December 11, 2024 • 30 mins
How do you form new habits and break old ones? And what’s the science behind successfully maintaining healthy habits? Wendy Wood is a behavioral scientist, researcher and provost professor at USC who’s studied habits for decades. She joins the show to talk about the three steps to forming a habit and explains why joy is key.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hello Sunshine, Hey fam Today on the bright side, It's
Wellness Wednesday. Behavioral scientist and habit researcher When you Would
is joining us to share three steps that we can
all use to form good habits, how we can break
bad habits, and how to set ourselves up for success
the next time we want to give ourselves a fresh start.
(00:25):
It's Wednesday, December eleventh. I'm Simoon Boyce.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
I'm Danielle Robe and this is the bright Side from
Hello Sunshine, a daily show where we come together to
share women's stories, to laugh, learn and brighten your day.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Today's Wellness Wednesday is presented by Coliguard. Okay, Danielle, We've
got some big news today. Reese's Book Club has officially
announced the Winter Young Adult pick yev.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
I got my copy in the mail this morning. So
the Winter Yapick is called Throwback by Maureen Goo. And
she's really known for writing ya book like I Believe
in a Thing called Love and somewhere only we know
how great are her titles. Well, her stories have a
flare for combining humor and heart through the lens of
Asian American characters.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
Yeah, and her latest book is no different.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Readers are describing throwback as Back to the Future meets
Joylok Club. It's all about a gen Z teenager named
Samantha Kong who's navigating our relationship with her mom in
the present day, and then it turns into this time
travel narrative where Samantha gets sent back to the nineties
and meets her seventeen year old mother.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
How cool is that Some of my favorite books growing
up had this time travel component to it, so this
one is really exciting to me. Sam gets a first
hand look at how the dynamics between her grandmother and
her teen mother mirror her own struggles with her mom,
and as she works to return to her own timeline,
Sam discovers this whole new perspective on her mom and
(01:54):
gains a deeper understanding of the future version of herself.
I feel like this is a generational storyry about walking
in someone else's shoes and learning to approach each other
with greater empathy.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Yeah. I love the idea of imagining, you know what
the seventeen year old version of my mom could have been, Like,
how about you, Danielle?
Speaker 3 (02:13):
Do you ever think about that? I do you know?
Speaker 2 (02:16):
The story actually touches me deeply because I learned a
lesson in therapy that kind of revolves around this concept
that has helped me a lot. And you know, I
think every person has one parental relationship that's more challenging
than the other. And for whatever reason, I think my
more challenging relationship is with my mom. And sometimes when
(02:38):
I feel really frustrated or like I'm going to react,
instead of respond, I try and think about my mom
as a little kid, and I think, Okay, this is
just like the nine year old version of my mom,
or the seventeen year old version of my mom looking
for love or someone who's scared, And that idea helps
me give the situation so much more grace and empathy.
(03:01):
And so even though this is a ya concept, I
think it's a profound storyline.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
Yeah, that's a really powerful thought.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
Well, I'm really excited to dive into this book and
even more excited to chat with Maureen Goo later this month.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
Yes, me too.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
And up first, in terms of today's conversation, we are
talking habits. Thankfully, this is such an important conversation to have,
especially as we start off the new year. I am
locked and loaded for this one.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
I know our guest today is an expert in this field,
and she's been studying habits for more than thirty years.
Wendy Wood is a behavioral scientist, researcher, and provost professor
at the University of Southern California. So basically, she researches
the nature of habits and why they're so difficult to change,
and more importantly, how we can better understand them so
(03:53):
that we can make the changes that we want and
need in our lives. I think it's important to note
she's also the award win author of Good Habits, Bad Habits,
The Science behind making positive changes that stick. So today
we're going to find out how to make those habits stick.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
She's here with us now, Wendy, Welcome to the bright Side.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
Oh thank you, great to be here. We're so happy
to have you.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
This is such an important conversation that we're having today
about habits, and I think we all know what it
feels like to be living out good habits versus bad habits.
But I think it's important for us to start with
the definition to make sure we're all on the same page.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
So how do you define a habit? Well, habits form
when you repeat a behavior, and we're repeating a behavior
typically to get a reward, so your brain ties together
the behavior and the reward. Something like standing in front
of your coffee maker in the morning. You're not thinking
(04:56):
a whole lot about whether you want coffee, how to
do it. What you're thinking about is what you've done
in the past. It automatically comes to mind and you
just start making coffee without making a decision to do so.
So habits are kind of an autopilot for your brain.
(05:18):
They're a mental shortcut that helps you repeat the behaviors
that you've done in the past, that worked for you
in some way, that got you some reward, that got
you that hot cup of coffee. And our days are
filled with those kinds of habits. We don't think about
why we're doing it or whether we want to do it.
(05:39):
You don't have to make a decision. It's the cues
around you that are activating that behavior that you've done
in the past. So habits are really useful, right. They
streamline our day, They keep us so that we can
focus on the important things.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
Wendy, you've developed three ways to activate healthy habit forming
through your research.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
What are they? They really have to do with the
components of habit. First is repetition. You have to repeat
a behavior in order for habit memories to start to form.
This part of your brain is just very sensitive to
repetition and it codes what you repeat. The second is reward,
(06:29):
and by reward, I don't mean money. It's not payment. Instead,
it's having something that works for you that meets your
goals in a given situation, like driving your car. You
figure out how to put your seatbelt on, you figure
out how to start it. All of those things are
(06:52):
rewards for a particular behavior that you're repeating over and over.
And then the third component is the context. When you're
in that context again, you get in your car, then
all of those behaviors about starting the car and starting
to drive automatically come to mind, and you don't have
(07:15):
to make a decision. You just do what you've always
done in the past. And that's why it's a little
confusing to get in someone else's car because the context
is slightly different, right, their seatbelt is configured differently, the
ignition is not quite the same. So you have to think,
(07:36):
I'm curious.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
As you look back over your career as a behavioral scientist,
an author, What is the wildest fact that you've learned
about the science of habits.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
One of the interesting things about habits is how forgiving
they are. Once you start forming a habit, even if
you quit whatever the behavior is for a while, that
habit memory sticks around. So you know, sometimes we start
doing things, we try to change our behavior, particularly at
(08:09):
the beginning of the year, and we think if we
don't do it for a week or so, that we failed.
But that's the sense in which habits are forgiving, because
you have practiced it a few times.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
You know.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
It's like people say, once you learn to ride a bike,
you never forget it. Well, that's habit memory. It sticks around,
and if you start building that habit memory, then it
will be there when you decide to do the behavior again.
So you're actually further along than you were when you
(08:49):
initially started. It's not like you've failed and you have
to start all over again. You have that habit memory
working for you.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
Wait, this is so true. I've definitely experienced habit memory
you with fitness. It honestly took me about i want
to say, seven years to get consistent with working out,
and it was a lot of stop, start, it was
a lot of Okay, I'm going to do this for
a few weeks, and then I'm going to fall off. Danielle,
have you ever experienced habit memory like that, where you
have a bit of a stop start relationship with a
(09:19):
certain habit.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
I'm having a hard time identifying with this because I'm
not great with habits in general. Like everybody tells you
should have a morning routine, I can't seem to make
that happen.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
So describe you a morning. What do you do?
Speaker 2 (09:38):
I'm so embarrassed to tell you the truth.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
Wendy tell us everything.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Okay, So my alarm goes off at five point forty five,
I snooze, and then I end up waking up at
like six or six fifteen, and I definitely look at
my phone for some time and tell myself I have
to get up. I have to get up. I get dressed,
I get a coffee, and I go to the gym.
I work out for an hour.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
I come home.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
I usually hot before I shower, I hop right into
the emails or the texts that are sort of important
or urgent that happened within that hour, and then I
scramble to get ready for my day, I'll try and
take a quick shower, throw some makeup on, and I
feel like I'm doing sort of fifteen things at once.
My mom calls, or my girlfriend is having some issue
(10:30):
with her husband and we're chatting about it on the phone,
and I'm driving into work eating a sandwich, thinking, oh shoot,
I forgot my lunch, And then there we go. I
realized I didn't have a proper morning.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
You did. This is a very clear routine. You have
so much packed in there, and the fact that you
get up at a certain time and you go and
work out is impressive.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
That's nice of you. Well, tell me about what makes
because in that vein. Is there a difference between a
good habit and a bad habit? Like, how are those
even characterized or moralized?
Speaker 3 (11:10):
Well, the difference between them is whether they're working for
us right now. Oh, the things that are getting in
your way, that are stopping you reaching your goals, that's
a bad habit. The things that are actually helping you
meet those goals, like your workout routine, right, that's a
(11:31):
good habit. So habits are essentially the same. It's just
how we perceive them, how we view them.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
Is it possible that we're all walking through our days
with a ton of good and bad habits that.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
We're not aware of.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
Yes, the good habits make our day go. The bad
habits frustrate us. They're the ones that we keep wondering,
why am I doing this? Why am I leaving only
ten minutes to get dressed and get my makeup on
and talk to my mother and my friends? Why does
that happen every morning? But it's your habit because you've
(12:13):
practiced it. So you just have to be really careful
what you practice right. Don't repeat behaviors that you find
are not working for you. We all do this right.
So there was a vending machine near my office, and
(12:34):
I would get so busy I would go down there
and just get some junk for lunch. And that was great.
It was rewarding because then I was no longer hungry.
The trunk never tasted that good, but fine, I wasn't
hungry then. And you do that a few times, and
all of a sudden, when you get hungry around lunchtime,
(12:55):
you think, oh, vending machine, I know where that is.
That's easy. I'll do that. That'll be quick. Over time, though,
that becomes a bad habit and it's something that worked
initially because you were under some time pressure, but it
does not work long term for your health right or
your fitness. And that's how we get into bad habits,
(13:19):
is we do things that are working immediately or are easy,
but in the long run they're not good for us.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
We need to take a quick break. But we'll be
right back to our conversation with Wendy Wood, and we're
back with habit researcher Wendy Wood. Wendy, I'm really interested
in how we break bad habits because it certainly seems
(13:51):
like it's easier to form bad habits than it is
to break them, because, like you said, they're a shortcut.
The reason why we latch onto the ones is because
it gives us the illusion of ease. So what goes
into breaking a bad habit?
Speaker 3 (14:06):
Removing yourself from the context is one way to do it.
And this is something that substance abuse counselors have known
for a long time. Right, if you are an alcoholic,
you don't hang out in bars, you don't go and
hang out with friends who drink a lot. You are
(14:31):
very careful about the situations you're in, because those situations
automatically bring that behavior to mind. So start being careful
about your context. And part of that is being in
contexts that are good for you. Right, it's great, we
know to live next to a park. People who live
(14:53):
next to a park exercise more than people who don't.
On average, this is not everybody. So living in a
pedestrian friendly community where there's lots of sidewalks it's safe
to walk outside, that's really good for exercise. People tend
to walk more than so. Choosing the context of your
(15:18):
life is part of this, but part of it is
also modifying them so that the things that you want
to do are easier to get to and the things
that you don't want to do are harder, and we
call that friction. You want to set up some friction
(15:40):
on the behaviors that you want to control. There's great
data on how likely people are to go to a
gym paid fitness center. And we think, you know, you
work yourself up, you motivate yourself, you think about all
(16:02):
the reasons why you should be going to the gym.
That's why you go. But there's many other influences as well,
and one is how easy it is to get to
the gym. So if you're going to a gym that's
close by that you don't have to travel far to
get to, you're more likely to go than if you're
(16:23):
going to a gym that's really far away. And again,
it's not how we think about our exercise routine, right,
make it easy, No, that's not what most of us think.
Most of us think I have to generate a lot
of willpower and self control and make myself go. Really
(16:44):
making things easier for you, Finding a context where the
behavior is easy is going to help you repeat it,
and it's then going to become your habit.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
I grew up my entire life hearing that it takes
twenty one day is to form a new habit. Can
you bust a myth for us, or maybe confirm that
it's true? There is no magic number.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
It depends on how hard the behavior is to do
and how complex the behavior is. Right, So, if you
want a habit of going to the gym, there's a
lot of different steps involved, So that behavior is going
(17:29):
to be harder to form into a habit than something
simple like I'm going to put my seat belt on
when I get into the car. That's just one movement
that's easy. So Behaviors that are simple will form into
a habit much faster than behaviors that are more complex,
(17:50):
more difficult. And it depends on how consistently you do
it as well. Right, if you decide to form a
habit to go to the gym, and you go twice
this week at different times, you go once next week,
you go three times the week after, you're not being
(18:12):
very consistent about it, and it's going to take longer
to form into a habit than if you do it
in a routine manner on a regular basis, same time
every day, go to the same gym. Consistency matters in
habit formation.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
It's time for another short break, but we'll be right
back with habit researcher Wendy Wood. And we're back with
Wendy Wood. Let's say I'm trying to save money, but
all of my friends love going out and getting dinner
twice a week. Maybe we go shopping together. That's sort
(18:52):
of our bonding time. How can we change habits without
completely overhauling our lives, taking ourselves out of our social dynamics.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
Yeah, that's a hard one because so many people view
saving money as not a positive challenge. But instead is deprivation.
So for many of us, the whole idea of I'm
going to change my lifestyle be more financially responsible, it
(19:25):
just doesn't sound fun, and especially given the circumstances you're
talking about, where all of your friendships your social network
is based on spending money and enjoying the consumerism that's
out there.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
I just want to be clear, it was hypothetical. It's
not my life.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
I'm sorry. I actually think I'm more of an essentialist
when many of us have friends like this right where
whenever we go out with them, we end up going
to a more spensive restaurants, spending a lot more for dinner,
going to fancy nightclubs, and spending far too much. I
(20:08):
would say that probably it's a good idea to reduce
contact with those people until you form new habits. So
it's not a matter of giving them up entirely, but
either stop spending quite as much time with them or
(20:31):
try to develop new things that you can do with
them that don't just involve spending money. People often say
to me that they have a hard time forming habits
to save money because it's not fun, And I think
(20:51):
back to my parents. My parents were habitual savers. They
did not like to spend money, and it was their habit.
It was a habit that formed not because they felt
like they couldn't, but they found it fun to find
(21:11):
the cheapest deals. They felt like they were being smarter
than the average person by seeking out bargains and by
not spending their money on things that weren't tremendously important
to them. And if you can start generating those kinds
(21:32):
of positive feelings from saving money, then you are well
on your way to forming a habit because it needs
to be rewarding. None of us like to repeat behaviors
that feel like deprivation, that feel like we're not having fun.
(21:52):
So expand your life with your friends, find other things
to do, and figure out way to save money that
feel good to you, that feel like you are actually
being successful and cool and smart.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
This is so interesting to me because Simone and I
interviewed an expert on motivation and sort of the net
net of that conversation was, we aren't going to follow
through on anything that's not joyful for us, that's not fun,
And I'm hearing you say something very similar, and I
can't believe that we've all been sort of trying to
(22:33):
make these things difficult for us and arduous and make
ourselves wake up earlier, make ourselves go to the gym,
when really we should just have been infusing joy this
whole time.
Speaker 3 (22:44):
Exactly, if you don't like to go to the gym,
it's probably never going to become your habit, that's what
she was saying, because you're not going to go often enough.
So you have a couple of options, laam out. One
is find something else to do that's like exercise. Maybe
(23:06):
walking outside with friends is where you gossip and tell stories.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
Maybe that's what motivates we would never gossip when the
chell stories, I know only the truth, or find some
way to make Jim fun. I used to be a
runner and I loved to run outside.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
That was really motivating for me, and it was an
easy habit to form. But as I've gotten older, it's
not so easy to run. So I bought myself an elliptical,
and you guys had been on elliptical before. It's the
most boring, tedious, horrible experience ever. And even though it
was in my house so it was close and easy,
(23:51):
I thought I'd solved it. No, I never used it
because it was so aversive, and then I figured out,
I can watch reality TV while I'm working out on
the elliptical, and I never have time to do that normally.
That became a real reward that was associated with the elliptical,
(24:13):
and that became my habit once I figured out how
to make it fun. So that's the other thing you
can do. You can find a different behavior, or you
can make that behavior fun in some way, whatever that
means to you.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
So I just want to make sure I understand the
reward can be something as small as the emotion of
feeling joyful about your accomplishment, or it could be something
as big as what fill in the blink for me.
Speaker 3 (24:44):
As meeting your financial goals in the future. But it
has to be something you experience when you're doing the behavior,
so it can't be the idea. This is why so
many people are frustrated with dieting. Typically dieting in order
to achieve some goal way in the future, and that's
(25:06):
not how habits form. Habits formed with immediate gratification. And
that's because of the way our rewards systems work. Right,
when you do something that's fun, that's rewarding, that is
working for you, in some way your brain releases dopamine,
(25:26):
and dopamine is the feel good chemical. It does a
lot of things. One of the things it does is
it helps to build habits. It connects the context you're
in with what you just did to get that reward,
so that the habit memory is there when you're back
(25:47):
in that context. So it has to be an immediate reward,
not rewards in the way we typically think about them.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
Right.
Speaker 3 (25:55):
We all work hard at school in order to get
an at the end of a semester, not that kind
of reward. It has to be immediate. And that's something
else people don't understand because we're also future oriented, right,
We're all thinking about our long term goals and we're
planning for what's going to happen in the future. Instead,
(26:19):
it's what's going on right now that memory is responsive to.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
This is such an ambitious time of year, and I
know on my vision board and my sort of workshopping
twenty twenty five, I have several habits that I would
like to shift this year. Is it possible to shift
multiple habits at once.
Speaker 3 (26:45):
It's harder to think about the context of each and
how you're going to control or change that context in
order to stop the habit from being activated. But there's
no reason why you can't change multiple habits. In fact,
when people move, when they move house, when they start
(27:08):
a new job, when you start a new relationship or
end an old one, many of the cues to your
life have changed, and people often find it easier to
start new behaviors then, and they can start multiple new
(27:28):
behaviors because the old cues aren't there. So it gives
you a chance to make decisions. It's tiring, it's effortful,
and it's sometimes not fun. Right when you move to
a new place, you have to figure out where the
grocery store is, where the gym is, where your kids
(27:49):
are going to go to school, your friends aren't just
close by anymore. It's just a lot of work. But
all of those old behaviors, whatever they were, aren't being
cute automatically.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
I have a personal question for you. I'm curious, with
all of your knowledge around habits, is there a small
habit that you've implemented in your life that has just
had a disproportionately large impact.
Speaker 3 (28:15):
Yeah. I started keeping my laptop in the kitchen so
that immediately after breakfast, I start working so I'm not
walking around the house, I'm not talking to my friends
on the phone, I'm not cleaning, I'm not doing other things,
(28:35):
and that's actually helped my productivity, is having the technology
close by so I can be writing first thing in
the morning.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
I'm so glad you shared that, because I actually think
this sort of crystallized the whole conversation for me in
that you said, you really have to change the environment
more so. And so you've changed your environment, which means
that I need to put my phone outside of my
bedroom so I don't look at it in the morning.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
That's it. And you have to put it outside of
your bedroom at night so you don't stay up on
social media too late. It's all part of controlling your environment. Wow. Amazing.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
Wendywood, thank you so much for joining us on the
bright side.
Speaker 3 (29:23):
Oh this was fun. Good talking to you. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
Wendy Wood is a behavioral scientist, habit researcher, and author
of the book Good Habits, Bad Habits.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
That's it for today's show. Tomorrow, Shana Todd joins us
to talk about her breakout Tony Award winning musical Suffs.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
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(30:10):
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Speaker 1 (30:17):
Join the conversation using hashtag the bright Side and connect
with us on social media at Hello Sunshine on Instagram
and at the bright Side Pod on TikTok oh, and
feel free to tag us at simone Voice and at
danielle Robe.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
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Speaker 1 (30:37):
See you tomorrow, folks, keep looking on the bright side.
Hello Sunshine, Hey fam Today on the bright side, It's
Wellness Wednesday. Behavioral scientist and habit researcher When you Would
is joining us to share three steps that we can
all use to form good habits, how we can break
bad habits, and how to set ourselves up for success
the next time we want to give ourselves a fresh start.
(00:25):
It's Wednesday, December eleventh. I'm Simoon Boyce.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
I'm Danielle Robe and this is the bright Side from
Hello Sunshine, a daily show where we come together to
share women's stories, to laugh, learn and brighten your day.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Today's Wellness Wednesday is presented by Coliguard. Okay, Danielle, We've
got some big news today. Reese's Book Club has officially
announced the Winter Young Adult pick yev.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
I got my copy in the mail this morning. So
the Winter Yapick is called Throwback by Maureen Goo. And
she's really known for writing ya book like I Believe
in a Thing called Love and somewhere only we know
how great are her titles. Well, her stories have a
flare for combining humor and heart through the lens of
Asian American characters.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
Yeah, and her latest book is no different.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Readers are describing throwback as Back to the Future meets
Joylok Club. It's all about a gen Z teenager named
Samantha Kong who's navigating our relationship with her mom in
the present day, and then it turns into this time
travel narrative where Samantha gets sent back to the nineties
and meets her seventeen year old mother.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
How cool is that Some of my favorite books growing
up had this time travel component to it, so this
one is really exciting to me. Sam gets a first
hand look at how the dynamics between her grandmother and
her teen mother mirror her own struggles with her mom,
and as she works to return to her own timeline,
Sam discovers this whole new perspective on her mom and
(01:54):
gains a deeper understanding of the future version of herself.
I feel like this is a generational storyry about walking
in someone else's shoes and learning to approach each other
with greater empathy.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Yeah. I love the idea of imagining, you know what
the seventeen year old version of my mom could have been, Like,
how about you, Danielle?
Speaker 3 (02:13):
Do you ever think about that? I do you know?
Speaker 2 (02:16):
The story actually touches me deeply because I learned a
lesson in therapy that kind of revolves around this concept
that has helped me a lot. And you know, I
think every person has one parental relationship that's more challenging
than the other. And for whatever reason, I think my
more challenging relationship is with my mom. And sometimes when
(02:38):
I feel really frustrated or like I'm going to react,
instead of respond, I try and think about my mom
as a little kid, and I think, Okay, this is
just like the nine year old version of my mom,
or the seventeen year old version of my mom looking
for love or someone who's scared, And that idea helps
me give the situation so much more grace and empathy.
(03:01):
And so even though this is a ya concept, I
think it's a profound storyline.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
Yeah, that's a really powerful thought.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
Well, I'm really excited to dive into this book and
even more excited to chat with Maureen Goo later this month.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
Yes, me too.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
And up first, in terms of today's conversation, we are
talking habits. Thankfully, this is such an important conversation to have,
especially as we start off the new year. I am
locked and loaded for this one.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
I know our guest today is an expert in this field,
and she's been studying habits for more than thirty years.
Wendy Wood is a behavioral scientist, researcher, and provost professor
at the University of Southern California. So basically, she researches
the nature of habits and why they're so difficult to change,
and more importantly, how we can better understand them so
(03:53):
that we can make the changes that we want and
need in our lives. I think it's important to note
she's also the award win author of Good Habits, Bad Habits,
The Science behind making positive changes that stick. So today
we're going to find out how to make those habits stick.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
She's here with us now, Wendy, Welcome to the bright Side.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
Oh thank you, great to be here. We're so happy
to have you.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
This is such an important conversation that we're having today
about habits, and I think we all know what it
feels like to be living out good habits versus bad habits.
But I think it's important for us to start with
the definition to make sure we're all on the same page.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
So how do you define a habit? Well, habits form
when you repeat a behavior, and we're repeating a behavior
typically to get a reward, so your brain ties together
the behavior and the reward. Something like standing in front
of your coffee maker in the morning. You're not thinking
(04:56):
a whole lot about whether you want coffee, how to
do it. What you're thinking about is what you've done
in the past. It automatically comes to mind and you
just start making coffee without making a decision to do so.
So habits are kind of an autopilot for your brain.
(05:18):
They're a mental shortcut that helps you repeat the behaviors
that you've done in the past, that worked for you
in some way, that got you some reward, that got
you that hot cup of coffee. And our days are
filled with those kinds of habits. We don't think about
why we're doing it or whether we want to do it.
(05:39):
You don't have to make a decision. It's the cues
around you that are activating that behavior that you've done
in the past. So habits are really useful, right. They
streamline our day, They keep us so that we can
focus on the important things.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
Wendy, you've developed three ways to activate healthy habit forming
through your research.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
What are they? They really have to do with the
components of habit. First is repetition. You have to repeat
a behavior in order for habit memories to start to form.
This part of your brain is just very sensitive to
repetition and it codes what you repeat. The second is reward,
(06:29):
and by reward, I don't mean money. It's not payment. Instead,
it's having something that works for you that meets your
goals in a given situation, like driving your car. You
figure out how to put your seatbelt on, you figure
out how to start it. All of those things are
(06:52):
rewards for a particular behavior that you're repeating over and over.
And then the third component is the context. When you're
in that context again, you get in your car, then
all of those behaviors about starting the car and starting
to drive automatically come to mind, and you don't have
(07:15):
to make a decision. You just do what you've always
done in the past. And that's why it's a little
confusing to get in someone else's car because the context
is slightly different, right, their seatbelt is configured differently, the
ignition is not quite the same. So you have to think,
(07:36):
I'm curious.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
As you look back over your career as a behavioral scientist,
an author, What is the wildest fact that you've learned
about the science of habits.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
One of the interesting things about habits is how forgiving
they are. Once you start forming a habit, even if
you quit whatever the behavior is for a while, that
habit memory sticks around. So you know, sometimes we start
doing things, we try to change our behavior, particularly at
(08:09):
the beginning of the year, and we think if we
don't do it for a week or so, that we failed.
But that's the sense in which habits are forgiving, because
you have practiced it a few times.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
You know.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
It's like people say, once you learn to ride a bike,
you never forget it. Well, that's habit memory. It sticks around,
and if you start building that habit memory, then it
will be there when you decide to do the behavior again.
So you're actually further along than you were when you
(08:49):
initially started. It's not like you've failed and you have
to start all over again. You have that habit memory
working for you.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
Wait, this is so true. I've definitely experienced habit memory
you with fitness. It honestly took me about i want
to say, seven years to get consistent with working out,
and it was a lot of stop, start, it was
a lot of Okay, I'm going to do this for
a few weeks, and then I'm going to fall off. Danielle,
have you ever experienced habit memory like that, where you
have a bit of a stop start relationship with a
(09:19):
certain habit.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
I'm having a hard time identifying with this because I'm
not great with habits in general. Like everybody tells you
should have a morning routine, I can't seem to make
that happen.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
So describe you a morning. What do you do?
Speaker 2 (09:38):
I'm so embarrassed to tell you the truth.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
Wendy tell us everything.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Okay, So my alarm goes off at five point forty five,
I snooze, and then I end up waking up at
like six or six fifteen, and I definitely look at
my phone for some time and tell myself I have
to get up. I have to get up. I get dressed,
I get a coffee, and I go to the gym.
I work out for an hour.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
I come home.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
I usually hot before I shower, I hop right into
the emails or the texts that are sort of important
or urgent that happened within that hour, and then I
scramble to get ready for my day, I'll try and
take a quick shower, throw some makeup on, and I
feel like I'm doing sort of fifteen things at once.
My mom calls, or my girlfriend is having some issue
(10:30):
with her husband and we're chatting about it on the phone,
and I'm driving into work eating a sandwich, thinking, oh shoot,
I forgot my lunch, And then there we go. I
realized I didn't have a proper morning.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
You did. This is a very clear routine. You have
so much packed in there, and the fact that you
get up at a certain time and you go and
work out is impressive.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
That's nice of you. Well, tell me about what makes
because in that vein. Is there a difference between a
good habit and a bad habit? Like, how are those
even characterized or moralized?
Speaker 3 (11:10):
Well, the difference between them is whether they're working for
us right now. Oh, the things that are getting in
your way, that are stopping you reaching your goals, that's
a bad habit. The things that are actually helping you
meet those goals, like your workout routine, right, that's a
(11:31):
good habit. So habits are essentially the same. It's just
how we perceive them, how we view them.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
Is it possible that we're all walking through our days
with a ton of good and bad habits that.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
We're not aware of.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
Yes, the good habits make our day go. The bad
habits frustrate us. They're the ones that we keep wondering,
why am I doing this? Why am I leaving only
ten minutes to get dressed and get my makeup on
and talk to my mother and my friends? Why does
that happen every morning? But it's your habit because you've
(12:13):
practiced it. So you just have to be really careful
what you practice right. Don't repeat behaviors that you find
are not working for you. We all do this right.
So there was a vending machine near my office, and
(12:34):
I would get so busy I would go down there
and just get some junk for lunch. And that was great.
It was rewarding because then I was no longer hungry.
The trunk never tasted that good, but fine, I wasn't
hungry then. And you do that a few times, and
all of a sudden, when you get hungry around lunchtime,
(12:55):
you think, oh, vending machine, I know where that is.
That's easy. I'll do that. That'll be quick. Over time, though,
that becomes a bad habit and it's something that worked
initially because you were under some time pressure, but it
does not work long term for your health right or
your fitness. And that's how we get into bad habits,
(13:19):
is we do things that are working immediately or are easy,
but in the long run they're not good for us.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
We need to take a quick break. But we'll be
right back to our conversation with Wendy Wood, and we're
back with habit researcher Wendy Wood. Wendy, I'm really interested
in how we break bad habits because it certainly seems
(13:51):
like it's easier to form bad habits than it is
to break them, because, like you said, they're a shortcut.
The reason why we latch onto the ones is because
it gives us the illusion of ease. So what goes
into breaking a bad habit?
Speaker 3 (14:06):
Removing yourself from the context is one way to do it.
And this is something that substance abuse counselors have known
for a long time. Right, if you are an alcoholic,
you don't hang out in bars, you don't go and
hang out with friends who drink a lot. You are
(14:31):
very careful about the situations you're in, because those situations
automatically bring that behavior to mind. So start being careful
about your context. And part of that is being in
contexts that are good for you. Right, it's great, we
know to live next to a park. People who live
(14:53):
next to a park exercise more than people who don't.
On average, this is not everybody. So living in a
pedestrian friendly community where there's lots of sidewalks it's safe
to walk outside, that's really good for exercise. People tend
to walk more than so. Choosing the context of your
(15:18):
life is part of this, but part of it is
also modifying them so that the things that you want
to do are easier to get to and the things
that you don't want to do are harder, and we
call that friction. You want to set up some friction
(15:40):
on the behaviors that you want to control. There's great
data on how likely people are to go to a
gym paid fitness center. And we think, you know, you
work yourself up, you motivate yourself, you think about all
(16:02):
the reasons why you should be going to the gym.
That's why you go. But there's many other influences as well,
and one is how easy it is to get to
the gym. So if you're going to a gym that's
close by that you don't have to travel far to
get to, you're more likely to go than if you're
(16:23):
going to a gym that's really far away. And again,
it's not how we think about our exercise routine, right,
make it easy, No, that's not what most of us think.
Most of us think I have to generate a lot
of willpower and self control and make myself go. Really
(16:44):
making things easier for you, Finding a context where the
behavior is easy is going to help you repeat it,
and it's then going to become your habit.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
I grew up my entire life hearing that it takes
twenty one day is to form a new habit. Can
you bust a myth for us, or maybe confirm that
it's true? There is no magic number.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
It depends on how hard the behavior is to do
and how complex the behavior is. Right, So, if you
want a habit of going to the gym, there's a
lot of different steps involved, So that behavior is going
(17:29):
to be harder to form into a habit than something
simple like I'm going to put my seat belt on
when I get into the car. That's just one movement
that's easy. So Behaviors that are simple will form into
a habit much faster than behaviors that are more complex,
(17:50):
more difficult. And it depends on how consistently you do
it as well. Right, if you decide to form a
habit to go to the gym, and you go twice
this week at different times, you go once next week,
you go three times the week after, you're not being
(18:12):
very consistent about it, and it's going to take longer
to form into a habit than if you do it
in a routine manner on a regular basis, same time
every day, go to the same gym. Consistency matters in
habit formation.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
It's time for another short break, but we'll be right
back with habit researcher Wendy Wood. And we're back with
Wendy Wood. Let's say I'm trying to save money, but
all of my friends love going out and getting dinner
twice a week. Maybe we go shopping together. That's sort
(18:52):
of our bonding time. How can we change habits without
completely overhauling our lives, taking ourselves out of our social dynamics.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
Yeah, that's a hard one because so many people view
saving money as not a positive challenge. But instead is deprivation.
So for many of us, the whole idea of I'm
going to change my lifestyle be more financially responsible, it
(19:25):
just doesn't sound fun, and especially given the circumstances you're
talking about, where all of your friendships your social network
is based on spending money and enjoying the consumerism that's
out there.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
I just want to be clear, it was hypothetical. It's
not my life.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
I'm sorry. I actually think I'm more of an essentialist
when many of us have friends like this right where
whenever we go out with them, we end up going
to a more spensive restaurants, spending a lot more for dinner,
going to fancy nightclubs, and spending far too much. I
(20:08):
would say that probably it's a good idea to reduce
contact with those people until you form new habits. So
it's not a matter of giving them up entirely, but
either stop spending quite as much time with them or
(20:31):
try to develop new things that you can do with
them that don't just involve spending money. People often say
to me that they have a hard time forming habits
to save money because it's not fun, And I think
(20:51):
back to my parents. My parents were habitual savers. They
did not like to spend money, and it was their habit.
It was a habit that formed not because they felt
like they couldn't, but they found it fun to find
(21:11):
the cheapest deals. They felt like they were being smarter
than the average person by seeking out bargains and by
not spending their money on things that weren't tremendously important
to them. And if you can start generating those kinds
(21:32):
of positive feelings from saving money, then you are well
on your way to forming a habit because it needs
to be rewarding. None of us like to repeat behaviors
that feel like deprivation, that feel like we're not having fun.
(21:52):
So expand your life with your friends, find other things
to do, and figure out way to save money that
feel good to you, that feel like you are actually
being successful and cool and smart.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
This is so interesting to me because Simone and I
interviewed an expert on motivation and sort of the net
net of that conversation was, we aren't going to follow
through on anything that's not joyful for us, that's not fun,
And I'm hearing you say something very similar, and I
can't believe that we've all been sort of trying to
(22:33):
make these things difficult for us and arduous and make
ourselves wake up earlier, make ourselves go to the gym,
when really we should just have been infusing joy this
whole time.
Speaker 3 (22:44):
Exactly, if you don't like to go to the gym,
it's probably never going to become your habit, that's what
she was saying, because you're not going to go often enough.
So you have a couple of options, laam out. One
is find something else to do that's like exercise. Maybe
(23:06):
walking outside with friends is where you gossip and tell stories.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
Maybe that's what motivates we would never gossip when the
chell stories, I know only the truth, or find some
way to make Jim fun. I used to be a
runner and I loved to run outside.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
That was really motivating for me, and it was an
easy habit to form. But as I've gotten older, it's
not so easy to run. So I bought myself an elliptical,
and you guys had been on elliptical before. It's the
most boring, tedious, horrible experience ever. And even though it
was in my house so it was close and easy,
(23:51):
I thought I'd solved it. No, I never used it
because it was so aversive, and then I figured out,
I can watch reality TV while I'm working out on
the elliptical, and I never have time to do that normally.
That became a real reward that was associated with the elliptical,
(24:13):
and that became my habit once I figured out how
to make it fun. So that's the other thing you
can do. You can find a different behavior, or you
can make that behavior fun in some way, whatever that
means to you.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
So I just want to make sure I understand the
reward can be something as small as the emotion of
feeling joyful about your accomplishment, or it could be something
as big as what fill in the blink for me.
Speaker 3 (24:44):
As meeting your financial goals in the future. But it
has to be something you experience when you're doing the behavior,
so it can't be the idea. This is why so
many people are frustrated with dieting. Typically dieting in order
to achieve some goal way in the future, and that's
(25:06):
not how habits form. Habits formed with immediate gratification. And
that's because of the way our rewards systems work. Right,
when you do something that's fun, that's rewarding, that is
working for you, in some way your brain releases dopamine,
(25:26):
and dopamine is the feel good chemical. It does a
lot of things. One of the things it does is
it helps to build habits. It connects the context you're
in with what you just did to get that reward,
so that the habit memory is there when you're back
(25:47):
in that context. So it has to be an immediate reward,
not rewards in the way we typically think about them.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
Right.
Speaker 3 (25:55):
We all work hard at school in order to get
an at the end of a semester, not that kind
of reward. It has to be immediate. And that's something
else people don't understand because we're also future oriented, right,
We're all thinking about our long term goals and we're
planning for what's going to happen in the future. Instead,
(26:19):
it's what's going on right now that memory is responsive to.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
This is such an ambitious time of year, and I
know on my vision board and my sort of workshopping
twenty twenty five, I have several habits that I would
like to shift this year. Is it possible to shift
multiple habits at once.
Speaker 3 (26:45):
It's harder to think about the context of each and
how you're going to control or change that context in
order to stop the habit from being activated. But there's
no reason why you can't change multiple habits. In fact,
when people move, when they move house, when they start
(27:08):
a new job, when you start a new relationship or
end an old one, many of the cues to your
life have changed, and people often find it easier to
start new behaviors then, and they can start multiple new
(27:28):
behaviors because the old cues aren't there. So it gives
you a chance to make decisions. It's tiring, it's effortful,
and it's sometimes not fun. Right when you move to
a new place, you have to figure out where the
grocery store is, where the gym is, where your kids
(27:49):
are going to go to school, your friends aren't just
close by anymore. It's just a lot of work. But
all of those old behaviors, whatever they were, aren't being
cute automatically.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
I have a personal question for you. I'm curious, with
all of your knowledge around habits, is there a small
habit that you've implemented in your life that has just
had a disproportionately large impact.
Speaker 3 (28:15):
Yeah. I started keeping my laptop in the kitchen so
that immediately after breakfast, I start working so I'm not
walking around the house, I'm not talking to my friends
on the phone, I'm not cleaning, I'm not doing other things,
(28:35):
and that's actually helped my productivity, is having the technology
close by so I can be writing first thing in
the morning.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
I'm so glad you shared that, because I actually think
this sort of crystallized the whole conversation for me in
that you said, you really have to change the environment
more so. And so you've changed your environment, which means
that I need to put my phone outside of my
bedroom so I don't look at it in the morning.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
That's it. And you have to put it outside of
your bedroom at night so you don't stay up on
social media too late. It's all part of controlling your environment. Wow. Amazing.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
Wendywood, thank you so much for joining us on the
bright side.
Speaker 3 (29:23):
Oh this was fun. Good talking to you. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
Wendy Wood is a behavioral scientist, habit researcher, and author
of the book Good Habits, Bad Habits.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
That's it for today's show. Tomorrow, Shana Todd joins us
to talk about her breakout Tony Award winning musical Suffs.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
Thank you to our partners at Coligard, the one of
a kind way to screen for colon cancer in the
privacy and comfort of your own home. Talk to your
doctor or healthcare provider, or go to coliguard dot com
slash podcast to see if you are eligible to order online.
If you're forty five or older and at average risk,
ask your healthcare provider about screening for colon cancer with Coligard.
(30:10):
You can also request a collar guard prescription today at
coligard dot com slash podcast.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
Join the conversation using hashtag the bright Side and connect
with us on social media at Hello Sunshine on Instagram
and at the bright Side Pod on TikTok oh, and
feel free to tag us at simone Voice and at
danielle Robe.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
Listen and follow The bright Side on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
See you tomorrow, folks, keep looking on the bright side.
Host
Simone Boyce
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