21. This Is How To Build New Habits That Actually Stick

know what I actually did and I've turned off all my notifications. And I've noticed that I actually haven't been on social media as much at all this week. And yeah, my screen time is actually getting this one hour. It was four hours and yeah, no, it's one hour. That's incredible. It really is. And obviously that doesn't include WhatsApp, because as we said, we don't include WhatsApp because that's communicating directly with another person. But as for Instagram, and Facebook, etc. I just I just really haven't really found that going on them. And I think that might be due to not having notifications. And I've just found it a lot easier to avoid checking them and checking the social media app. So it's kind of like I haven't really been that bothered, and I know that sounds too good to be true, but I didn't realise until doing it that turning them off would affect my behaviour this much.

Do you know what having notifications off? I'm not gonna lie is difficult, but to be honest, because I'm still using my phone. I found it easier because I'm still picking up my phone. That hasn't gone away. Obviously. It just kind of felt like I wasn't really connected. To those apps as much wasn't getting constant notifications. And I didn't say to you that I don't have notifications that pop up from Instagram and Facebook anyway, but just kind of not even having that badge icon there like kind of diminished the reward for opening it.

So when we talk about habits, we think about who we are as a person, and the habits that we have personally. So we might say things like, Oh, I'm just this type of person, or I'm the type of person that does this or this is me, and this is something that I do a lot and what we're explaining there is we are really explaining our habits and our behaviour. So we've talked about cognitive behavioural therapy before in the podcast. So I just wanted to touch on something that I learned in CBT. And that was how our core beliefs can structure our actual habits. So core beliefs are deeply buried assumptions that are inside of us, that kind of guide our behaviour. So these beliefs could be how we perceive ourselves how we see ourselves how we perceive the world and situations. And these core beliefs or habits tend to impact our emotions and how we feel which can impact our daily lives. all areas of our lives, such as friendships, relationships, etc. And the thing is, core beliefs we assume, are actually core to our identity. And it's just who we are. And core beliefs can feel a lot of real truth and they can be really challenging to alter. But our core beliefs could be responsible for feelings of self doubt, low moods and mood overall and things like needing approval of others. And so these core beliefs can lead to ineffective patterns of behaviour and self sabotage. And what happens is we can assume that situations that happen in life confirm our core beliefs. So they go either against our core beliefs or with our core beliefs. So we tend to put up these walls and we say things like, we don't like change, or we don't like to experience this new thing, because we sent because we tend to say things to ourselves like I'm not the type of person that would do this, or I'm not the type of person that does that. Or I'm not the type of person that engages in something like that. And the reason that I wanted to present this to you really is if you do have any core beliefs about yourself that stops you from progressing or achieving then just remember that core beliefs aren't facts, and that you can always change things about yourself. When we're talking about creating new habits. We want you to get into the mindset where you believe that you can change things about yourself, because you can and I think that's the first step that we need to address is that anyone can change at any point in their life at any age. And anyone can change their beliefs, if they just believe that they can do it. And core beliefs do not mean that they have to be fixed forever. So just remember that

so I have a bit of a strange example about a core belief that I had that I didn't even realise was a core belief until it was challenged. So in the UK, it's pretty common to see young girls holding hands teenage girls as well, maybe sort of linking arms, even I don't women will maybe not hold hands so much but link arms, but it's not something that you'd ever see boys do. And I just in my mind, sort of, I suppose thought that that was because maybe boys were less affectionate, or I suppose some some people were probably conditioned out of it thinking that it was, you know, wrong or inappropriate, whatever. But I thought that you know, generally boys were sort of less affectionate in that sense. But then I taught English for a year in South Korea. And actually in South Korea, it's the opposite. So boys hold hands and link arms and it's perfectly normal to see a group of teenage boys like linking arms and stuff. You know, younger boys will like sit on each other's laps, sort of the behaviour that I would only ever associate with females.

So the dopamine side of our habits are formed, relies heavily on rewards. And this also has something to do with being in survival mode. And we talked about how humans are programmed for survival before, and how our brains are programmed to take the path of least resistance. Because in nature, that's how we survive and stay safe. So if there's something that seems pretty hard or scary, or it seems like a struggle to get through, we say to ourselves, Oh, that's too much. That's too much ever that That sounds scary. So we always opt to go for the path of least resistance, the easiest option, and that can be for example, not cooking a healthy meal, and just getting a takeaway, and shall we'll explain in a minute. The second habit is formed through repetition. So this feeling of it's too hard, then leads to doing something easier for every ward. So that feeling then repeats itself over and over and over again, until it becomes a habit, a bad habit, such as eating junk food all the time.

So there's two reasons why you can form a habit as we've just discussed, the first is where you're literally just repeating something over and over again, until it forms into a habit and the second is through some kind of reward. So the reward based system works in a four step process. So the first is having a trigger, then a craving then you have a response and then you have a reward. So usually what will happen is say for example, We like pizza, we're triggered by something. We see the pizza. We crave the pizza, because we know that it's going to taste nice. And then the response is that we want to eat the pizza. So we eat the pizza. And then we get a reward when we eat the pizza because it's so delicious, and we get a dopamine kick, and that cycle continues over and over again. So what we need to do here is we need to take these two ways that we form habits and use that same system to create new and better habits, but ones that serve us. So guess what? I'm actually going to do the science section this week. Which I'm absolutely terrified about,

So forgive me if this is wrong. But we found some studies on habit formation and behaviour change and how repetition actually strengthens the formation of habits. So there's a little link in there about how relying on willpower for motivational performance won't last very long. But we're going to be talking about why relying on willpower to change a habit doesn't really work in the next episode. But the other study that we found is the impact of reward on habit formation and how they found that receiving a reward for doing something is more likely to lead you to repeating that same behaviour over and over again. So loads of different studies have been done on this. And as usual, we'll put all the scientific stuff down in the show notes. But basically the consensus is if you work towards getting some kind of reward or benefit out of what you're doing, then you are more likely to complete the task and do it over and over again. And if you put these two things together, reward and repetition, then you're more likely to create a new habit that sticks and if we're doing that in a healthy way that is how we create new

No Please do not that was terrifying and I don't ever want to do it again. Because I actually don't feel capable of doing the science bit and I've actually realised how hard it is for your shell because I'm never ever going to step on your toes again because you definitely got the bad end of the stick when it comes to doing this podcast. I thought editing the podcast was going to be the hardest part for me to have to hold my hands up and admit this after researching all of those studies. It's not my head's gone. It's uploaded. Oh my god.

I love it. It's my inner geek. So let's talk about reasons why we would create a new habit. So it's often civilian. It's easier said than done. It's so easy to acquire bad habits and hit it with minimal effort. But getting into a good habit is definitely more challenging. But there's loads of reasons that you might want to get into a good habit. So things like making life easy for yourself achieving success, changing your behaviour, getting fit drinking more water we get the jest there's a lot of there's loads

habit stacking in a bad way. Yeah. We've touched on this before but my I'd say one of my my really bad ones is to be like watching something on Netflix while scrolling mindlessly on my phone while eating Christmas. That is like, I mean, I could spend all day doing that. If I had the time. And I think my bad habit is getting really obsessed about something going down a rabbit hole of research and like staying up ridiculously late when I'm already tired because I just have to research something because I've got into the spiral I think those are the to my two most destructive habits. I think those two Yes,

Okay, so one of the major bad habits, as some of you are probably aware is I procrastinate loads. So even though I've got to do something early in the morning, and I've got a bill early. I'll stay up late and I'll watch a series and I'll just keep on watching it and watching it watching another episode and another episode and another and I know that I need to be up in the morning, but I just can't stop. I just I just have to carry on watching it. And in some ways, I think what I'm doing is I'm doing it because I really don't want to get up in the morning and do that thing that I really need to do. So I've created this habit for myself where I will say to myself, oh, I'll just watch this or relax and I'll feel better and Tomorrow will be another day. But I'll continue doing it all the while knowing that tomorrow is coming. So that's one of the bad things that I do. And the other one that I've got okay so this is a little bit of a confession. So I don't know if I've told you this show, but I am a bit of a binge eater. So for someone who's my size, you wouldn't really think it but I can just eat and eat cake. I'll just carry on eating and eating and eating. So if I've got a pack of six cakes, I can't just open the box and eat one cake and put them away for later. I'll just open the next one and have another one.

So when we talk about doing something without even thinking about it, what we mean is subconsciously so like brushing our teeth, getting in the car and driving, and these are things that we do without really thinking about it, or without really taking a lot of effort or thinking about the act of doing so we'll just walk to the bathroom. We'll put the toothpaste on the toothbrush, and we'll brush our teeth. And we know that we've got to do it because we've created the habit for doing it over and over again. We know we need to clean our teeth because we know we need to keep them clean. So the first step that you'll need to take in the formation of forming a new hobby is to actually decide what it is that you want to do or what it is that you want to change. So you need to be as specific as possible with this when it comes to forming a habit. You can't just say something like, Well, I mean, you can but you won't get very far. So you can't say something like, oh, I want to go running because that's not specific enough. So instead, try to reframe it. So be very specific. So for example, I would say, I will go for a 30 minute run every single day at this time. So it's a very specific and what you're doing here is you're deciding what it is that you're going to do what your new habit will be. And you're also committing to it as well. So you're putting a commitment in place

to this. The second thing is to set yourself some sort of reminder to make sure you do your habit. So the first few days are easy, you're motivated, you're excited, you want to get it done. stick into a new habit isn't an issue is a few days in that you'll notice yourself start to slip back into old habits or you know, maybe even drop the habit completely. So going back to sparkies example of going for a run. So maybe you know one day you wake up and it's raining it's cold outside, you really don't want to go for a run. Or you're just feeling a bit lazy you need and a few days of running a night you'd rather just sit at home and watch TV or sit on your phone. And that's when it becomes hard to keep a habit going. But it can be really useful to have something like a daily reminder even if it's just an alert on your phone. Just having that sort of visual reinforcement can be really motivating to sort of get you up out the door and and maintaining that habit until it becomes part of your routine.

You know what I mean? Okay, so until we've properly formed a new habit, what we need to do is we need to try and create a routine, because making a routine will help that behaviour stick a lot more and it will just become more automatic. A routine will also help you get it done without having to spend a lot of time thinking about things like willpower or even relying on daily reminders like me, I hate them. So I'll just look at a reminder and I'll just go Yeah, yeah, whatever. So if we work on new habit into part of our already existing routine, so that that run we were discussing, for example, that could become part of your daily routine. You could make walking or running part of that. So if you have a dinner routine already, you could say to yourself, I'm going to go for a run after dinner. And what it is you're doing there is you're just and what it is you're doing there is you're just combining two habits together to make it easier for that new habit to stick and stay on track. And then you don't have to rely on motivation or get caught up in things like decision fatigue, because you know, it's already planned and you know that it's part of your routine. We'll be talking a lot about that in the next episode because we've got so much to say on habit stacking and it deserves a bigger discussion.

So all we've got time for now is our little kicker for this week. So our little kicker for this week is some preparation. So it's just to make you aware that next week we are going to be setting you a challenge and it is going to be a habit based challenge. So have an idea in your mind about what sort of habit you would like to create. And our little kicker for this week is to restrict your environment so you won't be tempted in the first 30 days of your new habit. So for example, if your new habit is you want to eat healthier, remove the junk food from your house and don't buy any more so that when you listen to next week's episode, you've already set yourself up to be in a good place to start the challenge. Yeah, so

this helps remove environmental triggers. And it helps with not setting yourself up for failure as well before we even started. So like I was saying earlier, I know that there's cakes downstairs and if they're there, I'm going to eat them and I'm going to justify it to myself as well. But if those cakes on there, what I'm doing is I'm restructuring my environment so that I'm more likely to progress rather than fail. And you can do this in so many areas of your life, not just food. It can be for so many different new habits that you want to create. So for example, if you want to go running more, maybe you need to buy yourself some new running shoes because that reward will help you think well, I bought those shoes and I need to actually use them and go for the for and go for that run as well. Or maybe you need to find someone to run with a specific time. So think about all the ways that you can restructure your environment right now to help push yourself forward. So it's not so easy to fail. And so you can be well on your way to forming a new good habit in the right way.