How’s it going? Everybody? John Berrien here with Berrien media and I’m here with one of my dear clients, Dr. Roger Hall with Compass Consultation. Now, not only is he an amazing speaker and coach, but he’s a great author as well. He just released his book Staying Happy Being Productive. It’s just now on Amazon, correct? That is correct. Now, can you tell me a little bit about the book?
So the book is the product of my 25 years of working with successful people. I started to notice that, um, they all had very similar habits. This small set of habits that they did. And people who weren’t successful didn’t have any of those habits. And then I read this book called Anna Karenina, uh, by Leo Tolstoy. The first line is every happy family is the same. Every unhappy family is unhappy in their own way. And it got me thinking that the habits of success and health are few. The habits of dysfunction are many. And so I started to look at the habits of all my successful people. I kind of distilled it down to about 10, which I call the big 10 habits. Right? Yeah. So what are some of the big 10 habits? So successful people work on their sleep and rest. They’re not burning the candle at both ends.
They make time for recreation. Um, they work on their love life and that doesn’t mean just, you know, their, their love partner, but their kids, their siblings, their, their family. Um, their social life, successful people work on their friendships. They, they work on their work life. They, um, they almost always love their work. They love their work, and the side effect is money. It’s not, they’re working for money. They work. Money is a side effect. And for some of them it’s a lot of money. The, the, the next thing is Money Life. They have a proper attitude and a proper way they interact with money. In terms of their nutrition, they put good fuel into their system. They get regular exercise. That’s another one. Uh, and then, uh, they have a good spiritual life. Almost all of them are involved in some sort of traditional religious group.
And the last one I’m going to talk about today, which is the first one in the book is the most important, which is they first and foremost discipline how they think. They manage how they think. And they’re able then to manage their emotions, manage their behavior, and then that’s what helps them have successful lives. So one of the biggest things it starts with to being happy and productive and successful is, is your thoughts,. Is your thoughts. So the, the old stoic philosophers back from 2,500 years ago, Epictetus, Seneca, um, Marcus Aurelius, they all talked about the importance of controlling your thinking. It wasn’t that you could control anything else in your life, but you could control how you think about it. And these guys were the foundation of, uh, a group, um, in psychology called the cognitive behavior therapists. So a guy named Albert Ellis took their work and adapted it to the modern world. Um, Shakespeare said something that summarizes the stoic philosophy. It’s in, um, it’s in Hamlet. He said, nothing is either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. And so we can all have these experiences but they’re neither good nor bad. They’re how we think about them. So that’s one of the fundamental habits of successful people right now.
You perceive whatever situation may be happening to you, like, exactly, the glass is either half empty or half full.
That would be optimism versus pessimism.
Yup. And this all dictates your thinking in certain situations and can um, predicate or kind of predict, um, the outcome of you being successful or happy. Exactly,
Exactly. Happy and successful people first and foremost discipline their thinking and almost everything else comes after that. So for people out there that have trouble monitoring, managing their thinking and kind of disciplining it, what kind of advice would you give to help that? So the first advice is, is an exercise I put in the book, which is a called thought monitoring exercise. And there are three steps to it. The first is, um, is the monitoring phase. You take your phone, you set an alarm every hour for 10 hours for a week. So like seven in the morning to five at night, eight in the morning to six at night. And when the alarm goes off, you take a little pad of paper and a pencil and you write down what’s the thought that you had on the top of your head. Huh? And at the end of that week you’ve got 70 observations and at the end of the week you open up your pad, you look through and in almost every case I have assigned this to, people have always found a pattern. Well there are two people who didn’t, but that it’s an outlier, neither here nor there.
Um, but almost everyone else has found a pattern and so its excessive guilt. It’s successive urgency, it’s excessive anger, whatever it is, they start to see how these thoughts bubble up. Well that’s the most important part is they’ve begun to monitor their thinking. The second. And so the, the first is they see a pattern but more important is that they learn the habit of being able to monitor their thinking. I think so 70 practices in a week, you’re kind of on your way. The second piece is thought stopping. So once those unproductive thoughts come into your head, you go, oh, there it is, I’m doing that again. You Go, okay, cut that out. That’s you go. Yeah. And then the third step is, um, thought replacement. Where you work with somebody that you know, who knows you and loves you, who cares about you, you know, a friend, a pastor, a relative, a coach, you know, a therapist and help come up with combating thoughts. So thoughts that are true but better. So like if I have a thought, then I lie to myself. You don’t replace it with a false thought. You don’t replace it with a false thought, you replace it with truth based on evidence that then counteracts it. So those three steps are the first steps to mental discipline.
That’s amazing. Um, one, one little thing that I’m taking away from this is definitely don’t practice this exercise when you’re sleeping out and don’t like write on your notepad when you’re in the car right when you’re driving as well. But that is a great way to start managing and monitoring your thinking. Cause a lot of people don’t always dip into that stream of consciousness. Right? Like something I would say, Hey, I wonder where I got this from. You’ve been a client now and it’s paying off because I’ve been monitoring, managing my thinking. It works, and what you said the steps to start doing that if you’re not already doing that is amazing. Start to, like Dr. Roger Hall just said, um, 10 hours throughout the day, every hour, top of the hour, put out your alarm, whatever’s in your head, just mark it down and then you can start noticing that.
Right. And it’s important that people don’t think this has to be a journal or this has to be like some sort of long thing. It’s like whatever was on the top of your head. So that guy’s a jerk right down in that guy’s a jerk, right? Whatever. Whatever you’re thinking, write that down. This is great.
I might need more help in the figuring out how to combat the negative thoughts. So maybe that will be our next interview or maybe, your next book. Well (perhaps) it’s in here. Oh Hey. But my whole work is designed to help people combat those negative thoughts together better. I mean, it’s, there’s an extra to another exercise in the appendix here that will help you to do that as well. Well, this book, just that alone in itself will definitely help you or help somebody stay happy, and be productive, and be productive. Yeah, because you’re taking out those negative thoughts and get them out there. Um, for more information, more insights, you definitely got to go pick up this book by Dr. Roger Hall. It’s on Amazon right now, soon to be on iTunes, soon to be on audible, um, and also kindle edition. So there you go. It’s coming, Staying Happy, Being Productive. Uh, this is my signed copy and I don’t know if you guys are getting excited or not, but uh, you definitely need to go pick up the book. Dr. Roger Hall. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, John. Awesome.