Mastering Habits

Questions Answered

What are habits?

What can neuroscience teach us?

Why does this matter?

Full Transcript

Coach Dani: Hello, wonderful friends. I'm Danielle Hagerty and welcome to Habits Hub, your Cozy Corner for mastering life one habit at a time using proven psychology and design principles. As women balancing multiple roles and responsibilities building positive routines can be transformative. Here we go beyond quick tips to truly understand the “why” behind our behaviors. Together we'll craft sustainable habits to help you feel more energized, focused, and fulfilled whether that means kickstarting is self-care morning ritual, streamlining your day for better work-life balance or finding pockets of time for your passions. Our compassionate approach has helped women like you make lasting, meaningful changes. Subscribe at www.getbetterhabits.com to become an insider and claim your free consultation to dive deeper into designing your ideal life rhythm. Are you ready to invest in yourself and finally make those positive habits stick? Let's get started.

Coach Dani: What's a habit? That is such a great question. I'm a big fan of getting everyone on the same page when it comes to vocabulary and terminology because it's so easy to talk past each other when we don't know the same definitions. So for our purposes, let's define a habit as a process that you do consistently and repeatedly. Process around you all the time. At work that probably looks like a procedure document, a checklist, a workflow, something that captures what an organization wants a group of people to do repeatedly and consistently. There are checklists for takeoff and landing for a pilot. There are onboarding guides for new hires. Things like that, so you probably encounter processes all the time at work. 

At home and in life, it's not as formal, but it's still there,  so you probably have a routine or a process that you do to brush your teeth. Do you like to floss first and then brush? Do you brush and then floss? Do you do neither? You have kind of that consistent flow every time. It can be as simple as tying your shoe. Some people like to do the two loops; others like to do the rabbit around and through. Whatever works for you. Maybe velcro because it's easier.

When you're cooking maybe you like to set up your kitchen a certain way before you get started. Maybe your process is to wash dishes as you go or save them all for the end because you have a helper who's gonna take over. We have processes in our lives all the time. And so that, I think, is the easiest way to think about a habit. It’s just something that you do as a series of events.

For consistency, diving into what consistency means, you're typically going to do those events or those actions each time you think to do this process. The cue or trigger could be If we're thinking about work, right, it could be every time you have a budget meeting you're going to prepare a slide show. Or, every time you go to the coffee shop to order your coffee, you're gonna grab your friend and have a little walk and talk while you wait in line. If you're commuting, I like to listen to music when I commute so my process for commuting might be picking a playlist and then sitting in traffic until I get home. So, easy little sequences of events that we do each day. At home, it might look like every time it's 7 pm your family sits down to dinner. Or, every time you see your spouse you smile. Or, I'll borrow this one from my neighbor, every time her dog rings a little bell she lets him outside into the yard. These are just things you do every time or most of the time or more often than not you encounter some sort of cue when you start doing this process.

And repeatable is that repetition. How many times do you do it over and over? The more you repeat a process the easier it becomes and the less thought it takes and less energy it takes. The way I think about that is around here, we have a lot of kind of wooded areas. And so if I walk through the woods with my friend looking for antlers, we tend to go off the beaten path. So it's a little bit more effort and a little bit more awareness to look out for branches and bushes and shrubs and things like that because it's an overgrown area. Some of the trails around here are dirt tracks. So that's a little bit easier. And so that might be the next level of an area that's been repeatedly walked through become a dirt track and so it's a little bit easier. There's a little bit more of a sense of where the trail is that you've walked over and over or that people have walked over and over. So that takes less effort than that overgrown picture. And then, some of the trails around here are nicely paved for pedestrians and cyclists. So that's super easy. Just follow the paved Road. Some of them are even painted in the center for lanes. And so it takes less thought than the dirt track or the overgrown area to walk that route over and over.

That's how I kind of visualize repeatability and how trying to learn a habit initially might be a little bit hard. But as you repeat it, as you get that process down, as it becomes easier and easier to do you'll think less about it. You'll spend less energy on that and it just becomes more of a routine. The reason why you do a habit could be a lot of things. So let's start with things that are just outside of yourself. So it could be a particular location. So when I go to the grocery store I do or when I go to school, I do this or when I'm in a restaurant I do this. It could be a calendar reminder. I set a ton of those because I don't like to keep an eye on the clock. so I set calendar reminders to help me make sure I do things at the appropriate time. The reason could be something someone said. Someone pays you a compliment, gives you criticism, or asks a question. Those things that people say can be a reason why you go into a particular process. The reason we do a process could be internal too. So it could be a memory or a thought like I remember something, now I'm going to do this.  It could be an emotion or a feeling like when I'm sad I do this or when I'm happy I do something else. It can also be your values and beliefs. There are a lot of internal reasons to have a habit or a process, too. It's really any event, cue, or trigger that sets you into doing something.

Typically the cycle for a habit ends in feedback of some sort. And so that feedback can be rewarding or punishing. It can be outside of us or internal. Let's break that down a little bit. If it's within us, it could be that runner's high, we hear that a lot about exercise and things where you get kind of that natural high going on. It could be your inner advocate telling you what an awesome presentation you just did, or how you just crushed that sales call, or what an amazing Mom you are because you remembered to pack lunches. Or, could be that inner critic right that tells you how you're not good enough or you should have done this better, or other kinds of negative things that you don't want to hear. That feedback can also be external. It could be a performance review at work. That's external feedback on things you're doing. It could be praise from a friend or having them be sympathetic or empathetic in a moment when you need it. It could be, cold hard cash like a paycheck, a tip, or a bonus. Those all kind of reinforce whether you're going to do that process, that habit the next time.

If it's rewarding, if we liked what happened after we did that process, we'll save it for next time. I got a good thing out of that, I got a treat so I'm gonna put that in the to-do list. If it's punishing, depending on how we interpret what happened, we may modify the process for next time. That's the mantra of test and learn or learning and not failing. Hey, it didn't go the way we thought; that's cool. We're gonna make some changes and we're gonna try a different way next time. Depending on that interpretation of what happened, we may avoid that situation again. It was too embarrassing or too scary or too something and so we'd rather just skip whatever that situation was next time.

There are a lot of different negative spirals that might result if we don't like what happened after we did that habit of that process. That's a whole topic by itself. What I love about habits and all of this is that we can change. It's not easy at first, of course, we have to figure out what is that path through the woods, right? But, we can keep the habits that we like and we can modify the ones that we don't.

It's incredible to me that the brain allows us that freedom to choose. I think that's just a core principle of life that you can master and use to help you make the life that you want. So, I think habits are really fun and really cool. And so that's why I like to talk about them.

Coach Dani: What can neuroscience teach us about habit formation? That's an amazingly interesting question. I know you're not here to become neuroscientists. I will admit that I'm a big fan of the discipline. I'm not trained in it though. So I read a lot. I listen to lectures. I love trying to pronounce brain words, but if you want to deep dive into the subject, please do check out all of the great neuroscientists that are out there. For the pieces of the brain that we're interested in for habit formation, I'm going to keep it pretty simple so scientists, forgive me, please. But I want to talk about the three pieces that help us form habits. The first one is the basal ganglia. That's a structure in the center of our brain and it coordinates the actions of different parts of our brain. What's also kind of cool about what it does is that’s where we evaluate whether something is rewarding. So it's that little–I'll say voice, but it’s not really a voice right?--but the voice in our head that says, “if it feels good do it. If it sucks don't do it.” I think that's a great little area of our brain to know and to just understand that it's there.

If it went unchecked, of course, we would do things to the extreme. if it feels good just keep doing it. So well, hey shopping feels good. So let me just keep doing that until I'm way in debt. Eating feels good. So let me just do that until I'm beyond a reasonable size. I do think everything in moderation and luckily there are other parts of the brain that jump in so the basal ganglia doesn't go unchecked. But for creating habits this part of our brain helps us find an incentive to create a habit and I think that's a good thing. Remember, it doesn't evaluate whether that's good or bad. It just says, hey, you should create this habit. So we'll work on other parts of the brain to understand how we select a habit to be created, but I think it's pretty cool that there's a piece of the brain that neuroscience can highlight to say hey, this is where the incentive decision happens.

The next piece of the brain that I think is pretty important for us to at least know that it exists is the putamen. The putamen is called the “learning machine” and it takes things we repeatedly practice and turns them into habits. So that's where if you're learning how to ride a bike and it's hard the first time right? There are so many things to remember about wearing a helmet and how do you turn left or right? And how do you stay balanced? How do pedals work and what are the traffic laws here? And which direction on the map am I supposed to go? What hand signal do I use and all of those things you're kind of absorbing as a beginner learning how to ride a bike. The putamen is the part of the brain that helps that get easier over time and turns that into a habit. And so with practice, it takes less energy, less thought and so that's how the brain contributes to that outcome we're seeking right we want this Habit to be easy and low energy low effort so that it's very natural to do.

The third part of the brain that I think is pretty important for us to know, and by all means these aren't the only three pieces. I just think these are the three easiest to describe and understand our purposes. But the prefrontal cortex the other part of the brain plays a starring role in creating habits. That's the area where we regulate our thoughts actions and emotions. It tells other regions like the basal ganglia that perhaps we don't need 10 pizzas for dinner after a night at the bar. So I like this one. This one helps me stick to my everything in moderation mantra. Those three pieces and of course, there are more, help us in our brain learn a habit, repeat a habit, and keep that habit going forward. So I think that's pretty cool and nifty and really good information to know just about how your body and brain work. Like I said before, of course, I'm simplifying these for our purposes. If you're nerdy like me, feel free to find neuroscience articles and get curious about how the brain works. But, for our purposes I'll stop there for today.

Coach Dani: Why does this matter? Such a good question about anything you encounter in life. Mastering your habits is one of the most powerful ways you can take control of your life. As I talked about earlier, we have the ability to keep repeating habits. And, we have the ability to change them to something new. I'm not saying it's easy, but I'm saying that we know how to do this and it's possible. I think that's a fantastic feature of being human.

I'm a fan of good habits because they create that upward spiral of positive energy in your life. It helps you stay in a positive attitude and mindset which research has proven helps you achieve goals and things that we tend to want out of life. It helps keep your energy high and in a good vibe, so to speak, and it gives you that momentum to reinforce your belief that you can achieve that goal and you’re working towards a finish line. To me, the best kind of visual representation of that is training for a marathon. It looks scary and hard and somewhat daunting at first. But, it's something that you want to do, It's a goal you want to achieve. Potentially, maybe not everyone, but you can visualize. As you work toward that goal, you have good training days and you have bad training days. You have shoes that hurt and shoes that feel good. You have food that upsets your stomach and food that you like at certain miles. You learn over time what is the way to run the marathon for you. And, as you complete each mile of that race, you get closer to that goal and you start realizing the payoff of building those habits and of all the progress you've made and that momentum gets you to that finish line. Then, you have that outcome that goal that you achieved so I think that makes a good visual for any habit. It's going to be hard in the beginning. You're gonna figure it out, and you're going to get to that destination that you want in the end.

Bad habits, of course, do the opposite of that spiral. As you kind of end up spiraling down into a darker and darker place you tend to feel stuck burned out depleted. You may have physical symptoms of that. It can be a drain and a wear and tear on your body and on your spirit. so that's why I'm an advocate for trying to figure those out and trying to replace them with something better. I think that that's something we can all achieve to some degree in our lives.

Why does this matter? Switching between the two spirals is the skill of life, in my opinion. We all catch ourselves going down a negative path. It's how long you go down that path, and when do you stop and assess and pivot.  That's the skill that you're trying to learn, and it can take many years over time to figure out. In my own personal experience–and this isn't a terribly negative one, it's just an example of a change that occurred over a lifetime–that was my attitude towards running as a child. When I was in elementary school, we had a running club. We had PE, and kudos to the school system for having exercise being a part of the curriculum. I wasn't into it at the time. Not for me, I was not coordinated. I didn't really practice sports. So, at recess, my basketball game was not as great as everyone else's. In running club, I have some pretty vivid memories of telling my PE teacher I had an ankle problem or some sort of imaginary injury to get out of running mostly because my friends at the time were very fast. I still have fast friends, but I have a different attitude now! But at that time, it really bothered me that they could do two miles at the same time it took me to wander through one mile. It wasn't a thing for me yet. I didn't like running and that's the story I told myself. I'm not a runner. I don't like running, and so that was how I imagined life would be for the rest of it. I just wasn't into that. Fast forward to adulthood and positive peer pressure, we'll call it. I worked in a company with lots of healthy fit people, and they wanted to put together a relay team. The series is the Ragnar Relay series. These are 200-mile courses overnight. It takes 12 runners doing very segments between them to complete the entire course. And as a non-runner, right, that sounds ridiculous. But, a really good friend of mine was trying to recruit people for the team and broke it down, right? He said hey, we'll give you the easiest segments we can and you and I can run after work and running–there can be walking–and start with one mile and build up from there. And, he broke it down for me very bite-sized to the point that I couldn't say no anymore. Those experiences were amazing and such good memories now as an adult. But, when I look back and compare Ragnar Relays to running club in third grade, it's a very different experience, a very different attitude, and a very different set of habits. I think that that's possible for any area of your life. It can be the “I don’t like public speaking to the “I do like public speaking.” I don't like exercise to I do like exercise. It's all about finding those barriers that are getting in your way, and finding the things that sound good to you that you will do and that will benefit you. That's a very personal journey. I think it's worth taking the time to dig into what you like, and what you want, and finding those habits that help you make the life that you want.

That's why it matters, in my opinion. To me, it's a beautiful truth that you have the power to reshape your habits at any age or stage of life. It just takes curiosity, self-compassion, and the right strategies. So, I hope that you continue to stay curious about habits and find ways to make changes in your life.

Coach Dani: As we wrap up for today, I want to remind you that building better habits is an incredible act of self-care. By investing time to understand yourself and design routines to align with your priorities, you're actively crafting a life you'll feel proud of. If any part of today's lesson resonated with you or sparked an “ah ha” moment, I'd love for you to leave a comment and share your thoughts. Your experiences and perspectives help make this a rich community for all of us. If you're feeling inspired to begin your habit transformation journey, visit getbetterhabits.com to explore our personalized coaching options and join our amazingly supportive network of women taking charge of our lives one habit at a time. Remember you have immense power to shape your days and steer your journey. Keep taking those purposeful steps forward, and I'll see you again soon.