Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - #146 BITESIZE | How to Build Healthy Habits That Last a Lifetime | BJ Fogg

Episode Date: January 8, 2021

The start of a new year is the time many of us look to make changes in our lives, incorporating healthy habits and removing unhelpful ones. Feel Better Live More Bitesize is my new weekly podcast for your mind, body and heart. Each week I’ll be featuring inspirational stories and practical tips from some of my former guests. This week’s guest is Professor BJ Fogg, a leading expert in behaviour change Methods for building habits have often focussed on repetition, willpower and motivation. BJ believes there’s a simpler approach. Habit formation is linked to our emotions and by creating a feeling of success we can wire in a habit. We discuss my own experience with patients as well as the results he has seen with his own program. Finally, BJ reveals how easy it is to form new habits by using his 3-step method. When you do something and feel successful, that behaviour becomes more automatic. Feeling good can be the key to forming new healthy habits that last a lifetime. Show notes and the full podcast are available at drchatterjee.com/108 Follow me on instagram.com/drchatterjee/ Follow me on facebook.com/DrChatterjee/ Follow me on twitter.com/drchatterjeeuk DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to constitute or be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website. 

Today's Bite Size episode is brought to you by AG1, a science-driven daily health drink with over 70 essential nutrients to support your overall health. It includes vitamin C and zinc, which helps support a healthy immune system, something that is really important at this time of year. It also contains prebiotics and digestive enzymes that help support your gut health. It's really tasty and has been in my own life for over five years. Until the end of January, AG1 are giving a limited time offer. Usually they offer my listeners a one-year supply of vitamin D and K2 and five free travel packs with their first order. But until the end of January, they are doubling the five free travel packs to

10. And these packs are perfect for keeping in your backpack, office, or car. If you want to take advantage of this limited time offer, all you have to do is go to drinkag1.com forward slash live more. Welcome to Feel Better Live More Bite Size, your weekly dose of optimism and positivity to get you ready for the weekend. The start of a new year is the time that many of us look to make changes in our lives. Today's clip is from episode 108 of the podcast with Professor BJ Fogg, a world leading expert in behavior change. In this clip, he explains why emotion is the key to forming new healthy habits that can last a lifetime. healthy habits that can last a lifetime. Why do you think feeling good is important when trying to create new behaviors?

The feeling of success is what wires in the habit. It's not repetition. It is a feeling of emotions create habits. So when you do something and feel successful, that behavior becomes much more automatic. You're more likely to do it in the future. So if people can do a behavior like two push-ups or eat broccoli or any little thing and feel successful, then that behavior will become more automatic. And there's ways to hack that and help yourself create habits very quickly, very, very quickly, if you know how to fire off a positive emotion.

The other thing that the feeling of success does is it motivates you to do it again in the future. That's different than wiring in a habit into your brain. So that's, you know, effect number two is increases your motivation. And the third effect, I call it success momentum. As people do behaviors and feel successful, their confidence, you could call it self-efficacy, increases. And that means when they hit roadblocks or little bumps in the road, they can get through them. That's why I like calling it success momentum. They can get through it. they can get through them. That's why I like calling it success momentum. They can get through it. And with that increased confidence, with that success momentum, then they can tackle other

challenges in their life more effectively. So, that and other reasons are why, you know, that maxim, you know, I only have three maxims and that's number two. And it's just, if you're designing products and services, bam, that's a key for you. If you're creating new habits in your life, that's a key. Help yourself feel successful. If you're coaching other people, helping other people like you do, that's another, you know, that's the same thing.

Help them feel successful. Now, it's only four words. Help people feel successful. But the way you do that can be challenging. And it's not obvious to everyday people of how, you know know the fact that they just set out their vitamins or took a sip of water how they can feel successful about that but people can learn uh to bring up that emotion and wire in these positive habits really quickly let's go

into specifics so emotions create habits okay i love Now, this is a story I shared with you yesterday, but I think it's worth exploring as to why this has worked so well. I've got my own view on it, but I'd love to hear your expertise on this. So a few years ago, I was in my practice. A patient came in to see me. I had a whole variety of different problems. There's quite a few things going on. And I was coming across all the research on strength training at that time. And we had a long chat about it. And we felt that strength training would be a really good thing for him to do. It would help his physique. It would help his energy levels. It would help his mood. And he was like, yeah, okay, doc, I get it. You've convinced me. And he said, what do you want me to do?

Would you like me to do 40 minutes three times a week in the gym? I said, hey, yeah, that would be amazing if you could do that. And he said, right, okay, I'm going to do it. Okay, so he goes out the door, really, really motivated, really inspired that, hey, I'm going to go and do this. Four weeks later, he came in to see me at the follow-up and I said, hey, how are you getting on? He said, doc, you know what? I've actually not been to the gym yet. Work's been busy. The gym's quite far away from where I live. It's pretty expensive. I've just not got around to it. And he looked demoralized and he felt a little bit sheepish that he was

telling me this. He probably didn't even want to come to the appointment. Yeah, exactly. But all credit to him, he did. And it was interesting because that moment really changed things for me because I thought, I didn't think for one minute, why is he not doing what I've asked him to do? Because a lot of doctors say that, don't they? They say, oh, you know, we tell patients what to do, but they don't do it. I've never really had that view. I felt in that moment, what's going on there? I felt that I'm clearly not giving him information that he feels is relevant for him in the context of his own life. And I thought, right, I'm going to fix this. So I took my jacket off and I said to him, right, I'm going to teach you a workout right now.

I love it. That you don't need to join a gym. You don't need to buy any equipment and you don't even need to get changed to do. Nice. So what happens? He goes away and I say to him, I want you to do this five minute workout in your kitchen twice a week. Just twice a week.

Awesome. He's like, just twice a week, Doc. What? Just 10 minutes. I said, yeah, that's all I want you to do. And then I'll be happy. So he goes away, goes, yeah, I can do that, Doc. He goes away, comes back for his follow-up. And I said, how are you getting on? He says, Doc, I love this workout, right? I now do it for 10 minutes every day in my kitchen before I have my evening meal. So this is a chap who we had agreed before the strength training would be good for.

The conventional way of doing that wasn't working for him. When I asked him to only do 10 minutes in his house a week, he comes back to me a few weeks later, he's doing 70 minutes. That's great. Of strength training every week. And I wonder if you could sort of explore that and expand on why is that so successful? Wow. Okay. Well, let me start with his ambition to do this huge workout. So, often when people decide that they're going to change their behavior, they're in a high state of motivation. So, if he's sitting down with you

in the clinical setting, he's feeling motivated in that moment. And then he truly believes he can do these hard workouts. What he doesn't and what we as human beings don't account for very well is what's going to happen to our motivation in the future. And the motivation goes up and down over time. And so, you know, three days later, his motivation sags, he's not able to do the hard workout. What you did so brilliantly is then you matched him with a really simple exercise routine that didn't require much time or money or physical effort and you set the bar really low. And so, if something's really easy to do, it doesn't require high levels of motivation. Motivation can be high or relatively low,

he can still do it. And you were just right on to say just do it two times a week. Now, what he did was he exceeded that. And you set him up to succeed, not fail. You set him up that the bar was low enough he could do it, so he felt successful. Then he did even more. So, now he's feeling like a superstar. He's like the A plus student. He's the student in the front row of the class that knows all the answers. And so, that then helps him wire in the habit and it helps him increase his motivation which means he can do more and harder things. And I imagine as he was doing more than five minutes twice a week, every time he did it, he's like, oh my gosh, when I go back to the doctor, I get to tell him this and so on. And then that becomes part of his life and very importantly,

part of his identity. He starts thinking, I'm the kind of person that does strength training. And more generally, I'm the kind of person who can change. Yeah. What you said there about identity really strikes a chord with me really, really deeply. You know, behavior change in so many ways is about identity change, I've realized. And, you know, by doing that and succeeding, he actually then, there was what I call a ripple effect happened after that. It led to more and more healthy behaviors off the back of that one thing that he could do. And I think it's because of what you say, emotion is key.

He's feeling good about himself. So he's not the sort of person who fails anymore. He's the sort of person who succeeds. Right, right. Yeah. So, I mean, in my research, I see this week after week in tiny habits, week after week, about 75% of the people who do tiny habits report doing other behaviors besides the three

new habits that they designed at the beginning. And this is within one week. So, they start doing other behaviors. About 18% of people do a big change within those five days. Not one that was planned, not that one that was part of the tiny habits program or what they thought they would do. But change leads to change and success leads to success. And this dynamic of you do something and feel successful, your identity shifts, and then that naturally ripples out and affects other behaviors in your life. And I didn't in the first, I would say, three years of doing tiny habits, I saw the data and I was like, wow, this is really interesting. These ripple effects are there, I get it. But what about these big

leap changes that people are making, this 18%? And I didn't totally understand that until I started asking some other questions in the research. And I did see clearly that as people do something and feel successful, it shifts their identity in these positive ways. And then they naturally start doing other related healthy behaviors. And that's just like, to me, it's just like, wow. Okay. So, you don't have to have people change 40 things at once or do this huge thing. You just have to help them feel successful on something really, really small. And that works. And then that has these big effects if you do it right. And you did. How do you create new habits?

Yeah. It's easier than people think. There's basically three steps. You take whatever behavior you want and you scale it down so it's super tiny. So, you did this well for your patient. Rather than having him think 40 minutes, you scaled it back to five minutes. In tiny habits method, you go even more extreme. It's just like two push-ups or two squats. Super, super simple. So, you scale it back to be really tiny and then you find where it fits naturally in your routine. What does it come after? So, for example, if you want to floss your teeth, you don't floss all your teeth, you floss just one. You scale it way back. I know that sounds ridiculous, but there's a difference between one tooth and all your teeth. And then you find what it comes after. Well, it naturally comes after brushing.

So, then it's called the recipe in Tiny Habits. The recipe is after I brush, I will floss one tooth. Or it could be things like after I feed the dog, I'll get out my journal and start writing, you know, and not write a page, you just get out the journal and open it. It's like you're starting a little seed. You don't start out a huge plant and try to transplant it. You start it out really small. You find where it fits naturally in your routine. And then when you do that new behavior, you help yourself feel good about it. In Tiny Habits, we have a technique called celebration, which allows you to feel a positive emotion in the moment, which then rewires your brain. So, your brain goes, wow, I just felt really good.

What just happened? Oh, I did this and this and I flossed that tooth and I felt really happy. I'm going to, wow, I'm going to do that again in the future. So it's the feeling, it's that emotion that signals to your brain, wow, something just happened, I need to pay attention, and I need to do that again in the future. This is going against the tradition in a huge way, because people have said for decades, it's repetition that creates habit. It's a repetition. It's not. Repetition correlates with habit formation, but it doesn't create the habits.

It's emotions that create the habit. Hope you enjoyed that bite-sized clip. Please do spread the love by sharing this episode with your friends and family. And if you want more, why not go back and listen to the full conversation with my guest. And if you enjoyed this episode, I think you will really enjoy my new bite-sized Friday email. It's called the Friday Five. And each week I share things that I do not share on social media. It contains five short doses of positivity,

articles or books that I'm reading, quotes that I'm thinking about, exciting research I've come across, and so much more. I really think you're going to love it. The goal is for it to be a small yet powerful dose of feel good to get you ready for the weekend. You can sign up for it at drchastity.com forward slash Friday five. I hope you have a wonderful weekend. Make sure you have pressed subscribe and I'll be back next week with my long-form conversational Wednesday and the latest episode of Bite Science next Friday