Ep 5: “Creating “Super Habits” with Dr. Jon Finn

Creating “Super Habits” with Dr. Jon Finn

Dr. Jon Finn wrote his best-selling book ‘The Habit Mechanic’ (which took him over 20 years) because his life’s mission is to help people to be their best in the challenging modern world. This book is proven to change lives. People have said it is a ‘MANUAL FOR LIFE’, and a ‘TOOL KIT FOR SUCCESS’. It contains over 30 self-improvement tools.

Dr. Jon Finn founded the award-winning Tougher Minds consultancy and has three psychology-related degrees, including a Ph.D. He has worked in performance psychology, resilience, and leadership science for over 20 years.

Tougher Minds uses cutting-edge insights from psychology, behavioral science, neuroscience, and world champions to help organizations develop “Habit Mechanics” and “Chief Habit Mechanics”—resilient people, outstanding leaders, and world-class teams.

Having trained and coached over 10,000 people, Dr. Finn, and his colleagues, work with global businesses, high-growth startups, individuals, elite athletes, coaches and teams, leading educational institutes, families, the UK government, and think tanks.

Key Questions

How do you Manage your Happiness?

QUOTE: (8:50) There are three core ingredients. One is you’ve got to get your brain working properly. So that means you’ve got to get good sleep, a good diet, good exercise, and also have really good, positive, personal relationships. That’s going to help your brain work really well. 

The next ingredient is you’ve got to have, in scientific language, some spend some time doing hedonic things. So getting pleasure is giving in to short-term gratification, but the third ingredient, which is harder than ever to attend is eudaimonia which is working towards doing and achieving meaningful goals.

Now we call this habit mechanic development. So we’ve got to balance those three things out

What is your favorite coaching question?

A: “How can you make big improvements in your life quickly?”

QUOTE: (19:56)  The surprising truth is you are getting better at the things that you don’t want to get better. When you worry, you develop more wires in your brain for worrying. When you beat yourself up, you develop more wires in your brain for beating yourself up.

So the realization, that we are actually on autopilot the vast, vast majority of the time is a huge insight for most people because we are not designed to think of ourselves in that way. We are designed to think about the external world, not what is going on inside our own brains. 

And when we just start to get a little bit of insight just by turning on our prefrontal cortex a little bit more and doing a little bit more intelligent self watching, then we can start to make some big improvements very quickly. 

If we start to consistently do things a little bit differently and then build on this idea that we’re going to get good at what we practice, we’ve got to recognize what are the things that influence and  make it easier for us to practice the things that we’d like to practice

This podcast is produced by Managing Happiness.