MKJ (00:01.21)
Welcome back to the conversation, CEO Mischief Makers. Thank you so much for joining us. My wonderful guest here, Ronnie Loaiza. Hey, Ronnie. Let’s dive in. Strategy and tactics, right? Rubber meets the road. You were talking about roads in our last conversation and freeways and all that good stuff. If you haven’t listened to the previous conversations for mindset and also impact and innovation,

RonnieLo Life Coach (00:09.294)
me.

MKJ (00:24.164)
Highly recommend that you do so. But in the meantime, strategy and tactics. What do we do? So you’ve been talking about little habits, micro commitments, celebrating each change that you make, celebrating each time you do something. Can you do me a favor and just take one, let’s say a behavior or a particular habit or

change that a recent client wanted to make in their lives and just kind of take us through what does that look like? What does it look like to celebrate? What does it look like to make a small change that then leads to the next small change that then allows us to actually incorporate that as part of our being?

RonnieLo Life Coach (00:56.387)
Yeah, because

RonnieLo Life Coach (01:07.652)
Yeah, it’s easier when you have one specific example, because we’ve been talking a lot in generalities and like, like you said, well, a freeway. Now let’s take it to yours. So people come to me for different reasons and usually it impacts or we, we fold in all the other areas of their life. They’re 12 facets of their life, I call it, but they always come to me with one thing and we end up working on various things, but let’s take it to one thing. Um, let’s go ahead and, and one particular client I worked with just yesterday, we have like five different things to work

MKJ (01:10.062)
Yeah. Correct.

RonnieLo Life Coach (01:36.312)
But one little habit that will really help all the other aspects. wants to declutter her home and she’s been a clutter person all her life. And she says she’s listened to the podcast. She’s, she tried to find, I forgot her name. Everybody followed her for a while. Have I used this for a year? I forgot her name. love her. She had a show, but you know who I’m talking about. she’s done it all and it doesn’t work. It’s because she’s been conditioned that way since she was a kid, you know?

MKJ (01:54.126)
Yeah, yeah,

RonnieLo Life Coach (02:05.76)
She needs to get more, you know, after talking, talking, we were doing a session, an in -person session. I actually went to her home yesterday. Usually we do, we work on Zoom, but I wanted to see her place. She wanted me to see her place. And then we got on and we were on the couch talking about something that as we whittled it down, we realized she kept saying the word energy. I’m just, I don’t have any energy. I don’t have the energy for that or well, that takes a lot of energy. And I finally just told her, I’m like, you’ve said energy quite a few times in the past half

So how can you have energy? And I’m like, no, but think about it. Don’t just start thinking of all these hacks. How do you feel? What do you feel is not energy? And I really want her to describe the physical aspect of it. Is it droopy eyes? Is it like sleepy? She’s like, no, it’s not that. It really was mental energy. As we whittled it down, we got to that because it wasn’t really physical. It was like, I have no time for

MKJ (02:41.274)
Yeah.

RonnieLo Life Coach (03:03.414)
And she really resented that and she realized I’m rebelling. I have no time to do nothing. Okay. How would it feel like if you did nothing? And so I wanted her to imagine that and then she really couldn’t like just sit there and do nothing with no noise, nothing. And then she realized, well, I do kind of do that when I’m in the nursery with, she has twins, little baby boys, and she sits on the rocker and she just watches

And she automatically thinks, well, I could just leave them for like two minutes and I’m right there and I could get this done or put some things away. But then she realized, no, I’m just going to sit here on the rocker. And sometimes she’ll go on her phone. She’s like, no, I’m going to put the phone down. But she remembered what that feeling is like when she just watches her babies play. And then sometimes they’ll look up at her and they’ll smile or they’ll bring something to her. And she’s like, that’s as close as I can feel to doing nothing. And even then she’s doing

MKJ (04:00.122)
That’s right.

RonnieLo Life Coach (04:00.388)
She’s spending time with her children because in 10 years that’ll be gone. In 20 years that’ll be gone and that goes by fast. So like, do you want more time just for you even without the baby? She’s like, yeah. So let’s fast forward. She realized at night finally when her husband and her, they put the babies down at nine. They finally got time. He would fix dinner. She’s doing something and they sit down. They watch a little TV or something or talk. And then he usually goes to bed at 10 30. And she sits on the couch and scrolls on her

MKJ (04:05.488)
Yep.

RonnieLo Life Coach (04:30.016)
Instagram’s her best friend. That’s a lot of clutter in her mind. And that’s usually when she does a lot of shopping too. That’s why she has a lot of boxes. That’s also contributing to the clutter. You know, all this impacts each other. But that’s a habit of hers because she feels like rebelling like this is my time. Not really. She answered this. I didn’t suggest it for her. She’s like, Instagram’s got my time. Other people have my time. So we decided, what can

MKJ (04:31.384)
Yeah. Yes.

MKJ (04:38.52)
Yes.

MKJ (04:48.024)
Right.

MKJ (04:56.248)
Yes.

RonnieLo Life Coach (04:59.234)
honestly do. as soon as, cause you need an activator, something activates every behavior. Every action you take has an activator, whether you realize it or not. And when you don’t realize it, that’s a habit, but something always prompts you to go brush your teeth. Now you pick up the toothbrush. Now you put on the toothpaste. Something activates you to put the cap on. Let’s hope, you know, whatever, but you have an activator and I, I try to keep people away from the post that’s in the alarms.

I don’t know if you’re watching, if you’re watching this video, this is the post -it. It becomes a part you see around it. You don’t even notice that post -it anymore. People have post -its all over the place. So they, it tends to become part of their scenario. So they ignore it or people turn off the alarm and keep going and doing what they’re doing and they don’t pay attention to the alarm. So we try to find an activator that will truly remind you in joy, I enjoy. Yes, I get to do this.

MKJ (05:38.711)
Yes.

RonnieLo Life Coach (05:57.186)
as she committed to, as soon as her husband gets up, they turn off the TV and she goes to the bathroom or her room to put on her PJs. He’s probably putting the kids down or checking on them, whatever, or he goes to the bathroom first, she’ll put on her PJs, but she has to get up with him. I’m like, are you sure you’ll be able to do that? It’s like, I’m going to share this with him because you’ve got to engage everybody around you. And that’s something else we’ll talk about in strategies. You have to have the right environment and that includes

MKJ (06:13.242)
There’s a

RonnieLo Life Coach (06:24.556)
that she will literally physically stand up with him. if she wants to while he’s in the bathroom, if she wants to go ahead and do, she does a Duolingo, she can do it then, or she can just go change and then she’ll do her face. And then she will read. She wants to read. She doesn’t want to just lie there in bed. She wants to read because usually she’ll get sleepy, but at least she feels like if she read a page to three pages, she did something productive and it kind of winds her down. We’ll see. We’ll check in tonight because this just happened yesterday.

But she really felt like, because I really asked them, how do you feel? How does that feel inside? Can you imagine that? If there’s any resistance, we have to take away that resistance. Is there any barrier? Is there anything that can get in the way? Because you have to have an, if this happens, fill in the blank, then I’ll do this. Plan A, Plan B, Plan C. So if the baby cries, then I’ll do this. So we started going through all the barriers. Yeah, we look at the negative sides, what could happen? So then she’ll save herself.

MKJ (07:10.126)
Right.

RonnieLo Life Coach (07:21.036)
and that you don’t have to go, I messed up, I’m just not gonna do it, I can’t do

MKJ (07:24.676)
Yeah, yeah, because once she goes back to sitting on that couch and putting a couple of phone and starting to scroll that habit is fed again. And then but the more she actually creates that habit of getting up, getting herself out of that environment, going in, getting ready for bed and reading. And the phone is somewhere else in the house. It’s not next to her bed. Hopefully. I’m so many people sleep with their phones next to their bed. Thank goodness. Both of my sons don’t do that. They leave their phone in the other room.

And they turn it off, actually. There’s no sound or anything. And I turn mine off as well. But still, the more you have that habit of you break that habit and you have an impulse. I love how you did that. You had talked about there has to and you used a different word other than impulse. What was it? An instigator activator. That’s it. Something that activates you to make that change. So what so what are some of the other options? go ahead. Yes, when she

RonnieLo Life Coach (08:08.1)
Activator.

RonnieLo Life Coach (08:17.261)
She has to celebrate.

MKJ (08:21.461)
and gets up off the couch with her husband, yes.

RonnieLo Life Coach (08:23.688)
No, get this. Her celebration will be as she’s brushing her teeth and putting her moisturizer on or whatever she’s going to do, she’s going to look herself in the eyeballs and celebrate herself right in the

MKJ (08:34.945)
I did it.

RonnieLo Life Coach (08:36.868)
Because I don’t want her getting, I didn’t tell her this, but I didn’t suggest that she get on Boxner Celebrate with me because then she would have to pick up the phone.

MKJ (08:42.906)
Pick up a phone, that’s right.

RonnieLo Life Coach (08:45.006)
But if she remembers that she’s holding that toothbrush with toothpaste in her mouth, look at herself in the eyeballs in the mirror and go, yay, me or you rock star, you did it. Yes. Whatever. It really starts. Your brain goes, yeah.

MKJ (08:51.674)
Yes.

MKJ (08:57.1)
And so that time, so how is that going to lead to her house being

RonnieLo Life Coach (09:04.516)
because we were talking about energy. She was rebelling that she had no time for herself. And then she ends up staying up like an hour or two on Instagram, and then her mind is cluttered and she doesn’t sleep as well. And then she, and it’s, it’s a domino effect. And then she doesn’t feel like the next morning she really got enough sleep. So then she doesn’t know if she’s going to do her Pilates with her five minutes Pilates and five minutes of declutter. She started that habit and she thought, and this is another thing, but I can also liken it to other people in their fitness, for example.

We decided she every day, she’s going to spend five minutes decluttering. She did it for a good streak of three weeks. Something happened at her work. Then she traveled and she hasn’t gotten back into it. So she’s going to try. She didn’t stick with her if then, and she realizes that which was asking for help. And she wasn’t checking in and celebrating it. She just wasn’t celebrating it. So people are like, what’s five minutes? Don’t worry about the time.

What will you realistically do? Because you have to get your mind in the, in the habit of that time, that location, that same bad time, same bad location. if you have a certain generation, you know what I’m talking about. Other people, used to do that with them with their fitness. How much can you do? People always, people who hadn’t worked out or weren’t working out and weren’t eating right, all of a sudden they can do it all. Right. It’s like, no, what can you realistically do as far as getting rid of what’s in the cupboard? That’s not good.

MKJ (10:14.426)
You know what I’m talking about, that’s right.

MKJ (10:25.432)
I know.

RonnieLo Life Coach (10:30.66)
Or can you put the bowl of fruit out on the kitchen table? Can you do this? We put good stuff and we also get rid of the bad stuff. But when people would ask me, well, I can work out at least 30 minutes a day. It’s like, but you’re not now. Can you do 10 minutes? Yeah, I think I can. Can you realistically, if all goes to hell, do five minutes when you don’t feel like it, when you have no energy, when you have a lot on your mind, you want to pick the action that you will do at your lowest. It’s like, yeah, I could do five minutes.

timer? I’m like even if you just do one minute, will you commit to doing one minute? And people are usually like, I remember this one girl, I call everybody girl, I don’t care if you’re 82, 42 or 12. She’s like, what will five minutes do? I’m like, look, we can get online and I can give you exactly what 50 minutes will do for you during the week. Your heart rate, your oxygen volume, it does do benefits. It has benefits. But we don’t care about that. We want to get your brain used to

MKJ (11:03.556)
Yeah.

MKJ (11:10.905)
All

MKJ (11:27.204)
Yes.

RonnieLo Life Coach (11:28.996)
at the same time, same location. So five minutes a day, five days a week, she would commit, that’s 25 minutes, but she committed to 10 minutes. She’s like, okay. And it grew and it grew and it grew. Sometimes she’d be like, yay, I did 20 minutes. Yay, I did 15. I’m like, that’s wonderful. But you know what you only have to do? No, no, it was five minutes, but it always grew to 10 or 15. But I’m like, but you don’t have to because five minutes is good. Five minutes is

MKJ (11:53.796)
Yeah. Yeah. But see, that

RonnieLo Life Coach (11:56.258)
And people are usually resistant to that. They want to take on more than they can chew.

MKJ (12:00.666)
But that also takes for someone like myself, because I’m a rebellious person. So for someone like myself, that takes away that rebellion. That takes away that if I just do five, it usually ends up to 15. But no one’s making me do 15. No one’s telling me I have to do 15. It’s a choice. And when it becomes a choice, that is much easier to develop the habit rather than feeling like, I have to do this. Oh, it’s something someone’s telling me to do. Oh, I have to do it because my train.

it’s beneficial to have a trainer or a coach to have to account to when you see them. But but at the same time, it ends up because your body loves it. It ends up that your body craves it because you have that same time, same location. Wow. All right. So anything else? Any other ideas on? Well, so what would be the next? What is going to be so for this person that has the declutter and she’s able to spend some time on her

What will be the next small habit that you can help her make after she gets that time for herself?

RonnieLo Life Coach (12:56.76)
Well, we decided on a program. She is going to take section by section because it’s not, it’s also, she felt defeated because, what’s five minutes a day. But that’s what she thought of in the first place. thought, well, at least it’ll get me in the habit of putting, starting to put things away. When I looked at her place, it has things all over the place. I’m like, what about this hair band? It’s the little things. Like, what do do with this paper clip? It’s the little things that are all over the place. Everything has a place. I’m

MKJ (13:20.621)
Yeah.

RonnieLo Life Coach (13:25.06)
Fast forward, went through, if you hired a cleaning lady to come in for four to six hours one day and make this place like it was for a photo shoot for magazine, could you keep it up? I knew the answer. No, she’s not in the habit of it. It’s like, would feel good. I’m like, but could you keep it up? Everything has an, do you have a place for this now? And I started going around, do you have a place for this? Do you have a place for that? And she’s like, no, they moved there six months ago and they still haven’t unpacked a lot of boxes. I’m like, you know what I see around here? There are boxes over there, there are boxes over there, there are how do you feel with these boxes?

MKJ (13:50.746)
That’s

RonnieLo Life Coach (13:54.66)
And that was it. It’s the overwhelming part. It’s the boxes. And where do I put these little things? So we decided, she decided a three month plan and people often go, whether it’s diets or their business or whatever it is, three months, five months a year, know, especially when I had my personal training clients. I’m like, if you lose a pound a week, they’re 52 weeks a year, I think, right? Let’s, let’s dispel two weeks for travel or whatever holidays.

MKJ (13:57.321)
Yes. Yes. Right.

MKJ (14:17.892)
Yeah.

RonnieLo Life Coach (14:22.596)
If you lose 50 pounds in a year, let’s just say sometimes you only lose half a pound. Let’s say you lose 40 pounds in a year and your goal is to lose 20. Aren’t you ahead of the game? People want it so fast. So we decided because she was trying to go too fast and she was beating herself up to go a section at a time. And I’m like, let’s just put it for three months for now. We called it bubs, boxes and containers or cubs or something. She called it project cubs.

MKJ (14:30.104)
Yeah, right. I think you got there. Yeah.

RonnieLo Life Coach (14:50.116)
because it’s all containers and boxes right now. And she’s going to go one section at a time and she can devote three hours every weekend. An hour and a half, Saturday or Sunday or whatever. She can do that. She knows she can do that. She already knows when in between her kids’ naps because she doesn’t want to take time away from them. So that’s the next step for her. It’ll take three months, maybe more. But I told her, if we get to this by Halloween, you’re going to go through all these boxes, all these sections. But let’s say you didn’t. You’re going to go through a lot. The thing

MKJ (15:03.054)
Yeah, perfect.

MKJ (15:14.904)
yeah.

RonnieLo Life Coach (15:18.732)
She’s going to do the five minutes, let’s just put something away in the morning. That’s great. But she’s also going, she has a project of, all right, this is my weekend. She wanted to do it at night, but I’m like, all right, it’s nine at night. Are you realistically going to do something that takes energy away or time from your husband? People can say they will, but they won’t, or maybe they shouldn’t. We don’t want to give her any reason to rebel. So she figures, okay, the weekend is for

And she’s already, she told me this morning, she’s already contacted a couple of friends. I’m going to take a picture of this box and ask me about it later. Cause I’m going to go through this box. So she’s already engaged people to help her celebrate. She already knows what she’s going to do with stuff in the box. If she doesn’t need them, where she’s going to donate. So we set up a plan, a plan of action. The thing about habits is you have to set an activation for the immediate action. The second

MKJ (15:58.362)
Perfect. That’s wonderful.

RonnieLo Life Coach (16:13.208)
can be global, it can be immediate, but also for the future. You have to boost your ability. You have to have the resources, the knowledge, the skills. You have to be able to. Do you have everything you need? The gear, the equipment, the right setup? You know, there was a study, I forgot the doctor’s name, I’m just not good with names, I can see their faces and I know all about their story and their studies, but he had a study where even things in your business area, if you work at home or your own office or your cubicle,

Even things like a lot of pictures and mementos and stuff that you think just bring you happiness, that distracts your brain. Even though you’re looking in the computer, it still distracts your brain. Your brain is still trying to have a lot of cameras to focus on them. Get rid of it. It’s like a casino. All these bells and whistles. That’s why iPhones are set up that way. Also, Androids, I’m sure, where everything’s colored and a lot of notifications. It’s been shown when you put your phone on gray, you don’t look at it as much. It’s not as enticing.

So same thing with your work area. Is your work area boosting your ability to work or how you want to be productive or focused? So we go through that. She can’t get a lot of stuff done. And well, let’s go to the woo woo thing because her home is cluttered and then she does nothing. And it’s more than overwhelm. That’s a lot of energy. It’s exhausting looking at her place. She realized that because it’s just so much colors and boxes and you know, containers.

and stuff that hasn’t been put away, even a little hairband, a little hair tie, you know, it’s just, and socks on the floor that takes away your energy. It depletes you. And she kept saying energy. So you have to boost your ability, set yourself up with the right resources, information, all of that. Then the third thing, reward yourself, instant reward, reward yourself, reward yourself, even the tiniest action. And I shouldn’t even say even the tiniest action is an action. And then ensure repetition. How can you assure you can repeat

MKJ (18:03.18)
is yes.

RonnieLo Life Coach (18:07.736)
Have you had that talk with the family? Have you had that critical conversation with your colleagues, with your peers? Have you had that critical conversation with your spouse or your partner? You have to tell people, you know, you’ve heard boundaries. It’s the word of the day, but the boundaries aren’t for other people to keep up. Boundaries are your own. This is what I want in my life. It’s a little fence. I liken it to going up to the fence. You can look over the fence. Hey neighbor, how’s it going? Okay. I’m to go

Bye! You have to maintain it. You have to keep painting it. You have to keep it clean. Boundaries are for you. You’re not going to change other people. Don’t even expect it. If they change, great! But you cannot, you know, you can tell them what you need and want with no agenda on their part. You can’t expect it or demand it. You just tell them, this is what I’m setting up for

Now with your kids, your family, your partner, your colleagues, your peer, your boss, whatever, of course you can say, this is what I would like from you and it would really help me. And people are usually willing to get on your side when you approach them like that. I would like for you to help me, not I need you to help me. I need you to do this. More like I would like you to, it would help me so much. It’s a struggle without help. Can’t you relate to that if somebody asked you

MKJ (19:18.852)
Right, right.

RonnieLo Life Coach (19:35.276)
And so usually people are willing to see it from your side and they relate to you and they have empathy. So you ask people, you engage people with their own empathy.

MKJ (19:47.15)
There you are. Okay, so one last tip is there is there a final tip that you can give our audience about habits about how they can make the that first little change or the the cascading change? Is there any last words you’d like to

RonnieLo Life Coach (20:10.916)
that no matter how set in your ways you are, and we are all set in our ways, we’re human. No matter how set in your ways you are, you don’t have to be stuck in them. You can, like I used to say as a personal trainer, no matter what fitness level, you can be healthy. You can work out. No matter where you are in your diet, you can change the way you eat. No matter where you are in your business, you can turn things around or you can level

You can make that decision in your career. You can level up your relationship. You, no matter what, no matter what stage you are, what level or your situation, you can do it. And it’s easier when you do it with actual actions, tiny actions, and with facts. Like I said, confirmations, how you talk to yourself, not with, I’m going to talk to myself into positivity, but more like, okay, what’s a fact? Is it positive? Sometimes you just need to neutralize

So that’s the parting thought. You’re never too old, you’re never too set in your ways to be stuck there. And it’s great. You can pivot, you can level