Complete a Mental Cleanse
Why I Deleted My Twitter Account and Quit All News

The 5 AM Miracle Podcast, hosted by Jeff Sanders

Episode #568: Complete a Mental Cleanse: Why I Deleted My Twitter Account and Quit All News

Jeff Sanders
I used to love social media.

Truly, I couldn't believe I had the chance to share and connect with others online every single day.

But now I rarely feel that way.

Something has shifted and the best move may be to walk away forever.

This is the 5 a.m. miracle, episode number 568.

Complete a mental cleanse, why I deleted my Twitter account and quit all news altogether.

Good morning and welcome to the 5 a.m. miracle.

I am Jeff Sanders and this is the podcast dedicated to dominating your day before breakfast.

My goal is to help you bounce out of bed with enthusiasm, create powerful lifelong habits and tackle your grandest goals with extraordinary energy.

I am a keynote speaker and corporate trainer specializing in delivering high energy, interactive and action-oriented presentations and workshops focused on productivity, wellness and personal and professional growth.

If you want to learn more, head over to jeffsanders.com/speaking.

Now in the episode this week, I'll break down what ultimately led to me completely deleting my Twitter account.

Why also began a pause on all news sources and how performing a mental cleanse may be the breath of fresh air you need to make your next big move.

Let's get to it.

Social media and entertainment in general used to be a lot of fun.

It used to be funny, it used to connect me to the outside world, it was creative and engaging and even addicting but in a good way.

There was a time in my life where social media played a very pivotal role and it was just such a great thing.

However, social is not that anymore.

It really isn't.

It is distracting, it is disconnected, it lacks community, it's extremely political and controversial and I would argue angry and hostile as a default state of existence.

Social media is not what it was before.

The original pitch, the 20 years ago Mark Zuckerberg in his dorm room pitch for Facebook, that world is gone.

It just doesn't exist.

Mark Zuckerberg is my age.

I grew up with his software because that's just who I was and I wanted what it was promising back then.

However, we have reached a state of evolution where there are certain tools and connection opportunities that just aren't what they were sold to be.

And we have to figure out what to do with that.

Where does it leave us?

It's a question I keep asking myself and making intentional choices about our time, how we use it, what gets our attention and what does not.

That's the fundamental component to, I mean honestly, productivity in general, but time management itself.

We get to choose what to do with our time and if you choose to stare at your phone all day, every day, tapping buttons and endlessly scrolling, you're making a decision.

It might be subconscious, unconscious, not even there anymore, conscious.

You may be making these choices habitually, but that doesn't mean it has to stay that way.

My personal goal is to find and connect with what brings me joy and then to disconnect from what does not.

Which brings me to today's topic, my goal of a mental cleanse in order to figure out how to restart, how to begin again in a fresh new way.

We just had a new year pop up recently and every single time that this happens, people always say, "Oh, I've got these big grandiose goals for the new year.

It's going to be a new me."

And by day two, they've already quit whatever goals they're striving for and they have just returned to their old habits because at the end of the day, big goals are almost meaningless.

Our habits are everything.

If you're going to set any big goal now or in the future of the next new year, if it's not habit-based, it will almost guaranteed.

If it's not habit-based, it's almost guaranteed to fail.

Habits are everything.

A mental cleanse is a temporary decision.

We'll get to exactly what that means in a second.

But any kind of cleanse, physical or mental, is going to be a temporary restart, a chance to begin again.

And when you do, you allow those habits to be the core foundation of what is actually going to change.

And so this whole conversation is now led up to my decision to leave Twitter.

Now, you may say, "Well, Jeff, I didn't know you were even on Twitter."

I'm like, "Right.

It's never been a big part of my professional or even personal brand.

I've just been on the platform for a long time, just like Facebook or Instagram or others, where it has been just one of the many social tools that I've used.

And for a long time, I was on Twitter but did not like it.

I mean, from day one, really, I had an account and I tried to grow it because that's what people did.

You have a social account and you want more followers, especially as someone with an online presence.

I'm trying to build an audience here, so why not?"

Well, the problem with why not or the answer to why not is that I didn't like it.

It was used a lot for business and marketing, but it was filled with bots, hateful comments, all kinds of commentary that did not serve my best interests and definitely didn't serve the best interests of my audience, of my podcast and the things that I promote here on this show, which are, yeah, positive and helpful and actionable and based in facts, the kinds of things that are good and helpful for everyone.

And so for a long time, I basically saw Twitter as a trash can.

It was just a terrible place to be.

Well, then at some point down the line a few years ago, I found and kind of fell in love with the trending topics element of Twitter.

It became something that was actually quite interesting to me because it allowed me to stay in touch with major events, especially those are happening in the moment.

We're talking live sports, breaking news, anything that was going to be in the moment, trending topics has a lot of potential.

And I still believe in that potential today that there is such an element of connection that leverages the best parts of the Internet because we can all be involved in something simultaneously in real time using technology to the best of its capabilities.

There's so much there and the trending topics component really grabbed me and I said, wait a minute, Twitter has value now.

Let me really dig into that, stay connected, see what's going on.

And I found a ton of interests, entertainments.

It just it became something that was part of my routine to check in on that frequently.

Well, if you haven't followed the news in the last couple of years, you may have missed the fact that Twitter changed ownership and the platform changed radically yet again.

It has many times over the years.

This most recent change was probably the most significant and honestly the most radical.

And so the number of bots increased, hate speech increased, political commentary in general increased dramatically.

And it just got worse and worse without actually improving anything along the way.

And I just found myself going to Twitter, looking for inspiration, looking for something to connect with and be inspired by, to be informed by.

And I just saw nonsense in every direction.

Like I'm the kind of person who values using his time wisely and there was nothing there.

Now, you may say that social media in general doesn't offer a lot of value.

And I would have to agree with you that in today's world, it is less and less valuable over time.

And so from that perspective of Twitter, I'm calling out here specifically because I recently left the platform permanently.

However, this goes for all of these platforms, all of our decisions about what we give our time to and assessing is this valuable or not.

When it comes to Twitter, I actually looked for alternatives.

Platforms like Mastodon, Blue Sky, Threads, none of which have really captured my attention at this point.

And if they ever will, I'm not sure.

I think Blue Sky has the most potential, but even that, I just don't care.

Frankly, I'm pretty apathetic now when it comes to this because if it's not going to help me achieve my goals, I just don't want to do it.

I don't want to be involved in it.

It's not going to serve my best interests, so I'm just going to opt out.

And so honestly, in this process of considering leaving Twitter and looking at the alternatives and realizing they're just really mediocre, they're not good.

Well, in that case then, I am now better off without my involvement at all.

And once the scales tip on anything and the consequences outweigh the benefits, it's over.

So I left, I deactivated my account and I walked away.

I guess officially I'm still in their 30-day grace period to come back if I want to.

I'm not going to.

But that's where I am today.

My Jeff Sanders TV handle at Twitter is going to be available to the world pretty soon, I guess, but I'm not going to be there.

So the question for me then becomes, well, now what?

What do you do?

You've left a social platform.

Usually nobody actually cares unless you had a really big following, which I did not.

But this is not about me.

This is about what you are going to do with your time and your social platforms.

So I use social less than ever.

I find it less appealing than ever.

And I'm now filling my time with other activities, usually just my own to-do list or taking a break.

The question is now what for you?

If you leave a platform, then what?

If you decide to opt out of bad habits, then what?

And I was considering this a lot recently in terms of not just leaving Twitter, but also some dietary changes that I've made and some other healthy habits I'm looking into.

And I realized that when it comes to removing a bad habit, you basically have two options.

The first is a direct replacement.

So for example, I could say, well, I'm going to leave Twitter and use Blue Sky as my new go-to platform.

Or in the case of a bad dietary habit, I let go of drinking alcohol about three months ago.

And this one feels pretty permanent.

I've discussed alcohol many times this podcast last few years.

This recent, we'll call it elimination of that from my diet feels very permanent now.

And so I was looking for a direct replacement.

And one of the things I leaned on was hot chocolate for a few minutes.

And then a nice healthy nighttime tea has become my new go-to.

But the point here being that you could have something you want to eliminate and you really need something to fill in that gap right away.

If not Twitter, here's Blue Sky.

If not alcohol, here's a tea.

Right?

If not Habit A, here's Habit B.

That's the first option, a direct replacement, which honestly I think is the most effective, especially when your goal is to say, here's a thing that I have just been either addicted to or I've leaned on or has become so habitual I can't imagine my life without it.

If that's the scenario for you, you're going to need a direct replacement or you will return to your old ways.

It will happen.

And if your goal is to avoid that, which it probably is at this point, then a direct replacement is fantastic.

The second option is much more passive, which is to let your other activities just fill the void naturally.

So for example, let's say that you were a smoker.

You may have taken a smoke break at work.

Once every few hours, you take 15 minutes and have a cigarette.

Well, if you stop smoking, those 15 minutes, they're still on the calendar.

You could still take a break.

But from what I've seen, a lot of people won't do that.

They'll just simply keep working.

And in fact, they'll work pretty aggressively because they're in a bad mood because they want a cigarette.

But I digress there.

The point being that if you just simply let your other activities fill the void, well, then that bad habit basically just gets erased.

As if it was never there to begin with.

And your other activities just simply fill in that gap and you move on with your life.

This will happen with bad habits you're not that intentional about.

Life will naturally fill in.

Time will always be used by something.

It's a question of will you do so intentionally or not.

Of course, from my perspective, you probably know this.

Being intentional is what I do.

It's what I love.

It's what I promote because I find to be the most effective across the board.

So if you have a bad habit or a source of negativity in your life, a social platform, a dietary choice, an addiction, and you find a way to replace it intentionally, proactively, hopefully with something healthier and better for you and your time and your experience here on Earth.

Hopefully that direct replacement will lead you to a better place and you can literally walk away from what was there before and not let it take you down that bad path again.

This might sound a bit dramatic, but this is what bad habits can do to us.

There are bad habits that we have that can be very destructive.

Social media is interesting because it does tend to bring out the worst in some people.

I've told this story before in this podcast that I had a series of, we'll call them arguments or online discussions, conversations in my late 20s, early 30s, where I would basically get into fights with strangers.

I would kind of like pick digital fights and want to argue a certain point and really prove myself right.

My ego was just playing a huge role in all of this.

And I realized after a few conversations that went south that this wasn't working.

My wife told me for years to stop doing it and I told her that, no, I got to prove my point.

This is a big deal.

But it wasn't.

It was a bad use of my time.

But when I finally realized what a bad use of time that it was and I took a break from it and said, no more, lie in the sand.

I will not have arguments with strangers on the Internet.

I'm done.

You know what happened?

Nothing.

And it was great.

I just didn't get into fights anymore and I just moved on.

And that was it.

It was like an old life just over.

And here comes new Jeff.

Tada.

This is what's possible with bad habits.

You really can just simply say I used to do habit X.

I don't do it anymore.

That's not who I am anymore.

I'm a new person.

I'm a better person.

I'm a stronger person, more confident person.

I am better because I made a definitive decision.

I stuck with it.

And here's my new life.

That's what I want for you.

That's what I've been experiencing personally recently.

And yes, these other stories in the past as well.

But I think that also is another kind of side tangent here is that we can learn from ourselves.

We can learn from our own decisions in the past to let go of other habits.

Let's say that you were a smoker and 20 years ago you kicked the habit and now today there's a different bad habit you want to break.

You can leverage your discipline, your strategies from 20 years ago, bring them back and use it all over again.

We all have bad habits to break.

We need these skills for life.

And hopefully over time we're making smaller and smaller habit changes because we've already made the big ones before.

But either way, you still need the skill set.

We still need the intentionality.

We still need that proactive decision making power to move ourselves forward.

So if you're in a position now where social or your phone or some digital tool is just sucking your life away, you're going to want to find a direct replacement to move forward.

I left Twitter.

I'm not looking back.

I do not regret it.

It was a bad place to be.

It is a bad place to be.

If you're there now, I would like to know why.

I honestly would.

Email me, Jeff@JeffSanders.com and tell me what holds you there.

What do you grab me to hold up?

Because in the future I see it going the way of TikTok or other platforms that just either get banned outright or people just leave and the whole thing folds.

Long story short, we need to make intentional decisions about what we say yes to and then very intentional decisions on what we say no to so we can actually move forward.

The second part of this conversation involves the news, which is extremely indirectly related to Twitter now because Twitter essentially is a news platform.

I have discussed not watching the news since day one of this podcast and yet recently I've also told other stories about how my news consumption has fluctuated over time.

Everything from news is not a part of my life at all to I kind of like it and I'm there all the time and now we're back on the bandwagon of no news for Jeff.

We're just taking a huge break and this includes, this is a big one for me, comedy news.

Since college I have leveraged essentially comedy news programs.

The Daily Show was one of them in college.

I watched a lot back then and so comedy news was literally my only news outlet because outside of that I just didn't care.

Well as I got older and was basically a young adult outside of college, I did a little more news consumption.

I actually bought a newspaper and when Testa and I moved to Boston, I literally subscribed to the Boston Globe and had it delivered to my house every single day because I thought that adults read the newspaper and I should be an adult and here's my newspaper.

I bought it totally arbitrarily to fit a societal norm.

I'm not even kidding.

And what ended up happening was that I had a stack of newspapers by my door that once a week I would take to recycling.

And then the next week they would stack up one by one and then take them at the end of the week to the recycling.

I never read the paper.

I just bought it because I thought I was supposed to.

Which is kind of funny because I feel like that's what a lot of us do.

We're on social because societally that's the norm.

We should be, right?

I should be looking at Twitter feeds.

I should be watching the nightly news or whatever the case may be.

There's no should.

It's your life.

If you don't want to do it, don't do it.

If it's not helping you, don't do it.

If it's actually harming you, definitely don't do it.

And this has been my issue for so long with so many of these platforms is that I just caught myself playing the game of just going along with everybody else, doing the thing because everyone's there or they say they're there.

But in reality, my personal experience is terrifyingly bad.

So walking away is easy.

So once again, as a young adult, yes, comedy news is a big deal.

As I got older, we'll say in my 30s or so, I really dramatically increased my own news consumption.

Nightly news programs, lots of comedy news programs across the board, looking at things online, reading articles, just I became kind of a news junkie because I found it so entertaining.

And this is what I realized in the last few years that was more striking than I thought that it would be, which is that what news became for me, what it is today is 90% entertainment.

And 10% distracting with information that does not affect me whatsoever.

That's what the news is.

And not just for me, I would argue this is the case for most people.

It is 90% entertainment and 10% nonsense because it doesn't involve you at all.

So ultimately you get in most cases sad because the news is terrifyingly bad.

So it's painful to consume and ultimately unhelpful.

In rare occasions, maybe the weather is a good example where it actually is helpful.

It's great.

Weather is awesome.

I'm all about weather.

I love maps.

I love seeing the radar.

That's great.

That's good news.

That's the only good news I have for you today.

Too many puns here.

All right, so the weather is good.

The rest of it's just entertainment and just distraction.

Now you can argue these points with me all you want on this stuff, but the reality is for the majority of what you're going to consume, if you read the paper, watch the news, look at a Twitter feed, you seek out the best kinds of news sources.

I don't think you're going to grow or be informed in the way that you think you will.

There are rare exceptions and I've said this before in the podcast.

There are certain investigative reports and documentaries that I kind of view as an exception to the rule.

That's not the mainstream news sources I'm discussing.

Those are much more like deep, high level kind of thought provoking content.

That's the good stuff.

It's like reading a book, right?

It's a much higher level of learning.

It is beneficial in its own right.

I'm talking about everything else.

The typical news we think of and the typical news is just trash.

And I use that word very specifically because it's just, it's not something you should keep around.

It's something you should get rid of.

It's something that shouldn't be a part of your life and if it is, you need to justify it.

Truly.

Not to me, but to yourself.

Justify in a way that is emotional and logical, that is beneficial on paper and you can explain to someone else, here's why I do what I do.

And that other person should look at this and say, I agree with you.

If you can't convince yourself that's a good use of your time or a good idea, good luck with someone else who you trust who's also an intelligent person who wants to use their time wisely as well.

Which is the whole point of all of this.

We're trying to make intelligent choices to live better lives and I am fighting against this massive societal norm of doing things because everyone else does them.

The most common question that pops up here is how do I stay informed?

I want to be an informed citizen, Jeff.

Can't I do that?

You can, but you're going to need to be pretty intentional on exactly how that happens.

You know, I'm still online all the time everywhere and so I inadvertently will see news stories all over the place.

It's impossible to avoid news stories if you're connected to the real world.

I'm not trying to be informed, but I am and if I need to know something, I'll definitely find out about it.

I have no question about that.

This idea of a, I'll call it a blind consumption of news is just not a great use of my time.

And this kind of societal norm to want to be an informed citizen, I balk at that.

I don't agree.

I'm not interested.

That's not beneficial.

It doesn't work for me.

And I would argue it doesn't work for most people and that probably includes you.

Now, if you find it valuable, if you feel emotionally good about yourself because of the time you spend in these sources, I'm not going to stop you.

That could be a good thing.

But once again, it needs to be justified in a way that says this is pushing me forward.

This is achieving a goal.

This is serving a mission.

This is doing something other than blind entertainment.

And if it is actually just entertainment, it's a really negative form of entertainment.

It's a really destructive way to entertain yourself.

There are so many more positive ways to be entertained.

Why choose the news?

Why choose Twitter?

Why choose any platform that's going to just throw hate in your face all the time?

This podcast has been intentionally positive from day one and will continue to be.

These kinds of intense rants that I go on, these are rare, thankfully.

But I get mad about this stuff because I see how destructive it is and I don't see it helping anybody.

And I see people who are addicted to it and they just get sucked into this vortex of negativity upon negativity.

News porn is a real thing.

You get addicted to this idea of just, "I need to know more.

I just need to see the gory stuff.

Show me the worst of the worst."

That's just painful to me to see.

So, what do we consume instead?

We're not going to do the news.

If that's out, what's the direct replacement?

Where do we go from here?

I love documentaries.

Those also can be very dark, so that's kind of a sketchy way to lean because most documentaries tend to focus on the darker sides of life.

Rape, murder, pillaging.

They're bad, oftentimes.

I love them.

I'm a true crime fan, but true crime is pretty dark by the nature of what it is.

So instead of the news, you could go true crime, you could go documentaries, but you gotta be careful.

I would lean more towards great movies, amazing podcasts, audiobooks, anything to help you learn.

I don't know, read a book.

That's a possibility.

I know it's kind of old school now.

You could actually buy a physical book.

That's right, paper, and read it.

You don't have to, but that's an option.

Right?

Or, literally just do nothing.

Don't consume anything.

Just opt out.

Go for a walk.

Meditate.

Take a nap.

We don't have to be consumers all the time.

We don't have to be taking things in 24/7.

We can just sit and be still.

And that's a weird thing when you're so used to consumption.

You come home after work, and the first thing you want to do is look at your phone, and pull up Netflix, and watch the news, and do more and more and more of what just is noise coming into your brain over and over and over.

I set a personal goal of 90 days for this recent news pause that I'm on to really say I'm not going to do any of it.

And for me, this is a big deal because I was really consuming news from lots of sources.

Not just nightly news, not just online articles, but tons of comedy news programs and YouTube channels and online social media feeds.

There were so many different channels.

And for me to intentionally say, "No news for 90 days," well, then I had to go purge each of these channels one by one and realize how many places it was coming in.

And by the way, it still is.

I still haven't yet found a way to block all of the news while I still live in the real world and I'm still connected.

It's everywhere.

And so if your goal is to actually not be involved, good luck because it is a difficult task to do.

But for the next 90 days, I guess now we're 30 days in, for me the next 60, I'll be working myself towards this goal of reevaluation.

So after 90 days, I will ask the question, "Where am I now?

Has this worked?

Should I continue it?

Is it not working?

What's the plan going forward?"

Now, honestly, one of the things that's really kind of bizarre about this is the kind of awkwardness that I feel about it.

And when I say that, I mean I was so used to consuming some of these channels so often.

Comedy news is a big one.

But now I'm not sure what to do with my time.

It actually does feel kind of weird and I miss that feeling of what those things would bring me.

There was some joy there.

There was some entertaining value there.

Although I do realize the negativity that was kind of underpinning the whole thing.

So to walk away from that for 90 days is fine.

Will I return to those sources?

Maybe.

I would hope not.

Because I really don't think it provides the value that I think that it does.

And it takes probably a full 90 days to let go of something to the point where you're not emotionally longing for it anymore.

Where that actual addiction has faded enough, you can be more objective and make a decision for your future that is based on the new you who really won't show up until enough time has passed.

So if you're looking for the opportunity to make better choices, leaning on experiments is a big, big deal.

Anybody can do anything for 30 days, 60 days, 90 days.

And those are the best ways to begin.

To figure out what matters to you or what doesn't matter.

And then just live a new life for a short amount of time to see what happens.

And when you do that, the feedback there will be so clear.

Usually in the first few days, it won't take a full 30, 60 or 90.

You'll probably get a no in 24 hours or less.

And then the goal there is discipline to stick with your new habit.

But that's the intention here.

So now let's pivot to this actual final component of the mental cleanse itself.

Because what I've just discussed from Twitter and news and social media really is a conversation on cleansing your mind from those consumables.

All these vessels of entertainment and news and information that are from external sources coming into your life.

A mental cleanse is a way to say, I'm going to just turn it off.

Nothing for a while.

When you identify these sources and can then pinpoint them and say, I'm going to stop for a bit.

You're identifying potentially, most likely is negativity from these sources and the cleanse is to say, not that I'm going to stop all inputs, but I'm definitely going to stop the negative ones.

So what is no longer serving you or your goals that you consume on a consistent basis?

Or a better question.

This is the one that really got me.

What used to provide immense value, but is now just boring or habitual?

A thing that used to have that amazing value.

But today you're just like, it's not there anymore.

Or even what sounds good on paper, but then fails to live up to the hype.

These are the kinds of questions that allow us to identify what is negative or what is not helpful or what is not valuable and then be able to let go of those for a certain time period.

The second step is to choose a direct replacement.

So for most bad habits, for you to find a healthier or more positive habit to focus on is the best and most effective path forward.

I would argue or really encourage you to not think about what you're leaving behind.

That's the tendency.

The tendency is to always kind of go back to the thought of, but what's going on on Twitter, Jeff?

What's happening on the news tonight?

I don't know.

I don't know because I'm not thinking about it.

What I'm thinking about is what I'm moving towards.

My new life and the benefits I'll get from those choices and those new habits.

When you shift and make that mental pivot to the benefits of the new path forward, you are thinking and acting on your new life, your better life, your more intentional life.

And then you actually get those benefits.

If you spend your time in the opposite direction and just longing for what you're missing, you're going to quit.

First of all, it's not going to last a full 90 days.

And second of all, you're not, you're going to miss the chance to really latch on to the new thing.

You're going to miss the opportunity to see the benefits of the new life because you're just hanging out with the old crowd for too long.

Now, once you have a direct replacement for the habit, it is then time to choose your time frame.

Once again, you could do 30, 60, 90 days.

Longer is going to be better.

However, there is power in a deadline that could actually backfire on you.

A very common thing to hear about every year is Sober October, a movement to not drink alcohol for the month of October, which is on paper a very healthy choice.

I think Joe Rogan actually made this very popular for his audience to not drink alcohol and not smoke weed and not do any drugs and really just be clean and go do hot yoga.

And I heard this years ago from him and thought that's actually a great message.

How awesome of you, Joe, to go promote your ginormous audience these opportunities to make great healthy choices for October.

It all backfires when November hits.

At the first of November, everybody goes back to their old habits and they go back harder than ever.

The relapse is intense.

And the problem there is so clear.

The sober month meant almost nothing and in fact could actually be more harmful when you return and have that yo-yo effect of going back to the old ways.

This is very common in the diet world.

If you go on a diet, you lose a bunch of weight and then you quit.

You then rebound and you've gained more weight than you would have had you not begun in the first place.

And the effect of losing and gaining weight really quickly is even worse on your health than to have stayed the same the whole way through.

Long story short, it backfires.

Having this sense of there is a deadline and when it hits, when this finish line shows up, I get to quit on this crazy goal because I didn't like it in the first place.

That's not going to work.

What has worked for me, what I think could work for you is a timeframe that is undefined.

Which is not very intentional.

It sounds really arbitrary and not like a good choice, but it avoids this major problem.

When you begin your new habits, do not choose an end date yet.

Intentionally play it out for a while and just see how it feels.

If it feels permanent, then make it permanent.

If it feels temporary, then you can set a date to reevaluate in the future.

But that new date is a reevaluation date, not a quitting date, not a finish line.

The point is to then reassess, should I continue or not?

So it's not sober October, it is I'm not drinking and then a month from now I'll reevaluate and see how I feel.

See what the results have brought.

That's a better plan for most people because it gives you the chance to stick with these things.

To make these good habits permanent and part of your lifestyle going forward.

Which of course is where all the benefits show up, is the long term compounding effect of all these things.

The fourth step in this process is to choose one habit at a time.

If you successfully replace a bad habit with a better one, that's awesome.

You can then repeat this process with a new habit to focus on replacing going forward.

Don't try and do too many at once.

If you try to change more than one habit at a time, especially significant habits, you're probably going to exhaust yourself.

That's what I've always seen.

Whenever I try to do two, three, four habits at once, initially it feels awesome.

It really does feel great to do.

It's like, man, I'm a whole new person today than I was yesterday.

I got all these new habits.

It really does emotionally feel great.

And three days later you're so tired you can't stand up because you've just done too much.

You pushed too hard in the gym, you changed your diet too radically, you tried all these new supplements, you did whatever you did.

And it just didn't work.

So really keep this at a slower pace and focus on the long term habit sticking component.

Step five is to step down slowly if you need to.

Now, not all bad habits can be replaced with perfect habits right away.

I'm going to go back to my example of alcohol here because this is a really good one.

So I actually let go of alcohol three months ago and replaced my nightly about one to two glasses of red wine with one hot vegan dark chocolate beverage.

I went literally from wine to hot chocolate as my step down program to go from one to the next.

And arguably hot chocolate is probably not actually a healthy choice.

Yeah, I drank hot chocolate every single night for 90 straight days.

And I love sugar.

I'm a huge fan of chocolate and it's a fantastic beverage if your goal is just a treat.

So is it healthy?

Of course not.

Is it better than wine on a nightly basis?

Maybe, probably, depending on how you view the health impacts of these things, it could be a better choice.

What it did allow me to do is to prove to myself that I didn't need a glass of red wine every night.

It did prove to me that I love sugar and chocolate, but I already knew that.

So then the question was, well, how do I pivot from this like step down from red wine to chocolate to something else?

I then needed a replacement for the hot chocolate.

Right?

The bad habit became a lesser bad habit, which then became a lesser bad, which for me now is an organic sugar free nighttime tea.

So is that healthy?

Absolutely.

Is it better than wine and or hot chocolate?

Of course.

This is where the benefits showed up.

Now at night, I'm not craving alcohol.

I still like hot chocolate, but I'm not craving that as much.

And so in this process for me to kind of evolve myself forward, I want to consume the things that make me a better version of me.

And so for today, as of this recording, I can't speak for the future, but as of this recording right now, my organic nighttime tea is fantastic and I'm going to try some new ones and test some other possibilities.

But that's where I'm at.

And it should work really well.

So if you need that, this step down idea of bad habit to lesser bad to a little lesser bad, go for it, because that's going to lead you in the direction of habit change and prove to yourself you can change.

You can make better choices and get the benefits from those choices.

Step six is to get addicted to great habits while you're at it.

But don't overdo it.

So as you focus on making better choices, you will see many opportunities to improve your life.

And getting addicted to, let's say, health food, as an example, is a much better addiction than junk food.

But too much is always too much.

So finding balance here as you pursue a better life is going to be way better for you than going to the extremes.

I'm an extremist kind of guy.

I love making radical change quickly.

And I love this idea that I could be addicted to health food as that example, but that's not actually beneficial.

Addiction is still addiction and health food is not actually healthy if you're over consuming it.

And so the balance here still matters.

So the goal is to get obsessed with making better choices, but to realize the potential danger, because the danger is that these could be as dangerous as never trying to improve at all.

As an extreme example, body dysmorphia is what can happen when you care too much about your appearance, about your physicality, your exercise, your diet.

You can actually find yourself in a position where it didn't work because you pushed too far.

And so the goal here is not to land ourselves in those arenas.

We love great habits.

We love healthy habits here.

That's the point.

But balance still matters.

Health in the general sense includes balance.

Finally, step number seven, take a regular self inventory of your consumption habits.

Bad habits kind of as an entity in life are pretty sneaky.

They don't always show up out of nowhere.

And so the goal here is to schedule a reoccurring reevaluation of what you regularly consume, because you will catch yourself back in old habits.

You will notice that the things you used to enjoy are no longer serving you.

So when you make regular adjustments to get back on track, that's when you're actually best.

And so for me, I tend to do this once a month, definitely once a quarter, where I'm asking myself, what are these key habits that really define my life?

Where should I pivot to?

What's been working?

What hasn't been working?

Is this 90 day period now over?

OK.

Do I return to do more of that?

Do I do I pivot and change it?

This reevaluation of your life and your habits will define your future more than anything else.

Habits are everything.

You are who you are because of your habits.

And so if you need a mental cleanse to not consume the noise, to not be bought into all the nonsense, take the chance to cleanse, to pause, to not actually have all that stuff in your head.

And then because of that, have an objective view on your life to move forward with more productivity, more intentionality, more healthy behavior.

So those core habits can be this new and better version of you.

And for the action step this week, take an input inventory.

What are you letting into your mind every day that is no longer serving you?

What can you take a break from or even let go of completely?

Knowing what truly adds value to your day allows you to tap into the best habits and inputs, while allowing the rest to just fade away.

And of course, be sure to subscribe to this podcast in your favorite podcast app, or become a VIP member of the 5 AM Miracle community by getting a premium ad-free version with exclusive bonus episodes at 5ammiraclepremium.com.

That's all I've got for you here on the 5 AM Miracle podcast this week.

Until next time, you have the power to change your life, and all that fun begins bright and early.

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