Ep #30: The Science Behind Creating New Habits

You are listening to the Overthinkers Guide to Joy episode 30. This is the one
we're going to talk all about habits, the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Let's dive in. This is a podcast for overthinkers, overdoers, and overachievers who
are tired of feeling over anxious and just want to feel better. I'm your host,
certified life coach, Jackie de Crinis. Hey there and welcome back.
So for those of you who know me and have worked with me and /or have been
listening to this podcast, you know that my foundational work is all about healthy
habits to keep you happy, healthy and less stressed. And although my principles are
founded upon my own experience, my own research and my client's success stories,
there is a ton of literature and research done on the subject of habits. Habits at
their best are simply healthy routines, processes, or regimens. Habits at their worst
are unconscious, unwanted behaviors. And at the very extreme,
both can be a result of addictive behavior. But for today's discussion, I'm not
going into the world of addiction, I just want to talk about habits, the good ones
and the bad ones, and what makes us successful at adopting them and what makes us
struggle with maintaining them or giving them up.
So today, when I first sat down to record this episode, I was thinking, does my
audience really want to hear about habits again? 'Cause I do talk about them a lot.
and I spend a lot of time coaching on them, but I also spend a lot of time
practicing them and studying them and refining them. And I realized that part of the
success of developing good habits is to have constant reminders about them. And if
I'm always learning new things about habits, I can only imagine that my audience
would also wanna learn new tricks and new tools as well. So look, habits have been
the cornerstone for many psychological and sociological studies around the world for
decades. And currently, two of the most talked about experts, gurus,
bestselling authors on the subject of habits are B .J. Fogg, the Stanford researcher
who wrote the New York Times bestseller, Tiny Habits, and the expert, James Clear,
who wrote the book, Atomic Habits. Now, both of these authors, speakers, researchers
focus on the importance of habits. And as evidenced by the title of their books,
both believe that the way to ensure success of developing a new habit is by
starting with very small baby steps. Now, I believe a set of daily habits is a
good foundation for not just physical health, but also emotional health. And you'll
hear me use the acronym, HOME, doing your daily homework as sort of the one that I
use and recommend. And just to recap, the acronym of HOME stands for hydrate,
observe your levels, meditation, exercise. And while by no means is this list meant
to be exhaustive, and there's a lot more detail, which you can listen on my
episodes one through four, these are my basic four. These are my non -negotiables and
Everyone who works with me knows that these principles are the ones that I recommend
as a baseline of good healthy habits what I've learned and I've said this also
before is Most people who start with me Maybe they have one of those things on the
list. Maybe they're pretty good at adapting two or three pretty quickly But what's
always interesting is how there's always one or two things on the list of four that
feels either very difficult to start or maintain as a daily habit. But here's the
thing, even adopting one of these habits can make a really dramatic shift in
people's lives. I have clients who, the only thing they do on that list of four is
start drinking more water. And even that one can bring clarity and calmness and
motivation to take on other good habits. But this episode is not to debate whether
these are the best habits to adopt for optimal energy and stress reduction. This
episode is to discuss the behavioral science of why we are successful or not when
adopting good habits or trying to get rid of unwanted or bad ones. So when trying
to adopt a good habit or give up a bad one, most people fail to do so in one of
two ways, either by not getting started at all or by not being able to maintain
it. So BJ Fogg, the one who wrote "Tiny Habits," postulates that this is not about
willpower. He says the success or failure of adopting a new habit or relinquishing
an old one comes down to three basic things, motivation, ability,
and trigger. He believes that in order to have success, we must have all three of
these elements to achieve it. So here is his classic example. Let's say you came
home from the dentist and you have a cavity and your dental hygienist says, or your
dentist says, "You might need to floss more, but you always forget to floss, or
maybe you hate to floss. You'd prefer to have healthy teeth and a bright smile and
not have another cavity." So that's your motivation, and you know that flossing will
help all those things. But how do you make it a habit? Well, he says,
"Once you get home, oftentimes you just forget, or it just feels like too much
work, or you don't even think about it until the next time you're in the dentist
chair. Well, to help ensure your success, you need a trigger to remind you to do
something. So you might want to keep the dental floss right next to your toothbrush
or toothpaste. Another trigger would be to use a concept called stacking.
This is where you've already got the habit in place and you just simply add to it.
So you're already used to brushing your teeth. BJ Fogg would say, if you're already
in the habit of brushing your teeth, then make the commitment to just flossing one
tooth. Sounds silly who flosses one tooth, right? But the idea is that just getting
in the habit of opening the dental floss, tearing off a piece, putting it in your
mouth, flossing one tooth, goes to the next category,
which is ability, because it's really easy to floss one tooth. And he says if you
start doing that one day, you might floss two teeth on day two, and so on and so
on. But the idea is just to create the habit of flossing one. So saying it in
your head or out loud with this pattern. So after I brush my teeth, I floss one
tooth. He goes on to do this with other behaviors he's wanted to change in his
life. In his case, he wanted to get in better shape. So he started doing one push
-up a day after brushing his teeth. So he would say, "After I brush my teeth, I
will do one push -up." And he said that he was confident he could do one push -up.
And then once he started doing it, he felt successful. And so he started doing one
every day and quickly that progressed to two, and then it was five, and then it
was 10, and then it was 20, and then it was 50. But the point was, he always did
his push -ups after he brushed his teeth. Same with the habit of flossing. So author
James Clear, the one who wrote atomic habits, has his own take on motivation,
ability, trigger. So he took those three categories and kind of expanded them and
renamed them. And he puts them into four categories. Q, craving, response,
reward. Q is basically the same thing as trigger. I mean, what cues you to indulge
in an unwanted habit? For some people, it might be like their sofa and television
and late night snacking. They see their sofa and TV and they immediately crave
cookies, ice cream, popcorn or chips. So what James Clear says is the first thing
you want to do to get rid of a bad habit is remove the cue. And if you can
avoid buying things like late night snacking foods that create that habit, that would
be best. But if you live in a family or a house where it's not possible 'cause
you maybe have roommates or kids or people who like those kinds of foods, then put
them inside of something or make them more difficult to access. He even suggests
things like put put something in tinfoil, Tupperware, or place on a high shelf. With
less visibility, with less accessibility, you're less likely to create the cue,
which leads to the craving, which leads to the response. So can you find a
substitute for a craving? Well, studies have been shown that when readily accessible,
healthy snacks are available. Most people will choose them. It has to do with ease
and proximity. So he believes that success in creating or eliminating a new habit
comes down to basically two things. Number one, getting started with something tiny.
This is the ability that BJ Fogg referred to. James Clear believes in applying a
two -minute rule or less. That is literally something that takes less than two
minutes. It goes back to flossing one tooth or doing one push -up, but the other is
to change your environment. So this is that trigger we were talking about. Now the
trigger might be physical or social. If you're triggered by something in your
physical space, like if you literally cannot sit on your sofa and watch TV without
snacking, then maybe you want to find a different habit from sitting on your sofa
and watching TV. Maybe reading a book doesn't create that same snacking habit or
maybe playing a game doesn't create that same snacking habit. In other words, change
the trigger if you can't change the environment. Sometimes there's other things that
trigger you in your physical space, like for smokers if they have a favorite ashtray
or for candy eaters leaving candy in a bowl for people in your office or on your
coffee table. Maybe you need to remove that so you get out of the habit. Sometimes
it's just having alcohol in your bar if you're finding yourself over -drinking or
wanting to break an alcohol habit in the evening. Again, get rid of the triggers
when you can. But triggers can also be in your social environment. So if you
surround yourself with people who like to eat junk food, binge watch TV, over -drink
or don't exercise, then find a tribe of people who will support you in your new
goals. This is why joining a club, a team, a workout community, like CrossFit,
Peloton, SoulCycle, or a church, a temple, or other kind of group can be very
helpful in rewiring your habits. This is why AA, Weight Watchers,
and so many other like -minded communities have been so successful for decades,
because Success is often found with support from other people with similar goals.
So how can we apply these principles to my own recommended daily habits of home or
homework? Well, let's go through the list. Like with hydration, I recommend drinking
eight glasses of water a day. But if you're not drinking any water, then eight
glasses may be a very tall order. So start with one. First thing in the morning
when you walk into your kitchen before your coffee or your tea or your breakfast or
feeding your dog or your kids just drink one glass of water first thing in the
morning. That may do a lot of things. First of all, you'll feel better.
We wake up very dehydrated and a lot of times what we think is hunger or need for
caffeine is actually just dehydration. So start there,
one glass of water first thing in the morning, and then see if you can build on
it. Maybe it gets easier. Maybe you start the habit of doing that before every
meal, lunch, dinner, snack, maybe before bed. Before you know it,
you'll be up to four glasses. And then maybe you'll develop a natural thirst and
you'll get to eight. But just start with one. Make it easy. Okay,
the second one is observe your levels. So if you're not accustomed to focusing on
what you're eating, and again, observe your levels just means are you hungry or are
you tired? And when was the last time you ate something healthy? When was the last
time you rested? So for the first one, when you're hungry or you think you're
hungry, instead of grabbing sugar, caffeine, or highly processed foods like cookies,
crackers, chips. What if you had one meal or snack a day that was a healthy
protein with veggies? Maybe your afternoon snack becomes a handful of almonds and a
piece of fruit and a glass of water. So just changing that habit to not eating
junk food for a snack and eating a healthy snack changes your self -concept and it's
interesting how when we build that tiny habit, we start to want to do more and
more of it. Same with if you're feeling tired. What if you started the habit of
resting for 15 minutes during the day? Or if you don't have that ability, what if
you went to bed 15 minutes earlier at night? And again, just a tiny little change
could make a very big difference in you feeling fatigued. So let's move on to the
M in home, meditation. So a lot of clients will tell me I just can't meditate.
I can't close my eyes, I don't have 20 minutes. It makes me anxious. It actually
makes my anxiety worse. I don't know what to do, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So
what about starting a meditation practice for one minute? Just closing your eyes for
60 seconds at the same time every day. And again, go back to that stacking goal.
So where is it where it's easy for you to find one minute?
So maybe I like to meditate when I first get out of bed. I brush my teeth, I
feed my dog, and then I meditate. But maybe before you get out of bed, you take
one minute sitting up so you're not going back to sleep, you close your eyes,
and you meditate for 60 seconds. It becomes a habit. And it's small and it's
doable. So when you want to create a habit, they say make it obvious,
make it easy, make it attractive. When you want to break a habit, you want to make
it invisible or hard, make it unattractive. When you start the tiny habits or atomic
habits, James Clear says you cast a vote for being that kind of person that you
want to be. For example when you make your bed every day or even some days or
even once you can then say I'm a tidy person I'm a person who makes their bed.
Let's say you want to start a journal or you want to start writing or you want to
start keeping a diary or you just want to be somebody who writes. When you write
one page. You cast your vote by being a writer. So you don't need to complete a
novel to call yourself a writer. Just write one page. You get to change the
narrative. So things like I have a sweet tooth. I'm not athletic. I have no self
-control. I'm bad with money. All of those things are keeping you from developing new
good habits. You're holding yourself back with a label that either somebody once gave
you or you once thought about yourself, but you don't stand a chance for success if
you keep adopting that narrative. I used to have a friend who always referred to
herself as an athlete because she loves sports. She was often suffering from
mysterious ailments, asthma, allergies, chronic fatigue syndrome, so many different
things. But no matter how sick or injured she was, she never lost her identity as
an athlete and was always happy when she was feeling well or even when she wasn't
to surf, to play, to ski, to go out and do something because she saw herself as
an athlete. Now, I never saw myself as an athlete. I never played a sport until I
was in my 30s. I didn't go to physical education for all of high school. And you
might have heard my admission in an earlier podcast about me writing myself a note
to get out of PE in high school and then smoking cigarettes in the parking lot
with my friends. And it's funny how often people look at me sideways when they hear
this because I really make a conscious effort now to be very healthy. But that was
in the 1980s and I didn't know better. But after 20 years now of playing tennis
and doing yoga and most recently writing my Peloton and playing pickleball, I will
often hear other people say to me, oh, you're naturally athletic. And I wanna laugh
'cause I wanna tell them, no, I smoke cigarettes in high school and didn't go to
PE. But instead of correcting them or instead of correcting myself, I just simply
say, Yeah, I am, I'm athletic. And it's okay that I adopted that belief and that
statement and that self -concept very late in my life. So I became someone who
exercises, I became someone who likes sports, I became someone who is active. Yes,
I've had my share of injuries and age -related conditions, but I still consider
myself an athlete now. Now, we get to choose our own narrative by changing our
habits. And we do that by doing one tiny habit at a time.
And by changing our thoughts about ourselves, we get rid of those old labels that
are limiting our success. And success begets success, which is why you need to start
with one tiny habit. And when you're successful with that, you're more likely to do
more and more. And here's the thing. You can start today.
Identify one thing that you would like to change in your life, whether it's adopting
a new habit or breaking an old one, and just make one tiny change today.
Now, people assume, because I write and I coach and I podcast on these issues, that
I'm just perfect, that I never eat sugar, that I never drink alcohol, that I never
skip a day of exercise. And none of that is true. I'm human and I have my good
days and my bad days. But I don't let one bad day or one bad choice or one need
to step out, kick out, or have some fun as failure,
and I don't let it rewrite the narrative about myself. I am still an athlete,
I am still a meditator, I am still a healthy eater, and sometimes I have Coca
-Cola, and sometimes I have a drink, and sometimes I skip a day of exercise, and
sometimes I sleep in, and sometimes I'm not perfect, because I can't be perfect,
because I was never perfect, and I don't aspire for perfection. As I always say,
I aspire to make this all a practice and that's what I teach my clients to do.
We are not aiming for perfection. We are aiming for creating new habits and better
practices.
So make it easy, make it simple, make it fun. But most of all,
praise yourself for your successes, even if it's one tooth, one push -up,
one night of not late night snacking, one less drink, one minute of meditation,
one glass of water. All of those things are successful. All right,
friends, that's what I have for you today. I look forward to talking to you next
time. Have a great week and bye for now.