32. ANDREW ABELA: The Habits That Change Everything

Episode Transcript

Note: Transcript is AI-generated and may contain errors. Please refer to the episode audio or video for exact quotes.

[00:00:00] Andrew: Cultivating self discipline and the various virtues of self discipline is not about stifling a desire. It’s about redirecting it gently into a more productive direction.

[00:00:13] Michael: I am Michael Hyatt

[00:00:14] Megan: and I’m Megan Hyatt Miller.

[00:00:15] Michael: And you’re listening to the double wind show.

[00:00:17] Megan: And today we have a great conversation with Dr.

[00:00:21] Andrew Abella. Y’all are going to love. This topic,

[00:00:26] Michael: Andrew is the founding Dean of the Bush School of Business at the Catholic University of America. He’s an expert in leadership, business ethics, and integrating faith in business practices. He’s the author of a brand new book called Super Habits. Where he introduces a framework for cultivating virtuous habits that lead to personal and professional success.

[00:00:46] Now, if you’ve read books like Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit, or you’ve read James Clear’s book, Atomic Habits, or any other books on habits, I even wrote one. Then you might think, you know, all about habits, but I promise you, You [00:01:00] don’t, this is a completely different framework that builds on those books, or maybe even maybe a precursor or the prequel to those books, but it is fabulous.

[00:01:11] So enjoy this conversation with Andrew Abella.

[00:01:19] Andrew, welcome to the show. Great to be here. We’re excited. We’re excited about this book and the work that you’ve done, but we want to start kind of at the beginning and give you a chance to share with our listeners. Kind of your story, some of the key milestones and what led you to this place to write this book.

[00:01:34] Andrew: So I am a late convert to academia. I started out in business. I started my career at Procter and Gamble, worked for McKinsey and company, a consulting firm around the world, and then eventually realized that what I wanted to do was teach. So I went and got my PhD. And I’ve been teaching at Catholic university for the last 22 years here in Washington, DC.

[00:01:57] And then about 12 years ago, I made the mistake [00:02:00] of stepping into academic administration, which means that the thing I came here to do, I don’t get to do as much. And so I had the privilege of being the founding Dean of the Bush school of business, which is our business school. When I first came here, we didn’t actually have a school of business and we wanted it to be a school of business.

[00:02:18] That was turning out fully formed human beings, not just great business leaders, but people who are compassionate, caring, courageous. And so early on, we realized we’re going to have to focus on forming their character as well as their intellects. And the best way to do that is to cultivate them in the virtues, the classical idea of the virtues.

[00:02:40] And part of the problems with that was a lot of people misunderstand that word. They think of virtue as just generically meaning goodness, be good, you know, virtuous person is a good person, but it’s so much more than that. Going all the way back to the ancient Greeks and the Romans, the virtues, as I think, you know, are specific habits of excellence.

[00:02:59] Like [00:03:00] courage or generosity and so on habits that anyone can acquire. And so we started to focus on that from the beginning for the business school. But over the last several years, we’ve really doubled down on that. And so what I wanted to do is try to capture what we were doing and all the research that goes into it and so on into a book form, because I really think that in some ways.

[00:03:21] This is one of the most important things that our country and the world reads right now, which is a rediscovery of the true meaning of virtue and a kind of re embracing of that.

[00:03:31] Megan: Oh, I love that.

[00:03:33] Andrew: I do too.

[00:03:33] Megan: So refreshing, just right off the bat. And, you know, I think when you pick up a book about habits, it’s easy to think, you know, what, You’re talking about what we as the readers think you’re as the author talking about.

[00:03:47] And I’d love for you to just kind of frame up for us how your approach to habits is different than maybe the one that we’re more familiar with in kind of the world of achievement or productivity or those kinds of [00:04:00] spaces.

[00:04:00] Andrew: The three big ones in my mind are Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit. It was the first, I think, to the scene.

[00:04:06] And then, uh, James Clear’s Atomic Habits. Right. And B. J. Fogg’s Tiny Habits. I think there’s many others, but those are sort of the three big ones. They’re terrific, every one of them. And So I don’t disagree with any of them on anything. I, I, but I, my book builds on what they do. Their books are all about how do you develop a habit?

[00:04:26] My book is wait, which habits? Cause it’s, that’s not a trivial question. And those books kind of leave it open. Whatever habit you want to develop, we’ll show you how to develop it. Well, it turns out that there is a specific set of habits that is far superior than every other habit. And I can, I can make that claim.

[00:04:45] Both because there’s deep philosophy behind it, but also extensive empirical evidence as well. And so instead of leaving people to figure out for themselves, which habits they should grow in, I wanted to be able to chart the territory and say, here’s this [00:05:00] collection. It turns out I say about, cause you can quibble one way or another, but about 50 virtues, five zero, which may seem a little overwhelming, although over the course of a lifetime, anyone can develop all 50, you know, but also It’s somewhat reassuring to know that it’s actually only 50, not thousands of possible habits that you have to choose from.

[00:05:20] You know, it’s like, here’s a set. This is what defines human flourishing. Now you choose within that where you want to focus on right now, what’s going to be most helpful right now. So that’s my big difference. They’re all about how I’m all about which ones. Do

[00:05:34] Michael: you also have approach, an approach to when, like, is there a certain sequence or order or foundational habits that should be acquired first?

[00:05:41] That is

[00:05:42] Andrew: one of those interesting controversies. If I go back to Augustine, and I tend to follow his sequence. So there are the four big what I call the cardinal virtues, right? Prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance. Prudence, the habit of making wise decisions. Justice, the habit of treating others fairly.[00:06:00]

[00:06:00] Fortitude, the habit of moving forward despite being afraid. You know, people often think that fortitude or courage is all about not having fear. Nonsense! You don’t have a control over fear. Fear comes. Courage is moving forward despite the feeling of fear. And then temperance or self discipline. The habit of only following your desires when it’s rational, when it makes sense to do so, and for some reason, historically, that we always say them in that order, I believe the way to develop them is in the opposite order, and I think Augustine says the same thing, which is you start with self discipline, because if you have no self discipline, you’re toast, you’re just gonna, you’re just gonna flip after whatever passion, whatever interest you have at any moment that you never amount to anything.

[00:06:42] Okay. Once you have self discipline, then you need courage because otherwise the first obstacle you run into doesn’t matter how disciplined you are, you’re afraid, you stall, you don’t do it. Once you have that, then you can start focusing on, okay, well, Who am I serving and how am I serving them? And that’s where justice will come in.

[00:06:58] And you could debate justice [00:07:00] or the fourth one, the practical wisdom or prudence, the decision making then that has to be done in order to have a life well lived, how to make good decisions, but definitely. So I wrote my book in that order. So I. In fact, as you notice, the first nine chapters or so of the book are just individual types of self discipline virtues, because that’s where you want to begin.

[00:07:23] And then I start to, and then I explain the whole system. And then I have a chapter of each for self discipline as a whole, and then courage, practical wisdom, and then justice. How many virtues did Thomas Aquinas identify? So by my counting, 50, five zero. But it’s complicated because You have the three theological virtues, faith, hope, and charity.

[00:07:43] I don’t talk much about those in the book. And then there are four intellectual virtues. I don’t talk much about those either. The remainders are all around these four cardinal virtues, and then each of them have what he called allied virtues that I find useful to think of them as kind [00:08:00] of Subcomponents.

[00:08:02] So there are 15 different virtues of self discipline, 15 in a sense, 15 types of self discipline. And so if somebody is struggling to grow in self discipline, my response is, of course, you’re struggling. You’re actually, without knowing it, trying to grow in 15 different virtues, you know, that’s a lot. So just pick one.

[00:08:24] Like restraint, for example, would be one of the self discipline virtues, the very first chapter of the book and start with that as you grow in that you will grow in the larger virtue of self discipline, but but be focused, you know, so that’s that’s what I try to do with the book is explain how you can break out these really big cardinal virtues down into the more specific super habits.

[00:08:44] Michael: I’m just curious by way of background to Benjamin Franklin. Did some work around this too, as I recall. And I don’t remember how many virtues he identified, but would those be similar to the kinds of things? You’re talking about? Yeah. He had

[00:08:57] Andrew: 13, if I’m not mistaken. And that’s part of the [00:09:00] problem. Because if you read books on virtue by clever people, good people, people who should know, and there are a number of really good books like that, and you read them and everyone has a different list, not just a different number, but different ones.

[00:09:15] They usually have the four cardinal virtues, but after that, anybody’s guess, you know, And if this stuff is that important, and I think it is. Surely there should be some consensus over what they are, you know? And so that’s when I discovered that Aquinas had the answer for us here. He must be one of the most studied theologians and philosophers of all time.

[00:09:38] No doubt. And yet, there’s something in there. That I don’t think anyone in the last several hundred years noticed, which is in his what’s called Treatise of the Virtues, which is in part of the Summa Theologica. He’s not just enumerating the virtues, but he’s giving a system showing how they all fit together.[00:10:00]

[00:10:00] I spent a number of years as a management consultant. I mentioned before, um, McKinsey and Company. And when you’re a young management consultant, they train you on this really important concept. They call it MISI. An acronym that stands for mutually exclusive, collectively exhausted. And what you use that for is whenever you were taking apart a client’s problem, a complex problem, you had to break it up in its component parts.

[00:10:23] So then different members of the team could kind of go off to different parts and then bring it all back together. You had to make sure that when you, when you. disaggregated this problem into its component parts. Those parts were mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive. In other words, no overlaps and no gaps.

[00:10:39] We count everything and we counted only once. Otherwise you’re either wasting time or you’re missing something else. So very important. So I’m reading through the suma. And this was during Covid, so I locked down. My commute is three hours, one and a half hours each way. So that’s three hours bonus I had during the lockdowns, and I’m using that time to read the Summa, what every business dean would do, [00:11:00] right?

[00:11:00] Anyway, and I’m reading through this and it hits me, but what Aquinas did was he, he has a Missy disaggregation of an entire human life. He takes all of human life, divides it up into its component parts. The word divide is a little dangerous. I don’t mean as in like separate out kind of spiritual from material.

[00:11:21] Just kind of a categorization, if you will, of every aspect of human life. And then shows you how there’s a particular virtue for every part of life. And because he did it that way, we can say definitively that he’s covered everything because at every distinction he makes, it’s mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive.

[00:11:41] So no gaps, no overlap. So if you take anything and you do no gaps, no overlaps. You know that you’ve covered everything you need because there are no gaps and there’s no duplication. Another example I give in the book is the game of 20 questions. Sure. You have 20 questions and every question has to be yes, no.

[00:11:58] And do you remember the secret to [00:12:00] winning 20 questions? Every time you ask a question, the question has to divide the remaining universe roughly in two equal parts. So is it living or dead? Okay, it’s dead. All right. Is it smaller than a bread box or bigger? And if you do that 20 times mathematically, you can find one thing from among over a million, because it’s two to the power of 20.

[00:12:20] Because each time what you’re doing is you’re dividing and you’re dividing, so nothing gets left out. But all of that to say, Logically, we can say that Aquinas’s list is the definitive list because there’s no gaps in it, right? So, but what it means in practice is no matter what you’re struggling with in life, there is a virtue, there is a habit of excellence that if you cultivate it, it will address that struggle for you.

[00:12:44] No matter what it is, entire part of human life.

[00:12:47] Megan: Wow. This

[00:12:48] Andrew: is such a fascinating framework.

[00:12:49] Megan: It really is. Andrew, what, what is it about habits? That we get wrong.

[00:12:56] Andrew: That’s a great question. I’m going to blame that your questions are so good [00:13:00] that I keep getting tempted to geek out.

[00:13:02] Megan: I like it. You’re

[00:13:03] Andrew: asking, you’re asking really good questions.

[00:13:05] Um, there was a debate in the 1950s about what Aquinas meant with the word habit. Because the Latin word he used, he wasn’t speaking English, he was speaking Latin, was habitus. Which sure sounds like habit, right? It sounds like it should be translated as habit. But a habitus is a little different from a habit.

[00:13:27] Anything can be a habit. Good or bad or indifferent, right? You do something repeatedly, it becomes a habit. A habitus is a capacity that you already have inside you that you bring alive when you practice. Okay. Do you see the difference? Yeah. Mm-hmm . And so the habitus idea and what I call super habits, so, so I use the word super habits because so many people get confused with the word virtue.

[00:13:52] But what I mean by a super habit is what Aquinas meant by a habitus, which means not just any habit, but a habit that you [00:14:00] already had in potential inside you as a human being. ’cause this is the really good news. Every one of those 50 virtues we, all of us have inside of us. They just need to be activated.

[00:14:12] They are like muscles that maybe you haven’t, the joke I make is, you know, you’re trying to use sport and then you go, Oh my gosh, muscles. I didn’t even know I had are aching, you know? Well, the super habits, the virtues are all muscles. We didn’t even know we had. Every one of us has within us the muscle for courage, for self discipline.

[00:14:30] And all we have to do is activate them by practicing them. So when you ask what people get wrong about habits, it’s not technically wrong. There’s anything you do repeatedly can become a habit, but to miss the fact that there’s this precious set of habits that we are ingrained, predisposed to develop, and when we develop them, we really flourish as human beings.

[00:14:54] That’s just so important. So that’s why I have this. Hate is a strong word. So I shouldn’t [00:15:00] really say love hate relationship with the habits literature. I do love it. And I think it’s so important, you know, it frustrates me that it’s like, stop treating everything as if it’s equally important. You know, they’re just, we really should focus on this particular set of habits because it just comes out ahead of everything else.

[00:15:16] Well, it

[00:15:17] Michael: seems like you’ve given it such an amazing context and a higher orientation than just a mere habit for efficiency or greater efficacy. You know, this is really about, as you said, human flourishing, becoming who God’s created us to be, and realizing our potential. But I want to go back, as a practical example, the whole idea of self discipline, or what did you call it before, temperance?

[00:15:44] Temperance. Yep. Yep. And then an ally to that would be restraint. So what might a habit of restraint look like in the context of our audience, busy professionals who are trying to balance work and life?

[00:15:58] Andrew: There’s a short answer and a [00:16:00] longer answer. I’ll go with the short answer and then we can see where that leads us.

[00:16:03] The short answer is restraint is the habit, the super habit. So, so every type of self discipline habit is a habit for restraining some kind of desire that we have. We have, some people have desires for alcohol, some desires for food, you know, or at different times. Restraint is for the desire to do petty or trivial things.

[00:16:28] And it could include things like I’m on online and I’m on Amazon and I see a special deal of the day and I go, Oh, I want to buy that. I just buy it. Right. Restraint would be no weight. You know, if I must put wishlist or count to 10 or something like that, or I’m driving to work and somebody cuts me off.

[00:16:43] And I. Say a bad word or I make a rude sign. You know, it’s the desires we have that if fulfilled, make us less of a human being kind of, and makes the world in the tiniest little way, worse off, you know, and so restraint is the habit of resisting [00:17:00] those, and there’s a lot of research on this happily in, in temporary psychology and the best news about it is.

[00:17:07] Any practice that you choose that has you saying no to a little petty temptation helps you grow in this muscle of restraint across the whole domain of things. So if I say to myself, you know what, for the next 30 days, I’m not going to buy anything online without waiting 24 hours. That’s going to be my practice of restraint for a month.

[00:17:31] If I do that, I’m not just getting better, not buying stuff on impulse. I’m just getting better at restraint itself, which is different than, say, you know, the habit of brushing your teeth makes you better at brushing your teeth. And there’s not much else you can do that. I mean, it’s a good habit, but that’s it, right?

[00:17:48] It’s not really a

[00:17:49] Megan: transferable skill though.

[00:17:51] Andrew: Exactly. Whereas any restraint practice is transferable to the whole domain of, of restraint.

[00:17:56] Michael: You know, in all of our traditions, we were talking beforehand, you’re Roman [00:18:00] Catholic, I’m Eastern Orthodox, Megan’s Anglican, but in all of our traditions, we have the tradition of fasting.

[00:18:06] Which, it gives us an opportunity seasonally, in our tradition, I can’t speak to anybody else because this is what I know, but it’s multiple times a year to exercise our no muscle. And I’ve always seen it in the context of we’re saying no so that we can say yes to something greater.

[00:18:22] Andrew: Yes, that’s exactly right.

[00:18:24] There’s a freedom that comes right from growing in self discipline because instead of being a prey to whatever desire that you you have, you’re in charge, you’re in charge. So another one of the self discipline super habits is that of diligence. So if restraint is all about desires to want to do trivial things, diligence is all about desires to know things, curiosity, wonder, you know, and it tells something really important about self discipline.

[00:18:54] Aquinas explains this and contemporary research in education affirms this, which is [00:19:00] beautiful. The way to grow in diligence is not. Chomp down, do your homework, practice work. You know, that’s sometimes the impression was like, be diligent, like do your darn homework. The real way to grow in diligence is to fall in love with your subject.

[00:19:15] And

[00:19:16] Andrew: Aquinas said the thing and, and, and the contemporary researchers in education say the same thing. You grow in diligence by, by focusing on. How this subject will be useful to me or why this is interesting or how this would help me serve others, whatever it’s going to take to get you more interested in the subject is how we grow in diligence, but the larger point that it makes is that the desires that we have sometimes take us in good places, sometimes take us in bad places.

[00:19:43] But it’s generally a good thing that we have desires, right? The emotions provide motion, right? They, they give us the energy to do things. And so cultivating self discipline and the various virtues of self discipline is not about stifling a desire. It’s about [00:20:00] redirecting it gently into a more productive direction.

[00:20:03] So, so the example I give in the book is. When you spend hours on social media, especially with children, we know now there’s all kinds of horrible effects that come, but even if we separate those out, an adult who’s looking at harmless social media, the problem there is you are wasting the desire to know on stuff that is not going to help you.

[00:20:22] Why not instead read literature or read a self help book would be more productive. And so the way to grow in self discipline is ultimately about redirecting. Redirecting those desires to more productive areas.

[00:20:33] Megan: That is so fascinating. And it’s, it’s funny that you’re using these specific examples because we were, I’m like, yes, God, I hear you.

[00:20:42] We were just having lunch, my dad and I, and we were just talking about kind of some of our own journeys and we’ve been. Kind of leaning into a conversation around compulsive habits that are negative, uh, or activities, kind of things that have an addictive quality to them. And for [00:21:00] me, that includes social media, specifically Instagram, and also purchasing things, like just buying things.

[00:21:08] And so what I’ve, about six weeks ago maybe, I decided to completely get off Instagram. And the first two weeks were very difficult. But after that, you know, I’ve never read so many books in a month in my entire life. Like my intellectual life is just thriving. I’m happier. I’m less anxious. I’m more present.

[00:21:29] Like the list of benefits go on and on. So that’s one thing. And then just in the last week, I decided, you know, I’ve really been thinking deeply about the idea of sobriety, the relationship between that and the ability to be present, the relationship between being present and the ability to have the self awareness to ultimately make choices that lead to human flourishing.

[00:21:51] And so I decided that, um, I was going to give up buying anything new for 30 days, just as a way to kind of reset my own [00:22:00] dopamine pathways that were like over, overly activated. And. It’s amazing how those two desires, which are, you know, I would frame up as being really counterfeit for something else that I wanted that was meaningful and deep, that ultimately not being free from those two things is going to keep me from the very thing I want, which is human flourishing and meaningful relationships and experiences.

[00:22:26] And while it’s challenging to give them up initially, it’s also. So life giving, and I love what you said about redirecting desires because I don’t think the goal is some kind of asceticism as the end game is just that you don’t love anything and you don’t do anything that you love like it’s that you don’t want these trivial counterfeits that feel like love but actually aren’t.

[00:22:51] It’s a poor substitute. It’s like the old country song that says looking for love in all the wrong places. You know, it’s like that, that’s kind of what we’re talking about here. So I love that you [00:23:00] use those two examples that are personal to me right now.

[00:23:03] Andrew: You’re a great case study. That’s really, um, really terrific.

[00:23:07] And you’re a strong person because you were able to just kind of go cold Turkey. Not, not everyone can do that. And for the people who can’t, who don’t feel the strength to do that, a smaller step. It’s good too. So putting some kind of limit, a time limit on, on how much time you spend on Instagram and then ratcheting that down slowly, you know,

[00:23:34] Michael: I have a sort of related question about restraint. So I love learning. It’s one of my top five strengths, you know, as measured by the Gallup strength finders assessment, I get ravenous about learning, but sometimes it can be. A problem. So like I’ve, I’ve done a deep dive, Megan and I were just tying this at lunch about AI this last year and I kind of [00:24:00] fell into the rabbit hole and, you know, woke up somewhere else and then just realized this was consuming all my thinking.

[00:24:07] It was all I was reading about. It was all I was doing. And I think it became a compulsive behavior. So I backed off a little bit now. But do you ever see that with sort of the diligence side of it, that a diligence too directed and too intense can become actually a negative virtue. Idolatry, maybe

[00:24:24] Andrew: going back to the Greeks and the Romans, Aristotle in particular started to make the point that the idea of the virtue as the mean between two extremes that in most, in most cases you can go wrong in two different directions.

[00:24:42] And it’s actually quite, quite enlightening. So if you take self discipline as a whole. The obvious way most people, um, get it wrong is they give in to their desires too quickly, right, or to any desire, indiscriminately they give in to desires. But there is an opposite error, which is to not give in to your desires [00:25:00] at all, which you, I think you were touching on before, when you say we’re not, we’re not looking for some kind of absolute asceticism here.

[00:25:06] And in fact, so the opposite of every virtue goes in two different directions. So a complete lack of self discipline, you know, would be one vice. But the other extreme would be not allowing yourself any pleasure whatsoever, restraining every desire you have. Aquinas names that mirthlessness, having no mirth, you know, a real dull person.

[00:25:29] Nobody would want to be around. It’s not healthy and it’s not virtuous to be that way. So to your point about diligence and the desire to know, one of the vices opposing it is in Latin is called curiositas, which you might want to translate as curiosity, but I hesitate doing that because curiosity can be a good thing, right?

[00:25:47] That’s how we see it. But what they meant was, Your point, Michael, of this sort of an unfiltered, unrelenting pursuit of knowledge without bringing it into kind of context with [00:26:00] the rest of your life, kind of just overdoing it. And a lot of people would object and go, well, how are you going to know exactly where this sort of virtuous mean is, you know?

[00:26:09] And it’s not something that’s subject to a formula. It’s something you learn from others. And you look at people who are more virtuous and say, how do they do this? And you learn from them. But also from reflection. You did it yourself. You said, I’ve gone too deep into this. It’s distracting me from other things that I need to do, you know?

[00:26:27] And so this is too much. And so I’ve left the path of diligence and I’m falling into some more kind of specious curiosity. Does that make sense? Yes.

[00:26:35] Michael: And I think in, in, to your point there, I think it’s been my family that has helped point this out that You’ve gone too overboard because, you know, I think one trait of really good leaders is that they’re self aware, but that’s not a destination.

[00:26:50] It is a journey. And I often find that I think of myself as a self aware person, but I can sometimes be profoundly unself aware about certain [00:27:00] habits. And it takes reflection and it takes especially feedback from people that love us to just say, Hey, you know, you might want to rethink that or dial it back a couple of clicks.

[00:27:13] I have a question about another virtue, and I don’t know if this is an ally to one of the, you know, the core four, but it’s orderliness because that’s, that’s not a term that you hear much.

[00:27:26] Megan: And

[00:27:26] Michael: yet I can tell you. I love order. And I think part of it is that I was raised in a family with an alcoholic father.

[00:27:36] And so there was a lot of chaos. And so I have a compulsion for things to be ordered. And so I just want to talk about the virtue of that,

[00:27:44] Megan: like when it’s a virtue and when it becomes maladaptive. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

[00:27:49] Andrew: Well, first I am not at all surprised to hear you say that you like it because I’ve been following your work for years and you bring order to people’s lives.

[00:27:58] It’s what you do with the whole [00:28:00] goal setting and best year and so on. A lot of that is about bringing right. So I’m not surprised. But yes, it is. It is one of the 15. Virtues that roll up to self discipline. So it’s a type of self discipline. And what it disciplines is the desire to do something. Most people have left alone with no obligations would not just sit there, right?

[00:28:22] They would go and do something. Scroll on social media, go for a walk, annoy their baby brother. You know, just like people always do something. And so orderliness is the habit of making sure that the thing that we do Is the thing that we most want to or need to get done now, you know, so it’s, it includes things like setting up a to do list and then following through that to do list and so on.

[00:28:45] The two extremes of obvious opposite is to have no order at all and just doing whatever you feel like doing next, but the other is to be compulsive, you know, to be just completely obsessed about what you’re what you’re doing so that [00:29:00] there’s no room for flexibility or. That the human relationships are sort of squeezed out of it, you know, so those would be the two extremes in the book.

[00:29:09] I talk about the different Myers Briggs personality types and how orderliness might look different in different personality types. I haven’t yet found. Any research on this and if anybody listening to this knows of any, I would appreciate an email, but I am convinced that you don’t have people talk about habits being a result of sort of the neuroplasticity of our brains.

[00:29:34] You’re talking about neural pathways before. As you repeat a certain behavior, you create a new pathway in your brain. I’m convinced that there’s a very basic difference between the super habits being kind of very neuroplastic and then the personality types. You mentioned the Gallup StrengthsFinder before Michael.

[00:29:54] Far less neuroplastic. I think the strengths tend to be durable across decades [00:30:00] of a life. Whereas a habit, if you may be the most fraidy cat cowardly person around, but over some number of months you could grow in, in the virtue of courage through practice. So there’s a very big difference. I think, yeah, this is very helpful.

[00:30:14] Megan: Yeah. I think this is such an important thing to drill down on because we are two people who. I’ve never met a personality assessment. We didn’t love. It’s so fun to dig into those, but I think one of the weaknesses of the personality assessments is that they sort of implicitly say, this is who you are.

[00:30:34] And there are things that you’re going to be good at. And there are things that you’re not going to be good at. And for the most part, I would say the messaging around those assessments is just be who you are and lean into the things that you’re good at. And don’t worry too much about the stuff you’re not good at because other people will be good at those things.

[00:30:51] And it takes all of us. And, you know, some of that is good, right. But the negative is. If we apply that to our character, we [00:31:00] have a real problem on our hands, you know, we’re kind of left with what we rolled into life with, which, you know, I have, I know you have a bunch of kids, I have five kids, my oldest is 23, my youngest is five, and I’ve got young adults and teenagers in the middle, and That’s such a sharp relief of what it looks like to not yet have your character formed.

[00:31:20] I mean, there, there are things that they’re learning and developing, and there are things that they are completely deficient in, like taking showers regularly enough to not stink at the dinner table. You know, we’re still working on that with the teenagers. And I think that, you know, as adults, we have the same version of that.

[00:31:35] And I worry sometimes that we, we’ve created, um, kind of a worldview that says that character is sort of like, This old thing that we used to think about when we didn’t know a lot about ourselves very precisely. And now that we do, we don’t need to worry about developing all that stuff. And I mean, I think we get to see the fruit of that all the time and it’s not very pretty.

[00:31:57] So will you talk a little bit about the [00:32:00] relationship of personality and character and how they’re the same and how they’re definitely not the same?

[00:32:05] Andrew: I would love to draw a very sharp distinction between personality As the more fixed traits, you know, like the StrengthsFinder, which I love. I love the StrengthsFinder work and character as being completely malleable.

[00:32:17] Your character is basically made up of the virtues. So the 50 virtues, that’s a map of a human character,

[00:32:23] right?

[00:32:23] Andrew: And any part of that can be updated at any time. And I use the word update because at times I’ve described this as the human operating system,

[00:32:31] Megan: because

[00:32:31] Andrew: the analogy to a phone operating system or a laptop one is so great, especially when you see all the problems happening in our society today.

[00:32:39] I think it’s because we’re desperately in need of a major upgrade to our characters, to our human operating system through the practice of, of virtue. So I totally agree with you, the danger when you conflate. and character. And actually some, I think it’s a pity, but some of the biggest guilty parties here are those who should know better, [00:33:00] which is the positive psychology movement.

[00:33:02] These are brilliant researchers doing really important work studying the virtues, but they persist on calling them character strengths, character. Yes, but not strengths. And when you do their surveys, they’re delivered in a rank order. And here are your strengths, presumably in here, don’t worry about those.

[00:33:19] So, well, maybe I have a weakness in the air of honesty. And so what, I’m going to go be a liar for the rest of my life? That’s like, that’s not helpful. I don’t like the idea of calling them character strengths. They are virtues or they are habits of excellence that anyone can acquire. And they say, well, now that you know your strengths, you should play to them.

[00:33:36] Yes, by all means. But even more important is fix the ones that That need to be fixed. You know, if you’re lacking in perseverance or lacking in honesty or lacking in diligence, goodness, pick one of those and work on it and your life will get so much better than saying, well, I happen to be strong and resilient.

[00:33:53] So I’m just going to go around and be resilient all the time with it. Great. But don’t ignore this other stuff because a happy life is going to [00:34:00] be a well rounded kind of across all of the virtues.

[00:34:02] Michael: This is so fascinating. And I said a moment ago, it’s hopeful. I have yeah. personal coaching clients that will occasionally say to me something like, I’m just not a disciplined person.

[00:34:12] As though that’s

[00:34:13] Michael: a pass. I don’t have to be disciplined. And what this gives me is a framework for differentiating between personality and character and offer them hope that just because they have not been disciplined to this point, it’s still something they can acquire as a habit and as a virtue that could change the whole trajectory of their life.

[00:34:35] Megan: It would be like saying, I don’t have cardiovascular capacity. You know, I just, I don’t have any cardiovascular capacity. I guess I’ll have to stay on the couch. You know what I mean? That would be so nonsensical as though like you were just born with a certain like VO two max, like good job. You’ve got a high VO two max or low, whatever way it’s supposed to go.

[00:34:52] You know,

[00:34:53] Andrew: you’re exactly right. You’re exactly right. It is a hopeful message. And it’s part of the problem with the word [00:35:00] virtue is people think of. Things like diligence or discipline and so on as personality traits that I say that you’re born with or not born with, like, oh, so and so is creative, oh, so and so is very organized, like, no, any one of us can adopt, can grow in any one of these, it’s really, really good news, because not only can any one of us do it, but it’s relatively easy given the payoff, you know, just little steps each day, this is where we come back to, say, atomic habits of James Clear, like the little changes make a big difference.

[00:35:28] Thanks. especially if those little changes are in the direction of any one of these super habits.

[00:35:34] Megan: It’s kind of like the difference between skills and talents. I talk to my kids about this sometimes because I have one of my sons is a football player and he wants to be recruited for College. And we talk about, you know, he has natural talent for football.

[00:35:49] It’d be pretty difficult to play at the next level. He’s a high school sophomore right now. It’d be difficult to play at the next level if you don’t have talent, but he has to develop the skill [00:36:00] around things like worth ethic and self discipline and mindset and things that are not innate. You know, he didn’t come preloaded with those.

[00:36:07] Those have to be developed and strengthened. within himself, you know, and yeah, he has natural athleticism, but if he didn’t work out and train, it would be kind of pointless. And so I think maybe that’s analogous here a little bit.

[00:36:21] Andrew: It is in the sense that yes, the, the, the, he’s working out his physical muscles to become stronger.

[00:36:27] He needs to work out the character muscles as well. So the self discipline and so on. To make those stronger, but then that’s separate, as you say, from talent, which I think, and I think there’s some evidence on this, that talent, the root issue there is personal preference.

[00:36:43] Megan: Yeah.

[00:36:43] Andrew: Things that some of us like, therefore we, we have a tendency in that direction that will get better and so on.

[00:36:49] So at the root of these, I think these personality strengths in many cases is different kinds of personal preferences. I enjoy thinking. Big picture kind of have big picture [00:37:00] debates. And so one of my one of my gallop strength is strategic. You know,

[00:37:04] Michael: me too.

[00:37:04] Andrew: Um, way at the very bottom of my gallop list is anything to do with details because I just don’t like details.

[00:37:12] You know, so we’re all the same. All right. I say preference, I think, is a, is a, is a big part of that, but those preferences don’t change. I mean, you can sort of force yourself to change your preferences, but you’ll be uncomfortable versus. You can practice the different habits or super habits and get comfortable.

[00:37:30] So somebody who is uncomfortable, my wife always thought she wasn’t very creative. I’m super creative. And over the years I think she’s learned that you can learn to, because that’s one of the super habits. You can learn to become creative. She’s much more comfortable now throwing out ideas, you know, and just sort of.

[00:37:45] Whereas before, until she kind of analyzed something to death, she wouldn’t even propose it. But those are things we can grow in.

[00:37:51] Michael: I love

[00:37:51] Megan: that.

[00:37:51] Michael: I can’t source this, but I’ve heard it said that you are what you habitually do. Do

[00:37:58] Andrew: you agree with that? Yes. Yes. [00:38:00] Um, I know that Clear quotes it, but I think the original source is one of the Stoic philosophers.

[00:38:05] So going back 3, 000 some years. Yeah. Yeah. You know, there’s, there’s new research out this summer that really emphasizes, I mean, what things I love and joke about social science. And I can do that because I’m, as a business professor, I am a social scientist. And we go to great lengths to prove. What everybody knew all along.

[00:38:25] That’s what we do in social science, right? But at least we prove it. So what social scientists are starting to prove is exactly what, what, what do he called the power of habits, that there was a study that came out this summer meta analysis, you know, where they look at hundreds of other studies and draw conclusions.

[00:38:43] And they found of all the different ways to drive behavior change. from things like incentives, behavioral reinforcement or education or whatever habit comes out on top. You can change someone’s habits. You will change their behavior for the reason that you [00:39:00] said we do something repetitively. There’s something about the way we’re constituted as human beings that we are habitual beings, you know, which I think kind of makes sense cognitively.

[00:39:11] Because it’s so much more efficient cognitively when you have habits, right? They’re like computer programs, right? That, that just, if you had to think through, like, we would just die if we had to think through every moment of like, breathe now, swallow now, you know, pump some more blood, you know, it’s like, who would do that?

[00:39:28] Megan: Yeah.

[00:39:29] Michael: Another question I have is the relationship between identity and habits. Because I’ve, I’ve found and have taught that if you can change your identity, then you will, it’ll make it easier to acquire the habit. So for example, if I perceive myself to be a writer, then what do writers do? Well, they write.

[00:39:49] And so it’s easier for me to follow through. Or if I think of myself as a runner, then I run because that’s what runners do. So have you thought about that whole relationship between identity and [00:40:00] habits?

[00:40:00] Andrew: Yes. Um, James clear talks about this as well in, in atomic habits, the way I look at it, and this is why I, in part why I wrote the book, because what I wanted to do was paint a picture of every human identity.

[00:40:15] That these 50 habits are part of every human being’s identity and that being creative or being courageous or being self disciplined or being generous is not the province of a privileged few who are sort of genetically lucky. Every human being can aspire to and achieve all of these. So it’s a different level of identity where it’s just the human identity, if you will.

[00:40:38] So yes, I agree that having a vision of who you are is going to help you kind of reinforce those habits. I’m trying to show, I say, the broader picture.

[00:40:55] I want to just talk a little bit about the whole, how the whole framework comes together. I [00:41:00] call it the anatomy of virtue.

[00:41:01] Megan: Amazing. And

[00:41:02] Andrew: so I’ll take credit for the design. My teenage daughters will take credit for the color scheme, but Aquinas takes credit for the logic behind it all. What I was trying to do is visualize

[00:41:14] Michael: very orderly.

[00:41:16] Andrew: The way it works is you look in the center of the chart where it says human life. And then each concentric circle, as you move out is a further distinction that Aquinas is making. And the most important distinction he makes is between thoughts, actions, and feelings. That’s one of the earlier rings, right?

[00:41:33] Basically, if you think about everyday life. Our everyday life is comprised of our thoughts, our actions, and our feelings. What else is there? I mean, anything that goes on is something we’re thinking about doing, feeling. And then he makes a further distinction with feelings between feelings of attraction or desires.

[00:41:50] And feelings of repulsion or fears, which answers the question, why do we have those four cardinal virtues, prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance? There’s your [00:42:00] answer. Because prudence, also called practical wisdom, is the virtue for making decisions, which is all about our thoughts. When we’re thinking day to day, it’s usually because we need to make a decision.

[00:42:09] What should I have for lunch? What should I do next? What should I say? You know, so that’s the one. So that’s our thoughts. For our actions is the virtue of justice. Because most of our actions are interactions with others, and we do those best when we act justly. And then for our fears and desires, that’s courage and self discipline respectively.

[00:42:26] So the idea is, if you have those four cardinal virtues, you have your everyday life taken care of. Your thoughts, actions, and feelings are all in order. All managed, all easier because they’re done by habit. And then you can see the subsequent circles further differentiate. So you’ve got the 15 virtues of self discipline.

[00:42:45] There are eight of practical wisdom, four for courage, you know. And so that’s the map. And that’s why there’s no gaps in between. So that’s why when I say any problem you have, somewhere on that wheel is the habit that’s going to help you deal with it.

[00:42:59] Megan: [00:43:00] This is so cool. I think I need to frame this and put it up in my kitchen as, you know, an object lesson for my kids when we’re, they’re always in the kitchen doing everything.

[00:43:08] Michael: I’m going to get a tattoo.

[00:43:08] Megan: Oh, wow. Okay. I don’t know if anyone’s ever tattooed this before, Andrew, but today might be the day. I have heard many

[00:43:15] Andrew: people put up in the kitchen. I have never heard of someone tattooing. So that is a new one. This is your very

[00:43:20] Megan: first tattoo, you know, at almost 70 years old.

[00:43:22] That’s pretty exciting. Oh my gosh, this is so neat. And I, you know, for all of you listening, who aren’t quite sure what we’re looking at, this looks a little bit like if you’ve ever seen a feelings wheel for therapy, you know, with all the pretty colors and it organizes the feelings. This is like that, but on steroids, you know, it’s amazing.

[00:43:39] It’s really amazing. And I’m going to spend some time just looking at it closely after we’re finished.

[00:43:45] Michael: And it’s kind of simultaneously. I was going to say complex, but comprehensive is probably a better word, but at the same time, very simple. Like when you understand the internal logic that you just explained and you look at this and you go, yeah, that pretty much sums up everything.[00:44:00]

[00:44:00] Megan: We will definitely link to this so that if you’re listening, you can go ahead and. Download it and know what it looks like. But I also think the book is just critically important to understanding and sort of decoding the whole thing.

[00:44:12] Michael: So I want to talk about leisure because I think this maps to our concept of the double win, but I’d like you to explain that because I think.

[00:44:20] That particularly in contemporary society, we have a very misguided notion of what that is.

[00:44:26] Andrew: So the virtue goes by the name, the Greek name, eutropelia, because even the English word leisure doesn’t quite mean the same thing. So eutropelia is the habit of spending some time on a regular basis, maybe weekly doing something just for the love of it, not to achieve something else.

[00:44:43] And so much of what we do is ordered to achievement without even thinking about it. Like we socialize in order to network, we read to improve ourselves. We exercise to look better or to be fit. When do we do something just for the fun of it? Now, why is that important? [00:45:00] Aquinas, again, filled with insights.

[00:45:02] His insight is this. And again, modern science confirms this. Leisure or utropia in particular is necessary. To rest our minds because when our bodies are tired, all we have to do is stop moving, sit down or lie down. Have you ever tried to stop your mind from moving? Not easy. Even when we sleep, it’s the ticking over with dreams and so on, REM sleep and so on.

[00:45:26] Aquinas explains our brains are, our minds are problem solving machines. And so they’re always trying to solve problems, and the only time they stop, in a sense, their only time they’re at rest, is when you’re doing something where there is no problem to be solved, it’s just fun. I’m reading a work of fiction just because I love it.

[00:45:45] I’m going for a walk just because I love doing that. A favorite movie, or playing a sport. It’s true there’s cognitive ability exercised in, say, playing a sport, and if you’re really truly trying to win, then it’s not actually utropia. But if you’re generally playing [00:46:00] just for the fun of it, then it’s restful to the mind.

[00:46:03] And if we don’t rest our minds, we get cranky, our life isn’t as fun as it is,

[00:46:08] as it

[00:46:08] Andrew: could be, you know, this is a virtue everybody needs and our society desperately needs. emphasize it is a virtue. It is a really good thing to do, you know, and I won’t get into it here, but it’s the only chapter in the book that is quite autobiographical.

[00:46:24] I talk about how, in my days as a management consultant, I was going down a fairly dark, becoming a serious workaholic. And it was, in my case, through learning to sail that I discovered the virtue of eutropelia. Totally turned my life around. As a result, that’s when I met my wife, got married. I had sort of closed myself off to relationships, you know, so I wouldn’t, but for that virtue, wouldn’t have put myself in a position to meet her.

[00:46:49] And then we got, we got married, et cetera. So, but I leave that for people who want to read the chapter.

[00:46:52] Megan: Yeah.

[00:46:53] Andrew: Beautiful.

[00:46:53] Megan: What I love about that is I think for the people who are in our community, who are listening to this show, [00:47:00] This may be the most difficult virtue for them to cultivate. You know, the other ones, it’s sort of like they have transferable skills that maybe they can draw on.

[00:47:08] They’re good at doing things that are difficult, you know, those kinds of things. But doing something that is just for fun, that is play even, and not somehow gamifying that into achievement. It’s like, You know, you think about playing pickleball, but then you start playing it competitively and it’s, it all of a sudden becomes a whole thing.

[00:47:26] You know, I think that those are our people. Those are, that’s us and the ability to just enjoy something for its own sake and the necessity of that for the health of our mind and heart. I love that. And I love the, the challenge of it. And I love the definition around it. Cause I think it frames it up in a way that is ultimately.

[00:47:45] Both difficult and life giving.

[00:47:48] Michael: We have a chapter in our book, When at Work and Succeed at Life, where we talk about the value of non achievement.

[00:47:53] Megan: But

[00:47:54] Michael: I can tell you from personal experience, I know it better than I do it. And it’s, [00:48:00] it’s very difficult for me not to put an achievement part of it in there.

[00:48:05] Like if I play golf, which I love, I want to get better at it. If I fish, which I love. You know, I’m trying to get better at it. It just just really challenges me again To to let it be a non achievement activity.

[00:48:20] Andrew: Can I give you a suggestion, please? so one of the things that I I talk about is the What I call the do you remember the the the easy button?

[00:48:29] Um, yeah Yeah That imagine you had such a button And you pick fishing or golf and you had a choice. You could either play the game of golf or push the button and at the end of just by pushing the button, you will have achieved the improvement in the game and the win, say that you were going for without actually having to play it is a bit of a stretch with golf, but think about going to the gym.

[00:48:55] You could go to the gym and work out and say, well, I do that because I just enjoy it. But if you could [00:49:00] push the button and get the physical benefits from going to the gym without having to go, would you push the button? And if the answer is yes, I would push the button. Then that activity is not utropelia for

[00:49:10] Megan: you.

[00:49:10] Andrew: It is a means to an end because we have mixed motives, right? But this is the ultimate test. If you could push that button, would you? And if you would, it’s not utropelia. But if you would go through it anyway, then it truly is refreshing.

[00:49:22] Megan: That is fascinating. So good. I love that.

[00:49:24] Andrew: Well, this segues to our

[00:49:26] Megan: It does.

[00:49:26] Final question. So, Andrew, today, what is your biggest obstacle in getting the double win, meaning you’re truly winning at work and succeeding at life?

[00:49:40] Andrew: Wow. That’s a really good one. I think my biggest obstacle is the too many things that I want to do, which is another way of saying I’m not satisfied yet.

[00:49:52] Megan: Yeah.

[00:49:52] Andrew: And that’s not necessarily a good thing. And there’s actually a virtue I’m working on, the virtue of foresight, which is part of practical [00:50:00] wisdom, which is all about, I think you guys know a little bit about this, that is goal setting, you know, so that my goals are out of proportion with the 24 hours a day that I have.

[00:50:09] I’m working on that to try to bring them in. That, I think, is right now my biggest obstacle.

[00:50:15] Michael: May I offer you a suggestion on that? So, I’ve been struggling with this very thing myself. And I think, and I said to Megan at lunch today, I think it’s because I have a scarcity mindset around time and the older I get, the more acutely I feel it.

[00:50:35] It’s like I’m running out of runway and there’s still so much left that I want to do that I feel like I have to cram my days with so much activity that it wars against. The double win makes sense.

[00:50:48] Andrew: It makes complete sense. It makes complete sense. I’m slightly younger than you. I turned 60 this summer, but I’ve been feeling that, that sense of time’s running.

[00:50:56] Yeah.

[00:50:58] Megan: What I think about that is we’re not [00:51:00] even believing our own theology.

[00:51:02] Andrew: It’s

[00:51:02] true.

[00:51:02] Megan: You know, because as Christians and we understand not everybody listening to the show is a Christian and that’s totally fine. Everybody’s welcome. But as Christians, we believe in eternity. And we believe in eternity, at least in our traditions, that there will be work in the best sense.

[00:51:18] There’ll be meaningful development of humanity and growth and all, you know, all the things we love about life will continue. And yet we practically act as though that weren’t true. And I think that’s a real challenge to our faith. I mean, I feel that too, you know, it’s like it’s abstract and kind of difficult to connect with.

[00:51:38] And so we just act like the time is running out, but actually the time is not running out.

[00:51:42] Michael: It’s a good point. Go all the time in the world,

[00:51:44] Megan: literally all the time in the world.

[00:51:46] Michael: Okay. My second question, how do you personally know when you’re getting the double win?

[00:51:51] Andrew: For somebody who is so analytical, it pains me to admit, but it’s a feeling first.

[00:51:56] Before I start to analyze, I have a feeling [00:52:00] sometimes that things are working and then other times the feeling that things are not working, you know, and and when, when I’m winning at work and winning at home and life, you know, everything together, there seems to be music in the universe, you know, I can hear it more clearly, you know.

[00:52:19] They’re not my idea. I got that from a priest friend. Yeah. Yeah. But I tend to be fairly intuitive. Uh, so, so I think that my intuition says things are working. Other times by intuition say something’s wrong here. Something’s out of whack. That’s a

[00:52:33] Michael: good answer.

[00:52:34] Megan: That is a good answer. Okay. Last question. What is one ritual or routine that you rely on to do what you do?

[00:52:41] We should say, or habit. I feel like that would only be fair in this context.

[00:52:46] Andrew: Right. And that, that’s paralyzing because there’s like a lot, you know. Let me, let me sneak this in because uh, with the book, there’s an app that we’ve developed, the Super Habits app. It’s actually, there’s, you probably see the [00:53:00] QR code in the book.

[00:53:01] But it’s also, even if someone doesn’t buy the book, superhabits. app is the website. We’re about to release a big upgrade. And my son runs that company, which is kind of fun family business, and he’s a computer whiz, and he’s trained the app. It’s an AI tool that’s trained on on the super habits material.

[00:53:20] It helps you reflect on which super habits should I be working on right now? That’s love it. My answer to your question is that regular reflection of, because I think the answer is not, I used to think, even when I was writing the book, pick one and just kind of keep going after that habit until you get it right.

[00:53:39] I have come to see in part from my wife, who is so much smarter than I am, that it’s more a matter of playing kind of tweak here, tweak there, tweak there. Okay, I need a little bit better in terms of foresight and goal setting. But my diligence could be amped up a little bit. And so this regular reflection in conversation with this device, this AI device, you know, has been [00:54:00] really, really helpful in terms of just fine tuning my, how I focus my efforts.

[00:54:04] Megan: I love that. That’s great.

[00:54:06] Michael: Andrew, thank you so much. This has been a fascinating conversation, and I feel like we say this with almost every guest, but you in particular, I could talk all afternoon. You don’t have that much time. I don’t have that much time, but this has been enormously stimulating. Thank you.

[00:54:22] Megan: Thank you.

[00:54:22] Michael: I feel the same way. My pleasure.

[00:54:35] That was stimulating.

[00:54:36] Megan: You and I were both like, if y’all could see us, it was kind of like smoke is coming out of our head because there’s so much activity in our brains right now. It’s like, we’re nearly on fire.

[00:54:46] Michael: Well, you know, it’s not like habits is a new idea to us.

[00:54:49] Megan: Right.

[00:54:49] Michael: Like we’ve written about it.

[00:54:51] We’ve taught about it. It’s a key part of the framework for the smarter goal system, but we’ve never thought about it in the context of the [00:55:00] virtues and that takes it from being a really helpful idea. To be kind of an organizing principle for everything.

[00:55:07] Megan: Yeah. I think my biggest takeaway was the distinction that virtue and super habits to use the title of the book.

[00:55:17] Are something that everybody can cultivate. Nobody comes preloaded with. I mean, this is sort of our work as human beings is to build our character and and to become who we’re made to be. And I think I have been for so long, not that I would have said, you know, characters optional, but I’ve leaned so heavily into the personality assessments and to the idea of strengths, which I think are all great and helpful, but without the context of character.

[00:55:47] Sure. We can really become self indulgent and we can rationalize character deficiencies or bad habits as being just who we are. And the truth is, if you look at the [00:56:00] historical church and the, you know, the faith traditions and all that, like nobody actually thinks that, like that, that’s not a thing.

[00:56:06] Michael: No.

[00:56:07] Well, it’s a, it is a thing in contemporary society, I think.

[00:56:10] Megan: Absolutely. But it’s not a thing historically. Like no one has thought that until relatively recently. And I

[00:56:15] Michael: said this twice in the interview, but I just want to reiterate it. To me, it’s hopeful.

[00:56:19] Megan: Yeah. Because it

[00:56:20] Michael: means I can really change. The things that are important that I can become more than I am, that I can develop and grow in substantive ways that could really have an impact, not only in my own life, but in the lives of other people.

[00:56:35] Megan: Yeah.

[00:56:35] Michael: But I just don’t have to say. You know, well, I guess I’m just not disciplined or I guess I’m just not orderly or whatever it is that I can actually work on those things and they, and if I turn it into a habit, suddenly that becomes accessible and what makes it a super habit is that it is connected to a virtue, that there’s this transcendent purpose that goes beyond the habit per se.

[00:56:56] And I love that. That really resonated with me.

[00:56:59] Megan: I think what [00:57:00] we know about. Goal research, for example, is the part of it that’s rewarding is the pursuit of the goal. It’s really about who we’re becoming, like the achievement itself. We’re kind of like, well, once we’ve achieved the thing, which we think is going to be the big payoff, it’s actually not.

[00:57:14] And people typically don’t experience more happiness, like when they’ve achieved a goal, for example. But what does make us happy is feeling like we’re making progress and becoming better than we were yesterday. And having that sense of growth and progress in our life. And it’s kind of like everything is new again.

[00:57:32] Everything old is new again, you know, like virtues. You know, that, that’s like the least sexy topic of all time.

[00:57:38] Michael: And it’s ancient.

[00:57:38] Megan: And it’s ancient, but it’s also so true and so relevant. And I think, you know, for all of us who have kind of been watching the world for the last decade or so and just thinking, What a hot mess.

[00:57:51] You know, like why people are so

[00:57:53] Michael: and we’re the leaders of character.

[00:57:54] Megan: Yeah, no leaders with character. People are hateful to each other. The polarization, the kind of [00:58:00] viciousness of the kind of default of how people behave toward one another has degraded so significantly. It’s like, what’s the answer to that?

[00:58:09] And I think these Virtues are a big piece of that. And like you said, it’s hopeful

[00:58:14] Michael: guys. The book is called super habits, the universal system for a successful life. We highly recommend that you read the book, that you also go to the website and download this incredible poster that organizes all the virtues.

[00:58:30] And that you also download the app. I, I haven’t downloaded the app. I’m eager to do that, but I was hoping there was something like that that would kind of help me prioritize which ones to work on first.

[00:58:41] Megan: And all of this is in the show notes. So if you’re driving right now, don’t worry, we’re not going to give you anything you have to write down.

[00:58:46] But it’s in the show notes. Well, guys, thanks so much for listening and for joining us in this conversation. Hopefully it’s been as helpful for you as it has been for us. And if that’s the case, we’d love to ask you to leave [00:59:00] us a review to go ahead and rate the show. You can do that in just a minute or two, um, wherever you’re listening to podcasts and that helps us get conversations like this into the hands of others who need it.

[00:59:11] And we want to have as many people as possible. Win at work and succeed at life, but they’ve got to know that it’s an option. So helping to raise the visibility of the show helps to make that possible. And you can be a part of that. So thanks so much in advance for rating the show and leaving a review.

[00:59:28] We’ll see you next week.