The Science behind How to Change your Habits

For 30 years I've helped thousands of people across the planet to change their habits over the course of this episode I'm going to be walking you through everything you need to know about changing habits we're going to start off by talking about the history of habit change we're going to look at the Neuroscience of changing habits we're going to talk about the methods that research shows actually work in helping Us to make the changes we want in our life and we're even going to explore four of the most important books ever written in the area

of habits overall this episode is going to be transformational in the sense it's going to help you to be able to change whatever habit you want by the end of this episode you're going to be able to change your life I'm looking forward to bringing you through this let's get started welcome to another episode of The Changing Minds podcast I'm Owen Fitz Patrick and today we are going to be changing your life I just wanted to make that as dramatic as possible really what we're going to be talking about today is changing habits and habit

change is something that I've been doing for a long time now when you think to yourself Owen come on mate you're saying to yourself I've been changing habits for 30 years but sure you look like you're in your 20s that's impossible well I Have to share that I'm actually in my 40s but because of the habits that I've been engaging in over the course of my life that's why I look so young if you're saying to yourself oh and you don't look young I don't want you as a listener to this podcast so just leave

but anyway today we're going to be talking about changing habits we're going to look at how can you change whatever it is that you want in your life what are the kinds of things that You can do and we're going to do so the same way we always do it we're going to look at the history of habit change what have people said about habits Through the Ages we're going to talk about the neuros signs of habit change what actually goes on in the mind whenever we make changes in terms of our habits we're going

to look at getting ready to change what are the things you can do to prepare yourself for and then we're going to explore some of The insights from the best books written about this there's a very well-known bestseller it's like New York Times bestseller ridiculous amount of copy sold called Atomic Habits by James clear we're going to dive into that approach and extract from that the most important things you need to know we're then going to go to other books like tiny habits by BJ fog which is a get again another popular H book all

about habits and a few years before both of those were Released there was a book called The Power of Habits by Charles doig which was once again a bestseller and full of great wisdom there was also another book called How to change by catty Milkman and so I'm going to be taking the most important elements for each of those talking a little bit about how their approaches differ but all in service of helping you have all of these skills so you know exactly what you need to do to be able to change habits and we're

going To finish off with research based evidence-based practices that are most likely to help you along your journey to success and those evidence-based practices might be things that have already been mentioned by the likes of James or by the likes of BJ or the likes of kti or Charles in their different books but what's most important is you're going to be walking away with specific actionable things to do moving forward to allow you to change your Habits and therefore to change your life now just a quick little primer for you in the uh show notes

you'll see that there's a really cool video actually you'll see a clip of it coming up next to me all a video that I did a few years ago a little cartoon video which you can still find called Breaking Bad Habits changing habits or Breaking Bad Habits and you can still find it on my YouTube channel you can see it there but we will have in the description we will have Below we will have the link to this video so definitely we're checking that out not now but later uh it's pretty cool it's like a

like a little hand drawing things and I'm like saying things and it's fun but before we do that let's explore well what do we mean when we say habits when we say habits how do we Define a habit so a habit is an automatic pattern of behavior it's an automatic pattern or behavior or action that we take part of A routine that's performed regularly and often subconsciously something we do without even thinking usually in response to specific cues or triggers in the environment a routine is a little different to me routines are sequences of action

so sequences potentially of habits or behaviors that are again performed regularly often at the same time or in the same order now routine is a little bit more conscious than a habit but also you could have habits that are Part of routines so the aim is is that and one of the techniques that we'll talk about later is how can you start to incorporate a new habit into a routine that you already have to make it more likely that you'll be executing that particular habit moving forward so some really good stuff to do with habits

and routines there we'll also be talking a little bit about motivation here motivation is obviously the desire we have to be able to take the actions that We need to and discipline which is a decision that we make in terms of exerting our will to be able to ensure that we do what we need to do regardless of how we feel but I want to start off by talking about the history of habit change and so Aristotle first talked about the importance of practice and he really described how practice allows us to develop virtual and

moral habits so in order for us to be able to become virtuous and for us to be able to be the Kind of people that we would strive to be we need to be practicing virtuous actions on an ongoing basis William James the famous psychologist talked about how we're able to build habits through neurological Pathways where we use repetition and he talked about how important those habits were Ivan Pavlov does the name Pavlov ring a bell do you get it because the was to do with the the dogs that salivated and Pavlov rang a bell

at the same time as The dog salivating so every time we rang the bell the dogs would salivate so initially what happened was Pablo brought brought a bunch of dogs in I think I've talked about this in a prior episode but let me just give you the primary so Pavlov is there minding his own business and he's Russian so he's like uh I want to see what will happen if I um I think actually he wasn't doing anything psychological I think he was Actually focusing on something else and he was feeding the dogs but he

rang the bell at the same time as the dogs were eating or getting food and then a little bit later on he rang the bell and noticed that the dog was like that wasn't what they were doing but they were doing some sort of like mannerisms that looked like they were like salivating and he goes oh well that is interesting when I ring the bell the dog salivates or looks to so he measured It and he realized yes indeed every time he rang the bell the dog salivated because the dog Associated the the bell with

the the food again we know from a dopam nergic perspective the dopamine was released into the dog's brain and the dog's like I want food now and the dog thought the food was coming because of the belt which kind of makees sense and that became known as classical conditioning and that became not only uh very interesting finding when we think About motivation but it also became something that allowed us to be able to learn more about habits because habits can be created and changed by creating different associations by classically conditioning ourselves in this way we

can create different associations so we feel differently about certain things that will then allow us to change our associations and therefore build new habits with new associations in other words we can start taking the feelings We want and associating them with the actions or behaviors we want to be doing and then we can take the behaviors we don't want to do and we can start to associate them with feelings that we don't want to have Instead This sort of behavioral approach was followed on by Edward Thorndike where he talked about the law of effect which

is that behaviors that typically are followed by satisfying consequences are more likely to be repeated and again John Watson and BF Skinner with his operant conditioning they followed along and talked about the importance of reinforcing Behavior so in other words if you want to engage in a new habit you reinforce that new habit you do something positive you give yourself a award as a result of doing that new habit and you're more likely to keep doing that new habit very interesting stuff and that this was all in the 20th century and whatnot there's a phrase

in Neuroscience called neurons That fire together wire together they are the words of Dr Carla shatz a lot of people associate them with Donald Hebb because he wrote a book similar to this but apparently Dr Carla shatz was the author or the speaker of those words and really in a nutshell what that means is that in order for us to be able to learn learn new things or build new habits for example neurons that fire together so when two neurons fire at the same time and create a sort of a connection wire Together this allows

them to form a sort of a connection this what we call a synoptic connection between two neurons which means that the more that we do this the more we create an association so that's how we're able to build habits because these two neurons are fired over and over again at the same time and therefore we start to associate the two things we start to execute that habit over and over again Elliot arenson talked about the Cog of dissonance Theory and this really explained how our discomfort with conflicting beliefs and behaviors uh can actually motivate habit

change in other words if you believe something about life or you believe something about yourself and that's different to the actions you take then you're more than likely going to be changing those actions to fit in with your the beliefs that you have and this really connects with another point we'll talk about James CLA talked about it but I've been using that principle for many many years which is the principle of identity in terms of Behavioral change is that if you want to be able to get a person that Chang their habits you need to

get them to start to see themselves as the kind of person who engages in that behavior and that's about reducing the cognitive dissonance which again we could say that we learned from the work there on cognitive dissonance theory James prasa and Carlo declemente in the 1980s talked about the trans theoretical model of Behavioral change which sounds ridiculously F fancy uh but in a nutshell it was really about okay what happens before you think about the Habit change a lot of it's about being ready for the Habit so it's precontemplation phase the contemplation phase the preparation

the action the maintenance it's this big long sort of uh technical sort of theory not necessarily very different to a lot of the other insights That we'll be getting as we go through the literature today but it still is description of intentional behavioral change so it's a a framework or model for intentional behavioral change there also Eric candle talked about changes in synaptic connection which underly learning so whenever we make changes that's one of the ways in which we're able to enhance our learning but also make changes in terms of the way we do things

and an grael talked About how the basil ganglia part of the brain is largely responsible for a lot of automatic behaviors there's also work from behavioral Economics work by the likes of Danny canaman Cas sunstein Richard Taylor Taylor and sunstein wrote a book called nudge which is full of great ideas and insights around organizing your environment to make it easier for you to change habits and there's all sorts of apps nowadays to change habits using an app as well There's lots of apps out there that Leverage The the wisdom or the signs of habit change

to help you to be better at doing that so let's talk about the neuroscience and the neurochemistry of habit change what is going on in your brain when you're changing your habits what's happening to me brain own tell me what's happening in my brain well first of all we have two systems what we tend to be thinking in we've systemed one which is the automatic way of thinking I Say what's 2 x two you say that's four it's the effortless way of thinking where we generalize we create shortcuts in our brain we make thinking easy

and then the other system that we use is the system we have to use whenever we got to use a lot of brain power we got to really think what's 492 multipli by 58 you got to really figure it out you got to use your brain that's what we call system two thinking and of course system one thinking is more automated so Whenever we have habits we've really thought processes or waves of thinking that are very automatic and effortless and whenever we are changing habits we need to make what's normal or effortless we need to

make it conscious again so in many ways you could think about it like this you've got your system one way of thinking which is something you're doing automatically you take something you're doing automatically you become conscious of it and you start working on it do I Really want to do this how can I change this in system to and then you build a new habit that you want instead and you try to then fit that into system one the idea is that you should not have to think about it it becomes automatic problem is sometimes

people say to me oh and how long does it take to change a habit and there's all sorts of people out there that will spew and I mean spew research at you they will say things like it takes seven days to change it it Takes 21 days to change it it takes 30 days to change it it takes 66 days to change that now they won't say it in that way because that's just the weird voice but they will give you all of these different things and my response to the question how long does it

take to change a habit could be it depends cuzz that's a good answer and it's a fair answer although it doesn't mean much but instead my answer is that's the wrong question cuz if you're asking yourself How long does it take to change a habit it means you're waiting for that moment where all of a sudden you don't have to put any effort in and instead the real question to ask is is how can you make sure that this becomes something that's an automatic part of your way of life from here on in and when

you start to ask that question your brain starts to go in that direction and you're much less likely to struggle with it it's also important to recognize that this Notion of mindset by Professor Carol dwam stford University that with a fixed mindset about our beliefs about our intelligence if we believe our intelligence is fixed and we can't do anything about it or if we believe that we can change it people with a growth mindset where they believe that they can change it they believe they can get better they believe that they can get smarter if

they put the effort in that's also something that's going to help you To be able to be more likely to make changes in your habits because some people will have a fixed mindset about their habits thinking it's just part of who I am it's just what I do and other people will have what we call a growth mindset about their habits where they believe look if I put the effort in I can change I can change I can change anyway let's look at the parts of the brain we first of all we'll start with the

basil ganglia which is a I kind of Like saying that basil ganglia it's kind of fun thing to say this stores automatic behaviors that we engage in in routines and it makes actions more efficient because it allows the brain to save energy so the basil ganglia I'm sure is one of the part of the brain that's like loving it when we're in system one it's like this is my thing this is my gig I love my system one I do that's what the basal ganglia would say if it was a person which it's not the

Prefontal cortex on the other hand that's probably more the system too we're talking about because this is involved in decision- making planning exerting control over Behavior this is kind of the the the less fun of all of our brain it's kind of like the boring one that's like going hey hey wait we need to make sure this is a good thing to do all right pre prefontal cortex come on tell us what you're supposed to do now we have to figure out is this but Actually we need the prefontal cortex cu the prefontal cortex if

you will is more the system 2 side of things right because it's getting us to analyze and conceptualize is this leading Us in the direction that we need to get to you've also got the hippocampus this is where the memory is stored this is the formation of new memories and spatial navigation as well it's involved in it works with the prefrontal cortex forming contextual and situational cues so it's Able to in it and going when I'm in this situation the hippocampus is the memory so when I'm in this situation then I need to engage in

this thing so it's almost like the basil ganglia is doing the automatic Behavior the prefrontal cortex is figuring out you know what's appropriate what's useful what habits do we need and then the hippocampus is storing the sort of the memory of the context or cues of when it's important to engage in the habit then there's the Amydala where it influences habits that are formed based on emotional responses and reinforcements whenever emotion is in the table the amigdalar is part of our brain that fires off signals whenever we experience something new unexpected so whenever we see

something new our migdala sort of helps us understand is this scary is this a danger or is this good is this an opportunity is this a thres we're kind of looking at it from that point of view Some of the neurochemicals involved in habit change well one of them is our old friend dopamine another episode about dopamine you'll check it out we'll we'll put it again in the show notes but you definitely got to check out that episode of dopamine if you like dopamine if you're like I wonder I'd love to know more about dopamine

I'm telling you that episode is a killer we dive into the stuff we're like learn everything you want to know About dop you learn in that episode it is absolutely I don't want to hyperb it or anything but I'm telling you it's great isn't it Mike isn't it great absolutely yeah yeah see Mike agrees and he's listening to a lot of the stuff I'm saying and he's like yeah help means the business so you learn more about that but in a nutshell when it comes to Habit change dopamine is connected towards it helps us to

reinforce the feelings and it allows us to drive towards the new Behavior and also dopamine can drive us towards the old habit as well so we need to regulate and modulate dopamine and we need to be able to boost it when it comes to the new habits that we want to engage in there's also glutamate which is involved in synoptic plasticity this is our brain's ability to change learning and memory formation so to learn new habits glutamate which is more like energy in terms of our brain that's an important chemical and neine Norepinephrine is also

also known as neur adrenaline this helps in focusing attention and sustaining effort during the early stages of habit formation so couple of chemicals they're important they're not the only ones but there's some of the things that are important in terms of habit change you also have synaptic plasticity this is our ability to be able to create new neural connections and if you think about it that's really what a habit is so we're Going to simplify it imagine you have a neuron connected to another neuron and that's habit a you want to change habit a to

Habit B well instead of this neuron going to that neuron you want this neuron going to a different neuron so you want to stop this Association and you want to increase the new Association and so why you would do that or how you would do that is you need to be able to establish a new conditioning whereby you're reducing the connection between a And b and you're increasing the connection between a and let's say C and by doing this by practicing the new habit over and over again your increasing the firing between those two whatever

neurons fire together wi together as Professor shat said but you're also decreas in the connections between a and b as well and the more that you increase the synoptic strength in the long term this is known as long-term potentiation or ltp few fancy Words there for you to say at parties to become the cool person because of course that's one of the reasons you listened to this episode isn't it um when it comes to habits let's talk about getting ready to change and when we get ready to change the first step to getting ready to

change any habit is to do what I call habit mapping and that's to figure out the answers to a few things first of all what's the Habit that you want to change what's the Habit That you want to get instead so what is the Habit you want to change and what is the new habit you want instead of it now if it's not a habit you want to change it's just a new habit then it's just what's the new habit but the first question is what what do you want moving forward what is the new

Behavior you want in the future and po potentially what is the current behavior you're doing at the moment next is why do you want it so you need to have that Motivation to burst that dopamine to give you a sense of desire to be able to enhance and increase the level of motivation you feel that's the why so when you say why do you want it or why do you want to do this you're basically engaging motivation in that moment in that question that's important for you to be able to push through the early days

of any sort of habit change the next one is when so this is really looking at the contextual trigger so When do you need to be able to engage in this new habit when is it appropriate for you to be able to do this moving forward where do you need to do this moving forward another contextual cue so the when and the where allows you to know when are you going to engage or where are you going to engage in this new habit which makes it very clear for you and then finally how are you

going to do it so how are you going to actually execute on this new habit how Are you going to do the behavior itself and ensure that you're consistent about it as well so again what habit are you going to change or what is the new habit you're going to create why is it important to change it to this new habit when and where are you going to engage in this new habit and then how are you going to engage in this new habit is a great way to do what I call habit mapping once

you've done this there's a few things that will get you ready to Change and before you've even done the Habit mapping I suppose you do need to have an awareness as to what are the habits that you already have so before you make a change to a habit you need to know what kind of habits do I already have what am I already doing without even thinking right are you doing some sort of habit that you're unaware of that is actually causing you problems so what are your habits take some time to do a sort

of a habit audit where you Start to go through what are all the things I do automatically and then you might go well what are the goals I want to achieve and in order to achieve those goals what are the new habits that I need to have so once again we're doing two things we're talking about changing habits but we're also talking about building new habits so you change habits when you got habits that you don't want no more but you want a different habit instead and you build new habits when You're trying to achieve

a goal and you go what are the things the new habits or behaviors I need to engage in on a regular basis that would help me to achieve that goal that I'm looking for we're doing both of those things but it starts by the awareness of knowing what that is in terms of change Readiness we need to be ready for the change and go okay I'm going to make this change and give ourselves a specific deadline I'm going to make this change by this Specific time when the things there was a book called I think

the easy way to stop smoking by Alan Carr it was very popular book and he did a bunch of others but it was a very popular book and a lot of people swore by it but one of the most important parts of that book was a lot of the book was reasoning as to Preparing you for this date in the future where you were going to say to yourself on this date I'm going to stop smoking forever and all of it was Getting you ready for that date so defining that date that deadline of this

is the day that I'm going to change that's a really really useful thing because it's getting you CRI in your brain to go from this moment forward Everything Changes something else that happens is to break down the Habit break it down into Milestones so you know give yourself okay for this first half of the week I'm going to do this and that my goal is then I'm going to go seven days Then I'm going to go 10 days and and break it down into smaller Milestones because as you break it down into smaller Milestones it's

easier for you to achieve sometimes it's overwhelming what you mean I'll never smoke a cigarette again I'll never Vape again I'll never drink alcohol again again it's like terrifying for a lot of people so break it down into something more manageable something simpler create rewards for yourself rewards that are Good for you now create proper rewards so don't go okay I'm going to give up eating unhealthy and I'm going to change to eating healthy but I'm going to reward Myself by eating healthy I'm going to reward myself with ice cream and pizza because that like

defeats the whole purpose that's ridiculous that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard why are you even thinking of doing that and again I'm not saying that from experience at all I would never do Something like that I would never reward myself with pizza and ice cream for eating healthy that would be insane but the reality is we should be giving ourselves some sort of rewards now I know some of you are going to go well oh and this cheat days you can cheat there and blah blah blah and I get it and I understand it

but I'm just saying if there's other rewards you can give yourself why not choose a reward that's empowering you as opposed to one that Kind of like hurts or takes away from your achievement or accomplishment that's all I'm saying there's nothing wrong with what you're doing there's everything wrong with what you're doing I'm kidding I'm kidding there's nothing wrong committing to the change publicly can also help you so you tell people about the Habit that you're going to engage in you make sure that you'll be humiliated sufficiently right you're leveraging humiliation as a motivational Tool

which is pretty cool commit to a specific time again not just mentally but also tell people on this day this is happening uh and you can even put money on it as well right that's something that can also get you really primed if you say if I do this again if I fall into this habit again I'm going to be penalized that's a good way to be able to maximize your likelihood of succeeding writing it down make sure you write down the change that you're Happening it makes it more real and sort of you hold

yourself accountable to what you write down build a support network so get yourself around other folk that are also doing the same thing more often than not one of the biggest mistakes we make is we spend time around people that are still engaged in the habit that we don't want and so we're constantly around them they're constantly talking about it thinking about it or doing it and as a result of that we fall back Into the Trap so you want to be surrounding yourself with a group that is changing is disciplined is no longer doing

that particular habit anymore because that's going to help you to find it easier couple more things the key decisions that you make so let's say you're giving up eating junk food and you're in at the supermarket the key decision there is the decision you make at the supermarket because whatever decision you make about what you buy Well it's going to be a lot harder for you to eat junk food if there is no junk food in the house think see see how easy that is it's called a key decision and lastly this temptation bundling you'll

hear this a couple of times right so you hear me mention this a number of times but this is a very cool one I use this all the time myself Temptation bundling is when you've got a behavior you want to engage in and what you do is you associate it with something that you Enjoy doing so my example is when I go for a run I listen to podcasts and I only let myself listen to my favorite podcast when I'm running and there therefore I've Associated running with the podcast so therefore I have a much

healthier and happier perspective over running than I would do ordinarily because I'm one of those people that doesn't really enjoy running but I do it regularly so that's the example of Temptation bundling before we get into The approach of tackling habits and changing habits I want to talk about some challenges with habit change right and some of the challenges that invariably come up whenever we try to change a habit is first of all we have excuses so we need to prepare ourselves for the excuse excuses that we make to ourselves well um normally I would

have changed the habit but my best friend like I know I'm off chocolate cake but my best friend he like loves chocolate Cake and it's his birthday and he always gets a chocolate cake for his birthday and his name is chocolate cake and it's just everything was chocolate cake so um I went to his party and there I was shocked cuz I've been like you know you know I've been off chocolate cake for like 2 weeks and I can't believe believe it at chocolate Cake's birthday he had a chocolate cake what am I to do

I couldn't be rude so therefore I had it That's called an excuse It's a excuse come on you knew you knew his name was chocolate cake you knew exactly what you were getting into when you walked in there you could smell that sweet chocolate cake a mile away you could see the smears of chocolate all over the different faces of the party and you still went in and you still ate it that's on you but the point is we make excuses and what you really need to do is prepare for those excuses set Rules set

flexibility and know when this happens I'll give myself leeway here I'll give myself leeway there but when this happens this is what I'm going to do we need to be very clear to prepare for this we also need to be prepared for enablers you know they're like the they're like the drug dealers of the Habit world right they their their goal is to keep you addicted you know it's like these people that are like I don't know if you're ever in a situation let's Imagine you're you're um you're you're going off drink right you're going

off alcohol you're out with with people and they're like you want to have a drink like no no it's grandom I'm not drinking at the moment I go on sure have just one drink um I'm I'm actually okay I just one's not going to be the worst in the they're not just enablers it's like their whole goal is to ruin your life what they're trying to do is they're trying to get you to just Have one more just have one more just have one just have one now there's various different reasons sometimes they might say

to you quite in a hurtful way they might say oh to be honest with you you're no crack translation you're no fun whenever you're not drinking so could you ever have a drink I'm sure I've never heard that but I'm saying other people might have heard that and when you do hear that it's again it's peer pressure so we need to prepare when We meet people that are trying to get us to fall off the wagon and not engage in the habits that we want to build or start doing the old habits which are not

good for us when we're around people like that that's not necessarily going to be very helpful so we want to avoid putting ourselves in that position and we want to make sure that we do whatever we can to be ready for meeting people like that we also need to prepare for stumbles sometimes we're going to be Doing really really well then we'll fall off the wagon for a moment instead of going oh I failed I'm back to square one or any of that sort of stuff if you stumble you stumble see it as a stumble

if you go back a step just make sure you move forward two steps every time you make a mistake just look at it as an opportunity to learn and look at it as a further reason why it's critical for you never to make that mistake again so see your mistakes stumbles as just stumbles On your path to success another thing that we'll get in the way is present bias this is our overvaluing of what pleasure we get in the present and the undervalue of what pleasure we get in the future so what we really need

to do is think through if you are to accomplish what you want to the Future because the present feels better we need to really vividly imagine how amazing the future will be so we can start to make it so that the future can Compete with the present cuz again the example would be the ice cream in the present or the cheesecake in the present feels better than the six-pack in the future but if you vividly imagine the six-pack strongly enough and long enough and vividly enough then that feeling can be stronger than the desire you

have or the craving you have for the actual cheesecake in the present so it's about learning to be able to increase the intensity through visualization from That perspective something else you can do is plan for yourself the Temptation so knowing that you'll be tempted get ready a plan I will want X but I know why so I want X so I want the say I want this I want that I want to eat this I want to stay up and watch another episode of this thing I want to gamble but I know why but I

know what this does to me I know where this leads I know this leads to the dark side I know this brings me into a you know fear leads to Anger anger leads to hate hate leads to the dark side and I know that that brings me in that direction so I need to recognize that and make sure that I I remind myself of this fact now let me just give a little bit of a caveat here before people lose it with me I'm not suggesting just listen to this episode practice this stuff and you

know if you're an alcoholic or if you're addicted to drugs or gambling that That's enough right there's there's huge things going on with regards to drugs with regards to alcohol with regards to gambling with regards to a lot of those serious addictions so if you do need help with that please do go to train professional go to get the help that you need because it's a very very tough one because there's a lot of stuff going on because a lot of other things that play there I'm talking about the majority of habits that we have

that aren't as Serious as that so I just wanted to make that clear in case someone's going oh so what you're saying is no I'm not saying what you thought I was saying I'm saying something much nicer the implementation intention we're going to get into this again but it's like when I'm in situation X then I'm going to do why a little bit like the Temptation planning uh I want this but I know this reminding yourself having a little sentences like I want X but I know y really great for You to put yourself into

a different frame of mind when you're in a situation that you're tempted like that write down your statement like so have your Temptation planning statement or your implementation statement written down so I'm going to do X when y happens or in Z situation this is what I'm going to do so create your sort of intentions create your plan write it down and you're much more likely when you write it down to be able to execute on it and to be able to Follow through on it sort of like what we call the if when then

strategy is also how we describe what what's known as an implementation intention if this happens then I'm going to do that if that happens then I'm going to do this you're getting ready and preparing yourself for what might happen for the cues that might occur or you're getting yourself in a position where when you're tempted you're going to be able to handle it all of those are different Ways to prepare for habit change now in a nutshell the four elements of approaching habit change so the a really good approach to Habit change comes down to

trigger desire action and reward so the trigger is some sort of cue or trigger in your environment that automatically would have made you feel a certain way made you feel the craving or desire to be able to take the action then there's the desire for the action at that moment then there's the action Itself and then there the reward that you get from doing the action and the reward of course increases and intensifies the desire of the action and that's how the sort of the loop goes and the ways that we would tackle the approach

to changing habits might be to eliminate or remove the all trigger in other words stop being around the places that you have all those triggers so try to avoid the avoid the drug dealer right avoid the Person who would always offer you that particular possibility avoid the situations that would make you feel like you wanted to go into do that old habit again or that old Behavior again and try to remove yourself from those kind of locations and remove yourself from those kind of triggers that's one approach another one is to change the desire so

make it so that you change the way you think and the way you feel about it so a large part of the Alan car method as I Talked about the easy way to stop smoking a large part of that is changing the way in which you feel about smoking so by the end of the book you no longer desire the cigarettes you no longer feel that desire for the cigarettes and then you could also or it's also important for you to identify what are you going to do instead of the old Behavior instead of staying

up late what are you going to do instead of that so decide what the new behavior is going To be and then experiment by giving yourself different rewards so what kind of rewards can you give yourself to reinforce that behavior that new behavior and make you significantly more lightly to desire the new Behavior whenever you're experiencing the trigger so the trigger happens and instead of feeling the desire for the old behavior and then getting the reward instead now the trigger happens and when that trigger happens you now desire a new Behavior because you get a

great reward from that new Behavior and the better the reward that you get from that new Behavior the more you'll deser desire the new Behavior instead of the old one so hopefully that makes sense lastly in terms of before we get into the books when it comes to the actual action in order for you to get better at that action piece in terms of what's the new Behavior you're going to engage in make sure you get into the habit of taking The first step the more you practice it the power of repetition means the more

that you do it the more it'll be reinforced for you and the more your brain will start to automatically go there make sure you're tracking your habits so as you notice that you're doing on a regular basis the more you track it the more you'll know notice that you're on a streak and whenever we're on a streak psychologically we want to stay on that streak turn down The hassle dial what I call turning down the hassle dial make it easy for you to engage in the new habit and turn up the hassle dial make it

more hassle for you to engage in the old habit there's some really great ways link your behaviors what we call habit stacking so link the new Behavior you want with some other routine or some other habit that you already engag in so you want to drink more water and you already stretch every day when you're stretching grab your Yourself some water and Associate the two together so you link the two behaviors and then Leverage The Power of intrinsic rewards and intrinsic rewards are really rewards that you get from how it makes you feel about yourself

for example as opposed to the external rewards of money or any of that kind of thing the research shows that in most cases we're more motivated intrinsically than we are extrinsically therefore if you can start to motivate yourself to Engage in new habits because of how good you'll feel about yourself that's going to be a stronger motivation than like betting yourself that you're not going to be able to do it or at least it certainly is more likely to make it long lasting so let's tackle four of the books that are very popular in the

area of habit change and we'll start with atomic Habits by James clear now Atomic Habits by James CLE blew up James Clair was a blogger he had a lot of followers On his blog he's a very good writer but his book blew up Atomic habits has been a New York Times bestselling book for ages every time I go into the bestselling section I'm in there a lot in Barnes & Noble or back home when I'm in a bookstore back home book shop back home in in Ireland everywhere I go there James clear's book is on

the thing I am ridiculously jealous of him he's written a book that's sold millions of copies good for him but in atomic habits what Are the main elements that he goes through what are the main tactics techniques what's his Frameworks let's dive into exploring it so Atomic Havoc he defines as small incremental changes that compound over time to produce remarkable results so if we look at it when he looks at this whole metaphor he says look in order for us to make huge changes you actually need to start small when you start small on these

sort of what he calls Atomic habits they Compound so a small change that you make that you repeat consistently actually can provide you with huge amount of returns over time the problem is we try to make huge big big changes and then often times it's too difficult and then we fall back he says instead you want these small changes that all compound and allow you to be able to be significantly better at the end of let's say a year he talks about the 1% rule which is improving just 1% every day Leads to significant long-term

gains again if you improve 1% the compound interest kind of thing if you improve 1% today now you're at 101% now you you improve 1% the second day that's 1% of 101 that's a little bit more than one I'm not going to get into the math here right it's just too much work but all in all what you'll find is it's not just that you've in improved 365 by the end of the year you've actually improved significantly more than that why because Your improvement increases and your improvement compounds the same way money compounds in a

bank account with interest on a regular basis so the 1% rule is only try to get 1% better do the small things right and you get some great examples in the book where he talks about you know worldclass cyclist for example the head of the worldclass cycling team that made all these small incremental changes across it but they all stacked up and together they were Able to create a tour to France winning sort of Team amazing amazing examples he gives he talks about the Habit Loop which is really the cycle of cue craving response and

reward now where have we heard this before well Q is all also another word for trigger craving is another word for desire response is another word for action and reward is a same word as reward so you know the same approach I talked about which has been talked about Diff slightly differently by Charles doig in his book The Power of Habit which we'll talk about I have my Approach James CLA is his approach but it's all roughly speaking the same kind of thing and there's this cycle that goes in and James Clair talks about four

laws of Behavioral change the first one is make it obvious that's the first law make it obvious and this really refers to the Q part so with the trigger itself make that obvious so identify the Current habits you have and uh understand your cues what are the cues what are the things that immediately trigger the particular habit and what you want to do is He suggests the Habit stacking notion he goes what you want to do is you want to make it so that you have a new habit so you want to associate that new

habit with an obvious Q so make the Q obvious make it obvious that the new behavior is expected right and habit stacking is a great way Because you know I have this habit already so when this habit happens then I'm going to engage in this new habit that's making it obvious he says design your environment to make the cues more visible so make it easier for you to know when to engage in that particular habit that's called making it obvious the second law is make it attractive and this is to do with the desire the

craving the want this is where Temptation bundling comes in parent Action that you want to do with something that you don't particularly want to do so for example I talked about the podcast that I love to listen to you could do it for the change your minds podcast I'm just saying like you could play this podcast while you're doing something else you know what I mean like uh you're doing something you don't want to do and then you pair it with the change don't do in Reverse don't make it so that you know you you

eat like Cheesecake while you're listening to changing Minds cuz that then that's just saying oh my God I hate listening to changing minds but this cheesecake so good oh yeah I feel so good and then it's like owns like voice here's how to change your habit oh shut up oh I don't want you to do that instead I want you to make it so you're flipping it the other way make sense so it's make it attractive uh basically associate the new Behavior with something that makes You feel good you could join a community where your

desired behavior is a normal behavior join a running club if you want to run more it's like make it so that it makes it attractive something that makes you feel good while you take the action that's what you're looking for the third law is make it easy right and this is to do with the response the action itself this is really about reducing friction decrease the number of steps between you and your habits so make it easy if You're trying to eat healthy make sure you're plenty of fruit and vegetables all around your Gaff all

around your house and make sure that if it is unhealthy food it's if it is in your house at all it's hard to get so reduce friction you want to be able to Prime the environment make it so that the environment also boosts your levels and gets you excited and it's all designed to help make it more likely that you engage in that action years ago when I Trained for the marathon in in Dublin in my 20s I organized so that my training gear my running gear was right next to my bed so as soon

as I woke up in the morning the easiest thing in the world to do was just to get into my running gear straight away so that's a good example there's also what is known as the two minute rule that if there's a habit that can be done in 2 minutes that's what you do if it takes longer then maybe you think more about it but If it could be done in 2 minutes just get it done straight away and then the fort laws make it satisfying this is where the reward comes in so use reinforcement

give yourself an immediate reward after completing the Habit track your habits over time so that you're making a a bit of progress you're noticing your progress and then give yourself rewards based on the progress rather than every single time you engage in the behavior because you don't want To make it automatic all the time using a habit contract is also good because you make commitments to the public and then as you succeed in it you get sort of the social validation as well so again uh four things make it obvious make it attractive make it

easy and make it satisfying very cool laws there also he says the inverse of the four laws to break a bad habit what you want to do is make it invisible so make the queue hard to know when it's coming make it Unattractive so you don't really want to do it make it difficult like a lot of hassle the hassle dial and make it unsatisfying when you do it I don't get very much you're like eating the cheesecake you're like what now and you just get to look at yourself in the mirror while crumbs fall

off your your face very depressing definitely not going to do that again identity based habits this is what I touched on earlier is that the cognitive Diss and stuff is That if you want to be able to make changes in your habits you should change how you see yourself so see yourself as the kind of person so focus on who you want to be rather than what you want to do or what you want to achieve or what new habit you want so what kind of person would I need to be in order for me

to engage in those new habits and vice versa if you engage in new habits that'll start to make you see yourself as that kind of person but you can if You're struggling with the habits then see yourself as that kind of person and you're much more likely to engage in the new habits talks about the importance of designing your environment the most effective way again obviously to be able to ensure that you're making it not just obvious from a Q point of view but also making it as easy as possible the third law from that

perspective habit tracking once again we've touched on this a number of times but that allows you to Increase motivation and increases accountability give yourself variable rewards so don't reward yourself every single time reward yourself for Progress reward yourself every now and then if you're still sticking to this new habit if you're still exercising at that time every single day and another big one that he mentions that he's known for is the difference between between systems and goals and I think his phrase goes something along the lines of you do not Rise to the level of

your goals you fall to the level of your systems now I'm pretty sure I'm butchering that quote and I'm pretty sure something similar to that maybe I'm nailing it and if I'm nailing it reinforcement but even if I'm not the general gist is this is that a lot of people Elevate the status of goals they say I want this goal I want to achieve this he says actually what's most important is that you got systems you need to get into the habit of making It so that you're engaging in systems you're engaging in doing a

certain process in a certain way consistently not relying on the goal not relying on achieving something because you can't always guarantee in terms of the achievement but if you focus on systems that's more likely to to help you succeed long term and he emphasizes consistency over Perfection the most important thing is showing up and sticking to habits on a regular basis Even imperfectly so even if you can't do an error every day day of exercise but you wanted to then at least do half an hour at least do 10 minutes of exercise 10 minutes of

exercise is better than not doing any at all so it's important to just be as consistent as you possibly can the next book is tiny habits by BJ fog and this you might think to yourself well is tiny habits not just like another way of saying Atomic habits slightly different Nuance tiny habits Are small behaviors that can quickly and easily be completed leading to larger changes over time so whereas Atomic habits is more they stack on each other and they add up and compound and all that sort of stuff tiny habits are more this is

easier for you to do so the big problem thej fog would say would be the big problem is that most of the time we try to change habits we try to do too much too quickly and he's almost saying aim lower right just try to do small Habits and they will actually lead to uh bigger results moving forward down the line his behavioral model is a little different he says Behavior or b equals motivation m by ability a by prompt p and so for him if you look at it he looks at motivation as being

feeling that we have right the desire the ability is our ability to take that action so our ability to engage in this new habit and then the prompt is the trigger that reminds you so once again Prompt is another way of saying the trigger or the cue right ability is more likely saying the action right or the reaction or response and then the motivation is more like the desire or the craving so I just want to bring all these models sort of together so that you could see them quite clearly so the new habit is

really about the desire craving at the same time as the skill at the same time as the Q or the trigger The Prompt tiny habits recipe would be After I done this existing routine I will the new tiny Behavior so in other words it's really habit stacking in a nutshell after I've done this behavior I'm going to add this little tiny Habit to it so it's very much suggesting that whatever new habit you want attach it to the end of another Behavior to the point that it gets stuck to that and it connects with it

he talks about the ABC framework which is Anchor Behavior celebration he says use an existing Routine or an anchor as he calls it as a prompt for your new habit right so again this habit stacking have this I normally do this Behavior so I normally for example uh do meditation every morning right and I want to build a new habit of doing gratitude journaling so I normally do meditation every morning and that becomes the anchor right and then what we want is we want to make it so that we add a new habit onto that

which is for instance gratitude journaling the second One is the behavior of the behavioral prompt which is you have when it's this time or when it's that time I'm going to engag in this new Behavior so for instance you could have external prompts which is an alarm or a reminder of some sort or internal prompt which is a thought or a feeling but it's whenever this alarm happens whenever this thought happens then I'm going to engage in this this is again taking the prompt taking the particular sometimes an anchor and Attaching the new Behavior to

it so it's not you just you're not creating a new habit from scratch you're creating a new habit and you're sticking it to something else as a result He suggests starting with the smallest step smallest version of the behavior something that can be done in 30 seconds or less right some small part of it and when you do that your brain notice notices that you're making progress on it and therefore you elevate the level of Dopamine and you're much more likely to keep going he talks about PE habits which is start with a tiny behavior

and let it grow naturally so again this W habit that starts to really make a positive difference to your life he also looks at designing for Simplicity makes it as simple as possible reduce complexity to make behaviors as easy to do so the whole essence of his stuff is make it really simple do something new connected to something you already do And Bob's your uncle and Babette is your aunt and I don't know the rest of your family members but this is something that will work for you and also he emphasizes celebration celebrate good times

come on I would actually use the music here but I'm pretty sure there's a copyright violation if I do and so we're not going to do that today you'll have to deal with me but I won't sing again today the Power of Habit by Charles doig is the Next of the books that we have in our episode today he talks about the Habit Loop framework which is the cycle of Q routine and reward any of these recognizable same stuff everyone's pretty much talking about there's a trigger there's a routine or action right and then there's

the reward to reinforcement right and kind of in in in uh Charles's model we kind of assume the desire we assume the motivation for the routine itself because the reward is the Very thing that creates the the the routine in the first place the Q is the trigger that engages The Habit Loop the routine is the behavior of action and the reward is the benefit or POS of reinforcement the craving again is the desire that happens between the Q and the reward but yeah it's all the same thing he talks about the golden rule of

habit change to change a habit keep the old que and reward but change the routine the idea of it is is that the Reward you feeling good about yourself for the reward you being successful the reward a sense of self pride or the reward you feeling free whatever the reward is that you get from the old habit if you can get the same reward the same good feeling from the new habit then you're good to go you replace the old habit with the new habit with the same cue the same thing triggers but now instead

of triggering the old one it triggers the new one but the new one Still leads to the same result he talks about Keystone habits these are small changes or habits that lead to developments of other good habits they're kind of like the the pivotal moments we talked about earlier when you're in the store and you're deciding to what to buy and the decisions that you make that will determine how much Temptation you will or won't be exposed to etc etc there Willow as a muscle he talks about and he says says willpower Can be strengthened

so you can get better at developing more willpower whenever you need to reduce Temptation by practicing it uh but it can deplete with overuse as well inflection points uh what dug talks about here is he says there's critical moments when decisions are made that can strengthen or weaken habits so you need to pay attention to what are the most important decisions I'm making that can help me to engage in this new habit moving forward he says There it's very important for us to look at the beliefs that we have about the habits or our belief

in our ability to change this belief growth mindset as I would say or habit growth mindset in this context I suppose are important to have we need to have this kind of mindset if we are to change we need to believe we can change he does mention identity and habits as well and how habits shaped and are shaped by our identity so when you believe you're this Type of person you're more likely to engage in those habits he does also talk about the influence of groups and the social influence of other people surround yourself by

the right kind of people that will reinforce the new habits and he says that whenever you're experiencing stress that can also trigger all habits that's an interesting one so whenever we're under stress we're more likely to fall back into the Habit the system one if you will of the old Habits because old habits die hard and sometimes old habits die hard two Die Hard three Die Hard four Die Hard five didn't think Die Hard five was as good as Die Hard four or three or two my favorite is probably one but I also love two

one and two I also like three a lot four I didn't really like but it was pretty good five I really struggled hard to like and it I did I think I liked it but I wouldn't watch it like again or I might watch it again but I wouldn't Watch it twice again whereas I've seen one and two loads anyway back to the episode how to change by ktie Milkman and this is really good if ever you're in a situation that you're tired of dairy because KY milkman get it Milkman Dairy you're saying to yourself

how darey make that kind of joke did you get it I promise I won't milk these kind of puns right no more all right all right I hear you I hear you I know I've lost you she's a a Researcher that goes in depth in terms of what allows us to be able to make changes so for example she talks about the Fresh Start effect and that is we can use temporal landmarks the beginning of people are more likely to succeed in a change if it's the beginning of a week if it's the beginning of

year the beginning of a month if they move to a new place whenever we've like a start we can use that and that helps us to be more motivated and it's more lightly to Result in us making changes if we like she says we need to identify the obstacles recognize and understand the barriers to change really do what what is sometimes known as a premortem where you're imagining yourself failing and one of the things that led you to fail so you can be ready to avoid going into that direction Temptation bundling was actually something that

came from Katie's work so Temptation bundling is pairing an indulgent activity with a Beneficial but less enjoyable activity so this is something that the likes of James CLA would have drawn from the work of uh Milkman commitment devices is something else that's quite useful these are tools that bind you to a desired Behavior to ensure follow through so a commitment device is whenever you it's kind of like the ulyses contract which I've talked about in the past where you set yourself on a course of action and you go okay I'm only eating this sort of

Stuff therefore you sign up to some sort of food delivery service that always bring you that kind of food so you're already committed to it or you join a gym therefore you're more likely to go to the gym if you joined it as a result of that that's a commitment device implementation intentions she also mentions again we've talked about that before social support that's groups of people again mentioned before feedback loops so use continuous feedback to make Adjustments and stay on track so you start to improve the process of whenever you're not getting the result

you want you adjust it so you're constantly looking for feedback to optimize The Habit if you're looking to optimize a habit a new habit that you're building you're much more likely to be consistent with the Habit because in order to optimize it you have to keep doing it nudging is really about the behavioral economics version of organizing your Environment to make it much easier and nudging you I suppose to the new behavior and away from the old gamification is when you make it more of a challenge or a game so you see the you find

a way to gamify The Habit change so you go if I achieve this this and this this week if I make if I stick to this particular food for the next week then I'm going to give myself this sort of reward so it's kind of like making it more of a game and a challenge as Opposed to just rewarding yourself for it in the aftermath incentives that you give yourself which is akin to gamification to a degree loss aversion so you focus on all the things you will lose if you don't stick to this habit

and in all of these different things a real emphasis on in order for us to make the changes that we want to in our life These are the kinds of strategies that work so I want to finish if I will by two things I want to finish by first of All looking at some of the most important evidence-based practices for making changes in terms of our habits and then I'll bring everything to a conclusion as we get to the very end so first and foremost implementation's intentions a lot of the research here comes from a

research project by G witzer and Sheeran in 2006 which looked at these things so it's like if it's 7 a.m. I'm going to go for run if it's 10:00 at night I'm going to go to bed if This then that when this then that where I'm in this situation then that so it's really creating these intentions whereby we connect it so it's very clear with full clarification as to what we're going to do when we're going to do it habit stacking was the thing that was discovered in terms of the work of wood and Neil

in 2007 so it's once again after I brush my teeth I'll meditate for 5 minutes that's an example of H habit stacking obviously BJ fog talks about it Quite a lot James Clear talked about it as well so habit stacking is a great way to build new routines new habits we've also got q-based interventions this is by the work of L van jarfi pots and Wardle who of all very interesting names God bless them and they're h a study done by the four of them in 2010 I'd love to see the four of them in

a room talking about their last names that'll be guys 2010 an example of this would be setting a re reminder alarm to go off The same Time Each Day for your workout so you're organized in the queue that will then in turn help you to engage in the habit as well very straightforward like almost like common sense but the research shows that it actually does make a difference to our habit change reinforcements and rewards of course with the work of BF Skinner and conditioning yourself what is known as operant conditioning so where his classical conditioning

was paavo and I Noticed that my dogs were salivating what thought I was leing my my bell instead uh Skinner talked about reinfor enforcement positive reinforcement is known as oper and conditioning whenever you do behavior and you give yourself a positive reinforcement that makes you more likely to engage in that behavior and so allow yourself to watch an episode of your favorite show after a workout that's an example of that social support and accountability was something That Burke and bellan and Dunbar all looked at in 2001 an example of this would be joining a workout

group or having a friend checking your progress regularly getting sort of social support accountability is really good for habit change gradual progression is something that that uh prasa and Visser in 1997 uh found starting with a 5 minute walk and then slowly increasing the duration over time allowed a lot of people to change more than trying to do too much too Quick self-monitoring was something that was a useful tactic by Burke and Wang and cic in 2011 and this was basically like keeping a journal of for example your daily food intake or exercise routine tended

to help you to be able to stick to the routine or stick to the diet Temptation bundling again was done by milkman and minson and vulp in 2014 celebration and positive emotions were actually popularized by BJ fog celebrating with a small treat after Achieving a weekly goal and then a couple more cognitive reframing popularized by tersi and canaman in 1981 of course to ver King canaman the wonderful duo in behavioral economics they looked at viewing exercises a stress relief activity rather than a chore seeing it differently actually helped people be more likely to engage in

it and then finally failor and sunstein in their wonderful book Nudge in 2008 they talk about using default Options to make healthier choices easy so automatically enrolling in a savings plan is a great way to be better at savings as opposed to like okay I got to save money and then like going through that temptation of but I want to spend it on lots and lots of food I want to buy clothes I want to do instead you save it not because you're like using the willpower to say no no no no no I will

not go to the dark side of the force no No Darth Vader no instead what did we do we just organize our environment we make it easier to say no we say look may I can't why my savings plan's already given the money to the Rebellion so stuck sorry bro sorry bro anyway to finish off as you hear a lot of these insights a lot of these evidence-based strategies are things we've mentioned all the way through and I'm hoping the reinforcement the repetition of the most elements things like Temptation boning Things like habit stacking are

sticking in your mind to the point that as you finish this episode you'll be thinking about real habits that you want to change and you will execute the strategies that we shared today the things that you learned in this episode so you can start to build the kind of new habits that will lead you towards the perfect life where everything is beautiful where everything works perfectly where there's World Peace Where everyone gets on and nobody ever argues wouldn't that be amazed and unfortunately that's really unlikely to happen so instead of looking for that just look

for the small things you can do today the tiny habits the atomic habits that will explode your opportunity for happiness moving forward to see what I did there and for you to be able to have the right kind of reaction if you will a kind of a nuclear reaction see all the metaphors coming Together which will allow you to start to ensure that you are taking over the world I want this to be the most transformative episode that you've ever heard but the only way to do that is to make sure you practice so for

now take care be well take it easy and make sure you start to practice one little new habit and as always May the force be with you all bye for now