Changing habits - the motivation myth

0:02 A listener production. You're listening to Crappy Tore Happy with Tip and Cast. Last episode we were. Talking about mindfulness one oh one Real Basics. This episode, we're going to talk about changing habits and the motivation myth. So Cass motivation. Yeah, I'm assuming this is a that you see this a lot. I do as a trainer and running a online fitness weight loss business. People come to me because they want to. Lose weight or get fit, and they're very motivated in the beginning, and I see that they do get those results through motivation, but there comes a time where they fall off the wagon. Motivation fails them and they're staring at me, going whys is so hard? And the answer isn't always with motivation, is it. It's it always comes back to habits, creating healthy habits. And I find that the clients that are most successful members most successful are those who do implement the healthy habits, and those that are the least successful are those that are relying on the woolpower, relying on the motivation. And there's a lot of scientific evidence to back this up that motivation isn't what we should be relying on.

1:18 It should be habits where did that even come from? Where is it that we why is it that we all think that we should magically be motivated? And I mean that about any goal. You know, I'm writing a book at the moment, and you know, so you say, well, if I only wrote when I felt motivated to write, like, not much writing. Would get done. And the same with anything ex studying. Everything, you do it whether you feel like doing it or not. Yeah, sometimes you need to have a deadline. Sometimes that's the thing that gets you going. But I think the problem is when you're relying only on yourself, like there's no external pressure, there's no external deadline. If I've got to write an article for TVXO, it gets written maybe at the last minute, but there's an external pressure.

2:02 Because we're you yeah, yeah, yeah. But if I'm writing a book for myself or something that's for you know, nobody's putting pressure on me, then there's not that same pressure, and therefore things don't get done. So we have to go beyond motivation. Don't we to get touching any goal. Because the motivation runs out. And I find that in myself. I'm doing physio at the moment for my broken ankle. It's very hard to keep going. It's boring, you know, you get I'm over it, but you have to create that habit where as soon as I wake up, I'm doing physio. At lunchtime, I do physio, and before I go to bed physio. I'm trying to build the habit in to get it done because I know if I wait until I motivated, it just won't happen.

2:45 Too many other things get in the way. So what are the kinds of things that you see coming up in the community, like in the tifxo community about this topic, this pervation. So in the tif exo community, we see people have one bad day and then they write the whole week and they can't get remotivated after they have say a slip up like a biscuit with a coffee. Oh, I've had a biscuit. I might as well go and have fast food now. And you see this cycle once they're off the wagon of just sabotaging and feeling self defeated and just not being able to get back on track. So that comes down to, you know, how we coach them to reset and to to try that lose the all or nothing attitude.

3:29 But a lot of it has to do with motivation. If you have a bad day, how do you get motivated the next day to pick up, pull up your socks and kick going. And also, you know relying on that motivation far too much. I know that in my own life when I build healthy habits, for example, something as simple as brushing my teeth, I don't think about it. I brush my teeth morning and night. So you know, I've implemented exercise at times in my life where it is just like brushing my teeth. I just do it. Rain hell, I do it because I feel good after. And same with healthy eating. There's just some no nose. I don't drink soft drink for something. I hate soft drinks, so I don't have it in the house. I don't have it. There are habits there with what I drink, what I don't drink. Having those habits have saved me time and time again from relying on motivation.

4:19 That comes and goes. And my best advice to anyone starting a health and fitness journey or adventure adventure, because I hate the way journey it's use way too much in reality TV, is to forget the motivation and to concentrate on the habits. Can I ask you a question because you've talked about your healthy habits in terms of your nutrition and exercise, and that's been your lifestyle and your living. You make a living for a very long time, so those habits would be really well entrenched for you. In our last episode, we talked about meditation. How did you go with making that new habit? That's because that's been something that would have been new for you, something that wasn't already part of a routine. How did you do that?

5:06 Well, simply, I didn't have any more time in the day to dedicate to anything. So my husband and I decided we'd go to bed ten minutes earlier, and instead of scrolling. Through Facebook for Instagram like I. Was doing in bed, which is a big and no no froncas because of the blue light that kept me up and all the thoughts of. You know, and I found it negative. I put the phone away just in a drawer in the kitchen and ed and I went to bed and ten minutes earlier. And that's how we instilled a little bit of habit around meditation. And it's working. Yeah, it's really working. So there's a set time, set time routine. Space got a buddy which helps. Yeah, I've got a meditation buddy. He keeps me accountable, and you know, it is hard. Sometimes I do want to stay up and watch Tally or you know, I start tiding up the house at that time because the baby's in bed. You know, those things have to wait because the meditation is very important and we have stuck to it and it's been great.

6:06 Yeah. So cas, let's start with the science of willpower, because I do know this, but willpower runs out right. Yeah. Willpower has been found to be a finite resource. It's essentially that people talk about it in different ways. Some people talk about it like an energy that depletes and renews, and there are certain things that deplete it and certain things that renew it or replenish it. I think it also people talk about it as being like a muscle that fatigues. I actually really like that metaphor because the muscle that fatigues also can be strengthened over time. And that's the thing about willpower is initially you might have a weak willpower muscle. It actually technically is an energy.

6:50 It's like a glucose It's fueled by glucose in your body. But if we use the muscle metaphor, then you might have a weak willpower muscle, so it will fatigue by the end of a long day, which is while we all fall off the wagon at night and it but over time, with building up that muscle slowly, you actually can increase your the strength of your willpower over time. So when people are talking about looking for motivation to stick to goals, looking for their motivation to do something or not do something. So when we talk. About willpower, we're talking about Kelly McGonagall is actually a Stanford University psychologist who has also researched this, and she talks about willpower as actually willpower, won't power, and want power.

7:39 There's three different components to it. So I will do something, I will go to the gym, I will exercise today, I will write my book, I will, I will, I won't. So willpower also constitute the thing constitutes the things that I won't do, I won't eat the cake, all the things that were every time we stop doing something that we really want to. Oh, that counts too, Yeah, it counts as well. And then the other thing is, well, the other thing that we know depletes it is decision making. Sure you and I have talked about how important it is a decision. Making thing, and so every time we make a decision, every time, and in fact, any when you think about what I will do and what I won't do, if you think about all day long through your life, we can talk about the big things like the diet and the exercise and those big sort of bigger decisions, but even just the fact that I have to go to work when I would rather stay home, or the fact that I will I, you know, refrain from making a rude comment to somebody who cuts me off in the traffic, Like all of.

8:40 That's using yes, yes, and I find a nice children at work. Children so hard because you're making decisions all day. What do I do in this situation? Like do I It's so hard. You're making decisions all day. With the kids. You are very depleting. You are like we go out now, he's going to be different. Yeah, feed, nap, play this, what's he need? What's he need? It depletes so decision making, doing things you don't want to do, not doing things you do want to do. All of these things fatigue the muscle. So at the end of the day, your willpower will be quite depleted. Okay, so that's important to know. How do you build it. It's a muscle, though, we know it's.

9:22 An energy in your body, and we know it's fueled by rest and by glucose in your blood and your brain. So actually eating. Regularly, like keeping your blood sugar stable is really important. So if you apply that to people who diet, when you're dieting, when you're consciously choosing to limit your calorie. Into depleting willpower as you're all increasing cravings. Yeah. Yeah, So on the one hand, we've talked about we've had a whole episode on dieting in season one, or we talked about when you choose to not eat certain foods and then you focus intensely on wanting to eat those things, and then your blood sugar is low, so you're actually your willpower.

10:04 Is low as well low as well, So it's almost for disaster absolutely. Yeah, So keeping your blood sugar levels stable is really important and also rest, so meditation for example, taking breaks will renew that. So Cass, are you saying that we should limit the decisions we make. If it's possible to limit the number of decisions that you have to make, then you will certainly keep your reserves of willpower up. So this is the reason why Barack Obama, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerperk that all were basically like a uniform every day. So then I have to think about whether that's a gray T shirt and a pair of jeans, or whether it's a blue suit or a gray suit. Then they don't have to think about what they're going to wear every day. Similarly, they'll have a routine to you know, hit the gym at six o'clock every morning, rain, hail, shine, don't think about it, don't think about it. So if you can remove those decisions and make things part of the routine, what we know about habits is that they require no thinking but require no decision making because they're so automatic. So that's what we want to aim for, is to get rid of the thinking process, the decision process that depletes all of that willpower, and just make it so automatic that it's like you, it's such a part of your life that you don't even think about it.

11:26 And when I had the baby, I found that decision making so overwhelming what to do with this tiny newborn. So I did formulate a little routine with the help of a midwife and Arnold has been on Arnold's routine. I emailed it off to all friends and family visiting times the Here are his nap times, here are his feed times, here are his playtimes, and the whole day's mapped. Doubt, so I look at the clock. I know exactly right now he's asleep until one thirty, one thirty feed, he'll play until three thirty. When he'll have another nap, you know. And it has taken so much pressure off on that Arnold is on his routine and we just all can. You know until he changes it? Yeah, And of course.

12:07 It has been adapting from newborns for five month baby, there's solids. Now he's eating some solids, so you're adding solid sessions all of that. But it does take away some of that torment of decision making day and day out with kids. For sure. So let's talk about habits. I love habits, I love discipline, I love routine. I guess it comes from my martial arts background, where habits and the routine of training and the practice is so important. No matter how you feel what's going on, you would make time for that martial arts training every day. It's non negotiable. And it was beautiful because the habit was built into me. In terms of you put on your dough bock, your uniform, that's the first part of the habit. You type your belt in the exact same way every single day, making sure that the lengths are down to your knees and the knot is a certain way, and it all forms a way of getting prepared to train. And I think it's important in all sorts of habits. Whether you are going for a run in the morning, you put on your runners, or maybe it's a heart rate monitor or you know, you have these tiny little habits built into habits that help to get you moving. And I find that so important in my life to maintain healthy habits.

13:21 So is there some science behind that. Yes. In fact, almost half of everything that we do every day is done out of habit. Wow. So when you're talking about again taekwondo or exercise, return, that's one activity that you do. But the fact of the matter is from when you wake up in the morning until when you go to bed at night, most most of your day is habitual, like including what you think and what you feel, not just what you do. I don't have to ask you like if you would probably have to stop and think if I asked you, do you put your left shoe on first or your right shoe? Which no, I couldn't tell you probably might right, but. I guarantee you it's exactly the same every day. Or when you get up in the morning, you know, what is the first thing that you do? Do you go do you know, straight to the meditation cushions, straight to the coffee machine, straight to the shower, straight to the phone.

14:11 It will be the same every day. We all have our routine and we don't even think anymore, you know. So there's a part of our brain that is involved in making decisions, and that's a huge mental load. Like if you have to think about everything that you do, it uses a lot of mental resources. So for efficiency, our brain chunks things together. It chunks a whole lots of different activities into these little routines, so that then one thing just triggers off, another triggers off, another triggers off and other. You know, when you're driving somewhere and you this time instead of going to work, you have to pick somebody out from the airport, but you drive straight to you take the automatically, put the indicator on and take the EXEITU at work instead of going to the airport, because that's what you'll You're just so programmed to follow that routine, so if you're not consciously thinking, you'll automatically drive to the place even though you're not.

15:09 Supposed to go. So every day we you know, our brains have a limited capacity, so they're very good at chunking things together. And so everything that we do, generally speaking, like triggers off something else, triggers off something else, triggers off something else, so that it's not just one thing we do, it's whole chains of things. So you think get together. So if you're doing something that isn't good for you and you would like to change that habit, how do you short circuit that habitual automatic chain of events. So people focus on there's this behavior that I want to change, but that behavior will be one. Little chink in that whole chain.

15:51 And every behavior and we know this has got like a trigger, like a queue to do it. And then usually when we're talking about things like food or any behavior that we do, there's a reward at the end of it. Ah the reward, so we have a queue. If I am trying to stop eating chocolate. Yes, there'll be a queue to eat the chocolate. The que could be it's three o'clock. Yes, the que can be a time of day. It's three o'clock. I go straight to the vending machine. It's three o'clock. It's time to go down to the cafe in coffees. And so there's a queue, there's a behavior, then there's a reward. So if we want to unpack habits or create new habits, we have to look at the whole chain. I think that's the important thing, because everything links to something else.

16:33 So cas, what are some other things that are getting in the way of people making good choices and getting those habits in place to get them to their goal. There's lots of tricky things that our brain does. So essentially, what we when people talk about wanting to be motivated or looking for motivation or looking for will power to achieve a goal, what they're essentially saying is they want to prioritize the long term goal over the shit term gratification. You know, do I want to I really want to eat this cake right now, but I know that that's not again, not going to get me closer to the goal of fitting into the dress, or you know, I want to stay on the couch and watch TV, but that's not going to get me closer to my goal of running a half marathon. And so so often we tend to default to choosing the instant what feels good now, yes, over what is.

17:26 What we want? That's that I want power I was talking about before I said the willpower, the won't power? Then that I want powers their actual goal, the long term thing that I'm aiming for us. So how do we make that the priority? And we do tend to oftentimes choose the what feels good in the short. Term, yeah, yeah, And how how do. You sit with that discomfort and push through to well? I think we have to start understanding our own psychology a bit. And again, you know, mindfulness is no judgment. So if we can start noticing the things that we think, and the things that we tell ourselves, the stories that we buy into, and without any judgment, we can start seeing what some of these traps are that we fall into, that get in the way, and that's that's gonna help us.

18:11 Episode one on positive thinking and episode two and mindfulness. Are all helping. We're all helping to build these habits, Yeah, to prime you to make a good habit. So one thing that we know is that human beings will you know you we think. We see this in the community all the time. We think that if we're doing really well on making progress, that that will be really motivating to continue, and for some people it certainly is. But what we actually often find is that making progress almost triggers us. To feel that we deserve a reward. So I've done so well making all this great progress, Yeah, me, I deserve to have that pizza. And the other thing is that what we know is that we have this moralistic kind of way that we you know, we use.

18:59 We've talked before about moralizing food choices. It's good or it's bad, and therefore I'm good or I'm bad, And so this applies to often our behavioral choices as well. Like if we do something good, we give ourselves a pat on the back. But what we do human beings are fascinating creatures. If we do something that's good, we kind of give ourselves license to then do something bad. Why do we do that? Because I don't know, it's our this funny brain way that our brain works. This applies to for example, to get off the food subject for a minute. This applies to if you ask people to. Recall a time that they did something really altruistic, that they did something really good for other people, they're less likely than if you give them the option to donate to a charity. They're actually less likely to donate to the charity if they've just remembered the time they did something good because in their mind, they already did that good thing.

19:52 Pat on the back off the hawk. Incredible. Basically they do. They do. And also if you. If you tell yourself that you're going to go to the gym later, like you haven't even been yet, but if in your mind you tell yourself you're going to the gym, you give yourself license to eat more. Now, this is so interesting. Casts. I love talking about habits and motivation. We're going to take a little break now and come back and talk about how you can build those healthy habits. Welcome back to Crappy to Happy. We're talking all things habits and motivation. So for myself, when I was competing at elite level or you know, in peak states of training, I don't know if this was the right approach. Cast, but keep in front of mind the reasons that I was doing this, whether it was to build my brand or to because it was a personal goal to see how far I could go in taekwondo. I always came back to why, Why Why am I here? And that kept me motivated to continue to set the routine that set me up to keep the habit going, if that makes sense.

21:08 So when we talk about delaying, like putting off the instant gratification, it has to be in the service of the longer term reward. And that's what you're saying. So that remembering the why, Like that's what we tell people all the time. When you feel like you know you deserve this, or you don't have the energy for this, or whatever it is that your mind's telling yourself, then or you would have had days for sure. For sure when you didn't feel like train. Your muscles are fatigued, you feel tired, you feel like you're not going to be able to do it. Especially when I was going for my six dam black belt, I just felt, oh, no, I just want to see on the couch and watch TV. I really do, instead of going to class or going to training. But then I remember, no, I really want to earn this qualification, all the reasons why I wanted it, and that would motivate me to get off the couch to go to training.

21:56 Yeah, holding in mind, bringing that long term goal and that intrinsic motivation, that whatever that intrinsic driver is, to make that goal so meaningful and personal to you, I think that's how you get over that. Yeah. And one of the things that helped me was to write down those whys. Write them down, have them on the fridge, have them on the mirror in the bathroom, above my bed, everywhere, just to remind me in those moments where motivation was failing, I could say, hey, no, this is the time classes, this is a time you're going to go and to keep to the routine. Anything that you can put around in your environment I think is always really useful. Visual reminders and queues and phrases or pictures of where you see yourself, visualizing your future self. When even there's one exercise we do where you even write a letter to yourself from the future saying what you've achieved, or you write down your We call it the best possible self exercise, where you are in a day in the future when you've achieved what you want and you have become the best possible version of you.

23:05 And you write it in detail. It's proven to really improve people's performance and keep people on track to changing those habits and you know, pushing through that hard stage of because it is hard, hard, Yeah, absolutely. To push through until that becomes more automatic. It's really constable. And yeah, journaling anything you can. Do to push through that discomfort, I find does help. So let's talk about the willpower again. If it's a finite resource, it wears off, motivation disappears, and we're left with habits. So how do we start from scratch informing a new help habit?

23:49 So what you want to. Remember, like we said before, is that a habit is a comprises of and there's research about this that a habit comprises of three components, a Q, then the actual behavior, and then the reward. The reward. So what you want to do is to when that que comes up, substitute a different behavior that gives you the same reward. So that requires you to really think about what do I get from that behavior. Let's say my behavior is a three o'clock chocolate bar. For different people, and this will be different things. Maybe it is. Just a sugar hit or a sugar energy, and maybe I could get that in a different way. Maybe I could go outside and get some fresh air for some people.

24:30 And in fact, the author of the book The Power of Habit, he identified this himself and he said he realized that actually it was a craving for social connection because he would get up and go to the te room and there would be other people there, and so he would have a chat with people in the tea room. So he realized that he actually didn't it wasn't the chocolate or the cake or whatever it was that he was going for. It was a break from his computer and getting to go and have a chat with some people. So he just went and had a chat with some people. Yeah, he didn't actually need that that the habit of the cake to get the same reward. But so if you can work out, because it will be very different for different people in different circumstances, what that behavior is that you want to change, changing habits. Now, if you can work out specifically to you, what's the reward that that gives you, well, then you can we talk about this with emotional leading, right, yes, then you can work out, well, what do I substitute in that's going to give me that same reward, So that when that Q pops up, I have a little bit.

25:29 Of mindfulness, mindful awareness of what's happening. I have the urge to do something, to engage in that thing, which is so routine I don't even think about it, but I have enough presence of mind to say, well, no, I'm going to do this thing different, this thing instead it gives me the same reward, and over time then you actually create a different behavior. People sometimes start from you know this, we know this, and the typics so I community people starting from a point of needing to change. A lot of an overhaul. And he talks about cornerstone habits. This is Charles Dewey wrote the book The Power of Habit. He talks about some habits are like cornerstone habits, which if you can change this one behavior, because it's the way everything connects, it actually has this ripple effect which influences you to change another behavior and another pavior. So fight it'side I'm going to start exercising and I'm going to get up and have a run in the morning. Well that means I actually have to go to sleep a bit earlier, so then my sleep's better, which means I actually have to get off my phone, and then it means that I'm going to if I've been for a run in the morning, it means that I'm going to be more inclined to eat a healthier breakfast.

26:36 So it has flow on fact yeah, and flow on effects. So you change one thing and without even really trying, you can potentially have this ripple effect where you change a lot of things without actually necessarily putting a lot of energy into deliberately changing those things. So, but it takes a while to break a habit. How long does it take to break a habit or to make a habit? Break a habit? A lot of people talk about this twenty one day yeah idea? Is it a myth? I think so. I don't know where the twenty one days came from. I think there was some study that or something that. Three weeks seems very fast, and unfortunately people rely on that. When they haven't made a new habit, they get all deflated and demotivate abolutely.

27:18 I see it time and time again from TIFEXO. After a month they're like, oh, it didn't work for me, and I'm still dirty. It's only been thirty days. Your taste buds rejuvenate every two weeks, so even if you're eating a different diet, it takes two weeks for your taste. Buds to change. That's something biological, let alone those synapses in your brain to make new habits and connections. I'm pretty sure it's more like sixty six days. Yeah, is how long it takes to create a new habit. I mean, and you know what, even that is probably not a definite science. There's probably different habits, different individuals, different things will have.

27:58 How closely you stick to your new habit. Yeah, but you know, if you can expect to spend a couple of months rather than a couple of weeks, and then you're probably setting yourself up for a more realistic, you know, expectations about how long it's going to take, so that you're not demotivated if you haven't overhauled your life in a month. Here's another really interesting thing about behaviors, human psychology and behaviors. Do you know that if you go to a restaurant or a cafe and there is a healthy option on the menu, people are more likely to choose the least healthy option. This came out of they discovered. They discovered this when McDonald started introducing salads onto the menu.

28:40 They found it when they introduced When McDonald started introducing healthy options, sales of Big Max went through the roof. It's because our brains see the healthy option, and it's like they tick off healthy option, and therefore, I don't know why this happens, but we a brain registers as a healthy option. It's like we give ourselves the green light to choose the least healthy. That's bizarre, but I thought that would be only if you did choose the healthy option. And therefore you said I had a macat salad, therefore I deserve the macas big mac. I don't understand that. So this is what we're confronted with. Yeah, maybe it ticks off out. It ticks off something. It's a bit like writing a list and a half. We've talked about when you write a list, but then you feel good, but you don't actually then.

29:27 Do anything on the list. No, never, because just the writing list was enough to make you feel good to offload that stress. I think it's similar when you see the healthy option. Oh, there's healthy option, and. Then you feel good. So you give yourself life. I'll do that next time. Yeah, time incredible. Choose the unhealthiest option. Human brains and the reward system. You were telling me before, you said something about how given the reward of an apple or a piece of chocolate. Yeah, So people who people in studies who have been you know, put in to you know, it's a research exercise. So people have a goal and they work towards it, and they get feedback from the researcher. This might be dieting, for example, losing weight, and they get really positive feedback that they're making progress towards their goal. Then they're given the option of a reward, and the option is that they can have an apple or a chocolate. Eighty five percent of people will take the chocolate every day. Yeah, because our brains register we've done something good, we deserve something good, we deserve a treat or reward.

30:28 So in those. Situations it's important. This is where that remember your why, remember the long term goal. Then suddenly the chocolate becomes a threat, not a treat, you know. And so we see this all the time. You and I talk about this all the time all the time. Treat, food, treat and having your list on hand of rewards that aren't food based, yes, that are rooted in self care and other ways of giving to yourself. Yeah, but we have to remember that this is how our brains are wide. I think that's the important thing. And so we can start being more aware of these tricks that our brain. Plays, so that gives us. It just gives you back. The power to recognize what's happening as it's happening. When you notice yourself going for the unhealthy option and you know it's not in support of your goals.

31:14 I mean just when we do it anyway, it drives me crazy. Yeah, but then you can just recognize that, you know that this is this is just something that because people get so frustrated with themselves. People come and they say, what is wrong with me that I think I'm on track, I'm making all of this week, and then I do this and they get all that self critical talk. I think it just helps. I don't. I think some of this stuff is astonishing, But I think if we can just all understand that we are complex creatures and that we don't you know, this is not something an individual flaw of yours. If you choose the unhealthy option, on the menu. Then it doesn't mean that you are a failed you know, like a failure as a human. It just means that you've got this human brain that does some crazy things and that you know that's okay, and you're aware of it so you can make a different choice.

32:03 Thanks Cas, that's so helpful. Concentrating more on habits than motivation, it'll get you to your goal. Next up, we're going to be talking about life after a baby, Pressures to bounce back and get your pre baby body back fast, physical health, mental health, P and D. We're going to cover it all, so keep listening. Thanks so much for joining us, and we will speak too soon. Rappy to Happy is presented by Cash Dunn, produced by Davids Lenski. Audio production by Darcy Thompson. Listener