January 9, 2026 • 23 mins
Today, Jay invites us to rethink everything we’ve been taught about breaking bad habits. Instead of blaming willpower, discipline, or personality traits, he reframes habits as systems shaped by our triggers, emotions, and environments. He explains why most habits aren’t character flaws but subconscious coping strategies designed to provide comfort, escape, or relief. With this approach, we end up battling ourselves instead of breaking the loop that’s actually sustaining the habit. The real shift begins when we stop asking “What’s wrong with me?” and start asking “What is this habit doing for me?”
Jay then breaks down the four-part habit loop: trigger, emotion, behavior, and reward and shows how interrupting just one part can collapse the entire pattern. He explains that our environment matters more than motivation and if you want to change a habit, you have to change the cues that trigger it. Rather than quitting habits cold turkey, he encourages replacing the reward with a healthier form of relief, reminding us that the brain will always seek comfort. Through simple, practical examples, he shows how small interruptions, conscious pauses, and thoughtful substitutions can dismantle habits that once felt impossible to break.
In this episode, you'll learn:
How to Break Bad Habits Without Relying on Willpower
How to Identify the Hidden Triggers Fueling Your Habits
How to Interrupt the Habit Loop
How to Stop Fighting Habits and Start Understanding Them
How to Build an Identity That Makes Good Habits Stick
How to Use Small Replacements to Create Big Change
Every habit you want to change once served a purpose, now you get to decide what serves you going forward. When you become aware of your triggers, redesign your environment, and choose support over struggle, growth becomes lighter and more sustainable.
With Love and Gratitude,
Jay Shetty
Join over 750,000 people to receive my most transformative wisdom directly in your inbox every single week with my free newsletter. Subscribe here.
What We Discuss:
00:00 Intro
00:34 How Do You Actually Break a Bad Habit?
02:06 You Are Not Your Habits
05:04 The 4-Part Loop that Creates the Habit
07:11 Action #1: Redesign Your Triggers
08:44 Action #2: Replace the Reward not the Habit
11:33 Action #3: Interrupt the Loop In Real Time
12:48 Action #4: Build a New Identity Around Your Choices
15:00 The #1 Mistake in Breaking Habits
15:51 90-Day Habit Breakup Blueprint
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
You can't break a habit if you still see yourself
as the person who does it. If you think I'm lazy,
you can't break a habit that proves you're disciplined. If
you think you're disorganized, you can't build a habit that
proves you're focused. If you're not on top of everything,
(00:21):
you can't prove to yourself you have a plan. So
instead of saying I'm trying to quit, say I'm not
someone who chooses that anymore. The number one health and
wellness podcast Jay Sety Jay Sheety Sheety I could never
change my habits until I did this. What if I
(00:44):
told you that ninety percent of your bad habits have
nothing to do with discipline and everything to do with
the systems you live inside. Most people blame themselves for
their habits. I'm just lazy, I'm not consistent. I always
mess this up. But here's the truth. You don't have
bad habits because you're a bad person. You have bad
(01:07):
habits because you have invisible patterns that no one ever
taught you to see, and once you see them, you
can break them fast. Let's be honest. If you want
to have a Grete twenty twenty six, Breaking bad habits
and building good habits is core to your success. We
are what we repeatedly do. This is the wisdom that's
(01:29):
been passed down for generations. Yet we rarely focus on
our most repeated thoughts, actions, beliefs, and values. And we
think it's going to be some miraculous manifesting moment, some
random thing that happens in our life that changes the
trajectory of everything, when in reality, it's all about our habits.
(01:51):
If you want twenty twenty six to be the best
year of your life, this episode is for you. If
you want to break your bad habits in twenty twenty six,
this episode is for you. And if you're someone who's
done just setting goals and not meeting them, this episode
is for you. Let's dive in. So why can't you
break your bad habits? Let's get honest. If you could
(02:15):
have broken the habit by now, you would have. The
problem isn't effort. The problem is misdiagnosis. Most people think
a bad habit is a character flaw, but science shows
a bad habit is usually an emotional escape. When we
have a bad habit, we think it's because we're a
(02:35):
bad person. We had bad parenting, we had a bad background,
we had bad company. Now, even if you did have
a lot of challenging things, the truth I want you
to realize is a bad habit is more of a
subconscious response. It's something that you can train. It's not
something that you're stuck with. A bad habit can be
(02:57):
a triggered loop. A bad habit can be a dopamine
pattern you've repeated. A bad habit can be an environment
que or a story you've been carrying for years. But
you can change it, you can transform it. A habit
is not something you have to live with because it's
who you are. You are not your habits. You are
(03:19):
made of your habits. You're defined by your habits, but you, yourself,
are not your habits. Here's the key idea. You don't
fix bad habits by fighting them. You fix them by
understanding what they're doing for you. Because every bad habit
has a job. Scrolling equals distraction, over eating equals comfort,
(03:45):
Procrastinating equals protection, overworking equals avoidance. People pleasing equals fear
of rejection. Staying up late equals escape time. Your habit
isn't random, it's a coping strategy and Once you understand
the strategy, you can rewrite it. Oftentimes, when we want
(04:07):
to change our habits, we just think, I just want
to wake up earlier. Okay, great, But what does staying
up late do for you? What is it providing that
you need to change the strategy? If you say to yourself, oh,
I just want to stop drinking sodas, what is that habit?
What is the loop? What is the trigger? What is
the incentive that you turn to that for? Right? Every
(04:31):
habit we have you can say, I don't want to
do this, and I want to start this. I never
want to do this again. I always want to do this.
But in reality, if you don't get beneath the surface,
if you don't get beneath the hood, you have no
idea as to why you even turn to it in
the first place. And if you don't understand why you
turn towards something, you can't turn away from it. If
(04:52):
you don't know why every night, even when you don't
want to, you turn on the TV and waste two hours.
If you don't know why you do, you can't change it.
If you don't know why you choose to sleep in
instead of going to the gym, you can't change it.
Here's what I want to talk to you about. The
four part loop that runs ninety percent of your habits.
(05:15):
Every habit follows the same pattern. Number one trigger, something happens.
Number two emotion you feel stress, boredom, loneliness, fear, Number
three behavior you reach for the habit, and number four
reward Your brain gets relief. The loop completes and your
(05:36):
brain says, let's do that again tomorrow. But here's the
moment that changes everything. If you interrupt just one part
of the loop, the habit collapses. That means you don't
have to change yourself, you just change the loop. This
is where the real transformation happens. We keep thinking, I
(05:57):
can't change myself. I don't know what's wrong with me.
I just can't do this. I'm just a lazy, useless person.
But the reality is we're trying to change the loop,
not trying to change you. It's the loop that has
become you. Therefore, if we can interrupt the loop, change
the loop, transform the loop, we can change how we feel.
(06:18):
Focus on the loop, don't focus on yourself. We over
focus on ourselves and our character more than we focus
on the actual trigger. So here's what I want you
to do. Change your triggers. Most people try to change
the habit, but your habit is not the problem. Your
(06:39):
trigger is. Here's an example. You don't bin scroll because
you want to right, I don't think. You go to
your phone and go I can't wait to binge scroll today.
You bine scroll because your phone is beside your bed.
You don't eat late at night because you're hungry. You
eat because your kitchen is the only quiet moment you have.
(07:00):
It's a place of escape. You're exhausted, you're tired, you
didn't eat something right before. You don't procrastinate because you're unmotivated.
You procrastinate because you're overwhelmed, because you're scared of rejection.
So here's your first actionable step. Redesign your triggers. Move
(07:20):
the phone out of the bedroom. Prep your meals, early schedule,
work into smaller emotional portions. Remove the queue, remove the craving.
Your environment beats your willpower every single time. Don't try
to fight the habit. Break the loop. Don't try to
(07:42):
fight the habit. Break the loop. Focus on the design
part that you can change to shift the direction of
where you're going. I really want you to think about
this profoundly and thoughtfully. I'll give you an example. I
know that I used to turn to sugar when I
felt stressed. Sugar would get me out of that feeling.
(08:04):
I also know that I used to turn to sugary
drink so sodas when I felt I didn't have energy.
I used to think that I couldn't work out unless
I had energy, not realizing that working out gave me energy.
When I'm working out, I'm less likely to crave a
sugary drink or a snack. Also, going even a step further,
(08:25):
when I'm sleeping well, I make better choices. Now, ask
yourself why A you're not sleeping well? What are you
stressed about? What's keeping you up at night? Figure out
that trigger and interrupt that pattern. Focus on solving that,
and you'll be able to wake up earlier and sleep better,
as opposed to just beating yourself up for not having
(08:45):
a good bedtime routine. Next, replace the reward, not the habit.
You can break your habit faster if you replace the
reward before you remove the behavior. Here's what I mean.
If your habit gives you comfort, replace the comfort, not
the habit. If your habit gives you escape. Replace the escape,
(09:08):
not the habit. Most people try to stop a habit cold,
but nature hates a vacuum. So I remember at one
point I would just want to play video games. After
a air of work, no activity, my brain goes dull.
I just need to switch off. Instead, I switched it
for pickleball. Playing a sport in the evening gives me
(09:29):
that sense of play, but it also gives me connection,
gives me physical activity. I'm burning calories and getting steps
and getting a sweat. In Replacing the habit is better
than just saying I'm not going to do anything this evening.
I'm just gonna start doing nothing from now on. That's
just not gonna work. For example, if you say to yourself,
I'm gonna start eating healthy now, I'm never going to
(09:49):
reach for the chips. But if all you have in
your snack drows chips. If you replace the habit and
now you've got healthier alternatives, that's what you're going to
reach for. Remove a habit without placing the reward, and
your brain will find another habit to fill the gap.
This is why emotional eating turns into bin scrolling, or
(10:09):
why overworking turns into overthinking your brain is not sabotaging you.
It's solving for relief. So you need an upgraded relief system.
We all need relief at the end of the day.
We all need relief at the end of the week.
That's normal. We couldn't possibly read a book instead of
watching a show. Reading a book requires effort. Watching a
(10:30):
show requires no effort. So if you eat for comfort,
call a friend for three minutes. If you know you're
going to watch a show, what's something that you feel
really engaged by and fulfilled by rather than disappointed when
you finish. If you scroll for escape, take a ninety
second walk outdoors and truly escape and feel the difference.
(10:52):
If you procrastinate, set a five minute time and let
yourself procrastinate, but have a deadline. If you stress when
you go shopping, right about what you're feeling, talk to
someone about it. Small replacements break big habits. I remember
(11:29):
when I was first trying to give up refined sugars.
I would find sweet products that were not as bad.
I was eating some monk fruit, I was eating some dates.
I had to still solve for my craving at the time,
but I wanted to find a healthier craving, so that
I wasn't hurting myself. Does that make sense? I hope
that's resonating with you. I don't want you to just
(11:50):
say I'm never going to do this ever again. It's
really really hard to do that. The next step is
interrupt the loop in real time. This is the most
important step. When a trigger hits and you feel yourself
slipping into the habit pause just ten seconds, your brain
only needs a tiny interruption to disrupt the automatic pathway.
(12:15):
Say this out loud, what am I actually needing right now?
That one sentence moves you from subconscious habit to conscious choice.
This is where the bad habit loses power, because the
habits thrive in autopilot and die in awareness. As soon
as you're aware, as soon as you ask yourself, what
(12:35):
am I doing here? What do I really want right now?
If while you were scrolling, you ask yourself what do
I really want right now? You might actually say to
switch off, and you might actually find a twenty minute
power map better than that hour doom scroll that you're
about to do. If you're watching a show late night
and yourself, what do I really need? You'd probably say
to decompress and rest, and maybe getting into bed thirty
(12:56):
minutes earlier is better than that extra episode. If you
work in the morning and ask yourself what I really
need right now, you'd say I really need to get
moving right and you're going to choose that over snoozing.
That question re establishes what's really important to you. Now
we're getting into some serious growth. The next step is
to build a new identity around your choices. You can't
(13:20):
break a habit if you still see yourself as the
person who does it. Let me say that again. You
can't break a habit if you still see yourself as
the person who does it. If you think I'm lazy,
you can't break a habit that proves you're disciplined. If
you think you're disorganized, you can't build a habit that
(13:42):
proves you're focused. If you're not on top of everything,
you can't prove to yourself you have a plan. So
instead of saying I'm trying to quit, say I'm not
someone who chooses that anymore. Notice the difference. Instead of
I'm trying to wake up earlier, say I'm a morning
(14:03):
person in training, instead of I'm trying to stop procrastination.
Say I'm someone who starts small. This isn't about manifestation,
This isn't about creating something from your mind. This is
about identity. Identities the soil. Habits are the seeds. Plant
a new identity this year, and your habits will grow
(14:26):
into it. Because we don't change our self image, we
can't change our habits. Right, if you imagined yourself as
an athlete every day, you would wake up, eat right
and sleep well. Because you see yourself as an athlete,
you treat yourself as an athlete. But if you see
yourself as someone lazy and underachiever, someone who doesn't perform,
(14:49):
why would you certainly start doing all of that. When
I'm working with a client, I encourage them to see
themselves as an athlete. How would they treat their body?
How would they treat their mind? How do they p
game day on Saturday or Sunday or Monday and actually
have an impact on the field. What does that look like?
What does that sound like? What does that feel like?
We have to build the identity first, and the behavior
(15:13):
will follow. When you understand your past, you understand why
you reach for certain habits and how to outgrow them.
For example, breaking habits isn't about force. It's about understanding
where they came from so you can finally let them go.
That's one of the biggest mistakes we make. We're just
(15:33):
trying to fight this thing and beat it and break
it down, whereas you can actually take its power away
when you go. Oh, I remember when I was stressed
out at school and I started that habit because it
made me feel less stress. Guess what, I'm not stressed
out anymore, you know what. I remember that I developed
that habit when I was really broke, and now I
(15:55):
still feel broke, even though I'm a bit safer. I
can let that habit go. You disempower bad habits when
you recognize where they came from. So here's the ninety
day habit breaker blueprint, and I need you to commit
for ninety days. Here's the structure I want to give you.
Month one, focus on your awareness and triggers. Track your
(16:18):
habits for seven days. Identify the top three triggers, redesign
your environment. Month two replacement and microwins. Assign a new
reward for each habit, practice the ten second pause, and
celebrate tiny successes. This part is huge. Here's what you
(16:39):
need to do. When you make the right decision, write
down how you feel after it. I'll say that again.
When you make the right decision, write down how you
feel after it. When I first started going to the
gym in the morning, I used to have to write
down how I felt after it, because it felt amazing.
It always felt better than skipping. It always felt better
(17:01):
than sleeping in. It always felt better than not showing up.
And in the beginning I had to write that down
so that the next morning, when I woke up again
and my mind came up with a list of excuses,
I was convinced. Because here's the thing. When you're doing
things that are good for you, they always feel hard
before you do them. You're going to wake up and
(17:21):
your mind is going to say, sleep in, you don't
need to work out, you're tired, you've been working hard.
But if you've recognized that even when that's the case,
you feel better after you work out. You'll show up.
And especially if you celebrate tiny successes. So many of
us don't celebrate until the big thing happens, until the
big win happens. The problem with that is that could
(17:41):
take a year, and if you start celebrating a weekly win,
a monthly win, You'll feel more momentum towards the big
thing than taking energy away. Month number three, focus on
identity and integration. Rewrite your identity statements are one friend
your new commitments. Choose one habit to turn into a ritual.
(18:05):
There's a quote that I love, and it says, a
bad habit is not a life sentence. It's just an
old story waiting for a new ending. I can't stress
how important this piece on identity is. We have to
start seeing ourselves as not the habit. You are not
(18:29):
your thoughts. You are not the voice in your head.
You are not the habits you've practiced for all these years.
That's not who you are. You are so much more
than that. You're beyond that, And simply by training yourself image,
your habits can change. If I don't see myself as
(18:51):
a podcaster, I won't podcast. If I don't see myself
as an interviewer, I would never sit in the interviewer's seat.
A lot of us are not doing the things, not
because we're not capable, but because we don't see them.
You're not held back by your lack of capability. You're
(19:11):
held back because of your lack of vision. You're not
able to start that new business, launch a podcast, write
a book, build a social media channel, not because you're
not skilled enough, but because you think you're not there yet.
You think you have to do something else before you
do that. Please change your identity. Here's the thing. Most
(19:33):
people think breaking a bad habit takes strength, but it
actually takes understanding. You're not failing because you're weak. You're
stuck because your system was built for a version of
you you no longer are, and once your system changes,
your habits will as well. So remember you don't have
(19:54):
to break everything at once. You just have to break
the loop. Start today, Interrupt one habit, redesign one trigger,
replace one reward, shift one identity. Because when you change
one habit, you don't just change your behavior, you change
your future. This is the year you break the pattern.
(20:18):
This is the year you take your life back. This
is the year you make the shift. This is the
year you transform your future. In future generations, you can
break ninety percent of your habits. Now why did I
say ninety percent and not one hundred percent? Because I
didn't want to mislead you. I remember one of my
(20:38):
monk teachers saying to me, even if you take the
word habit, it teaches you a lot about breaking habits.
When you first start breaking habits, you take away the
H in habit, and a bit is still left. And
then he said, you work some more on breaking your
bad habits, and then you take away the A. He goes,
(20:59):
bit is still left, and then he goes, hey, you
work harder on your habits. You get rid of the HS,
the aid, the B and guess what it is still left.
The idea being that when you're breaking your habits, it
doesn't just all evaparator. Once you're really excavating every layer.
The first layer is just the trigger, the second layer
(21:20):
is the loop. Then it's the reward. And then you
get into this subconscious space of why do I need
that escape? Where does it come from? You could locate
it to a childhood memory, You could locate it to
a friend or family member and interaction. Sometimes people are
not chasing their dreams than when you go to the
subconscious level. The answer is because people at school teachers
(21:44):
never believed in me. No one ever believed in me.
And guess what. Then, sometimes you hear people who are
really successful and you asked them what they heard in school.
They said, people never believed in me. Interesting. Right, Two
people in the same class heard the same thing. The
teacher said, I don't believe in you to both of them.
One person went on to become successful. One person didn't.
Why because one person saw as fuel, one person saw
(22:07):
it as being held back. But you can retrain that habit,
You can rewire that function, you can change it into fuel.
You don't have to live up to what people expected
of you. You simply have to pursue the life you won.
And it all starts when you start breaking ninety percent
(22:27):
of your habits, they will stay. There'll be some habits
that will take years to break, and that's not to
discourage you. It's to be honest. But know that you
can keep chipping away and it'll be worth it because
you will unlock another level of growth, performance success every
time you chip away. I really hope this is the
year that you succeed in breaking the habits that are
(22:48):
holding you back, and most of all, start seeing yourself
as already capable of everything you want to achieve. Remember,
I'm forever in your corner and I'm always rooting for you.
Thank you for being here. Make sure you subscribe so
you never miss a video. Let's lock in in twenty
twenty six. If you love this episode, you will also
(23:10):
love my interview with Charles Douhig on how to hack
your brain, change any habit effortlessly, and the secret to
making better decisions. Look, am I hesitating on this because
I'm scared of making the choice because I'm scared of
doing the work, Or am I sitting with this because
it just doesn't feel right yet
You can't break a habit if you still see yourself
as the person who does it. If you think I'm lazy,
you can't break a habit that proves you're disciplined. If
you think you're disorganized, you can't build a habit that
proves you're focused. If you're not on top of everything,
(00:21):
you can't prove to yourself you have a plan. So
instead of saying I'm trying to quit, say I'm not
someone who chooses that anymore. The number one health and
wellness podcast Jay Sety Jay Sheety Sheety I could never
change my habits until I did this. What if I
(00:44):
told you that ninety percent of your bad habits have
nothing to do with discipline and everything to do with
the systems you live inside. Most people blame themselves for
their habits. I'm just lazy, I'm not consistent. I always
mess this up. But here's the truth. You don't have
bad habits because you're a bad person. You have bad
(01:07):
habits because you have invisible patterns that no one ever
taught you to see, and once you see them, you
can break them fast. Let's be honest. If you want
to have a Grete twenty twenty six, Breaking bad habits
and building good habits is core to your success. We
are what we repeatedly do. This is the wisdom that's
(01:29):
been passed down for generations. Yet we rarely focus on
our most repeated thoughts, actions, beliefs, and values. And we
think it's going to be some miraculous manifesting moment, some
random thing that happens in our life that changes the
trajectory of everything, when in reality, it's all about our habits.
(01:51):
If you want twenty twenty six to be the best
year of your life, this episode is for you. If
you want to break your bad habits in twenty twenty six,
this episode is for you. And if you're someone who's
done just setting goals and not meeting them, this episode
is for you. Let's dive in. So why can't you
break your bad habits? Let's get honest. If you could
(02:15):
have broken the habit by now, you would have. The
problem isn't effort. The problem is misdiagnosis. Most people think
a bad habit is a character flaw, but science shows
a bad habit is usually an emotional escape. When we
have a bad habit, we think it's because we're a
(02:35):
bad person. We had bad parenting, we had a bad background,
we had bad company. Now, even if you did have
a lot of challenging things, the truth I want you
to realize is a bad habit is more of a
subconscious response. It's something that you can train. It's not
something that you're stuck with. A bad habit can be
(02:57):
a triggered loop. A bad habit can be a dopamine
pattern you've repeated. A bad habit can be an environment
que or a story you've been carrying for years. But
you can change it, you can transform it. A habit
is not something you have to live with because it's
who you are. You are not your habits. You are
(03:19):
made of your habits. You're defined by your habits, but you, yourself,
are not your habits. Here's the key idea. You don't
fix bad habits by fighting them. You fix them by
understanding what they're doing for you. Because every bad habit
has a job. Scrolling equals distraction, over eating equals comfort,
(03:45):
Procrastinating equals protection, overworking equals avoidance. People pleasing equals fear
of rejection. Staying up late equals escape time. Your habit
isn't random, it's a coping strategy and Once you understand
the strategy, you can rewrite it. Oftentimes, when we want
(04:07):
to change our habits, we just think, I just want
to wake up earlier. Okay, great, But what does staying
up late do for you? What is it providing that
you need to change the strategy? If you say to yourself, oh,
I just want to stop drinking sodas, what is that habit?
What is the loop? What is the trigger? What is
the incentive that you turn to that for? Right? Every
(04:31):
habit we have you can say, I don't want to
do this, and I want to start this. I never
want to do this again. I always want to do this.
But in reality, if you don't get beneath the surface,
if you don't get beneath the hood, you have no
idea as to why you even turn to it in
the first place. And if you don't understand why you
turn towards something, you can't turn away from it. If
(04:52):
you don't know why every night, even when you don't
want to, you turn on the TV and waste two hours.
If you don't know why you do, you can't change it.
If you don't know why you choose to sleep in
instead of going to the gym, you can't change it.
Here's what I want to talk to you about. The
four part loop that runs ninety percent of your habits.
(05:15):
Every habit follows the same pattern. Number one trigger, something happens.
Number two emotion you feel stress, boredom, loneliness, fear, Number
three behavior you reach for the habit, and number four
reward Your brain gets relief. The loop completes and your
(05:36):
brain says, let's do that again tomorrow. But here's the
moment that changes everything. If you interrupt just one part
of the loop, the habit collapses. That means you don't
have to change yourself, you just change the loop. This
is where the real transformation happens. We keep thinking, I
(05:57):
can't change myself. I don't know what's wrong with me.
I just can't do this. I'm just a lazy, useless person.
But the reality is we're trying to change the loop,
not trying to change you. It's the loop that has
become you. Therefore, if we can interrupt the loop, change
the loop, transform the loop, we can change how we feel.
(06:18):
Focus on the loop, don't focus on yourself. We over
focus on ourselves and our character more than we focus
on the actual trigger. So here's what I want you
to do. Change your triggers. Most people try to change
the habit, but your habit is not the problem. Your
(06:39):
trigger is. Here's an example. You don't bin scroll because
you want to right, I don't think. You go to
your phone and go I can't wait to binge scroll today.
You bine scroll because your phone is beside your bed.
You don't eat late at night because you're hungry. You
eat because your kitchen is the only quiet moment you have.
(07:00):
It's a place of escape. You're exhausted, you're tired, you
didn't eat something right before. You don't procrastinate because you're unmotivated.
You procrastinate because you're overwhelmed, because you're scared of rejection.
So here's your first actionable step. Redesign your triggers. Move
(07:20):
the phone out of the bedroom. Prep your meals, early schedule,
work into smaller emotional portions. Remove the queue, remove the craving.
Your environment beats your willpower every single time. Don't try
to fight the habit. Break the loop. Don't try to
(07:42):
fight the habit. Break the loop. Focus on the design
part that you can change to shift the direction of
where you're going. I really want you to think about
this profoundly and thoughtfully. I'll give you an example. I
know that I used to turn to sugar when I
felt stressed. Sugar would get me out of that feeling.
(08:04):
I also know that I used to turn to sugary
drink so sodas when I felt I didn't have energy.
I used to think that I couldn't work out unless
I had energy, not realizing that working out gave me energy.
When I'm working out, I'm less likely to crave a
sugary drink or a snack. Also, going even a step further,
(08:25):
when I'm sleeping well, I make better choices. Now, ask
yourself why A you're not sleeping well? What are you
stressed about? What's keeping you up at night? Figure out
that trigger and interrupt that pattern. Focus on solving that,
and you'll be able to wake up earlier and sleep better,
as opposed to just beating yourself up for not having
(08:45):
a good bedtime routine. Next, replace the reward, not the habit.
You can break your habit faster if you replace the
reward before you remove the behavior. Here's what I mean.
If your habit gives you comfort, replace the comfort, not
the habit. If your habit gives you escape. Replace the escape,
(09:08):
not the habit. Most people try to stop a habit cold,
but nature hates a vacuum. So I remember at one
point I would just want to play video games. After
a air of work, no activity, my brain goes dull.
I just need to switch off. Instead, I switched it
for pickleball. Playing a sport in the evening gives me
(09:29):
that sense of play, but it also gives me connection,
gives me physical activity. I'm burning calories and getting steps
and getting a sweat. In Replacing the habit is better
than just saying I'm not going to do anything this evening.
I'm just gonna start doing nothing from now on. That's
just not gonna work. For example, if you say to yourself,
I'm gonna start eating healthy now, I'm never going to
(09:49):
reach for the chips. But if all you have in
your snack drows chips. If you replace the habit and
now you've got healthier alternatives, that's what you're going to
reach for. Remove a habit without placing the reward, and
your brain will find another habit to fill the gap.
This is why emotional eating turns into bin scrolling, or
(10:09):
why overworking turns into overthinking your brain is not sabotaging you.
It's solving for relief. So you need an upgraded relief system.
We all need relief at the end of the day.
We all need relief at the end of the week.
That's normal. We couldn't possibly read a book instead of
watching a show. Reading a book requires effort. Watching a
(10:30):
show requires no effort. So if you eat for comfort,
call a friend for three minutes. If you know you're
going to watch a show, what's something that you feel
really engaged by and fulfilled by rather than disappointed when
you finish. If you scroll for escape, take a ninety
second walk outdoors and truly escape and feel the difference.
(10:52):
If you procrastinate, set a five minute time and let
yourself procrastinate, but have a deadline. If you stress when
you go shopping, right about what you're feeling, talk to
someone about it. Small replacements break big habits. I remember
(11:29):
when I was first trying to give up refined sugars.
I would find sweet products that were not as bad.
I was eating some monk fruit, I was eating some dates.
I had to still solve for my craving at the time,
but I wanted to find a healthier craving, so that
I wasn't hurting myself. Does that make sense? I hope
that's resonating with you. I don't want you to just
(11:50):
say I'm never going to do this ever again. It's
really really hard to do that. The next step is
interrupt the loop in real time. This is the most
important step. When a trigger hits and you feel yourself
slipping into the habit pause just ten seconds, your brain
only needs a tiny interruption to disrupt the automatic pathway.
(12:15):
Say this out loud, what am I actually needing right now?
That one sentence moves you from subconscious habit to conscious choice.
This is where the bad habit loses power, because the
habits thrive in autopilot and die in awareness. As soon
as you're aware, as soon as you ask yourself, what
(12:35):
am I doing here? What do I really want right now?
If while you were scrolling, you ask yourself what do
I really want right now? You might actually say to
switch off, and you might actually find a twenty minute
power map better than that hour doom scroll that you're
about to do. If you're watching a show late night
and yourself, what do I really need? You'd probably say
to decompress and rest, and maybe getting into bed thirty
(12:56):
minutes earlier is better than that extra episode. If you
work in the morning and ask yourself what I really
need right now, you'd say I really need to get
moving right and you're going to choose that over snoozing.
That question re establishes what's really important to you. Now
we're getting into some serious growth. The next step is
to build a new identity around your choices. You can't
(13:20):
break a habit if you still see yourself as the
person who does it. Let me say that again. You
can't break a habit if you still see yourself as
the person who does it. If you think I'm lazy,
you can't break a habit that proves you're disciplined. If
you think you're disorganized, you can't build a habit that
(13:42):
proves you're focused. If you're not on top of everything,
you can't prove to yourself you have a plan. So
instead of saying I'm trying to quit, say I'm not
someone who chooses that anymore. Notice the difference. Instead of
I'm trying to wake up earlier, say I'm a morning
(14:03):
person in training, instead of I'm trying to stop procrastination.
Say I'm someone who starts small. This isn't about manifestation,
This isn't about creating something from your mind. This is
about identity. Identities the soil. Habits are the seeds. Plant
a new identity this year, and your habits will grow
(14:26):
into it. Because we don't change our self image, we
can't change our habits. Right, if you imagined yourself as
an athlete every day, you would wake up, eat right
and sleep well. Because you see yourself as an athlete,
you treat yourself as an athlete. But if you see
yourself as someone lazy and underachiever, someone who doesn't perform,
(14:49):
why would you certainly start doing all of that. When
I'm working with a client, I encourage them to see
themselves as an athlete. How would they treat their body?
How would they treat their mind? How do they p
game day on Saturday or Sunday or Monday and actually
have an impact on the field. What does that look like?
What does that sound like? What does that feel like?
We have to build the identity first, and the behavior
(15:13):
will follow. When you understand your past, you understand why
you reach for certain habits and how to outgrow them.
For example, breaking habits isn't about force. It's about understanding
where they came from so you can finally let them go.
That's one of the biggest mistakes we make. We're just
(15:33):
trying to fight this thing and beat it and break
it down, whereas you can actually take its power away
when you go. Oh, I remember when I was stressed
out at school and I started that habit because it
made me feel less stress. Guess what, I'm not stressed
out anymore, you know what. I remember that I developed
that habit when I was really broke, and now I
(15:55):
still feel broke, even though I'm a bit safer. I
can let that habit go. You disempower bad habits when
you recognize where they came from. So here's the ninety
day habit breaker blueprint, and I need you to commit
for ninety days. Here's the structure I want to give you.
Month one, focus on your awareness and triggers. Track your
(16:18):
habits for seven days. Identify the top three triggers, redesign
your environment. Month two replacement and microwins. Assign a new
reward for each habit, practice the ten second pause, and
celebrate tiny successes. This part is huge. Here's what you
(16:39):
need to do. When you make the right decision, write
down how you feel after it. I'll say that again.
When you make the right decision, write down how you
feel after it. When I first started going to the
gym in the morning, I used to have to write
down how I felt after it, because it felt amazing.
It always felt better than skipping. It always felt better
(17:01):
than sleeping in. It always felt better than not showing up.
And in the beginning I had to write that down
so that the next morning, when I woke up again
and my mind came up with a list of excuses,
I was convinced. Because here's the thing. When you're doing
things that are good for you, they always feel hard
before you do them. You're going to wake up and
(17:21):
your mind is going to say, sleep in, you don't
need to work out, you're tired, you've been working hard.
But if you've recognized that even when that's the case,
you feel better after you work out. You'll show up.
And especially if you celebrate tiny successes. So many of
us don't celebrate until the big thing happens, until the
big win happens. The problem with that is that could
(17:41):
take a year, and if you start celebrating a weekly win,
a monthly win, You'll feel more momentum towards the big
thing than taking energy away. Month number three, focus on
identity and integration. Rewrite your identity statements are one friend
your new commitments. Choose one habit to turn into a ritual.
(18:05):
There's a quote that I love, and it says, a
bad habit is not a life sentence. It's just an
old story waiting for a new ending. I can't stress
how important this piece on identity is. We have to
start seeing ourselves as not the habit. You are not
(18:29):
your thoughts. You are not the voice in your head.
You are not the habits you've practiced for all these years.
That's not who you are. You are so much more
than that. You're beyond that, And simply by training yourself image,
your habits can change. If I don't see myself as
(18:51):
a podcaster, I won't podcast. If I don't see myself
as an interviewer, I would never sit in the interviewer's seat.
A lot of us are not doing the things, not
because we're not capable, but because we don't see them.
You're not held back by your lack of capability. You're
(19:11):
held back because of your lack of vision. You're not
able to start that new business, launch a podcast, write
a book, build a social media channel, not because you're
not skilled enough, but because you think you're not there yet.
You think you have to do something else before you
do that. Please change your identity. Here's the thing. Most
(19:33):
people think breaking a bad habit takes strength, but it
actually takes understanding. You're not failing because you're weak. You're
stuck because your system was built for a version of
you you no longer are, and once your system changes,
your habits will as well. So remember you don't have
(19:54):
to break everything at once. You just have to break
the loop. Start today, Interrupt one habit, redesign one trigger,
replace one reward, shift one identity. Because when you change
one habit, you don't just change your behavior, you change
your future. This is the year you break the pattern.
(20:18):
This is the year you take your life back. This
is the year you make the shift. This is the
year you transform your future. In future generations, you can
break ninety percent of your habits. Now why did I
say ninety percent and not one hundred percent? Because I
didn't want to mislead you. I remember one of my
(20:38):
monk teachers saying to me, even if you take the
word habit, it teaches you a lot about breaking habits.
When you first start breaking habits, you take away the
H in habit, and a bit is still left. And
then he said, you work some more on breaking your
bad habits, and then you take away the A. He goes,
(20:59):
bit is still left, and then he goes, hey, you
work harder on your habits. You get rid of the HS,
the aid, the B and guess what it is still left.
The idea being that when you're breaking your habits, it
doesn't just all evaparator. Once you're really excavating every layer.
The first layer is just the trigger, the second layer
(21:20):
is the loop. Then it's the reward. And then you
get into this subconscious space of why do I need
that escape? Where does it come from? You could locate
it to a childhood memory, You could locate it to
a friend or family member and interaction. Sometimes people are
not chasing their dreams than when you go to the
subconscious level. The answer is because people at school teachers
(21:44):
never believed in me. No one ever believed in me.
And guess what. Then, sometimes you hear people who are
really successful and you asked them what they heard in school.
They said, people never believed in me. Interesting. Right, Two
people in the same class heard the same thing. The
teacher said, I don't believe in you to both of them.
One person went on to become successful. One person didn't.
Why because one person saw as fuel, one person saw
(22:07):
it as being held back. But you can retrain that habit,
You can rewire that function, you can change it into fuel.
You don't have to live up to what people expected
of you. You simply have to pursue the life you won.
And it all starts when you start breaking ninety percent
(22:27):
of your habits, they will stay. There'll be some habits
that will take years to break, and that's not to
discourage you. It's to be honest. But know that you
can keep chipping away and it'll be worth it because
you will unlock another level of growth, performance success every
time you chip away. I really hope this is the
year that you succeed in breaking the habits that are
(22:48):
holding you back, and most of all, start seeing yourself
as already capable of everything you want to achieve. Remember,
I'm forever in your corner and I'm always rooting for you.
Thank you for being here. Make sure you subscribe so
you never miss a video. Let's lock in in twenty
twenty six. If you love this episode, you will also
(23:10):
love my interview with Charles Douhig on how to hack
your brain, change any habit effortlessly, and the secret to
making better decisions. Look, am I hesitating on this because
I'm scared of making the choice because I'm scared of
doing the work, Or am I sitting with this because
it just doesn't feel right yet
Host
Jay Shetty
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