🔫 Vietnam War, Heroin, & a Habit-Building Cheat Code

Happy late father’s day to all the dads!

We celebrated last weekend by hiking the Pulaski trail in Wallace, Idaho where the largest ever forest fire in the United States happened back in 1910. It’s now lush, green, and covered in 100+ foot tall pines. Amazing how nature always finds a way to bounce back.

And check this out…

Virgil Built an education company from $0 to $10M in 4 years. Now, he shares how you can build, launch and sell your course.

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You’re soaked to the bone, dodging bullets and exploding shrapnel, and you just saw your best friend die.

How do you cope?

For American soldiers in Vietnam, this was reality. And unfortunately, some 35% of them coped with heroin.

But get this: despite heroin being the 2nd most addictive substance, only 5% of veterans became re-addicted within a year of returning home.

How?!

All the social cues that triggered use and abuse overseas didn’t exist when they got home.

Turns out your environment matters.

Some gurus take this and say “great, so if you can’t build new habits, just move far away and start a new life.”

But isn’t that just lame advice?

Not because it might not work… because it might.

…or there isn’t evidence to support it… because there is.

…but because it’s extremely impractical for most people!

Like, how many people could really do that for the sake of a habit?

So I found a cheat code to circumvent this problem.

See, the idea of going somewhere new is based partly on the idea of being around new people.

But let’s be real - it’s 2023.

Most people go online to connect with others. Some even prefer it.

Which is kinda sad.

But there’s a silver lining - because I leveraged this very fact to build the writing habit that has resulted in you reading this publication right now.

So in that sense, you could say it’s been a success!

Here’s how I used online communities to build a consistent writing habit:

1. Stopped using Facebook and Instagram. My feeds made me sad.

2. Joined Twitter, and ONLY followed the kind of people I want to be more like as a writer and entrepreneur. (hint: I didn’t follow anyone I knew personally)

3. Mute people who post anything except for the content that motivates and inspires me.

Since doing this, I’ve more than doubled the number of people who read this newsletter and never missed sending a single issue. Plus I’ve made incredible friends on Twitter who support me in building the habits necessary to grow. Feels like I’ve found a tribe where I belong.

Point is, you don’t always have to change your physical environment to build better habits. Try changing your digital environment instead.

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Step 1: Pick a habit you wanna build

Step 2: Logout of your social media accounts. Create a new account with the sole purpose of following and engaging with a community of people who inspire you in relation to your habit. (Twitter’s great for this)

Step 3: Make this your new social media habit. Instead of a mindless doom scroll, you may as well be educated, inspired, and supported by likeminded positive people who are striving to improve in the same ways you are.

Note: You’ll need to curate what the algorithm thinks you like. This means unfollowing, marking posts as “not interested”, or muting accounts from your feed.

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Me: Your uncle wants to go to school to be a pilot.

Her: He can’t be a pirate, he needs to be my uncle!

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Thanks for reading!

- Kody

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P.S. These habit examples take me 3 hours to write.

It only takes you 3 seconds to share.