J: Welcome to compete like a champion. You're here with Dr. Larry Lauer, mental skill specialist, and coach Johnny Parkes with USTA player development. Today we're gonna dive into a really key topic, getting habits to stick. We've talked about habits a lot in passing with a lot of different other topics here,but actually diving into how we can get our habits to stick I think is really important. Seems like, you know, we're conditioned by our environment with some things but then personality comes into play and then obviously how that bleeds over to sports and performance and how that either helps or can hurt you. So you know, it should be a good discussion here.
L: Isn't it true that there's now you know, the New Year's resolution and there's a day that's set aside for the day that resolutions end. Isn't isn't there a day for that? A holiday?
J: Was it set new year's resolution on the 31st of December and the resolution is failed by the second of January, is that what it is?
L: I think it was more like the 19th, but that's pretty quick. Yeah. Yeah, definitely, I'm sure a lot of people are interested in finding out how to make these habits stick and stay around long term because really, anytime you're thinking about changing behavior, you're doing that in most cases, because you want it to be a part of your permanent sort of repertoire, right? You know, whether it's eating more healthy or sleeping better, or changing something in your game. A new habit in your game, you know, your tennis game. So there's many different ways to go about this. A lot of this work started many years ago in stopping smoking, getting people to stop smoking. And there's some interesting research around that. But I think with the habits, what we're trying to do is to get some consistency with our behavior. We're trying to create something, right? You do a habit to get to something. I eat healthy, so I can maybe lose weight or to look different, or to be faster on the court, or right and you change your sleeping habits so that you can feel more energized during the day. So I think all these habits are leading to some outcome. For me the habit is the process, these are the things that you start putting together to get to a certain place and that's why we talk about habits and in our mental training, because there's certain habits you must create to get to an optimal performance state.
J: Yeah, absolutely. I think that there's going to be a couple books I reference here, Larry. There's a couple books over the past two years that I've read that I thought were pretty good, very good interesting books. The first one, for the listeners here, I mean definitely go out and buy these books and just to kind of get a good understanding and we'll put some resources on the shownotes as well, but the Power of Habit was one by Duhigg. Yeah, let me get that before I say anything, Charles Duhigg. The Power of Habit.
L: I hope we're saying his name correctly.
J: Yeah, I don't want to butcher that. But Charles Duhigg, that to me was the start of really a habit book that I read that just really got me to think about it a little bit more, think a little deeper about it. I like to think of myself as a creature of habit. I'm a type of personality that really craves structure and craves, doing things...
L: Why do you say that?
J: I think for me, I've been conditioned that way from a young age. I think I had a structure. I played a lot of sports as a kid, so it was always the school, you know, wake up, get to school, you know, you've got your school structure, obviously, that is outside of your control, then afterwards was always a, you know, the sport structure, finishing school and getting home and then you go through the bed night routine. And then at the age of 12-13 I went away from home. And I think the environment I went in was very highly structured, where, yes, you had guidance, but it wasn't as if I had mum and dad going, time to get out of bed, time to do, this time to do that. I had to follow the structure in order to basically not get into trouble. Right? So, the onus became on me, because I did that at such an early age and I had to figure out basically staying within the rules within a high structure, and I think that conditioned me. So now I think I'm at a point now when things go I think I'm more versatile than I used to be on when a habit changes or you know I need to change a habit because of schedules change and things like that. I think I'm definitely more resilient to that now. But there was definitely a time where I struggle to deal with changes to schedules and changes to that. And then obviously, when something changes, it's not that you change a habit, it's that you have to adapt the habit a little bit in order to get the structure that you're craving. There definitely was a time where I really struggled with it.
L: How did you get over that struggling with having to adapt or change in the schedule?
J: Yeah, that's a good question. I think what happened was that when I made this change from basically going from school to college. College was a new system that I had to figure out. And to be honest, I think I figured it out, again, because it was more environmental factors, the fact that things would change so regularly, I had to just figure out how to change one from the next. And I do remember there was one point especially with training schedules change, class schedules changing from one semester to the next semester where I didn't have that when I was in secondary school or in high school, whatever. When you're in college, you've got one semester with one schedule, then the next semester is another schedule. I think it was a nice transition because you get used to a schedule for one semester and then you have to adapt and change again. And I think I did that over the course of the first year was getting to understand it, the second year was now expecting it, and the third and fourth year was embracing it and just owning it. So I think that was almost, college was a nice transition, because if it was now a weekly schedule that was changing from going from a really highly structured yearly structure, I think now you're going from one side of the penny to the other to quickly. But I think I had a nice little natural segue in time, but then constraining that time over...
L: I think one of the things that when you start digging into habits is that, you know, there's habits and then there's routines and schedules where you start stacking habits, putting together things that you do consistently. Listeners thinking about habits as behaviors or you're gonna have habits in thought. These are just things that kind of happened automatically, right? This is what you do. This is your habit. You don't have to think about it when it's a habit necessarily, right? Before it's a habit you have to put in a lot of mental effort to try to make it happen to intentionally create this behavior to occur. True? So you know, that's one thing to keep in mind is that these habits are, you know, they're intentional. And then at some point, they move into more automatic, where they're still intentional, but they're so kind of written into your daily schedule, as you're talking about your schedule or into your mindset. This is the way I see things, this is the way I do things, then you can maintain sort of this habit or this behavior change. Until then you're sort of working through the process, as they talk about the process of change that requires a number of different strategies. But the other thing to keep in mind is that a lot of people believe that habits are domain or context specific. So you talked about the environment, and so I might have certain habits at school, and then I go home and I have different habits, right? So that's where you see maybe a kid who you put them in a highly structured environment, he thrives, but then he goes home and maybe it's not structured, maybe both parents are working or there's not a schedule and that's where problems can occur. And then some people thrive on, less on structure and more on spontaneity, they're creative and so you have to factor in the personality, but we do believe that environment plays a major role in what habits you're going to form.
J: I want to come back to a point you just mentioned there and that's basically getting to the point of it becoming automatic. When you said that, in my mind skill development, skill acquisition pinged in my brain, and so I think that's a really great point because you ultimately want to get to a point where it's automatic. You do these things without thinking. You know that the habit that you've developed is something that you think is helpful, and you want to continue to do it, but it takes work but you want it to get it automatic. So when we talk in the skill development realm, we talk about mastering and we can link this now to developing skill in tennis, you talk about mastering the basics, master the fundamentals. Really get that foundation down, so once the foundation is there, and you can make that automatic, then the brain can start processing the next level up, right? So in a computer game, you cannot go to level three without having gone through level one and level two. And each level in a computer game gets a little bit harder...
L: True. Well, the good ones anyway.
J: Maybe the days that we played computer games, if you know, you get to level two and you die you got to go back to level one. Now the computer just saves automatically for you, so you get to level two and you die, you don't go back to level one, you just start up from where you finish, which didn't exist when, I don't know, when I was growing up.
L: That's so weak. Well, you know, these younger generations, they don't have to earn anything, right. Come on, Johnny.
J: Exactly. So, but you talk about then the chunking of information, right? So each chunk of information you learn is then, you can memorize that and then just opens up new capabilities of being able to learn, I guess, a little bit more advanced skill, and then you get into a routine of that becomes a bit more of a habit and that gets set in and, okay, what's the next chunk of information I need to know to get better? And then... So yeah, that just kind of pinged in my brain there as you were talking about creating automatic habits.
L: Well, what we're trying to do is clear up space for processing, right, short term, and being able to put things into this long term deeper memory where it's there, whether that's a motor skill, or maybe it's, you know, cognitive or in a way you see things. But you want to move from the novel and the new, which we're not going to be consistent in that environment, to something that's consistent. Performance is all about consistency. And so to do that, you have to have these automatic habits and these things you don't have to think about, so you can clear up processing for the things that are the surprises, for the adversity, for the things that don't go your way. If you're struggling just to, we'll take motor skills, just to keep the ball in and then someone throws another variable at you, that's where, you know, younger or inexperienced players really struggle, right? So I've struggled to keep the ball in play and now the wind's blowing a 30 mile per hour gusts. I mean, this blows their game up usually, right? With that then, when you first start, you're trying to, in some ways, isolate that, so they can just focus on what they need to do or make that the only goal, right? So they can just be clear on, okay, I'm trying to form this goal, or create this goal, form this habit, and then try to manage the other variables that could get in the way. And as they start to learn and become more consistent, you can start to bring some of those variables in because we know in reality, you have to be able to perform this with a whole bunch of variables going on in the environment, or within yourself. So an easy way to think about this is if you want to stop drinking alcohol, you probably need to get into a place where there's zero opportunity for you to have alcohol. It's not around you, no one around you is drinking, it's zero, right? And then over time you start putting yourself, once you have some consistency of behavior, and you're managing that temptation where now you can go out to dinner in a restaurant where they serve alcohol and you can make the choice not to purchase that alcohol. You see what I'm saying? So I think anytime you're trying to form a habit, you're trying to isolate that and make it easier for the learner and then over time you start putting in, you know, more variables, fluctuations, progressions into the learning environment to see how they handle it. And that to me that's how you form a habit. But if you only form the habit in isolation, as soon as they're outside of that place you know all bets could be off.
J: yeah, so would you say with a habit then, the repetition of that habit develops, and I'll use the words from a from a different book here, Atomic Habits by James Clear, if we repeat a habit which we basically can develop fluency and speed of doing it over time, but then my question would be then, once we developed it, is there a point where we actually as human beings need to adapt our habits once they're setting stone? Do we need to change habits? Do we need to adapt in order to prevent, I guess, a fixed mindset almost, in that once you've developed a good autopilot with your habit, do you just stop working on how things can get better?
L: No, and I think there are some habits that are formed as I just mentioned, that might be counterproductive to your health or your well being. So there are things that people have are habits like smoking or, you know, whatever it may be that that aren't helpful. And so I think you, you want to basically think about it as, am I achieving the goals that I'm setting out to achieve and if I'm not, then I need to take a look at these details, these habits, these processes that I'm going through to get there and that can change. For example, like what we deal with in tennis, you may have formed habits at 12 and under that have made you highly successful. Hitting the ball high, that's the one everybody talks about, moon balls, right? Hey, it works tremendously at 12 and under, maybe even going into 14 and under. But at some point, that's no longer going to be effective. You're gonna have to change that habit, that under pressure, instead of putting one up that you're gonna hit through the ball and shape and spin and whatever, but so certainly these habits need to change over time and I think you can't, it's not like you can just say, one size fits all with habits. Especially in high performance, you can't just say, well, you always do this, well, those things change with growth and development, for example. You know, when players are able to do more because they're physically stronger, or maybe their mental capacities have formed and they've developed in that sense. For example, the habit may be to have one goal and focus on one thing when you're an eight year old, when you're when you're 21 you can focus on multiple things. You still don't want to have seven, eight goals, you need to just have a couple clear, simple goals when you go into a match. But I think at that point, your thinking should be advancing to a point where you can hold multiple things in mind and be able to achieve them.
J: That's a really great point. I want to dive a bit more into goal setting, because goal setting seems to be a logical way to be able to establish habits. We want to change a habit or we want to create a habit, let's set a goal, right? But there are many things that go into goal setting. First of all, you have to understand how to goal set. What are your goals? I think when we think about goal setting, a lot of people automatically go to, alright, well this one match my goal is to win the match. Well, everyone's goal is the same, right? Or my goal is to be number one in the world. Well, you're gonna have a lot of people out there who are playing, and you know, especially when you ask the little kids, what do you want to be? I want to be number one in the world, I want to win a Grand Slam. Well, there's a lot a lot of people out there that have the same goal, right, that is to win. But what is the difference between basically the winning and the losing? So and this is an interesting perspective here, is goal setting helpful in that regard, if we're not led in the right path on how to goal set? So instead of goal setting, do we want to talk about actually creating systems and processes?
L: Interesting question for me, I think, you know, goals are a part of these processes. You know, what is the direction and intensity of a person's effort. And you want to educate them on goals that are going to facilitate their motivation in a direction that's going to make them successful for whatever they want to have and then help them understand also the kinds of goal setting that isn't helpful. You know, setting far too challenging goals or under shooting on your goal, so you can make them all. Neither one of these things challenges us and moves us forward. You need to think about, you know, in terms of these systems and processes, that we're forming these goals, because that's sort of the markers along the way to let us know that, that's at least the way I'm seeing it, that our habits are getting us to where we want to be. Like, I can have the habit of doing whatever, you know, of making sure I wear the same shirt every time I play. Is that getting me to where I want to be towards a goal, right? So I think are these relevant? Are they valuable? We can set up systems and processes, but I think you need to know for the purpose that you're doing that, right? What's the purpose? What's the goal? And these can be outcome, performance, or process goals.
J: Yeah, and I think the key there, though, is making sure that that outcome goal is not the driving force, but the process right.
L: Well, I think the outcome goal to me, the way I've thought about it is it's that 1%, that passion, that dream, that vision that you have. I think you're you're gonna have that and you want to have that fuel that fire inside, but 99% of your focus on a daily basis is on the process about getting better the little details that you know I don't skip out on my my habits of you know, eating healthy for example, or hydrating. It's great to have a goal of being number one in the world, but if you don't eat healthy and hydrate, how are you ever going to achieve that goal, right? You're you're going to hit a ceiling at some point. So every every goal or outcome goal is going to come from some process. There's some details that have to happen. And when you're putting all these things together, you talk about systems and processes, this is when you start piecing together things, habits that create something right? So if we take our between points routine, you start by having a response, so you want to have good body language, going to your strings, you recover with your breathing so you've recovered so you can reset your mind so you can refocus on how you want to play the next point so that you can go to the line with commitment and a quiet mind, so then you can just focus on the ball and play. But if you do one of those in isolation, it's only so good. If you put them all together, and I want to think about it as a routine or a system, then they become more powerful. Right? So to me, we want to be thinking about habits, you know, people think about, okay, I want to eat healthier, great. Think about it broader too, in terms of what what's the system, the processes I need around me. So if I'm wanting to eat healthy, but my spouse is eating chips and candy all the time, and that's in my environment, I'm not setting up a system that's gonna allow me to achieve my goal. If I want to have a better forehand, but I constantly play people worse than me, how is that forehand ever going to grow to the forehand I want it to be? I have to create a system, a progression of things that must happen with the goal in mind, the destination is to have a forehand that I can use effectively when I'm 18. And there needs to be a progression, a system in place to get to that.
J: Yeah, absolutely. And you know, in the camps at the minute, we're talking a lot about confidence. You know, the role of confidence is one of our seven core values of competing like a champion, right? Confidence is that first one. And embedded in the confidence is, okay, confidence is an outcome, how do we feel more confident? Well, a lot of the curriculum embedded into how we teach confidence is actually developing the in between points routine, developing the change event routine, and how does that, how do we connect the dots between how that helps us feel more confident? Could you elaborate more on it?
L: Sure. You know, one way to think about it is that where does doubt come from? Uncertainty. And doubt creates anxiety, fear, so these things grip and captivate the mind and start to take away from your confidence. But if you have a plan, a routine, a way of doing things, it creates a certain state of mind and body. You can think of habits being stacked together, then you can create an optimal mindset and make decisions that make you perform, right? To help you to perform, you're going to feel more confident. So if my habit is when I see something I look outside and there's palm trees and blue sky and it's warm outside and some people look at it like, ah, it's so nice out, it's amazing and they have a good feeling. Others, pessimists can say well, you know, it's gonna storm tomorrow. It's not not that nice out, the wind is too windy, right? So you have to be aware that about yourself and then what kind of habits are you creating in the way you think and the way you do things that make you confident. Now to me I always borrow borrow from Scott Gordon, who works in the Philadelphia Flyers system, he talked about confidence comes from commitment. And to me the way I took it was the habits to perform. If I commit to the habits, if we're talking just about between point routines to become confident, do I commit to a response, then instead of putting in mind that, ah, I'm failing, I'm so bad. I look over to my parents and you know, they're reacting, oh, they think I'm terrible and this is a waste of money and a wasted trip and time, their time, right? So if I manage and I filter these responses immediately to what happens in the point, I don't bombard my brain with all this negative information. As our friend David Ruthford would say, the Navy SEAL negative insurgency, right, and then if I recover and I do deep breathing in a way that really clears my mind of the past, then it doesn't really give the the negatives too much energy, right, and starting to clean that out. And then in the refocus stage, if I can focus on something that captivates my mind, I will serve wide and go open court. I do this all the time in practice, I got this. Now I have a commitment that captivates my mind, there's not much room for the negative to come in anymore. I've created a new focus. Something that I committed to, something that I believe in, then I can go to the line and actually do my rituals to turn my mind off essentially to stop thinking because I already made my commitment and I can just be ready to play and that's where you see players bounce the ball four times like it's like a metronome I get to four and my mind goes quiet, it's time to play, breathing, swaying and their return stance to get a rhythm. You see these kinds of things, simple cues or reminders, okay, trust and go, ways just to kind of turn off the mind. And when you start stacking that together, you start to get to this optimal state more often, that generates confidence. I'm not always going to win, but I feel confident about the way I'm approaching each point because I'm sticking to these habits. Now, if you look at like what clear talks about in terms of reminder, routine and reward, very important, right, in this whole system. You need a reminder, he talks about traffic light in his example, when it turns green. In our example, a reminder is a point ends, strings, travel, towel, turn and walk away, right? That gets you into your routine, right? The things that you would do so one unlocks the others. And then what's the reward? Well, the reward is that, hey, you followed your routine, your process today, your steps, your habits, there's so many different words for these things. And so parents need to be rewarding that, coaches need to be rewarding that, mental coaches need to be rewarding that. Don't just look at the score, say, well, actually, what did you do? Did you feel ready to play? This is just one example, but if you want someone to go through the stages of change and get to permanent change or maintain it, you have to reward the actual behavior first and not the outcome. The outcome will come because of that, but all these things, I think, ties together with that commitment to the habits and you start stacking together, you create the systems and processes that allow you to perform
J: That's awesome. A couple things that come to mind when you say that was, well, in order to do that, basically mastering a new habit, you need patience, right? I mean, you're talking about that process there and what you just detailed there with what Clear lays out, that takes a lot of patience. And so what's your advice I guess to the listeners that go, I want to change a habit, I'm really having a hard time getting it to stick? Okay, I need more patience, but how can I have myself become more patient in order to stick with it for longer in order to get it stick?
L: I think you start with a reasonable goal. If your goal is to go from weighing 240, down to 170 in six months, you probably need to rethink things. Make sure your goal is reasonable, and the habit you're trying to attain is also reasonable, right? That you know, I'm cutting out all of something, cold turkey. Well, can you do that? Is it realistic? And then I think Clear gives some good examples of, for example, if you want a new habit, set a time for it. And even more powerful is when you start, he talked about stacking, I talk with the players about coupling things or hooking them together. If you have a habit already and your habit is to when you get up in the morning, you immediately go get a drink of water. Can you attach or couple to that doing mindfulness for two minutes? Can you, if one of your habits you formed is to, let's say, you know, get on the bike in the morning and ride for 20 minutes. Can you attach stretching to that? Right? But in our warm ups coupling things, so if we're going through a warm up, can we attach visualization to that of what I'm going to achieve that day so you see where we're going? One of the ways to get these habits to form more effectively is attach them to an old habit that's already automatic. And that then allows you, that's that reminder, right? Oh, I'm getting water, it's time to meditate. And so, I think that, schedule a time for it, couple it with an old behavior. Also location is important, the environment. People will switch in and out of things depending on their environment. You need to train these habits on court or wherever you want this behavior to happen, not just in isolation somewhere else. So I think you need to know how those habits are changing based on where you're at. So there's a number of things, how do your emotions impact your habits? Do you eat healthy, but then when you get stressed, suddenly, you're looking for sugary things? Or you know what I'm saying, you're stress eating. So again, how can you be aware of that and make sure you're not reacting off your emotion and moreso making an intentional choice. So again, these these things are really important. And when you start to identify them, it gives you a chance to have a better habit forming kind of routine, I guess.
J: Would you say the we, I guess thinking more more on the tennis lines here, would you say that we don't rise to the level of our goals, the goals that help drive, we don't rise to the level of our goals, but we actually fall to the level of our process or system or whatever word we use for that?
L: It's interesting, I think, in many cases, yes. Because we believe that what comes out under pressure are your habits and the way you do things and the way you think. And we've seen that in performance for many years. You can put players in situations where there's low pressure and they can perform, but if they formed the habits that allow those things to stick when there's high pressure, when the pressure's on. And so that's why you see players are really good in practice, but they're not able to perform in matches, well, okay, what are their habits of thinking? What are their habits of doing things? A lot of times players can play really well in practice, but the stress of score and people watching and this counting, their decision making goes out the window. They don't play with intention, they don't play their game style, their vision of their game. So how do you get that? Well, that has to become the priority, that has to become the focus of your work and you have to do it in that environment, you have to use matches to teach and you need to play practice matches where they count for something, you know, rewards, consequences. So to me there's there's a lot of different ways to look at this. If you want to change one singular habit, great, identify it, know why you're doing it, set a schedule for it, make sure your environment makes it easier for you to stay with it. Make sure that people around you are bought into it and are supporting this and not working against it, and realize this patience, you're talking about Johnny, you're going to need a couple months, maybe more depending on your personality on the habit you're trying to create how far it is to get to it. All these things. You got to be patient, you got to be persistent. Don't think you're going to create a habit in week, you have to stay on it. And a lot of discussions we have with the players is around this subject is that, okay, you have this habit, it can't just go out the window because you're not playing well. Stay with your routine. Stay with being positive with your body language, even though you're down because you're forming a habit. You're trying to create that and we don't want that changing with the conditions. We want that to stay and stick and so you're gonna have to practice doing that in times when things are not going your way and the reason for you doing this is not solely about winning, it's about understanding that if I create these habits and I create these routines, these systems, that I can win long term. I'm going to become a better player for it.
J: Awesome. Well I know we're running short on time here, it's been a bit of a crazy week so far but and that's why we're short on time, but I want you to give us a little drop the mic moment for the listeners to finish them with and...
L: Dropping the mic. It's when you announce it that it makes it really hard. I'm feeling the pressure.
J: I like to just spur it on all of a sudden, see what you come up with.
L: Dropping the mic moment, geez. I thought I already did that.
J: Well you did do it multiple times. There was some serious hit of knowledge there and [inaudible].
L: Well, alright so couple things. Number one, if you want a habit to change know why you're doing it know what it is you're trying to achieve and be challenged yourself but be reasoned. With the change you're looking for Be patient, get the people around you supporting it. You know, that's why you know, working in social groups like losing weight or overcoming addiction, these kinds of things often work better when you're working in a social environment with people who are supporting you or going through the same thing. I think secondly, keeping in mind that in terms of high performance, you need routines, you need schedules, the systems that Clear is talking about, to get to where you want to be. It's great if you have the habit of hydrating very well. But that's not the only variable that's going to get you to winning a national tournament. You got to be able to put a number of these habits together, put them in routines, put them in schedules, so that you can then perform when you need to perform, right? It's great if you can sleep well at times when you can't sleep well the night before matches well then, that habit hasn't been fully formed yet and you're going to struggle. So I think you have to think about, okay, what habits are needed and it's not just one. Now you start with one, you improve it, and then you either progress upon or you go to the next one, right? And that's how you continue your progress. So I think that it's a bit daunting at times for young people to understand it, because they have so much to learn. And there's so many different things they're trying to experience. And so you're better off focusing on one or two things, get your plan together, stay with it, know that it's going to take time and stay with it, because you know, what you can gain from that is excellent. So you get enough good habits in place, then you can be excellent at whatever you're doing,
J: That's awesome. And if you allow me here, Can I finish? Can I do a little drop the mic moment?
L: You should drop the mic, yes.
J: I'm gonna do a little equation if that's okay.
L: An equation? I didn't know, do you know what equations are?
J: It's a sum i guess. Habits plus deliberate practice equals mastery.
L: There you go.
J: Is that a drop the mic?
L: I think that could be drop the mic.
J: Boom, get in there, Kate. I just got my first drop the mic moment from doc.
L: If Mick was here he'd have some weird noise for this.
J: Yeah. Yeah, Mick's at the paddle show again. But..
L: All righty. Well done, Johnny. You're showing your tremendous...
J: I'm learning. No, it means I'm learning finally after what, 54 episodes or whatever we've done now, which by the way, we have past a year of doing the compete like a champion podcast, which has been amazing. And I think we'll maybe do a, we'll do a little podcast here to reflect back on the year and maybe point out some of our favorite episodes that we've done.
L: We'll let Kate do that. Make us a short list.
J: Yeah, or maybe you out there. I mean, if you haven't yet, and if you'd like to scroll down to the bottom of the main podcast page, and leave us a review on what your favorite podcasts were, but it's been, it's been a great year, Larry, and I've learned a lot from you and a lot from our guests that we've brought on. And you know, for me, this is actually quite cool, because I use this as almost like an hour of professional development engrained every week. We can just get better and it forces me to really learn more about the topics that we choose and dive into and also learn about the great listeners more that we're bringing, sorry, the great speakers and guests that we bring on. It forced me to kind of, you know, really, really learn about what it is that people do and how they do it and then obviously hearing about how they go about it when they talk on the podcast. So it's been fantastic and
L: I feel the same way. I'm learning a lot from you, JP. You got a lot of great ideas and always challenging me. Yeah, making me think.
J: Well, hopefully I can challenge you if anything. If you're not learning anything, I'll definitely challenge you.
L: You should challenge me in that case.
J: But anyways, and to the listeners, I mean, we thank you for being great listeners to the podcast. And again, this is an open forum, so any topics you'd like to hear from us about please leave as a comments and leave us a review and I think until next time, Dr. Lauer we're going to be getting on some more guests and choosing some more great topics and yeah, until next week, we are checking out.