Michal Stawicki | Success Through Small, Sustainable Habits | Ep 04

[TRANSCRIPT]

[0:00:00] (A): I am crescia, your minded and accountability coach who is obsessed with business, reaching your full potential without sacrificing life's priorities and being your best self. Listening. I've distilled the practical lessons from myself and experts on their journeys so you can plug and play right into your day. Money, selfimprovement growth and comfortable choice. All topics to discuss here. So think of this as a one stop shop for business, personal development, fulfillment and everything authentic.

[0:00:34] (A): Sit back and get ready to be challenged, encourage, laugh and grow. This is the High Achievers Podcast.

[0:00:43] (B): Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of The High Achievers podcast. I'm host Craig Hadle and today we have quite a special episode and we're speaking to someone from all the way in Poland. Story is quite unique and as you know, when they show profile the stories and the transitions of many prominent individuals and their journeys and how you could really apply these themes your life on a daily basis. And our guests here are authored several books. He has quite a humble beginning and he's not other than the likes of Michael Stabinsky. I hope I pronounce it properly this time.

[0:01:28] (B): Welcome to our portal.

[0:01:30] (C): Michael absolutely got it right. Thank you Craig, for having me tell.

[0:01:35] (B): The audience a bit about you and generally your story.

[0:01:40] (C): So let's start from my story. Over ten years ago, I was miserable cog in a corporate working in it and I didn't like it. It wasn't bad, but wasn't so great. I felt that I can do better, but I had no clue how. And I read the book The Slight Edge by Jeff Olsen which says that success is a few simple disciplines repeated over time. And until that moment I thought that success is something really grant.

[0:02:10] (C): So I didn't even try to succeed. I didn't even give myself permission to try. So, encouraged by that message, not immediately, it took me a month till I really started doing something. But I started developing small daily habits in order to inch me towards my goals. And soon enough I was hoped that I discovered okay, it works here, there. So I continued even in the areas when I had no belief that I can succeed, like starting my own company.

[0:02:47] (C): I was working full time and that was the only source of my income for years. Entrepreneurship was totally fine to me, but I knew I needed to do something on my own because one, I felt miserable in my day job be there is always a sailing salary selling and I aimed higher. I tripled down on my personal development, created my personal mission statement and while doing that, I discovered or had already discovered my dream of being a writer. So I started from that. In several months I published my first book. It was a bumpy. I tried other projects and they failed. But I published my first book in May 2014.

[0:03:33] (C): Then I started habit coaching on coach me platform. And in 2017 I started my own book, advertising business. So we run ads for other outdoors on Amazon and a bit done. A year ago I did training Accreditated by ICF International Coaching Federation and started business coaching. I love coaching. I discovered it and I love doing this. So this is my story and appeal.

[0:04:12] (B): Okay, awesome. And let's unpack some of that a bit, because in our conversation outside of this interview, he did speak about generally what getting to that point was like, and some of the struggles that you actually went, which was actually quite helpful. Could you tell our audience a bit about those?

[0:04:37] (C): There were plenty of struggles along the way, starting from the very beginning where I just didn't have enough belief in myself to start to do anything. I needed that book to push me. And then I spent the whole month on just digesting the message. Could it be so easy? Really? That would be the hardest thing I did in my life, to start doing something, to give myself permission to start pursuing my own dreams. And I hadn't really great job role models around me when it comes to having your own business. I learned everything online, and I created a network online only. Like last year when I did my coaching training, I finally had some face to face connections with people right here in Poland.

[0:05:32] (C): My whole business is online in English, and that's really very different than what people do around me. So first of all, I was not understood by my closed ones. My wife was very resistant to me starting this thing. And I remember it was when I published my second book, we had a clash. Come on, find a better job instead of doing this. But I convinced her to give me some grace. Another thing was that I was working full time. I had trickets life responsibilities, and I was writing on the site link everything from social media to website to write to publishing. Yeah, it should be overwhelming, but really it wasn't, because I was pursuing my dream, like deep inside me. I wasn't discouraged. I just kept doing those small things, even though, as I said, I didn't really believe I can achieve something.

[0:06:37] (C): But the longer I kept doing things, the better results I got in different areas. So I just kept going. Even I remember my first payment from Amazon. I got eleven euro less than an hour of overtime in my day job, and it was after eight months of slogging. So I wasn't motivated by the residents for the first year for sure. I was just by my vision.

[0:07:13] (B): Let's talk about generally the difference in terms of development and how people approach adversities from people in the west, which is where we are. And outside of that, because what's really striking is generally a lot of experts, if you travel, for example, to a particular area, whether it's in europe, whether it's in Asia, medicine generally, or what to get prescribed one ailment is not what you would get in the west.

[0:07:53] (B): Similarly, when it comes to personal development, they are pretty squad thief. And can you speak to generally how whether it's in Poland or whether it's in that region of the world, what are some of the key differences in terms of how one can approach one personal development? And some things I think I don't.

[0:08:14] (C): Know if that's really original. I feel like Poland is a part of Western culture, but I quickly discover that there is no such thing like a self help, really. We are social creatures. And I can give you dozens of examples. When I started collaborating and networking, and then my results leveled up big time. So at the very beginning, learn from my book, how to publish my first book, started selling maybe a copy a day.

[0:08:51] (C): Then I got involved in groups, outdoors groups. Learned from those guys, listening to their feedback today's success stories and getting feedback really that was about this. Because, for example, I had no clue. I have terrible aesthetic sense. So my covers were terrible, awful. And one guy in the outdoors do he pity on me and he recreated my covers. They were much better than the nightmares I invented. And my sales jumped from like one copy a day to three, five copies a day. And then I got involved in someone from that group. He helped me with marketing. And the field book became a bestseller.

[0:09:37] (C): And I can share story after story that involving others in your growth is so much more effective than trying to grow on your own. And the best example is the last year of my life when I started learning. And I also get coached. And that was skyrocket to success, really. I grow my team from one half type person to three people. I quit my day job in August 2022. A lot of things happened because I wasn't alone.

[0:10:15] (B): It's quite interesting you mentioned this, because I want to touch a bit on that. The individual nature of a lot of us in the west, in that most of us have to do things in our own and yes, a lot of people to get coached. But the point is that we don't see our development really as a collective, not just individual, but even as founders. So when you find people have approached things that a lot of other people would do jointly, it's like we do it for ourselves and then whatever emerges from everybody else. However, when it comes to our ability to really not just develop but actually grow as people and deal with change, deal with many things that go wrong, jail, we struggle because they do not have that group support.

[0:11:09] (B): And it's really interesting you actually mentioned this because how you actually was vulnerable and you saw the systems. Maybe you may not have been the most resourceful, may not have had the most resources at the time, but rather that you accepted that generally you don't have to be all in your home. It means you get a lot more help and make people be more to help you and it actually push you further along.

[0:11:39] (B): Tell the listener.

[0:11:41] (D): So with your books, are you self.

[0:11:44] (B): Published and one whose looking to get started wrote would you advise them to take would you put them to do the self published route or would you prefer them to go ahead of a traditional publisher?

[0:11:55] (C): Yeah, I'm self published. The only traditional published book I have is my Korean translation of one of my books Three Callback Mindset.

[0:12:05] (B): That's it.

[0:12:05] (C): I just sold them for in rides. I'm self published. I'm fearfully in the self publishing camp there is so much more control over the whole process. It's not that expensive really and like you can control the schedule and especially like me, I published 19 books. I have maybe not a team of people but team of collaborators, so the same editor, a couple of people who do cover design for me and so on, and the list of readers, few thousand people who are eager to check my next book. So they help me in the pre publishing process here to make the book better. Absolutely.

[0:12:52] (C): And of course the last bit is I'm getting more in royalties than traditionally published outdoors, 40, 70% depending on the format on the store. So I would say for people who want to start I would just send them over to the very very good website Kindleprepernor.com run by Dave Jessen who is also a self published author and content there is great and you can learn everything from how to research topic for your next book.

[0:13:30] (C): So you will find some market demand, how to find relevant keywords categories on Amazon and by the way, if you want to self publish, you need to do it on Amazon because this is the 800 pound gorilla in the publishing landscape. When it comes to my sales, 99% are through Amazon now, maybe 98% because I expanded a bit and competition finally catches up with Amazon but the majority of sales are there. If you are a beginner, focus just on Amazon because this is the biggest.

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[0:14:58] (B): Yeah, and that's really a thing because my thinking was always that it depends on what you try to achieve when you release Block Machine because people do both very well. Some people want variety. They want to be known as a peso and they want the theme that goes along. They would typically go to traditional routes and hire an agency publisher, editor, but others use books in a different way in that they want to create a business. They use it as a positioning tool. Not in that the traditional route doesn't give you a good positioning after it does, but in terms of client acquisition, the book is really seen as a leading market, as a way to prove your expertise to authors before they can potentially buy for you or opt into your services. So it's interesting when you mention this station.

[0:15:54] (B): So let's talk about key mistakes. Most people do as they really try to become better in their lives. So they have a goal and they really want to improve. They really want to become better. From where we are right now, there is a gap between what they want and what they really would like to achieve. What are some of the common mistakes that you see people make?

[0:16:22] (C): I think that the two common and the most common are trying to achieve too much, too fast. It's what Bill Gates said, that we are overestimating what we can do in one year, but underestimating what we can do in ten years. And shorter the span, the more true is that we overestimate what we can do in a week, underestimate what we can do in a more people try too hard at the beginning and they set up themselves for a failure right from the start. New Year's resolution, the typical one. Okay, I will start exercising, I will go to the gym three, four, five times a week and spend an hour or two there.

[0:17:01] (C): After the few times you are so exhausted that resistance kicks in and then you find excuses and then you fade once and okay, so now it's even your internal self talk. Okay, you failed at this, give it up, it doesn't make sense and so on. So trying too much too fast is like number one and not having the mindset of process outcome on the goal instead of trying to break down the goal into steps or even daily actions.

[0:17:33] (C): If you keep doing those smaller daily actions, you will eventually reach your goal. I remember when I was so clueless. I had no idea what does it mean to be a writer? And it down on me after a moved, okay, writers write. So I started to do it every day. And writing my first book, it wasn't like I set some deadline for me or when the book will be up. Nope. I just kept writing every day, a few hundred words and they eventually added up.

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[0:19:36] (B): Michael tell the audience a bit about generally some of the things that people as they embark on the journeys of personal development and really improving their lives. What are some of the things that you have?

[0:19:54] (C): It's trying too fast, too hard. You had this big goal, so you are in your mind already there. So you take a massive action. But massive action is not sustainable. Life overwhelms you, this new action overwhelms you and you give up and it's so much better. And it worked in my case. And really I shouldn't be able to develop so many habits at one time. Expert Sales so very hard, but slow. As you keep the difficulty level at easy, you can develop really quite a few habits at the same time.

[0:20:33] (C): And easy is different for each person. For me, doing 40 push ups at the very beginning was easy because I was physically fit. But for some people that's flatly impossible. So it must be you easy, so your mind won't rebel when you do this. Also of course, it must be like your habit, your daily action that is supposed to inch you towards your goal must be somehow aligned into what you want to achieve.

[0:21:07] (C): And when you start something new, you don't know what you don't know. So you need to be flexible and adjust your actions. The worst thing is, like I said, trying too hard, too much, too quickly, it's not realistic. I always tell people who I coach and who I coach in habit coaching. I am for something which is sustainable. If you can do it every day, even if there is some disaster, even if you are traveling, even if you are sick, then that's the right size.

[0:21:41] (C): Once you develop a habit, then you can head it up.

[0:21:44] (B): When?

[0:21:44] (C): I started writing, I wrote 400 words a day and it took me about an hour. Then later, when I was at the peak of my writing career, 1 hour and I was able to wrote more than 1000 words and produce much more in the same time. So practice makes master, that's for sure.

[0:22:05] (B): I really like what you say because people have believed that really get good results. It's about honestly going hard, taking massive action and yes. It's an icy lease as well, but it's not taking massive action you have to ensure that your efforts generally are stealing because it not always for me want to be operated for resource discovery, you have to hit the deadline really get appealing by a particular time have to really get something eat or avoid a massive punching care that's cool and that helps people out of all thesis from that standpoint but generally that does consist and you definitely cannot have to take these.

[0:22:57] (B): And what a lot of people don't realize is that consistent action, like you said, typically really helps people progress a lot further. Because you have a winter as you have a winter and it's like a rock that move it downward and hit your rock. It's very easy, and it's a lot easier than simply trying to push it up here. So I really like that point. We actually getting results, you find? A lot of people sabotage their progress.

[0:23:35] (B): Can you speak to listeners? Gender what are some of the reason we sabotage the progress that they really try to what are some of the ways that you're doing?

[0:23:45] (C): Common for us all is this internal critic and that we listen to it and we don't really differ it from our own self. So we decide, okay, this voice in my head, this is me. So what it says is true. But no, that's not true. And really what this internal voice is self talk is just cautions by trying to discourage you from taking effort. But the problem is we accept it. So if you don't have this any kind of recognizing your thoughts and then doing anything with them or just accepting them, if you just act, react on whatever thoughts are going here, like, I'm no good, it's impossible, let's give up. I always give up. And other discouraging things which are going through mind. If you cannot manage that, success is very hard to achieve.

[0:24:49] (B): Yeah, because when a lot of people speak about being resource the first he might come to mind is half in the little Lange and tell. It was shown from portion experience money typically is not the biggest resource that people lack. It's really getting out of people. You find people who have less money will do very well. You have people who have a lot of money, who don't deserve and the resourcefulness really comes from the desire to use what you have more advantages, whether it's a skill where it has a particular advantage family or a leg up that helps.

[0:25:37] (B): But the other part of that is really following on the goals that you and even when you have the right coaching, the right training, the right instruction, if you were solely doing the work and not letting your excuses get into me, because they're going to come. So generally a lot of people find that is the reason why they don't succeed. It's not because of a lack of money. Yes, your environment is very important and it does play a role, but it's not as many, it's not as much as environmental as this mental alone.

[0:26:17] (B): Because there are people who have higher environments as worse than a long list and they've succeeded. And every time we see a story and this back what is he of love, right? Because it can point finger at our old crack. We are completely not happy. But you never was homeless knew what is like to not have your appearance around. You never knew it was like miss a lot of things that we take for granted to not have electricity with them.

[0:26:52] (B): So I'm not preaching here to be deep to do that before. What I'm saying is that we can't get absorbed in our own reasons why we don't succeed, instead of being focused on finding the way no matter what. And that is why long with good stuff. It's not because of the lack of resources. One is people we saw some as general, it really depends on the individual and where we are at risk advantages and that also most people are fully tapping.

[0:27:23] (B): So as we begin to wind down, I want to also speak about how you go about this is forgotten a habit formation briefly. But if one were to distribute the new light and we have so many planners, we have so many apps, we have the I Jab Ggp GTP for Chronology. There seems to be so many ways to go on daily right now. However, with Joel and I will see all the adversary technology. There's no way to be better people, more productive, healthier, happier, richer.

[0:28:10] (B): So what would you advise one in terms of how to make the most out of innovation technology and just using it all without getting the most?

[0:28:24] (C): Yeah, that's hard not to crack, especially for younger generations who like they grew up with this technology around. I'm old school, I was born before the Internet. I've seen the first cell phone when I was like 18 or something. So I know how to fall back to the old ways. And I'm using technology for what it is, it's a tool. So I manage what applications I have on my desktop, I manage what notifications I'm getting. So they will not distract me.

[0:29:04] (C): Actually, on my phone, I have only text messages and phone signals that are able to disrupt my attention. Everything else is off or just visible. If I look at the screen, then I can see the notification, but it won't distract me. So use technology as a tool, because this is what it is. And I would also say to use it as a tool, you need to invest in your personal growth. You need to be able to manage your modes, manage your thoughts, and then you can plant something.

[0:29:41] (C): Okay, how I will use the phone or how I will use the computer.

[0:29:45] (B): Because what people don't realize generally is that it's not the media, it's how you use. I really love the fact that you said that no one else like living the town without Internet when first fall was this big thing that would have had and was so fancy. But if you were to show it now, it would look like only but and seeing how that different people generally have adapted. The other side of this is that it's not the tool it's really having.

[0:30:22] (B): Meaning they have a cell clinic, all those features, the latest cameras delete the latest state features, and it's not improved your life one bit. And you put up with three nerds, and that's fine. I'm not saying not to be explained before, but I'm saying you need to make sure that the device benefit you as well in that improving your so if you look at me, is it always wise to get the more expensive product would you be getting already?

[0:30:58] (B): And we have to really see a new technology as an arm that amplify us rather than being just a consumer in and of itself. Michael, what of the common mis technologies are because now we can't escape the AI mirror and everything now becoming automated, not just with how we commute, not just with how we devices, but jobs and really just go back to the publishing world a bit. Love programs, for example, janitge continue to write books for the aspiring offers out there.

[0:31:44] (B): What are some of the things that we could do to really protect their lively? What would you require someone if you were standing?

[0:31:52] (C): I don't know. If you can save your livelihood. It's like I was talking to people from a century ago, for example, taking care of horses. Yeah, that was a big industry back then. It's not anymore. So that may be the same with writing. However, I don't think so. Like, I've seen the output of AI right now, and it's not comparable yet with people's skills. So work on your craft, work on yourself, practice. This is how you get better.

[0:32:25] (C): Right now, I have around 3 million words under my belt, but it took me a decade to write as much. So learn, grow, invest in yourself and be yourself. By the way, no machine can be better you than you.

[0:32:39] (B): Yeah, very well said. Because as much as the machines may improve in what it can happen, the human element can never be reversed. And the uniqueness of what makes an offer the actual storyline and yes, good storylines can be replicated, but no one can replicate you. No one can replicate what you will have to bring your story, your ideology and it's really important to understand that even as you adopt some of the technologies, you do not alter everything in that remote study of what is unique about.

[0:33:17] (B): One of the concerns that make cultures about mixing and I hope to be worried people into the actual cultures is that losing the actual identity regards to creating, whether it's an author or any other art form you have. To nation at Miserable we have to call the tags and our technologies will improve our process through all of this is not love but we always keep what's unique to us. And generally people will prove that TensorFlow plans very well and just one understand that it just passes and there will always be disasters.

[0:34:01] (B): But are you involved with that? You have never said so. I was a beginning to widen Michael general audience speak about how they could learn more about you, what you do and how they are.

[0:34:18] (C): It's so great to be a Polish guy in the English speaking world. Just type my name into Google at anything blog books and something will pop up at the first page. So that's very easy. My blog is expand beyond yourself.

[0:34:35] (B): Yeah. And Michael, one thing I like to do with guests is that if you were on the day of bed and you had three pieces of advice, let's make it easy. One or two pieces of advice that you can give somebody, what will those will be?

[0:34:55] (C): Be the best view you can be, which includes at the beginning know yourself. Then you can be the best version of you. But if you do not know yourself, what are your aspirations, what are your talents, weaknesses? It's what we just discussed. Then you are blending into the mass. You are not yourself. You are not the unique one. And your uniqueness nobody can be better than you. Nobody can be better.

[0:35:27] (B): You awesome staffinsky. Thank you so much for being a guest on our show. It's quite insightful to get perspective outside of our area. Not that we're not connected, but generally we have this hustle grindelcort culture and a lot of times, yes, looking at is important. But there is always this calculation that your success is sustainable and you could actually have a whole life. Michael, thank you for being a guest in our podcast and any information of links that I mentioned will be in the showbox, so please check the description.

[0:36:11] (C): Thank you for having me.

[0:36:12] (A): Give your thought of which you are. High five. You've just listened to another episode of the Hard Achievers podcast. If you. Want to learn more and get your hands on the shoulders and any links or resources mentioned from these sponsors go to craighadler.com.