23. How To Easily Break Bad Habits And Change Your Behaviours

So I have but obviously we record these episodes slightly in advance. So since since that episode went out and we to do the challenge, it has only been four days. So so far there has been a strong start. I have done two litres a day for the last four days. I found myself slightly cheating at work though. So I'm going to run this past you and see if you think it is okay. So we have quite a regular t run going at the moment at work. Are we all sort of making sure the cups of tea and I do drink decaf, so it's not caffeinated tea, but I found that trying to drink two litres of water on top of four or five cups of tea in a day was actually making me feel quite sick so I've had to scale it back so now i i Don't count any drink with caffeine in that doesn't come out of our water requirement but if it's if it's a drink without caffeine in our maybe districts slightly less to compensate for that she then that's okay.

Yeah, I think this is really good because we were saying before, you don't have to be perfect. And if you continue doing things that aren't working for you, you're not going to stick to them. So I think it's great. If people are listening. If you feel that you've started something and it's not going so well or you're pushing yourself a bit too much. It's okay to change the bar, bring it back down again. I think that's great. You could have just gave or you could have thrown the towel in and you could have just went Oh, I'm just gonna go back to my bad habits. So it's good that you've noticed and you've started changing it and I think that's a great way to deal with changing and creating new habits.

I have I've been walking quite a bit. I've visited a few places I find that if I have something planned I'm more likely to do it because I did say I wanted to just go for a walk around the park but I mean, I've lived here now for like quite a long time and it's just such it's so the same that I just can't get motivated to go to the park because I already know what it's like. So I found that you know, trying to do different things or if I need something from the shop instead of actually getting in my car and going to Morrison's just walking around the corner shop and picking up what I need even though I have everything that I need so that that creates its own problem. But Madison's isn't even that far, so I might try. I might try and walk a

So what is a bad habit? We need to define it, don't we actually so we've discussed some of our bad habits in the last episode. But what we mean by bad habits is things really that are a bit disruptive or get in the way of you living a good life. Some of these bad habits may even make you miserable in the long term, and can really affect your quality of life. So things such as checking your email every two minutes when you don't need to snacking on junk food late at night scrolling on your phone when you know you should be working. eating junk food is such as takeaway ordering, constant takeaways all the time when you know you should be unhealthy. We've all got bad habits and bad habits are on autopilot, aren't they? We do them and sometimes we don't even realise that we're doing them. So that's really what we mean when we're defining bad habits, things that you don't really want to do long term, but you're doing them anyway. And I'm sure you've got loads of bad habits yourself that you know that you do. So that's why it's really important. To break those habits. So

on to the science part and today. And we've got something a bit different for you this time. So it is a study show. I'll put in the show notes. But they've also made a little infographic of the study as well which just breaks it down makes it a bit easier to read. But the study is basically looking at sedentary smartphone owners, and whether actually using technology on your smartphone can be a way to break bad habits. So it's things like using behaviour modification games to change how queues are received, changing queues in the first place intermittent rewards and feedback. It's just really interesting, really, it's a preliminary study, again, released in 2013. So hopefully if they got funding we should be looking at getting the actual study sometime soon. Just poses an interesting question really about whether or not we could be using our smartphones in a better sort of more healthy way. I think it's something that has gradually started to creep into our society anyway, hasn't it like you've got most phones now have like step trackers on. You can track the food that you're eating. You can log your exercise you can join groups of people like in their exercise as well. I think as much as we seem to always be anti technology. We definitely aren't and there's definitely a time and a place when it can do great good.

So how do you improve? How do you get better habits? How do you break those bad habits? How do you deal with them? The first question is to focus on why why is changing this habit important to you? And I read a really great book a few years ago and it's called what is your why and it's all about setting up a business and it goes into what is your why and why you're doing it. And when we started this podcast we talked all about our why why we were doing it and you need a why for why you're doing it because that why inspires you to carry on. So why am I why do I want to change this may be for example, if you want to get healthier and you want to get a good buddy and you want to maintain that. Then the bad habit might actually be that you're overeating. You're ordering the junk food you're getting takeaways. So the two things on the surface may look totally different. But it's the why you were doing it. Well you want to change it. I mean, if you like eating junk food and you don't want to lose weight that might not be for you. But that's a common bad habit that people have, which is why I'm mentioning it. So what you need to do is you need to focus on your why. And then you need to remind yourself every day that you're doing, why you're doing it. So for example, why is your not ordering the takeaway? Why is that you're exercising because your body needs to stay strong, and that you can go and play with your grandkids or children and you know, it just gives you that motivation. And we will be talking a little bit more about motivation and willpower later. But it just gives you that kickstart it gives you that reason to actually start

Oh shall you need to give up on this? I actually said didn't know that. I actually said I was actually enjoying SMART goals. But do you know when someone's can't go in on about them like Oh, smart, smart. Even though I know like we were talking the last episode wasn't me about smart goals and habits and things they are actually smart goals. Really. It's just put in a different context and slightly different. So I do agree with you. I am agreeing with you that smart goals are amazing. And they give you specific targets and all that jazz and I think it's great. It's just I don't really know why I hate the word smart. I hate the word smart phone. I hate the word smart. I hate the word smart. I hate the word smart. Just when you put a smart in front of me makes it sound like it's a magical thing to hear but it's not

okay. I'll be interested to to hear this when this comes out. Another thing that you can do to look at breaking your bad habits is to find identify your triggers. So there will be something that triggers the behaviour so you want to be looking at when the behaviour occurs is no one else involved. How do you feel when it happens? Just to give you a clue as to what's starting this cycle off in the first place. So a couple of mine I will when I'm bored of scroll social media, if I'm busy if I'm engaged by you know, hanging out chatting with friends, I pretty much won't pick up my phone at all. So being sort of bored at home not much to do that's a definite trigger for me to slip into bad habits. If I've got sort of the end of the day when I'm suffering from decision fatigue, I will make poor life choices. So I try. I try and avoid having any big decisions at the end of the day. But I do usually end up having to decide at least what to eat. And

Yeah, decision fatigue doesn't necessarily have to be the end of the day. That's just what it's worth. But yeah, if I make decisions after I've made a lot of big decisions, they definitely tend to be poor ones. And I'll definitely tend to do things like reach for junk food and takeaways rather than cook something healthy. Yeah. And then put another one that I thought about is bad bedtimes. So if I just having a normal evening and the TV isn't on, I will usually end up in bed at a reasonable time and medication. Now spiral into a rabbit hole of endless research is discussed. But otherwise I tend to end up in bed at a reasonable time. If I start watching some sort of show on Netflix. That's That's it?

last week I was saying that's exactly what I do. I know I'm gonna regret it but I can't stop myself. Yeah, it's just it's so funny to me that we know. Like we know don't we when we're doing things, for example, like we know when we're going to eat that pizza or we're going to eat that McDonald's or whatever junk food we're ordering. We know that it's not good for us. But we tried to justify to myself like always just just tonight and then tomorrow, our staff will be different. Yeah, I only watch one more episode. And then the end of that episode, something dramatic happens or something amazing or just just one more and then I'll go to bed. But we all know we're doing it. Yeah. It's hard to stop

The thing is with bad habits, they are like we said before they start they become sort of like a subconscious sort of habit because we're doing them over and over and over again. And then we don't realise that we're doing it so like Shel said, it's great to start with the trigger. So the trigger of smelling the foods and trigger of going hunger is one of the biggest triggers for junk food. Because when you're hungry, and I don't know you probably do this as well. Charlaine a lot of people who are listening probably do as well. You go to the supermarket when you're hungry, you end up buying the whole store because you're so hungry, that you just you just want all of the food whereas if you go when you really fall you make you make better decisions like so you make poor decisions when you're hungry, and it's the same. It's the same situation for any bad habit. You're making poor decisions along the way. So when you're in when you're ordering the food, it's because you're hungry. So if your trigger is hunger, try to fill yourself up, try to plan your meals, try to eat things that are filling or lowering calories, all that sort of stuff. We're not dietitians, obviously but that's a good place to start. So one of the one of the one of the biggest bad habits that I have is telling myself that I'm this kind of person. So I'll say to myself, Oh, I'm just the kind of person that does this or I'm the kind of person that does that. And you're you'll notice talking a lot in these podcasts that I say all of these different things constantly. But that's a bad habit as well because I'm telling myself that I'm the type of person. So what I'm doing is I'm reaffirming to myself, that this is how I'm going to behave. So those things you need to look quite deep into yourself to find those habits and find what the trigger is for that. I mean, obviously on the podcast app, we have a joke or laugh about it all the time and that's basically what I'm doing it but what is the trigger for those things. So look at your triggers, and find out what

is a great way to to describe that weaning yourself off from it because a lot of people think they could just, you know, go go cold turkey, white knuckling it through I'm going to do this I'm going to do this but that's why a lot of people do end up failing and going back into the old habit. And I've got a great example for this. I used to have seven sugars in my tea. So growing up, I used to burn seven about I got to a stage show where it just used to tip a mug gonna lie I didn't even use to measure it out because it was so time consuming measuring seven cups, seven spoons of sugar into my tea. But literally,

but I got used to it. That's what that's what I'm saying not the habit just got worse and worse and worse. The longer it continued. I mean I used to line you know when you have like cereal, I used to line the ball with sugar before put the cornflakes in and then put sugar on top as well. So when I put my spoon in, I could get the sugar from the bottom of the bowl. It was awful. Wow. So I had this massive habit of overeating sugar and liking really really sweet things. And like I said it got to a stage where I just used to take the sugar into my tea I didn't even care anymore. Now if I have one grain of sugar in my tea or coffee in my tea or coffee, I can't drink it. And the way that I did that was doing what you said weaning yourself off if I had just said to myself, I That's it. I'm not gonna have sugar again tomorrow. There was no way that would have ever worked for me. So what I actually did was I went back to starting to count them because that was better than just taping it and when I did that I did six and a half then I did six you get the drift or went down until I was fine having two which is obviously a normal, normal level of sugar for most people in their in their beverages, and then one and a half. And sometimes I'd go back to two so I'd have like to one day than one and a half another day that too and just slowly weaned myself off and to the point where now I don't I just I just don't care for sugar in any of my drinks anymore. And it's great and I think that you know that's that's what you want to get to isn't it? So, some other examples are if you want to give up coffee, have less of it, replace it with something else, maybe start having teas. So instead of just going like I'm not going to have coffee again, full disclosure, I don't think there's anything wrong with having a cup of coffee in your morning routine or if you like it but if you having too much of it and you are having everyday all the time, maybe switch the occasional coffee to have a tea and you'll start realising that you're relying on it less and less and less. So great way to actually start changing your bad habits.

And then the final thing that we've got for you is to stop black and white thinking. This is something that I definitely fall victim to time and time again, which is where it's got to be all or nothing. So you know, trying really hard to give up on something or to succeed at something. Yeah, and then one little slip up and I'm like, Oh, well that's it. It's all done now. Oh might as well not bother so you need to you need to get out of that mindset, you will fail. And that isn't an excuse to stop completely. It took time to build the habit in the first place and it is gonna take time to break it. And I think if you're aware of that beforehand and you can catch yourself when you start to get into that oh I just I just won't bother mentality. Then it's easier to sort of talk yourself back down. But that is a hard word that is definitely a weakness of mine.

I think that's probably one of the things that a lot of people struggle with the most Isn't it this all or nothing mindset of if if it doesn't go well if it doesn't go right then that's it. I might as well give up on it. But even if it's not perfect, do something that's slightly better. You can do things that are slightly better. For example, I really love Starbucks coffee, and I used to go and have like vanilla, oat lattes and all this sort of stuff right? I started to realise that they're actually really high in calories, so I just have less of it. So I'll just say to whoever was working at the desk, right? Can I just have like less caramel shots or can I just have like it made this way so that it's not as many calories like that was that was my compromise for me. And you can make compromises to do the next best thing if you want to pizza. Instead of ordering it from a takeaway make your own or go to the store and buy like a fresh pizza or something like that. That is going to get you out of this all or nothing mindset and I think like Shell said, you will fail. Not everything is going to be perfect, but it's about making those choices and making those decisions and saying to yourself, Okay, so I didn't do as well as I could have done on this particular thing this day. I'll try again tomorrow. And if I don't do it again tomorrow, I will make a better decision. It doesn't have to be the perfect decision. Just a slightly better one.