Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - BITESIZE | 3 Simple Steps to Make New Habits Stick | Charles Duhigg #477

Episode Date: September 19, 2024

We can all make short-term changes, but so many of us struggle to make our new desired behaviours last. Feel Better Live More Bitesize is my 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. Today’s clip is from episode 436 of the podcast with Pulitzer Prize winner and author of international bestselling bookThe Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg. In this clip, we discuss why it is that so many of us struggle to make our new desired behaviours stick, and Charles shares some great tips to help build better habits. Thanks to our sponsor https://www.drinkag1.com/livemore Support the podcast and enjoy Ad-Free episodes. Try FREE for 7 days on Apple Podcasts https://apple.co/feelbetterlivemore. For other podcast platforms go to https://fblm.supercast.com. Show notes and the full podcast are available at drchatterjee.com/436 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.

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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 positivity and optimism to get you ready for the weekend. Today's clip is from episode 436 of the podcast with Charles Duhigg, author of the international bestseller, The Power of Habit. In this clip, we discuss why it is that so many of us struggle to make our new desired behavior stick. And Charles shares some great tips to help you build better habits. to help you build better habits. A lot of people want to improve their health.

And often, I'm trying to recommend new behaviors. Yeah. Right? Which hopefully they can turn into long-term habits. Right. But what I often find is despite people's best intentions, they really, really want it. But despite that, you know, that strong intention, often they can't make those new behaviors stick in the long term. In your view,

why is that? It's usually because they're so focused on the behavior that they're not thinking about the cues and the rewards that have to change over time as their relationship to that behavior becomes deeper. One of the things that we've learned is that every habit has three components. There's a cue, which is like a trigger for this automatic behavior, and then the behavior itself, and then a reward. Every habit that exists in our life has a reward, whether we're aware of it or not. And I think what happens is that oftentimes when we start a new behavior, we focus on the cue and the reward, right? We say, oh, I'm going to meet my friend Steve at the gym every Wednesday night. That's the cue, a certain time of day and in a certain place. And when I'm

done, I'm going to like let myself have a beer with Steve, or I'm going to give myself a piece of chocolate or take a nice long shower. And then over time, as the behavior becomes more regular, we stop thinking about those cues and those rewards and the reward stops being rewarding, right? We get to the place where we're like, I can't have a beer every single time I work out, right? But instead we don't supplement it with anything else. Or we get so accustomed to running that we go in the morning for a jog. And instead of letting ourselves relax afterwards, now we're late for work. And so we're rushing to get to work and we're rushing to take the kids to school and we're stressed. We're actually

punishing ourself for that behavior. And so I think what happens is that when we first start a behavior, it's so novel that the novelty of it is a reward in and of itself. And we feel so good about doing that behavior that we give ourselves something we can enjoy. The reward becomes even more rewarding because we're giving it to ourself. And then over time, it's almost a form of stoicism. We think that we don't have to, we shouldn't have to reward the behavior anymore. And so we stop paying attention to the cues and the rewards. And once they're gone from your environment, the habit just crumbles. And so 40 to 45% of what we do every day is a habit. We're not aware of that, right? We think of it as a decision, but it's actually just a habit.

And think about the habits like backing your car out of the driveway. So the first couple of times you do that, the first week or two that you're living in your new house, you have to really concentrate on it, right? You're looking in the mirror. And then at some point it becomes much more automatic. You can do it almost on autopilot. And what's interesting though, is that in neurological studies, what we find is that when someone, even once it's on autopilot, once they back the car into the driveway, we see a small reward sensation in their brain. We see actually oftentimes a release of some dopamina agent or serotonin agent

that is causing some type of reward. Now, you don't feel a reward sensation when you back your car out of your driveway. You're not aware of this, but your brain is designed to pay attention to those reward sensations. And when it comes to bigger behaviors, like exercise or

eating more healthily, sometimes those intrinsic rewards emerge on their own. You learn that you feel really good after going for a run, right? Again, you have that sort of brain chemistry release. But sometimes you don't. And sometimes that reward process does not take hold. And in those situations, you have to give yourself a reward. You have to jumpstart the reward system. And that means that initially I need to give myself a small piece of chocolate whenever I go and exercise. And eventually I'll learn that exercise makes me feel good. And that's enough of a reward in itself. But at some point that reward may become less rewarding. And if I'm not aware of that, and I don't supplement it with a new kind of reward, then that's when the habit crumbles.

My brain is no longer getting a reward for this behavior. And so it just allows itself to discard it. Let's say, for example, someone wanted to take up, I don't know, journaling. Maybe they've heard me say on a podcast how beneficial I think journaling is, or they've read it somewhere else. What would you say to that person as you think about that habit loop? Absolutely. Okay, so let's start with the cue. So almost all cues fall into one of five categories. It's usually a certain time of day, a certain place, certain other people, a certain emotion, or a preceding behavior that's become ritualized. Okay.

Do you journal? I do journal, yeah. Okay, so let me ask you, do you journal at the same time every day? Do you journal at the same place? Like what's the consistency? Yeah, same time, same place. Okay, so, and you can have more than one cue, right?

And that cue, so just choosing that, just saying, I'm gonna journal from, you know, every morning, 10 minutes after I wake up, I'm gonna get my cup of coffee. I'm gonna go sit down in this one chair. I'm gonna journal for 20 minutes. So that's the cue. Now, the behavior we understand is journaling.

Now we have to choose a reward to give ourself. And when you first started journaling, what was the reward? What is the thing that you looked forward to? Yeah, what's interesting here, Charles, is that I have a morning routine which has evolved over the years. So I've been putting into practice things in my life to make this morning routine happen for over five years. So it started off as a five or 10 minute routine and it's now sometimes 30 or 40 minutes. I have these three M's of a morning routine that I often talk to people about, mindfulness, movement, and mindset.

Now I do it at the same time every day and I do it in the same place every day which for me is very very important yeah okay so consistent cues consistent pattern 100% so currently how that looks is that I wake up in my pajamas I go downstairs and I sit in my living room and I meditate for 10 minutes that's my mindfulness practice I then walk out of my living room into my kitchen and I very mindfully prepare my coffee. I weigh it out, I put it in the French press and I put a timer on for five minutes. In those five minutes, I do a five minute strength workout in my kitchen. And then at the end of this I get the reward of a gorgeous cup of coffee exactly the way I want to make it and I do my journaling at my kitchen counter while sipping my coffee so it's interesting as I explain that to you it's not so much although I'm sure there are

some mini rewards around journaling but you could also take it on a much more macro level and go halfway or two thirds of the way through our morning routine. The reward is this hot cup of coffee that I enjoy with my practice of journaling. Yeah. That makes a ton of sense. And my guess is, how do you feel after journaling? I feel completely differently. Journaling is a way of having a conversation with ourselves. So I feel, because I ask myself some key questions each morning, and by answering those questions, I feel I've reflected on my life and my day.

And I feel differently. I feel much more intentional and purposeful at the end of my journaling practice. So what I hear you saying, and tell me if you think this is wrong, I hear you describing a situation where you're very deliberate about your cues and you're actually giving yourself very deliberate rewards. And more importantly, you're recognizing them as rewards. Because a funny thing about our brains are when we decide a reward is rewarding, it actually becomes more rewarding. So you do the strength workout and at the end of it,

you get your coffee, right? A little bit of a reward and you get it exactly right. Like you spent five minutes exactly doing your, and so you give yourself the coffee and then you start journaling and you get to enjoy the coffee as you're journaling. And you know that when you're done journaling, you're going to feel better. And actually knowing that you're going to feel better, knowing that you're giving yourself permission to have this reward, actually means you're going to feel better, right?

It makes it more likely. You know, I think you're widely regarded as someone who's written one of the best books on habits, maybe of all time, okay? Let's say someone like me, for example, has this established routine. And let's say I said, okay, let's say someone like me, for example, has this established routine. And let's say I said, okay, you know what? I want to try a couple of months without coffee. Right. Right. But coffee is actually, it's almost like a foundation that this routine hangs off. Right. So knowing what

you know about habit loops, how might I maintain that routine, not have caffeine or coffee, but still keep it going? It's a great question. And there's this basic principle. We think of it as breaking a habit. There's this phrase, right? I want to break this habit. And that's the wrong way to think about it. Because breaking a habit, you cannot extinguish a habit. The neural pathways associated with that habit still exist in your brain. What you need to do is focus on changing the habit by finding a new behavior that corresponds to the old cues and delivers something similar to the old reward. So let me ask you this. What is it about the coffee that you enjoy so much? I like the fact that it's hot. Okay. I've always found hot drinks comforting.

Chopped ginger and hot water, that's one of my favorite drinks. So yeah, there's probably a little bit of a buzz from coffee because it's a psychoactive stimulant, right? So it gives me that little buzz. I love the taste. Yeah, yeah. I think people who love coffee, they love the taste of coffee.

Yeah. I hear three rewards that coffee is delivering to you. Taste, a hot drink, a hot beverage, and a little bit of a buzz. So what I would say is you need to do some experiments. Okay, so the hot beverage, we know that we can replicate the hot beverage. So I would say two mornings in a row

when you normally make your coffee, make hot water and ginger. And then afterwards, you know, 20 minutes after you've drank that, ask yourself, am I craving coffee right now? Like, has this satisfied the reward that I'm seeking? Now it might not do the trick, right? Because there's these two other things

that coffee's providing. If taste is one of the huge rewards, if that's really driving you, then hot water and ginger might not be enough. You might need to do a hot water and ginger and some citrus, something that makes it taste or perhaps some bitters, right? Something that gives it a coffee-like sense. A couple of days, you put bitters in your

hot water and ginger to see if that satisfies your taste sensation, that taste craving that you have. Now, the caffeine is the harder one, right? Because you're trying to move away from caffeine, I assume, is why in this theory, this theoretical. You know, a couple of years ago, I think I had a few weeks off. Yeah. And it was great. You know, I went through the withdrawal.

Right. And then I felt just fantastic. So I think, you know, it's definitely be something I've been thinking about recently. Yeah. I know how I might try and do it, but I'm very interested with all your expertise

and how, what that looks like through the lens of the habit loop. So here's the test that I would do. To test the caffeine theory is I would start cutting your coffee with decaf. It's gonna take a couple of days to get to a fully decaf cup but then spend two or three days having a decaf cup of coffee and see if you still have this craving.

Yeah. The goal here is to kind of look at ourselves as like a laboratory where we are scientists and we're conducting experiments. And the thing about an experiment, my wife is a scientist and you're a scientist. If every experiment my wife did succeeded, she would be the worst scientist on earth, right?

The whole point of doing experiments is that some of them fail and we learn from that. As you're doing these experiments, if you're paying attention to the results, if some of them don't work, that doesn't mean that you made a mistake. That doesn't mean that you're a failure. It means you're learning what the reward is that can change the behavior. Yeah. I love that because one of the big problems I've seen with patients is that when they try something and it fails, they think that they've failed. So the guilt, the shame, the negative self-talk all starts to kick in. And I think what you just said is so, so powerful. Let's have experiments, do the experiments.

You're the test subject. See what works, see what doesn't work. And with our kids, we tell them to experiment, right? We tell them like, oh, go try basketball. See if you like it. Try football. See if it's, you know, try the debate club. And we don't pose it as,

oh, if you don't like this sport or if you don't like this activity, you're a failure. It's exactly the opposite. And yet when it comes to ourself, we sometimes have this self-punishment instinct. And the more we rid ourselves of it, the more we unlock our capacity for change. One thing many people who are trying to improve their health are working on all the time these days is reducing their sugar intake. And one thing that became clear to me a few years ago is that it's not just knowledge that people need, it's self-awareness. And this little exercise I created to help some of my patients who were,

despite their best intentions, ending up on the sofa at 9.30 in the evening, stuck in a tub of ice cream, right? Even though they'd managed to stick to what they wanted to in the day, even though they were trying really, really hard, they were pre-diabetic, they knew the knowledge that actually this is not helping me, but they were still doing it. So I create this little exercise and I'm, I wonder how you would assess it through the lens of the habit loop, right?

It was called the three F's basically, the freedom exercise. And I would say, okay, next time you're on a sofa and you feel the urge to have ice cream, just take a pause and ask yourself what you're really feeling. Is it physical hunger or emotional hunger? Yeah. Okay. Then if you want to have it, go ahead and have it. But you start to build in that awareness. Oh, actually, you know, I'm a bit stressed or I've just had a row with my partner, whatever it might be. Okay. Next time, then you do the first step, then you do the second F, which is, oh, actually, you know, I'm a bit stressed, or I've just had a row with my partner, whatever it might be. Okay, next time, then you do the first F, then you do the second F, which is, okay, now that you know the feeling, how does food feed that feeling? Oh, okay, so I'm feeling stressed, I've had a row with my partner, when I have the ice scream, I feel less stressed, at least

for a few seconds, for a few minutes. The third F is, okay, now that you know what the feeling is, now that you know how food feeds the feeling, the third F is find. Can you now find an alternative behavior to feed that same feeling? Oh, I'm totally going to steal this. This is so good. Oh, you like it?

Okay, good. So it was kind of like you're feeling stressed. So maybe instead of going to sugar, maybe you can do 10 minutes of yoga. Yeah. Or maybe you run yourself a bath. Yeah. Or maybe you're feeling lonely.

And instead of going to sugar, maybe you phone your mom or you phone your best friend. So I don't know, maybe you could unpack that with me through the lens of your work. Absolutely. And what I love about that is, so what we know is that if we just give people knowledge, all of us know that we should

eat more healthy and exercise more, right? Just knowledge does not actually solve the problem. If you tell someone an idea, either they'll forget it or they won't see how the application, but if you tell someone an idea embedded in a story, then we remember that story. Our brain latches onto that story. It's the thing that we carry in our pocket and it reminds us of the idea when we need to be reminded. And what I hear you saying is you're telling your patients to create a story for themselves. Like here's the three F's. This is a story. It's not that I am just sitting on a couch. I'm actually someone who's feeling something, right? And that

feeling is prompting me to look to food. That's sort of the middle of the story. And the ending of the story is that I can find something else to do. I can find this alternative. But it's enough of a story that when I'm sitting on that couch, I can say, oh, the three Fs. I remember I'm supposed to do the three Fs. It's empowering. Yes. But it also makes you think the first one of the habit loop is the cue. Right. It's so important to know that cue because otherwise you're thinking you're a failure. I can't stick to anything, but you're not recognizing what the cue is. That's exactly right. And in this case, I think that cue is, I feel bad. You're helping people

realize that their cue for many, many health-related behaviors is an emotional cue. Yeah, I really think it is. And people say, okay, well, now that I'm aware, what do I do? And I often say, hey, hey, wait a minute. Do not underestimate the power of awareness. Simply being aware that you go to sugar when you're feeling stressed, that will start to change things. Even if you consciously do nothing else, you will change your relationship to that behavior just by knowing that. Absolutely. Because you don't recognize the link previous, right?

And that's the thing about habits is that when we're in the grip of a habit, our brain actually powers down, right? This is why habits exist is because every animal on earth has a part of the brain known as the basal ganglia that exists essentially to make habits. And it's because if you don't have habits, you have to decide every time you pass an apple or a rock, which one you ought to eat, right? You have to think about how you walk. So our brain developed this system where when we're in the grip of a habit, we can make a behavior automatic without having to think about it the entire time, which means we can think about other things. We can dream up how to build fire or forts or video games. But when our brain turns off in the grip of a habit, we tend to stop paying attention to the cues and the rewards, right? We don't notice,

oh, I want ice cream right now because I'm stressed. Some part of us knows, but it's very easy to ignore that voice. And when you pull it into the forefront of your brain, when you make yourself start thinking about it again, and someone says, oh, my cue is stress. I usually turn to sugar. And by the way, the second and the third F are teaching me that sugar actually does not solve this problem for me.

It's a crutch, but there's another behavior that would be healthier and provide the same reward. Then all of a sudden change becomes so much easier. Yeah. And it doesn't mean that change is easy. No. But it means change is easier.

Hope you enjoyed that bite-sized clip. 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 original full conversation with my guest. If you enjoyed this episode, I think you will really enjoy my bite-sized Friday email. It's called the Friday Five. And each week I share things that I do not share on social media. 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

free of charge at drchatterjee.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 conversation on Wednesday and the latest episode of Bite Science next Friday.