Hello everyone, and welcome back to English With Dylan! I hope you’ve had a great week (whether at school, at work, or both!), and as we often say in English, thank god it’s Friday! Just as a reminder, you can find the free transcript to this episode on my website, www.englishwithdylan.com. As I have said before, I truly believe that listening to a podcast while reading its transcript is the quickest way to advance in a foreign language, simultaneously expanding your vocabulary, improving your listening comprehension, and improving your accent! 

As is now the routine, before I get into the main topic of good habits, I would like to begin by answering this episode’s question of the week! This week, it’s a fun one: someone suggested that I talk about all the different places that I have visited! I love travel, and am so grateful for the travel experiences that I’ve had. It has been a lot of fun to think back to all the different places I’ve visited throughout my life!

I think the most fun way for me to address this topic would be to simply read through a list of cities that I’ve been to that I can remember (sorted into their respective countries), and say a few words about each place. I’ll also give each city a personal rating from one to ten. These are simply my PERSONAL opinions, based on my experiences! I am a believer in the fact that most places are just what you make of them, and so you’ll find that I’m very generous with my rankings. I’ve never truly and wholeheartedly disliked a city. Every place has its pros and cons! Of course, I am going to leave out some places, either because I hardly remember them or I  don’t feel like I saw enough to form a real opinion.! But this list will include the majority of the most important/significant places that I’ve been to. So, without further ado, let’s start off with:

Canada: 

• Vancouver, British Columbia: what can I say about my amazing home? Amazing mountains, fresh air, probably one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Outrageously expensive, though! 11/10 (an extra point for home!)
• Toronto, Ontario: the “big city” of Canada. Reminds me of a smaller New York. Beautiful sunrises and sunsets. Harsh climate. Also outrageously expensive. Very busy, very fast-moving. Great support of sports teams. People are proud to be from Toronto, which I love. 9/10.
• Montréal, Québec: bilingual, but French is preferred! Amazing culture, it feels like a slice of Europe in North America. The home of poutine and Montréal smoked meat, which are really Canada’s only famous “traditional” foods. Historic and architecturally stunning. Would love to see it in the summer one day. 10/10.
• Vancouver Island, British Columbia: I’ve been to several cities on the island and I like them all, but the most important to me is Sidney. A second home to me. Small town, right on the ocean. The smell of sea salt and the sound of seagulls. My grandparents’ house. Slow-moving, peaceful, simply beautiful. 11/10.
• Osoyoos, British Columbia: my annual summer vacation spot! Pretty much a desert. “Small town on the water” vibe, great place to lounge by the pool or at the beach, play golf, drink wine (if you’re 19 or older), and just generally relax. Beautiful scenery. 10/10.

United States of America

• Alta Ranch, Darby, Montana: my family has visited Alta Ranch on several occasions. Rustic, cabin living. Great rivers for fishing. Great mountains for hiking. Great place to take a break from city life and just enjoy nature. 10/10.
• Los Angeles, California: Hollywood, baby! To me, it’s too huge and spread out to be considered one city. Some fantastic areas. Some not so fantastic areas. Los Angeles is probably significantly more fun if you are rich. Still a cool place though! As an actor, there was definitely something inspiring about being there. 8/10. 
• San Diego, California: for me, San Diego is the place to be. Right on the Mexican border, residents often cross into Mexico simply to go surfing and eat lunch during the hot months. San Diego (particularly the more historic parts) is filled with the beautiful and vibrant cultures and traditions of Mexico. Beautiful beaches. California living. 10/10.
• New York, New York: THE big city, for real. Everything is faster, brighter, bigger. Architectural masterpieces. Any kind of food you could possibly want at any hour of the day. People in a rush. A global hub of finance, arts, and sports. So much to do, so much to see! 9/10. 
• Orlando, Florida: great climate, beaches, Universal Studios. That’s about all I remember. 8/10.
• Waikiki, Hawaii: Surf’s up! What’s not to love about Hawaii? I found it to be a great combination of nature and city. Very chill. A nice peaceful getaway from the outside world. Hope to go back soon. 9/10.

Mexico

• Puerto Vallarta: Beautiful walks on the beach. I love the smell of the sea. Also, fantastic for watersports such as surfing! Would be more fun now that I speak Spanish. 10/10.
• Cancún: I stayed at a resort close to lots of amazing natural and cultural attractions. The vibes in Cancún are simply fantastic. Parties, music, dancing, and everything in between! 10/10.

Spain:

• Madrid: the first European city I ever saw. It absolutely blew me away (amazed me)! Efficient and cheap transit system. Spanish food. HISTORY AND ARCHITECTURE GALORE! Welcome to Europe indeed! Amazing culture, amazing people. 10/10.
• Cádiz: talk about history and architecture! Cádiz, for me, is the single most amazing place that I’ve ever seen. A city older than both the Greek and Roman empires. Seized and conquered by numerous groups of people who all left their own mark. Incredible climate (I surfed in January!). Unbelievably beautiful ocean views. The best sunset I’ve ever seen. 11/10. 

Italy: 

• Turin: though often forgotten about by us North Americans, I found Turin to be a wonderful city. Incredible food (obviously), history, and architecture. What’s not to love? 10/10.
• Milan: everything that I said about Turin, but on a grander, more impressive scale. Think New York but make it Europe. 10/10.
• Frossasco, Italy: a tiny town in the Italian countryside. The home of my brother from another mother. Beautiful mountain views. Peaceful, country living. 11/10.

United Kingdom:

• London, England: definitely impressive in some respects, but beyond the tourist attractions it’s nothing that special. The first few hours were cool because I could say to myself, “wow, I’m in London!” but once that wore off, it was just kind of another city. Still some great spots though. Would like to give it another try. 7/10.
• South Shields, England: lovely little place. The home of the English side of my family. On the outside, there is nothing too special about South Shields. In fact, it’s a little bit run down. But it sits on the North Sea. Big grass fields, beaches, ocean views, and impressive cliffs give this place a certain charm and beauty that, although quite simplistic, really captured my heart. I had my 18th birthday there, and hope to have one or two other birthdays there at some point. Special memories. Plus, family! 10/10. 

Monaco:

• Monte Carlo: “Wow!” is the only word that comes to mind. The city where the world’s richest people come to play around with superyachts and sports cars. High fashion. Luxury everything. Going out on the water on a jetski was one of the most fun and beautiful  experiences I’ve ever had. Amazing warm weather in the summer, and the views are stunning as well. 

And that does it for my travel list! Like I said before, it was fantastic to go through this list in my head and remember all of the amazing experiences that I’ve been so lucky to have. I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life traveling and collecting more amazing experiences!

Now, I’m really excited to get into today’s main topic. It was suggested by one of the listeners of this podcast (thanks so much!), but to be honest it’s something that has been on my mind a lot recently and I’m sure I would have ended up addressing this topic sooner or later. 

Since the beginning of 2023, I have been consciously working to improve myself in every aspect possible, and so far it’s going quite well! One thing that I have found out is that self-improvement really starts with forming good habits. If you didn’t already know, a habit is defined as a “usual manner of behaviour”, but in other (simpler) words, a habit is something that one does consistently, often every day. For example, smoking cigarettes is generally considered a bad habit, whereas going for a walk every day is a good habit. 

I’m going to present this to you in three parts. First, I would like to give some context on the kind of person that I used to be, the kind of habits that I used to have. Then, I’ll touch on the changes that I have made in the past few months that have improved my life in several ways. Finally, I’d like to quickly talk about my goals for the future and the habits that I hope to develop or add to my life!

So, to start off, for most of my life I never really had good habits. I have found that positive self-improvement is often born out of adversity,  and to be quite honest my life simply has not included much adversity at all. I have been very lucky to grow up in a loving home, to have the chance to be an actor and a hockey player, and to be born in Canada where we never have to worry about war and peace and where our school system is quite easy. I believe that it is in part due to this lack of struggle that I did not ever develop good habits. And it makes sense, doesn’t it? All my life, I’ve gotten all that I needed and much more, from basic things such as nutrition and love all the way to a great vacation every year and a career in acting that I am passionate about. So why would I have thought, at 13 or 14 or 15 years old, that I needed to start focusing on developing good habits, on becoming disciplined, if everything in my life was going well? Actually, despite the easy life that I had, at some points things were not going well for me personally at all! I had everything I needed and wanted, but in fact I struggled on and off with anxiety and depression for much of the time between my 13th and 16th birthdays, and I even had a very rough time as recently as September and October of 2021. It’s true that I did suffer some losses throughout this time, a few very impactful losses. But if I am honest with myself, I know that that wasn’t the only reason I struggled mentally, because I started feeling these things before I ever lost anyone and it continued well after I lost anyone too. Luckily, thanks to a wonderful therapist named Chris and of course the support of my parents, I was able to make it through all these times.

Recently, as I have started implementing good habits into my life, I have become more and more convinced that a lack of good habits was one of the main causes of the mental health struggles that I had. I know it wasn’t the only one, as I mentioned I did have a few losses and there were other circumstances that could have also contributed, but I do sincerely believe that it was a lack of good habits that made it such a long, grueling process for me to overcome anxiety and depression. So let’s talk about this, what kind of habits did I have (and what kind of habits was I missing)? 

Without a doubt, the single worst habit that I had (and still have to this day, although I am MUCH better now) was my usage of my phone and my constant consumption of media. Back then, whenever I was feeling down, my first reaction was always to go on my phone or to go on youtube and try to find something funny or comforting that would make me feel better. I think this is a very common habit amongst people today, particularly in or around my age group. The reason why this is such a dangerous and common habit is because it actually works, it truly can have a positive effect – but only for a short amount of time before you go back to how you felt before. Bad habits such as smoking cigarettes quite literally accomplish nothing of use, neither for the body nor for the mind. They are simply an indulgence that people choose to do because…why? I don’t really know, I don’t smoke. But an addiction to social media often happens because of the momentary positive effect that it can have. Sometimes when I was feeling depressed, I was able to find a video on YouTube or TikTok that made me laugh, that helped me forget about my bad feelings. Now I just want to clarify, I wasn’t constantly depressed and anxious, for me it was quite off and on, where I’d have a good week and then maybe a bad few weeks, then maybe a good month and a bad two or three months. In any case, for much of my time as a teenager, I spent entire days after school just indulging in online content, from Youtube to Netflix to Tiktok. And yet, when I finally put my phone away for the night, I noticed that I often still felt empty, that I still felt anxious, that I was still unhappy. This then spiraled into another two bad habits: going to bed way too late (because I was afraid of turning off my phone and feeling so empty again) and being on my phone right before going to sleep, which affected the quality of my sleep. These two bad habits often resulted in me feeling very tired due to a lack of good quality sleep. This fatigue, in turn, took away my motivation and held me back from picking up better habits such as studying more often and going to the gym. Have you noticed how quickly it spirals? Using my phone too much quickly turned into going to bed way too late which manifests in fatigue and thus takes away energy that I could have used to better myself. In addition to a social media addiction, I did have a few other bad habits. Firstly, I was a huge procrastinator and waited until the very last moment possible to get anything done. I also have to admit that I lied to people way too often. I never lied about important things, and never with important people such as my friends or family, but I definitely told a fair amount of little white lies to teachers, coaches, and other people that I interacted with on a regular basis. Sometimes I knew something that I figured would be unproductive to bring up, so I would simply agree with someone and move on. Other times, I lied to teachers about if I had studied, if I’d read the textbook, etc. I know that these are common, relatively harmless things, but I’m not proud of the fact that I used to lie so much, and honestly I think it’s shocking how common lying is. Most people tell a couple lies each day, and while my lies were essentially harmless I’d still classify it as a very bad habit. Another thing is that I would often lie about little things regarding myself in order to fit in better in a social or professional situation. Sometimes in life you find yourself in a situation in which telling the truth, your truth, your true feelings about something, could be a lot more difficult than “going with the flow” and agreeing with the people around you. But I feel that this can weigh heavily on someone, and that we should all make the effort to be 100% honest as often as possible. Do I still tell a few lies here and there? Of course, we all tell harmless lies often, sometimes it’s automatic. We lie about how our day is going, or how we feel about something that happened in the workplace, or a million other unimportant possibilities. It’s normal. But I have recently made the effort to be honest in every single situation that I can be, and I find that I just feel a lot better about myself because of that. Writing this episode is part of that, too. Part of the journey of self-improvement is being fully honest with yourself, acknowledging that you are an imperfect person with flaws, and then doing the best that I can to eliminate those flaws in a healthy and productive manner. 

It’s difficult because not only are bad habits so easy and comfortable to pick up, but they also often lead to other bad habits forming. In English, we call this a “slippery slope”: once you take your first step onto the slope of bad habits, you can quickly find yourself sliding down, collecting more and more bad habits and finding yourself further and further from the top. However, no matter how far you’ve slid down the slope, it is ALWAYS possible to recover, to start going back uphill, to start becoming better. And that’s exactly what I’ve been doing so far this year, and what I will continue doing for the rest of my life. So, let’s talk about some good habits that I have picked up recently which have significantly improved my life. My hope is that you’ll be able to add these habits to your daily life as well, and we can all improve our lives and ourselves one step at a time! 

First and foremost, without a doubt the most important good habit that I have right now is that I go to the gym. I go to the gym 7 days a week, as soon as I wake up on weekends and after I finish work on work days. I mostly do weight training on a three day split, whereby I do legs and shoulders one day, then chest and triceps another day, then back and biceps on the third day. I constantly repeat through that cycle, and about once a week I also do an intense cardio session on a bike. I started consistently going to the gym about 6 weeks ago, at the end of January, and since then I have already seen big improvements in my body which has been incredibly motivating. Obviously, due to the fact that I have put on quite a bit of muscle, I physically look a lot better than I did before, which helps massively with my self confidence. I have always been quite confident in myself as a person, in my personality and qualities, but now I am starting to really feel good about my body which is incredibly powerful. I have never disliked the way I look at all, but I feel much, MUCH better like this, and I know that this is only the beginning! Guys, I cannot stress this point enough. Whether you lift weights, do cardio, go swimming, or play a sport, exercise every day or as often as possible is absolutely vital for good physical and mental health, it’s as simple as that. Exercise is key to improving self confidence, becoming disciplined, and of course keeping your body as healthy as possible. Good sleep and a good diet also go hand in hand with exercise. If you exercise, you are more likely to sleep longer and more deeply, which will also leave you feeling better and more likely to accomplish good things on a day to day basis. Eating well will complement your exercise as you are more likely to build muscle, and not to mention the fact that our brains and bodies need nutrients to function at the highest level possible. If you aren’t already doing them, three most important things that you can do to start really improving yourself and taking control of your life are establishing an exercise routine, eating well, and sleeping well. You will be amazed at how much better you feel! I found that I really started to feel the positive effects about two weeks after I started gaining control over these three good habits: I am happier, more energetic, less stressed, and mentally sharper than ever before. As I said to my friend the other day, “I feel like I’m functioning at 150%!”

Now, aside from the three basics, there are a handful of other good habits that I have implemented into my daily routine which have improved my life significantly. The first one that I’d like to talk about is cold showers. I know, I know! Cold showers??? Gross!! Don’t worry, I used to think exactly like that. But you really have to trust me on this one, guys. I promise you that it’s so worth it! Since the beginning of February, I have taken a cold shower every single day, and I honestly do plan on keeping up this routine for the rest of my life, it has only helped me and I see no reason why I should stop! So, why do cold showers? Well, quite surprisingly there are several scientifically proven health benefits to it! I won’t go too deeply into it, but consistent exposure to cold showers has been found to help reduce inflammation in the body, lose fat, and boost the immune system, among other things. But for me, these physical health benefits are nothing compared to what the cold shower does for mentally. Every single morning, whether I wake up leisurely at 9:00 AM or I get up at 4:30 AM for work, I wake myself up with a cold shower. And when I say cold, I mean it’s freezing. No matter how many times I do it, I still hate the thought of getting under that water. I still lose my breath for a second because of the physical shock of the cold water on my skin (though I have gotten much better at controlling my breathing). The fact is, cold showers are hard. Sometimes they feel brutal, especially at the beginning. But that’s the whole point! If you start your day off by successfully getting through an incredibly uncomfortable experience (while simultaneously giving yourself a boost of energy and knowing all the physical health benefits), you set yourself up for success. You’ve won a mental battle with yourself. Every time you take that first step under the water, you’re choosing to win, despite the discomfort. It is incredibly powerful for the brain. I feel cold showers teach you that you do have to be uncomfortable sometimes, you do have to do things that you don’t want to do or that seem difficult in order to succeed. And above all else, you master the art of discipline. You gain control over your mind, your desires, your motivation, even right down to the way you breathe. It’s surprising how little control most people have over themselves these days, myself included. Distractions and addictions are everywhere in today’s society, and one of the greatest and most powerful things that you can do is to take that control back. Cold showers are perfect for this!

After starting to exercise, eat well, sleep well, and take cold showers, the next thing that I wanted to do was beat my procrastination. I am so hard wired to procrastinate, it’s not even funny. I spent most of my teenage years leaving things until absolutely necessary. Whenever I did a deep clean of my bedroom, it always ended up getting messy again. Why? Because I waited. I didn’t need to organize my desk because it’s not that bad yet, I don’t even use it that much anyway. No, I don’t need to take that plate upstairs right now. I can dust my walls later, who cares, no one’s coming over today. Thoughts like these eventually result in a very big job to do all at once, whereas if I had been disciplined and cleaned something or organized something as soon as it needed to happen, I would maybe spend 5-10 minutes MAXIMUM per day cleaning my bedroom, as opposed to the two hours that I had to put in after a month or two without doing any organizing. And you might say to me, “well Dylan, 5-10 minutes per day adds up to a lot more than 2 hours over the course of a month”. And you’re right! But think about the conditions that you’re living in. It’s true, at the end of the month you can spend two hours one day and make everything shiny again. But for the last 10 or 15 days of that month, that room will be disorganized, dirty, and just not a nice space to live or entertain in. Whereas if you dedicated just 5 or 10 minutes, 5 or 10 short minutes that we all have (but just waste on tiktok or youtube or netflix) then your room would ALWAYS stay perfectly clean. Think about the impression that you make, not only on other people but on yourself. Do you think it’s good for your mental health to walk into your bedroom and see a disaster? Of course not! The state of someone’s personal space says a lot about them. With a clean room, every time you see it you can be proud of yourself for maintaining an organized and healthy lifestyle. That’s why I have recently picked up the habits of making my bed as soon as I wake up in the morning, keeping my bedroom tidy, and now that I’m living alone, cleaning and organizing my kitchen and bathroom every single day. I find that these habits have helped me beat procrastination. Now, don’t get me wrong, I still procrastinate a lot (I’ve procrastinated while writing this episode!) but I have gotten better, and I am going to keep working to hardwire my brain and take control of my time management. 

The final good habit that I’ve added to my life and that I’d like to talk about right now is keeping myself busy. In 2023, specifically in the past month and a half, I have had more things to do than ever before. And no, unfortunately, I do not mean socially busy. I was incredibly socially busy for the month of January. I had a bit of time before I moved to Toronto and started working, so I dedicated most of that month to having fun, going out with friends, and enjoying life. And that’s all well and good! But it can’t last forever. I am now of the mindset that I have to earn that time with friends, I want to earn going to that hockey game or seeing that movie. I want to accomplish multiple meaningful things every day. Guys, I’m not saying that you have to shut out your friends and stop doing fun things. I am all about living that life: going out, eating great food, talking with people, traveling – these are some of the most exciting, rewarding, fulfilling experiences that life has to offer! But balance is key. We often reward ourselves for having done the bare minimum, and sometimes without having done anything at all. I sure used to. And I believe that deep down, even though we do laugh and enjoy that social time, it can have a negative effect on the conscience. At the moment, I am in a state of imbalance, but surprisingly it’s not towards social life at all, I’m actually doing way more work than I am doing social things. I’m in a different city without the majority of my friends and family, I live alone,  and I work most days, so these days I am being less social than ever before. And truthfully, I don’t think this is a healthy option either, as I do sometimes find myself missing that social interaction a lot. We really do need it, we are social animals. But what I have done to implement this good habit is to focus all that energy that I’d normally use for my social life into more productive things. I have multiple activities that I do every day to take up my time, I keep myself busy, and I am actually happier these days than I’ve ever been! Trust me, it is extraordinarily difficult to not be at least content when you accomplish meaningful things every day. On an average weekday, I get up early for work, take a cold shower, go to work and back, go to the gym, do some work on my podcast, study languages for a while, and then learn my lines for the next day of work. Of course, I often fit in time for a couple conversations with a friend or family member and maybe a youtube video or two. I’ve only just recently realized how long a day truly is! If you sleep for 8 hours every night (which most of us don’t) then you have 16 hours of time every single day. Let’s say you work 12 hours at work (which most of us definitely do not), you’ve still theoretically got time to dedicate an hour to the gym, one hour to an activity of your choosing (some days it could be productive, others it could be dinner or a coffee with a friend), and finally two hours to cook and eat dinner, catch up with your social life, and wind down with an episode of a show or a few chapters of a book before bedtime. That’s assuming that you are working/studying for 12 hours in a day, and maintaining a good sleep schedule! And then, you also have the weekends to do whatever you want, after 5 extremely productive days. So I’ll say it again, days are quite long, and I believe that one of the best good habits that I’ve been trying to implement is being extremely conscious of what I use my time for, and trying to keep myself busy for as much of this time as possible while still maintaining a healthy amount of relaxation and social life. 

I hope you’ve enjoyed hearing about the good habits that I’ve implemented into my life this year! I want to reiterate: I am not quite a master of any of these. I mean, I do go to the gym and take a cold shower every single day, but it’s true that I still procrastinate, I still waste some time, I still leave a dish in the sink from time to time. But in general, I do these things a LOT less than I used to, and these days when I do I also feel quite guilty about it, which motivates me to do it even less! I’m not a robot, guys, I may not be a perfect human that has a perfect day with no flaws or time wasting, it’s just not super realistic. But what is very realistic is completely changing your daily routine in a way that drastically improves your physical health by keeping you well rested, well nourished, and in good shape, and drastically improves your mental health by giving you more productive activities to dedicate time to, cleaner spaces, and most importantly control over your own mind.

So where do I hope to go from here? Well, it goes without saying that I will have to continuously work on maintaining and expanding upon these good habits as I grow and my situation continues to change. Procrastination is still my worst flaw, and every day I am attempting to take steps towards beating it once and for all. I am also going to continue to stay as busy as possible. I want to always have a language on the go, a passion project such as this podcast, and as I grow older I would love to be involved in business ventures on the side as well. The two biggest habits that I don’t currently do but that I want to add to my life are reading and journaling. I have recently read a couple books, but I wouldn’t say that I read habitually. I get really into a book, finish it in like two days, and then don’t pick up another book for a couple months. There is zero consistency in that! It goes without saying that reading is an incredible thing to do for the brain. I am really interested in reading about stoic philosophy, and when I finish work on the job I currently have I plan to dedicate some more time each day towards learning and reading about this philosophy. I don’t even know if I identify with it yet (I think I probably will), I don’t know the history of it, I don’t know anything! But the general concept fascinates me, and so I’d like to get into it once I have some more time on my hands (“time on my hands” is just a funny English phrase, I simply mean once I have more free time!). Finally, I believe that journaling is a really important activity and in fact one that I am committing myself to starting from today onwards (I ordered a journal on Amazon yesterday)! I don’t exactly know how I will go about it, but I know that I will use it to record the events of the day, reflect on how I felt (whether good or bad) and what I can do to improve this, organize my thoughts and make a to-do list, among other things. Perhaps in a few months or a year I will do an episode about stoic philosophy or journaling, that way you guys will know that I stayed committed to my goals!

So there you have it! That was my spiel about good habits, and I really hope that you enjoyed it. I believe that going on a journey of self-improvement and really sticking to it is the most powerful thing that you can do for yourself. Starting small with basics like exercise and diet provide you with a great base to expand the scope of your life and evolve as a person! My journey has only just begun, and I am still extremely far from being finished (the truth is, I think it’s a journey that lasts a lifetime, because we are always changing and growing)! But I know that it is going to take me to some amazing places. I really hope that hearing a bit about my experience has inspired you, and if so, don’t forget to let me know in the comments of my instagram, @englishwithdylanpod. 

Have a great week everyone, and until next time!