to church; we went to Sunday school. I went to Wednesday night small groups, and it really helped develop certain character qualities in me that I'm still proud of today. Here's a reality though: a lot of people don't have good spiritual habits anymore.

I was watching a lecture done at Toronto University by Jordan Peterson, and he said that around when he first started teaching—now he was an instructor at Toronto and at Harvard.

And he said when he first started teaching college students, 90-plus percent of them had heard the you know had spiritual practices and had heard things like the biblical stories, and they were very aware of their their their of certain morals. He said today when he when when he when he was this is just a couple years ago, he said it's 40 percent.

And so people today are far less into spiritual practices than maybe they were. Many years ago. And if you look at the ancient saints and monks, they had spiritual practices such as prayer, fasting, communion, meditation, which are in fact spiritual habits. We think about those as rituals.

So taking communion or confessing what you've done wrong or praying or meditating, those are all ancient spiritual habits. And those habits can radically improve your life. I want to go through some spiritual habits that I've tried to implement that have improved my life in a really significant way. The first one is acts of service. And so looking to volunteer my time in the support of others.

You know, there was a recent Gallup poll. By the way, I love Gallup and Pew Research. I love looking at the research about this.

And Gallup discovered that those people who attend a religious place of worship— and this was despite their religious affiliation, so this could have been a Protestant or a Catholic or a Mormon or a Muslim or a Jew or a Buddhist— but across the board, people that attend a place of worship on a regular basis, even if it's every other week, They donated more money, volunteered more, helped more strangers than those who didn't attend a religious service.

And according to research, in 2017, 50% of people donated their time in some way to help other people. So 50% of people volunteered their time. By 2021, that number— now part of it's due to COVID, but also it had been descending before that, and pretty significantly only 35% of people volunteer their time to others.

And one of the greatest things you can ever give to people as a form of generosity is volunteering your time.

And whether that be going to a soup kitchen or helping the woman next door who is maybe in her 90s take out her trash or knowing, you know, mowing the lawn of a neighbor or I know one of the things that You know, I've seen people do if somebody has just had a baby, you bring them food when they first have a child. All of those things, those are acts of service.

One of the things that I started doing with some of my closest friends is anytime they were sick with a cold or flu, I would rather than just— and this is an act of service sometimes in and of itself— but I would, if I would hear about them, whether they would ask me or not, I would text them exactly what to do.

But another thing I started doing was I said, you know what, I want to do more than that. So I would go to Whole Foods Market, I would buy them this homemade chicken soup, and I would buy them elderberry and vitamin C and certain supplements, and I would just go and drop it off at their front door.

So rather than just telling them what to do, I wanted to perform an act of service of showing up and doing that for them. So I don't know what it is for you, but think about as a spiritual habit What is that act of service, that thing that you can do, even if it's just once a month, that you can do and give in some way? You know, that act of service, that's an incredible spiritual habit.

In fact, of all the habits I'm gonna talk about, it might be the most powerful 'cause you're doing something actionable. The next spiritual habit is meditation. And I wanna go through a fantastic study that was published in JAMA, that's the Journal of American Medical Association, and this was reviewed by 47 trials and 3,500 participants.

And what they looked at was people who have a meditative practice of sitting down daily, and this was done for 8 weeks, and practicing mindfulness. So mindfulness, it could be self-awareness, it could be, hey, how can I become better? How can I support others, become more loving? They did this for 8 weeks.

They found that people who had a meditative practice had a 38% reduction in anxiety, 30% reduction in depression, and a 33% reduction in pain relief. So the benefits of meditation are immense. Now listen, there's a few different types of meditation. There's a type of meditation where you just clear your mind and you don't think about anything, and that can have its benefits.

But when I talk about a spiritual meditative practice, I believe the best thing to do is meditate on a way that you can transform yourself and serve others and connect with God. So here, here, here's an example of this. You may go and read whatever spiritual book you decide to read or whatever meditation. It could be a devotional.

But just this week I was reading the Bible and I was reading through Corinthians and read very common verse about love is patient, love is kind. And, and I went through that verse and thought about what is love? What is patient? What is kindness?

And started thinking through all of those things and thinking about how God is those things, thinking about, am I being loving enough and how can I be more loving? Am I being patient enough? Am I being kind enough? And I started— it was a lot of self-reflection, reflection on God, reflection on myself. And that's how I meditate on— and you may just take one thing, love.

What is love and how can I be more loving? What is it and how can I become it? That, that's how you want to meditate. What is it and how can I become it? It's a great form of meditation you could grow in. So that's the second spiritual practice that has tremendous benefits. We talked about religious attendance.

And as number 3, and I see this a lot more, I think oftentimes— now listen, I do think that watching a religious service on your computer or TV has a lot of benefits, but I think there's something about going to a church or synagogue in person and meeting with a group of people that has tremendous benefits as well.

So that's a third practice that you may consider of getting consistently going into church or Sunday school or a small group.

In fact, I really believe that growth groups and small groups are one of the greatest ways you can transform yourself as well, because not only are you listening to something like a sermon, but you are taking part in the conversation that's happening, which tends to be even more transformational. The 4th practice I want to talk about spiritually is the practice of gratitude.

You know, there was a study that found that those who practice gratitude had significant benefits in their mindset and their health. And so here was the study. One group focused on things that irritated them every day. So, so here's what happened in this study. They had these participants They had them write down a few sentences every week.

The first group spent time writing down daily what irritated them. The second group wrote down just basically the regular events of their day, whether positive or negative. They kind of wrote down both. The third group was asked to write down what they were grateful for.

So even if they had a rough week, let's say for instance they had a really— they didn't meet the deadline on their job and they're worried about their career. Well, they would still write down what they were grateful for, even about that situation.

This study was done for 10 weeks, and by the end, the researchers found those who were focused on showing gratitude were more optimistic, had a more positive outlook, and just overall felt better about their lives. Their life was better and more meaningful than the other 2 groups.

And so just having a gratitude practice, and this is where I think that you can really benefit through what I call, or what James Clear and many other people call, habit stacking or habit combining. What are a couple habits you can combine together that might be synergistic? So for instance, we talked about a gratitude practice, and earlier I talked about walking first thing in the morning.

So if you are walking for 20 minutes first thing in the morning, Say out loud for five minutes of the twenty everything you're grateful for. That's the power of habit combining, and it can have tremendous benefits. So think about that similar thing when I'm working out. I will listen to a book on audio or a podcast or or or something that's going to help me grow. So spend time at the end here.

One of the things I want you to do. Is write down what are the top 3 habits you can implement in ranking order. Just do one at a time, possibly. But what is your 1, 2, and 3 habits? And then are there any habits you can stack together or add on to those, like the walking with gratitude or the working out while listening to a book on leadership or personal growth or health at the same time?

The last spiritual habit is what I call a spiritual triathlon. And this is combining several spiritual practices together. And so the habit is going to be, let's say you have 30 minutes in the morning. Spend 5 minutes saying everything you're grateful for. Spend 20 minutes reading something like a devotional. And then spend the next 5 minutes in prayer or meditation on what you just read.

You know, whatever devotion you just read that day, Meditate on that and pray about that. And so a spiritual triathlon is combining gratitude, reading, and prayer or meditation, or you can make it a quadathlon and do all four. But that's the idea. Start doing that daily. That is a habit that I have found that that has made me more positive.

It's helped me grow in virtue and character, really impacted my life in a positive way. So that's the last type of spiritual habit. The last of these 5 habits that have really improved my life are relational habits. When people get to the end of their life and they're asked what was the most important part of their life, nearly every time people say my relationships.

Could be with my spouse or my kids or my closest friends and family, but relationships are so important. And so you want to build habits related to building great relationships. So I want to share a few of the habits that I have that have really improved my life. Number one is a weekly date night with my wife.

So every time my wife and I can go out to eat together and have a one-on-one conversation, it is good for our relationship. And sometimes when we go out, I like to think my wife, her love language is quality time and deep meaningful conversations. So I try and think of questions ahead of time are what are some questions I can ask Chelsea that will get us into a deeper conversation?

My wife loves having spiritual conversations. And so what are some things that I watched that week or read or asking her questions that can create a great quality date night? The next habit is family dinner. And you may have already heard me talk about this on a previous podcast, or you'll hear me talk about it in the future.

But family dinner is one of the number one determining factors of a family becoming close-knit together and creating a great family environment. And it doesn't have to be every night. Let's say you've got 5 kids and they all have sports and music and all these activities, then make it 3 meals a week. It doesn't have to be dinner, it can be family, a family meal.

So maybe 1 night a week you can get together, maybe it's Thursday nights, and then you could do a Saturday breakfast and a Sunday brunch. Whatever you can do, just try and do at least three a week. But the ideal number is five to seven. And when you sit down at family dinner, family meal, there's no cell phones, there's no TV on. It's meaningful conversation.

Another relational habit that I've gotten into is we would do food nights with family and sometimes with our friends. So Taco Tuesday, or what we do is we typically have a pizza night Thursday where we. Make a homemade pizza, whether it's with a cauliflower or gluten-free crust, and we do all our toppings and throw that in the oven.

And so we do that typically in the Axe household where we maybe do a game night combined with pizza night. And that's one of the habits that we have that has really been good for bringing us together. And we've done this with friends in the past. We've done it with friends where we have, you know, Italian night and Mexican night and Thai night.

And having them over, and it's a great way to build a deeper connection to the people you love. One of— and this might be the most transformational habit I've touched on so far together— and that's being part of some sort of growth group or leadership group. You know, when I was in high school, I started doing a small group at church, and I noticed I really built some great relationships there.

And then when I got into college, I did for a short period of time. Then I didn't do one for years. And then I, I started my own and I started doing a growth group where I have 8 other guys that meet together one time a month for 3 hours. This is other entrepreneurs, guys that share my same values and want to change the world. We started getting together and we've been doing this.

We're going on like 4 or 5, 4 years now. And it has been one of the most fulfilling and transformational practices or habits of my entire life. We read a book together and we all go around and share what we've learned, and then we have a practice and then we do dinner afterwards. So I'll give you an example.

We read a book, you know, we read a book, The Meaning of Marriage by Tim Keller, and then we also had an exercise that went along with the book such as write down the 10 things you love most about your wife and then share that with her on your next date night, something like that. And so we would do those practices every month.

One month was on— we read a book on vision, and then we all created a vision board. So, but I was part of this growth group, and as a habit— and remember I said this earlier— the number one thing that's gonna have a positive impact on your habits is your friend group. It's your inner circle. It's the people you spend the most time with. So this became a group where we all grew together.

Very, very important habit for our relationships. And that was actually something a good friend of mine, Michael Hyatt, shared with me, that he started a group and then I started a group because he shared all of the benefits. And so that's another incredible practice for relationships. Start a growth group for growing in your relationships.

So listen, there are so many different habits you can implement, but remember, Pick 3 habits in ranking order, and if you can just do one, do one. And if you can habit stack where you combine one habit with another, such as walking in gratitude, working out, and listening to, you know, something to help you grow like a podcast, try and stack those together. And remember, your habits become you.

If you're saying to yourself, I want to have a certain level of career success, I want to have better relationships. I want to have better health. Habits are the way that you get there. And so implement good habits. Remember, you don't need to get 100% better tomorrow.

You just need to get 1% better a day, and you're going to be a totally different person a few weeks, months, and especially years from now. And here should be the goal. You know, when I started using those character cards that I talked about earlier, I had people come up to me afterwards saying, Wow, you're different.

We can tell, you know, you've grown, you've got more character, you're more inspirational. Habits can make that big of a difference in your life. So I want to encourage you, start forming good habits and you will become that person you've always dreamed of being.

Hey, I want to say thanks for tuning in here to the Growth Lab podcast, where each week we uncover the science behind how to grow yourself, your health, your wealth, and take your career and relationships to the next level. Make sure to subscribe, like, and share this. And because this podcast is so new, hey, maybe text it to a friend.

If you know somebody that could benefit from listening to this, hey, please share it with them as well. Again, thanks so much for listening to the Growth Lab. I'll be back next week with more.