Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 194: Atomic Habits, James Clear

Episode Date: July 3, 2019

An athlete as a kid, a devastating sports injury would change James Clear's life forever. While a sophomore in high school, a baseball bat struck Clear in the face, resulting in massive head trauma. He would need to relearn very basic skills to function as himself again. Bit by bit, he started forming small habits which over time resulted in big changes. Today, he is the author of Atomic Habits: An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones. Plug Zone About: https://jamesclear.com/ Book: https://jamesclear.com/atomic-habits ***VOICEMAILS*** Have a question for Dan? Leave us a voicemail: 646-883-8326 See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Before we jump into today's show, many of us want to live healthier lives, but keep bumping our heads up against the same obstacles over and over again. But what if there was a different way to relate to this gap between what you want to do and what you actually do? What if you could find intrinsic motivation for habit change that will make you happier instead of sending you into a shame spiral? Learn how to form healthy habits without kicking your own ass unnecessarily by taking our healthy habits course over on the 10% happier app. It's taught by the Stanford psychologist Kelly McGonical and the Great Meditation Teacher Alexis

Santos to access the course. Just download the 10% happier app wherever you get your apps or by visiting 10% calm. All one word spelled out. Okay on with the show. For ABC, to baby, this is Kiki Palmer on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcast. From ABC, this is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hey guys, here's something I hear a lot when I'm giving speeches or when I'm listening to users of the 10% happier app. People really, really struggle to form an abiding meditation habit.

It's incredibly hard. So today we're going to take a deep dive on this and we're not just going to talk about how to make and sustain a meditation habit, but also about how to make or break any kind of habit. From meditating to going to the gym, taking to a diet, this stuff is brutal because the truth is we are not wired for success here. There have been a ton of books written on this subject, but there's one that's really stood out.

It's become a pretty huge bestseller. It's called Atomic Habits, and it's written by a guy named James Clear who's got a rather varied resume. He's an MBA, he's an athlete, I think a weightlifter, also a travel photographer and he blogs and writes about habits. The term Atomic Habits has to do in part with his belief, which is based in science. He says that the best way to change your habits is to start really, really, really small and easy at the atomic level and then to layer up from there in ways that can be super powerful. He is incredibly practical about behavior change and we're going to get

pretty granular and actionable in this interview. So we talk about best practices for starting a meditation habit, spoiler alert. He's a big fan of something called the two-minute rule. He's also a big fan of joining a tribe and he has a trick that involves marbles. We talk about tips for sleep. He gives me advice for breaking a bad habit I've been struggling with for a long time. We talk about tips for sleep. It gives me advice for breaking a bad habit I've been struggling with for a long time. We talk about the connection between yourself image and your habits. And we tackle a very common question, how long does it take to form a habit? Two quick notes before we dive in. One, while we do talk about meditation here, it's not the sole focus.

We have heard from a lot of you in our podcast Insiders group that you don't mind it when we have interesting and useful nonmeditation centric guests, but apparently you'd like to have these guests balanced out with a lot of deep meditation folks. So the good news is that next week we're going to dive into the deep end with a legendary meditation teacher, also hilarious human being named Sylvia Borstein. The other note, and this is the last thing I say before we get rolling here, you may notice that the audio quality is a little bit different on this interview. We did not record this in a radio studio.

We actually shot this as part of a story for Good Morning America. So you're going to hear a tiny bit of background noise on occasion, but the audio is still professional, high quality, yada yada yada. All right, here we go. Here's James Clear. So I think it would be interesting to start with just your personal story. How did you get interested in habits?

Well, I mean, we all have habits, right, and we're building them all the time. So I had them before I was consciously thinking about them. But the first time that I started to think about making small improvements and kind of why that matters and makes a difference was through sports. So my dad played professional baseball and then my legs were St. Louis Cardinals. So growing up I wanted to be an athlete too. And sports played a big part throughout my whole childhood. And then when I was a sophomore in high school I had this very serious injury where I was

hitting the face of the baseball bat. And it was an accident, but my classmate took a swing and the bat kind of spun like helicopter style through the air and struck me right between the eyes. And so I broke my nose, I broke the bone behind my nose, which is your ethmoid bones like fairly deep inside your skull. Shattered both eye sockets. I looked down, I had blood all over my clothes. which is your ethmoid bones, like fairly deep inside your skull. Shattered both high sockets. I looked down at blood all over my clothes.

Classmate of mine literally took the shirt off his back and gave that to me to plug up the blood. And so I walked down the nurse's office. And I was answering questions for like, I don't know, 10 minutes or so, but I wasn't answering them very well. It was like, you know, what year is it? I said, 1998, it was actually 2002.

Or, who was the president? I said, George W. Bush, but it was actually, or I said Bill Clinton, but it was actually George W. Bush. And then they asked what my mom's name was and it took me like 10 seconds to respond and that was the last question I remember. So, over the course of the next day, multiple seizures,

lost the ability to breathe on my own, had to be intubated, air-care to the hospital. I couldn't undergo surgery because the swelling was too severe and I was having too many seizures, so I was too unstable. So they placed me into a medically induced coma overnight. And then finally, the next day, I've stabilized the point where they could release me from that and kind of this process of healing began. And over the next eight months or so, I had double vision, I couldn't drive a car, I was practicing basic motor patterns like walking in a straight line.

And all I really wanted to start small, right? Like I had to just build small habits. Things that were so tiny that they didn't even really seem significant. Like I started working out for the first time, consistently, first one or two days, and then maybe three or four. I made my bed every day, prepared for class for an hour. And none of these things were significant enough that they would like transform your life, but they gave me a sense of control. Again, you know, I felt like I had lost all that when I got injured. I got a NAS for this to happen

to me. And so finally, through those small habits, I was able to make some progress. Eventually, the next year, I tried to get back on the baseball field. We got cut. It was the only junior to be cut in the team that year. Senior season, I got back and barely got to play, but I did make the team. I weaseled my way onto a college squad, and then freshman year came off the bench, sophomore year. I was a starter, junior year was a captain,

and then my senior season, I was an academic all-American. And so that arc from injury to fulfilling my potential, I guess. You know, I never played professionally. Like, I never ended up playing professionally with my dad. But I do feel like I made the most of what I had given the challenges that I faced. And I feel like that's really the message of habits and like why I care about them so much. You can make these small changes.

They don't seem like much on any given day. But if you can continue to compound them on top of themselves and show up day in and day out, then despite the challenges or drawbacks or barriers that life may throw your way, hopefully you can make the most of what you have available. And what's your background? What did you do professionally before you wrote this book? So in school, I was hard sciences, so my undergraduate degrees in biomechanics, which

mostly chemistry and physics. Then I went to graduate school and got my MBA. While I was there, I also had kind of more of a health focus and did some studies in classes in the school of health and public health in sciences. And then I got done and I decided I want to start a business. And so the first two years, I launched a variety of different products.

And most of them just flopped and didn't go anywhere. And I realized, oh, the reason this isn't going well is I have no idea why people sign up for things. I don't know why anybody would buy something. Why would they sign up for an email list or whatever. And so I started studying consumer psychology to learn about that, like why would someone buy a product? And that led me to behavioral psychology, habit formation.

I kind of went down the rabbit hole from there. And my background in the hard sciences really helped a lot. I had done a research project, a year and a half research study in the physics department, and I was an undergrad. So I was at least familiar with academic papers and kind of how to dive into some of that stuff. And now finally, I had found a topic that I was like really interested in passion and too, because I could read that and be like, oh, now I see why, you know, how this idea

could apply to my workout habits or my nutrition habits or my creative writing habit or whatever. And so there was suddenly science had this very practical aspect. And that was what I really liked about it. And kind of what I still see my job as being and what I feel like this book is, it's like a bridge between the academic research and scientific background and practical daily life and how to apply it to life and work. But we've had, it's interesting to watch how this book has cut through because there have been books on habit before, I mean, Charles Duhig and the power of habit.

Seven habits, I affect people, it's, yeah, it's, I mean, it's been covered for decades. So what do you think is resonating about this book? I think there are two things. So one, the science has updated and improved and continue to expand. So there are new things to talk about, like some of the topics that are in the book that haven't really been covered elsewhere. Connection between identity and self-image in your habits, the genetic underpinnings of habits, and how like your genes and your personality may influence whether you're more likely to be able to stick to a habit or not.

And there are a couple of other topics as well. But then the second thing, and I think the more important one, is I read all those books, and I looked very deeply like what's missing, or what do we feel like we need more of. And the answer always came back, practical application. How do I, OK, we understand from a scientific standpoint what a habit is and how it works. We have a good idea of what brain regions are involved and so on.

But how do we actually translate that to something we can use? And so that's why the book is organized around the four laws of behavior change and kind of these four major areas you can focus on to make it easier to build a good habit or break a bad one. All right, let's dive in. So let me start with why atomic habits? So I chose to phrase atomic for three reasons. The first meaning of the word atomic is what you might guess,

tiny or small, like an atom. And that's kind of a big part of my philosophy, habits should be small and easy to do. The second meaning of the word atomic is the fundamental unit in a larger system. So atoms build into molecules, molecules build into compounds, and so on. And your habits are kind of like that. You know, they're kind of like these little units are rituals that you follow each day.

And you put them all together and you end up with the system of your daily routine. And then the third and final meaning is the source of immense energy or power. And I think that if you combine all three of those meanings, you sort of understand the narrative arc of the book, which is you make changes that are small and easy to do. You layer them on top of each other, like units in a larger system. And if you do that, then you can end up with some really powerful,

remarkable results in a long way. So how does this work? If I want to, well, I'll get personal with you. The habit that I would like to break is late night snacking. Just terrible for me. It's unnecessary calories. It's not good to eat right before you go to bed.

It gives me nightmares. I wake up not feeling that good. And yet I do it. So how would I apply the atomic habits paradigm to something like that? Yeah, so let me just recap the, this kind of four main stages, because that gives us like four different points

of intervention. So my four set framework for how what happened is and how it works is Q craving response reward. So the Q is something that gets your attention like you see for late-night snacking maybe see a play to cookies on the counter. Okay. Then the craving is how you what you predict that Q means. And this is a I think an important stage in one of the newer pieces of the book. It helps explain why people have different habits in the same situation. So two people walk into a room and they see a pack of cigarettes on the counter. And one person is a smoker and they interpret that cue as favorable.

And they get this urge to smoke. And another person has never smoked a day in their life. And they see it and they're like, oh it's just a pack of cigarettes and they get this urge to smoke. And another person has never smoked a day in their life and they see it and they're like, oh, it's just a pack of cigarettes and they move on. And it's really the prediction, the internal narrative, the story that you tell yourself about what that Q means that determines whether you respond to it or not. And so the craving is this period of prediction.

And actually, to tie it back to some of your work on meditation, I think a lot of the power of meditation is it gets you to either tell a new story about the cues and experiences in your life, or gives you enough time to let that craving pass to kind of ride that wave so that you can let the story play out without responding to it or without acting on it. But most of the time, you have the cue, you get a craving, and then the third stage, a response, so eating the cookie, you get a craving, and then the third stage, a response. So eating the cookie, doing one push-up, meditating for one minute. And then finally, there's the reward, which is the outcome.

Now, not all behaviors in life are rewarding. Some of them have a consequence. But if it's not rewarding, it's unlikely to become a habit because your brain learns why would I do that again? It didn't feel good. It wasn't enjoyable. It didn't serve me in some way. So those are the four stages. So let's bring this back to your late-night snacking question. If you want to break a bad habit, there are kind of four different points of intervention.

And this is also true for building a good habit. So for the first stage, the cue, you want to build a good habit, you want to make it obvious. And to break a bad habit, you just invert that. So for the first stage, the cue, you wanna build a good habit, you wanna make it obvious. And to break a bad habit, you just invert that, so make it invisible. So instead of that, play the cookies being out on the counter, maybe we wrap them up in foil or in some kind of a tupperware and put them in the highest shelf in the pantry behind the doors.

And you better wrap them in dog poop and then nobody will wanna eat it. Or even better, don't buy them in the first place and then they're not there, right? So first step, make it obvious or make it invisible. Second stage, craving, make it attractive, the more attractive and appealing it is, the more likely they are to perform it,

or make it unattractive. I'll come back to an example of that in a second. And then the third stage, make it easy, the easier, more convenient, frictionless your habits are, the less likely, or the more likely are to do them. And then if you want to invert that for breaking a bad habit, it's make it difficult. And then finally, the fourth stage,

make it satisfying or make it unsatisfying. So let me give some practical examples to kind of add some teeth to this. So make it attractive, second stage. Let's say that tonight you go to bed and you're like, all right, tomorrow morning, tomorrow's going to be the day. I'm going to wake up early. I'm going to go for a run at the park.

So you set your alarm, 6 a.m., 6 a.m. rolls around. Your alarm goes off. Your bed is warm. It's cold outside. I go out and maybe I'll press snooze instead. But if you rewind the clock and come back to today, and you text a friend and you say, hey, can we meet at the park at 6 a.m. and go for a run?

Well now, morning rolls around and your alarm goes off and your bed is still warm and it's still cold outside. But if you don't get up, then you're a jerk because you leave your friend at the park all alone, right? So you've suddenly made it more attractive to wake up and less attractive to sleep in. So these are kind of two sides of the same coin here and so for many bad habits this is really hard to do to make it unattractive. So I think the first stage is a better point of

intervention like keeping cookies outside of the environment is probably an easier thing to do than to say well just don't crave a cookie which is going to be very hard. But you can imagine certain setups where like people do this with biting their nails, for example. They paint a certain type of fingernail polish on there so that it tastes terrible. So now suddenly, it's very unattractive to bite your nails because it tastes hideous as soon as you put them in your mouth.

So that's the second stage. And then the third and fourth stages are make it difficult and make it unsatisfatisfying and i can give you examples of those if you want to just pause there for a second so how would this work so it's not like i mean cookies just for the record and i'm not i used to do that i should broke that habit i had a really horrible sugar habit and i went cold turkey uh... that doesn't sound like what you would recommend but for some reason it worked

for me well can work they're kind. There are three ways to break a bad habit. So first way is elimination, so go cold turkey. Second way is reduction, so you curtail the behavior to the desired level. And then the third way is substitution. So you add in a good habit to replace the bad one. And all three can work. It just depends on the situation and what your goals are.

I, at least the story I tell myself is not good at moderation, but I'm pretty good at abstinence. So I couldn't just have a cookie because it would turn into 75 and a shame spiral. That's a lot of people are social media, right? It's like, oh, just check for a minute in an hour later. Actually, I'm now with social media mindful enough that I recognize pretty quickly as making me unhappy and I stop. But with cookies, I don't have that wear with all.

So I quit, you know, full stop. What I'm bingeing on late at night is usually just something like pretzels or rice cakes or you know, something embarrassingly, or benign. And nonetheless, it doesn't make me feel good. Well, sometimes it's healthy food, but you just don't need the extra calories. Yes, so I'm unsure because I don't think I can make a case that we shouldn't have healthy rice cakes in the apartment.

So I don't know how and we do put them away. They're not just lying around although sometimes they are but mostly they're not just lying around. But I know they're there and the cue for me is I'm you know once or twice a week I get to hang out with my wife after the kid goes to bed my schedule is such that I'm not home that often in the evenings because I work on a night, nightly show called Nightline and or I'm going to bed early to get up for good morning America. But once or twice a week we get to hang out and chat or watch Netflix or whatever.

And I or watch ABC Prime Time programming, which is awesome, what I meant to say. Little plug. There you go. And somehow that's a powerful cue to me to indulge. Because historically, that's what we've done. We've had dessert or we've had pizza. And I don't really eat so much of the bad stuff,

but I still want that indulgence. Yeah, all right, so let me give you three possible ideas. So it sounds like the first two stages are maybe not the best place to intervene for this particular situation. So it's possible that the third stage is a good one. So third stage is the response. If you want to build a good habit, you make it easy.

If you want to break a bad habit, you make it difficult. If you want to break a bad habit, you make it difficult. So what you're really trying to do is add some friction here, right? So one way to do this, there are Tupperware containers that are programmable on top and so you can get your rice cakes and store them in the Tupperware and the pantry or wherever. But you can program them to lock at 7 p.m. And really not open until, say, 7am. That's a dialogue. And so now suddenly it's out of your hands.

Can you hack them? I don't know. They're different models, so I'm not sure if some are more airtight than others. I actually recommend this sum for people with their phones. Like, if you feel like, okay, everybody's looking at their phones during dinner and we just want to have a family dinner for an hour. Well, dinner started and everybody sits down. They put their phones during dinner and we just want to have a family dinner for an hour Well dinner is started and everybody sits down They put their phones in the box that program and it only opens up an hour later

And so you just find a way to take willpower out of the equation a little bit, right? So that's one way to increase friction and that's what the actual storage of the food another option Which I thought was really brilliant. There was one father of mine, who's a reader of mine, who's a father. And when he puts his young kids to bed, at like, say, 8 or 8.30, they are brushing their teeth to get ready for bed, and he brushes his teeth when they do as well. Because if I've already brushed my teeth, I don't want to have to brush them again. And so that was the thing that helped him cut out the late night snacking. And I should say, as we're talking through all of this, I recommend this all the time, it's not a single 1% change or little habit that is going to like change your whole life, right?

It's actually the layering of a few different strategies that might work. So maybe you brush your teeth early and you put your food in a programmable container and you try to not leave food out on the counter, so you're less likely to see it. And the combination of all three of those little changes are is enough to nudge you forward. So those are two strategies. The third one that I can think of is maybe substitution is a good method. It sounds like for your type of personality elimination and going cold turkey make sense, curtailing it a little bit, reducing it probably isn't going to work that well,

but maybe you could cut it out entirely if you had something else that you did. And so this story of, I come home, I get to hang out with my wife at night, and usually we'll snack on something together and watch Netflix or whatever, maybe there's something else you can plug in there that you do together while you're watching Netflix that takes the space of eating mindlessly while you're watching. I don't know exactly what that would be, right? I'm not saying you have to get like a fidget spinner and you know, spend your time doing that, but there could be something that makes sense for your setup or for what's interesting to you.

This is going to sound pathetic, but occasionally we will subs to gum. But then I'll chew so much gum that I feel crap. I just have a very powerfully addictive personality. I mean, I've been pretty open about my addictive perclivity, so it will transfer. I don't do cocaine anymore, but it will transfer over into anything. Right. I'm actually pretty restricted. I don't eat animal products. I don't need animal products, I don't need desserts, but it will, my, the

addictive, addictive capacity of my mind will find a way. In a weird way, habits are kind of, I don't want to use the word addiction because I think actually at that point you're like on a very extreme end of like repetitive behavior, so it's not quite the same as like a lot of other daily habits. But to a certain degree, it's kind of the process of trying to find the healthiest addictions for us to do. You know, like, certainly exercise, for example, yes, there are extreme examples of people who exercise four times a day or whatever, and it becomes so prohibitive to the rest of their life that it negatively impacts them like an addiction.

But I think it's also true that it's much less likely that exercise spirals into something negative like that than other behaviors like, I don't know, doing math or something, right? Which is probably much more toward an unproductive side of addicted behavior. So if you can channel that energy into something that's less likely to have a negative downside, you kind of get to put your personality to work for you in a better way, even if it's not going to be a perfect solution. I like that. Let's talk about the inverse, because I asked about breaking a habit, and you wisely talked about both sides breaking and making, but let's just dive in a little bit on making a habit.

You mentioned exercise, the other habit that I'm attuned to and I've heard you've discussed publicly before is meditation. Those are two of the big things that people talk about, too many big things that people talk about when they say, I need to get better at x, y or z. So let's take meditation since a lot of my listeners are into that. How would you, based on everything you've learned for those of us who are struggling to establish a meditation habit, what would you, based on everything you've learned for those of us who are struggling to establish a meditation habit? What would you recommend? I think, so there's sort of, there are kind of two phases when building a habit.

There's getting started, and then there's sticking with it, right? So there's like, making it easy to get going and having some kind of long-term consistency with the thing. And I'll talk first about getting started and making it easy. So I think this, the fastest, simplest way to do this is to apply what I call in the book, the two minute rule. And you just take whatever habit you're trying to build, and you scale it down to something that takes two minutes or less to do. So do yoga four days a week, becomes take out my yoga mat, or meditate every day for a month, becomes meditate for 60 seconds, right?

Like you just make it something it's two minutes or less, very small, very easy, not intimidating, so easy almost that you can't say no to it. And sometimes I tell people this and they like resisted a little bit because they're like, well, I know the real thing I want to do is like do the workout. I'm not just trying to take my yoga mat out and then roll it back up and put it back, right? And if I know it's this mental trick, then why would I fall for it? But I think this is a truth about habits that's often overlooked, which is a habit must be established before it can be improved, right? Like you have to make it the standard

in your life before you can worry about optimizing or expanding or upgrading from there. And so often we're focused on finding the perfect workout program or the ideal diet plan or the best business idea. And we're so focused on optimizing that we don't give ourselves permission to show up, even if it's just in a small way. And if you don't become the type of person who meditates for 60 seconds, five days a week, you have no chance to be the type of person who meditates for 40 minutes. you know, like you have to, it has to be established before it can be improved. So, I think that's the first step. Let's just scale it down and make it so easy that you can do it whenever you want.

The second thing that you can do is try to carve out the right space for that habit to live. So, for most people, the morning is a great place to build a new habit because your day hasn't got going yet, you're not responding to all, you're not putting out fires and responding to everybody else's agenda. But let's say you're the parent of a four year old. Well your four year old doesn't care that you're trying to meditate at 7am, right? Like they're just running around, you need to get them dressed and like maybe that's

not the right time to do it. And so I think it's worthwhile to sit around and think about, where's the best place to insert this habit into my life? And I'll add a caveat to that, an important consideration, which is habits are tied to a particular context. So let's say, for example, that your living room at 7 p.m. is where you watch Netflix each night. And over time, it's not really the TV, or Netflix, or any individual thing that is prompting that habit. It's just the context of being in your living room at 7pm. And if you say, all right, now it's going to be different. I'm going to start a journaling habit. And so I get home and then I sit down

in the couch at 7pm to journal. Even if you don't consciously say it, you're kind of naturally being pulled toward the remote and watching Netflix. You're kind of fighting these behavioral biases that are tied to that place. And so instead, it might be more useful to say, okay, there's a coffee shop down the block from my office. I never go in there. And now this is going to become the journaling coffee shop. I leave work, I walk in, I turn off my phone, I journal for 10 minutes, and then I get out and continue my community to go home. And there's nothing tied to that space right now, so it's easier for that blank slate to become tied to this new habit.

So for meditation, if you're struggling to build a meditation habit in all of your other current context at the office or at home or in the car or whatever, it might be because you're fighting against the other habits that are already built there. So maybe the combination of scaling it down and making it really easy and picking a new place where you can make this the meditation room, those are good ways to build that new habit. So you talked about the difference between the booting up stage of a habit and then the keeping it going stage.

Because on the meditation, that's a thing I hear a lot. I did it for a month and it was great and then I fell off the wagon or I did it for six months and it was great and I fell off the wagon. Or I did it for years and then I had children and it blew up. What is the wisdom you've been able to glean from your research on that latter part of the habit? Consistency is a huge thing, right? I mean, really, if we're honest about it,

getting started each day, that basically is what a habit is. Like if you're able to be consistent with it, that's when it becomes a habit. Otherwise, it's just a behavior you did once or twice. But let me say something on the example you just gave of, I used to do it, then I had kids and things changed forever, and then I'll give you two practical strategies. I like to think about my life as happening as a series of seasons. The question I'm asking myself

is what season am I in now? For me, currently, I don't have kids yet. So it's kind of a career-heavy season. And I'm maybe more focused on personal health, whereas family and friends, even to a certain degree, are maybe on backburners. But at some point, I will have kids. And maybe that'll signal a shift in the season that I'm in.

And so I need new habits in this new season and maybe something, maybe the career burner gets turned down a little bit and the family burner gets turned up. And nobody likes being told this, right, that like life has trade offs and you have to choose. But I think it's important to remind yourself of it. And I'm the type of person that, you know, I want to be ambitious and I want to try a bunch of different things and it's hard to say no. And so the season's mentality kind of helps me box those things in a little bit better I want to be ambitious and I want to try a bunch of different things. It's hard to say no.

The season's mentality helps me box those things in a little bit better and be like, all right, it's not no forever, it's just no for this season. Then I can pick up those habits in a different season when it makes more sense. That's just a note on sticking with habits and when they may transition in and out of your life. I do think there are kind of two practical strategies you can use for being more consistent. So pretty much any behavior produces multiple outcomes

across time, right? Like if you have like an immediate outcome and an ultimate outcome. And I think this helps explain why bad habits form so readily and good habits can be such a struggle. Like if you eat a donut, if you take a bite of a donut, the immediate outcome is kinda great. It's like sweet, sugary, tasty, it's enjoyable.

It's only the ultimate outcome if you keep doing that for a year or two or five that is unfavorable. And with good habits, it's often the reverse, right? Like the immediate outcome of going to the gym is kind of unfavorable. Yeah, you know, it's like, what's the reward for going to the gym for a week?

If anything, your body's probably sore, you sweat, you had to sacrifice, you gave up time, that you could have spent on something else. It's only once you've gone for a year or two or five, that the ultimate outcome is favorable. And so there's sort of, with many habits, there's this like valley of death in the beginning where you're doing it, and you're like,

I've been running for a month, how come I can't see a change in my body? And so you need something to get you through that. And I think that there are kind of two strategies you can use. The first is having some kind of immediate reward, what psychologists call a reinforcement layer on top of that. So here's one kind of fun way you can do it. I've seen parents do this with their kids as well. So say you get a jar of marbles and you have 100 marbles in the jar and 90 are blue and 10 are red.

And whenever you do your habit you meditate for five minutes say. You get done, you pull a marble out of the jar. And you pull out one of the 90, nothing happens just a pat in your back like good job you do what you're supposed to. But you could pull out one of the 10, you get something that's rewarding to you. You know, you get to take a bubble bath or you get an hour of YouTube without feeling guilty about it or you get to take a walk in the woods or buy a leather jacket you were saving for whatever it is. Something that excites you. And so what you've done is you've taken this thing that, okay, let's say you've meditated for six days in a row.

Do you feel a sense of calm washing over your life? Well, probably not yet, right? Like, into the long term rewards, probably haven't kicked in. But you have this element of surprise now with this jar of marbles where maybe it's rewarding because of that. So that's one strategy. And then the second strategy, and the real long term one that gets any habit to stick

is social reinforcement. Who you're surrounded by, what kind of tribe you're a part of. I would imagine, for example, that after you've written these books on meditation, that now you talk to and are friends with many meditators. People are reaching out to you, you're surrounded by them. And whether you consciously think about it or not, there's a lot of social pressure, even if you wouldn't define it as like peer pressure, but in a positive sense, that is pushing you toward

being a meditator. It's part of your identity. I wrote books on it. I have friends who do it. I'm reminded about it constantly because people are asking me questions about it. And those are all great little elements of social pressure that are nudging you

to be consistent in the long run. And so I think the punch line or the takeaway for that part is you want to join a tribe, join a group where your desired behavior is the normal behavior. Because if it's normal in that group, then it's going to be very attractive and compelling for you to stick with it for the long run. And so those two things in combination, I think, can be helpful. I wish you're describing on the social, positive social pressures, the description of what you were guessing to be my experience is actually my experience,

and it's really positive. But I think you can also see the same effect with CrossFit or any any time you're doing a healthy behavior where it's got social reinforcement where you're part of a tribe or how accountable why other people are expecting you to show up etc etc it's for some types a massively important component. I think it's actually very effective way to show up, et cetera, et cetera. It's for some types a massively important component. I think it's actually, so I have a whole chapter, chapter eight or nine in the book, is on like the power of friends and family and how social environment shapes your habits. But even though I wrote a full chapter on it, I think I undersold the importance of it.

And I think actually it's not even for some types. I think it's for all of us, but we just, it's so pervasive that we don't even see how powerful it is. For example, you move into a new neighborhood and you walk outside on Tuesday night and you see that your neighbors put their recycling bins out. And then you're like, oh, we need to sign up for recycling. And it's like, you stick to that habit for 20 years, mostly because of the social pressure of, I don't want to be the one the neighborhood who doesn't do what everybody else does.

Or why do we trim our hedges and mower lawns? Like partially, yeah, it feels good to have a tidy yard, but mostly we want to have a tidy yard, so we're not judged by our neighbors and peers, right? Like that social pressure nudges you along. Or, you know, like right now, I'm sitting here talking to you, I have a, you know, jacket on and a button up shirt. Like, why am I wearing this?

Mostly because I know the social expectation is to be dressed this way. There's no reason I have to have this on. Like I could be wearing a bathing suit, but that would be weird, right? Like it would violate the social norms. And so many of our behaviors are nudged along by the tribes and the groups that we're in. And so if you can be surrounded by people where the expectation is to act that way,

you pick up all kinds of habits that are aligned with that. So with my desire to cut down on late night binging, if I could enlist my wife in this effort, I'm much more likely to be successful. I think that's true, because the hard part about behaviors like that is there isn't much of a tribe because it's just you at your home, right? But you do have other family members.

And so people talk about this all the time with habits, which is how can I change my family members don't want to change or how do you get a family member to join you in a process? And yeah, that can be really tough. And I think one way to do that is a strategy that scientists refer to, the shorthand is like praise the good ignore the bad. And so any time that your wife say supports you and not late night snacking, she doesn't have anything you don't, doesn't have to make a big deal about it, but just something small like, I'm really glad that we eat healthy tonight. I'm glad that we didn't snack late tonight, you know something like that,

like thanks for supporting me in that, but whatever. It can just be a little praise. And everybody likes being praised, right? They start to learn that, oh, whenever I do this, I get praised. It feels good. I get rewarded for acting in that way. And so I think especially for family relationships and for marriages, that kind of long-term strategy is really compelling. They're actually, when I was researching the book, I came across this article in the New

York Times where a wife effectively trained her husband to put his dirty clothes in the laundry camper over the course of like a year and a half by never mentioning it when he didn't do it, but only praising him when he did do it, and like giving him a kiss and making a big deal about how like helpful that was. And over the course of year or two he learned I should just put it in a lot of time. It sounds right. Speaking of wives, if your wife was here, what would she say about the habits you've been successful at making or breaking and what habits you need to make or break still. People ask her this all the time, like, oh, is he always looking over your habits or questioning about this or ever? And her response is like, no, and my response is like, I don't want to be that person. You know, like, that's not my job.

I don't want to, I'm not looking to judge or whatever. And also, I struggle with this just like everybody else. You know, like, I think a lot of the times people assume because I write about habits that like, oh, they must be dialed in or something. But my readers and I are peers, right? Like we're working through this together. And so anytime I come across a strategy, I share it because I'm trying to experiment with it in my own life and hopefully it'll be helpful for them too.

And my wife and I are the same way. Like she has many things that she does that are more effective, habit-wise than what I do. Like she gets up before me, but every night before she goes to bed, she sets out all the utensils on the counter and like has everything her coffee's like preloaded and everything so that her morning routine

of making breakfast is like easier. It's a great example of what I refer to in the book as priming the environment, but I never used that phrase with her, right? She like came up with that in her own. I think the nice thing, and this is true for many good relationships, but you start to bleed over into each other, right?

You soak up a little bit of them, they soak up a little bit of you. And I feel like I've probably been able to pull us towards we work out together and that time has been like, it's been really nice to share that. It's sure we get the benefits of exercise, but that's like an extra hour that we get with each other, which is really nice to have that be the way that we share that hour together. We could do it in a million ways, right? We could just like watch reruns of the office and sit on the couch.

And that's fun too, but I'm glad that it like happens in a healthy way or a healthy space. My wife and I have been working out together too, and it's phenomenal. But what are you, is there anything you're struggling with these days? Oh, yeah, yeah. So, one that I've really struggled with for a long time, I don't know, I've tried a couple different strategies. It's not really sleeping. I'm good about making sure that I get enough sleep. It's really what I would call the power down routine. So I get this kind of second wind around 9 p.m. where I'm like, oh, maybe I'll just check

email for an hour, maybe I'll work on something else. And of course, it's never just an hour, right? Like I turn around, it's like midnight and I'm like, oh, all right. So if I'm up till midnight or one and I don't cheat myself on sleep, well that means I'm not getting up till like nine. And I don't feel bad about sleeping that long because I know that that's the more important thing, but I would prefer to be up at like seven

and being more productive. So it's really like shutting off late night screen time, not checking email, powering down that's been a challenge for me. How are you working with it? Well, so one strategy that... Lock your phone in one of the containers I'm about to buy. Similar.

So, a friend of mine, near a y'all, he wrote another book on habits and technology, it's called Hooked. And he had this interesting strategy. So he bought what's called an outlet timer. You can get it for like 10 bucks on Amazon. And it's like a surge protector. You plug it into the outlet, and then you plug your device into the timer.

But the difference is you can set the time that it kills the power from that outlet. So he plugged his internet router in, and then set it to turn it off at 10 PM each night. 10 PM rolls around, can't watch Netflix, can't check email, like time to go to bed. I bet if you paired that with your internet router with a combination of like putting your phone in a lock box, that would be a pretty powerful combination.

But you haven't done it. I haven't. But I haven't ordered it the outlet time. Okay. We're getting closer. Yeah, I haven't implemented it yet. So a few items. Yeah.

Yeah. So, that's one strategy. And then there's another question around what aspect of checking late at night pulls me in. So for example, if I find that it's email that I'm usually checking, then it's like, well, the real problem is that you keep checking your inbox then. So maybe there are other steps I can take, delete Gmail from my phone, for example. Or I didn't ex a version of this when I was writing the book. I got about a year in and I realized this is not going fast enough. I'm going to need to be writing forever if I don't like become more productive.

So I noticed that I was spending too much time on social media. So every Monday, my assistant would log me out of Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, reset all the passwords. I would work until Friday. She'd send me the passwords. I'd log in over the weekend, and then on Monday we'd do it all over again. So I could do some version like that, where every night at 5 p.m. she resets the password to Gmail, and I'd get locked out, and then she sends it to me in the morning and I can check it out in the morning

What does it say about us as a species that it's so hard for us to do stuff that is patently good for us? Hmm I think it says more about the modern environment than anything else. So you know Our ancestors grew up in what scientists would call an immediate return environment, which means that most of their actions had an immediate payoff for their daily lives, so taking shelter from a storm or running away from a lion or foraging in the berry patch. And in an environment where there's an immediate payoff, it makes a lot of sense to be wired for instant gratification or for the path of least resistance.

Because if you could get, if you could forge for berries in a patch that was 100 meters away, then it made sense to do that. That was the smart thing rather than going on like the other side of the mountain. You would just be wasting energy. And so throughout the eons, we gradually selected for people who were making choices that prioritized their immediate benefit and outcome. Modern society, however, is what scientists would call a delayed return environment. Because now suddenly, we have, and I say suddenly, in the sense of history, like compared

to say hundreds of thousands of years of evolution, we've got the last say 500 years of modern society. Suddenly we have all sorts of things that require a delayed return. You go to work today, you get your paycheck in two weeks, you go to school today, you graduate in four years, you save for retirement today, you can retire decades from now. And so the choices that pay off for us now require more foresight, more delaying of gratification, rather than instant gratification. And so I don't think it's, you know, sometimes we like, belabor this point and talk about how we're broken or we, you know, like, are, you know,

these stupid humans that aren't making smart decisions or whatever, but I think it's just like kind of an evolutionary mismatch. We have brains that were wired for paleolithic life and we're kind of walking around with very similar or the same hardware that we had before, but in a completely different environment. And on the whole, humans are really flexible.

They're still incredible, we're thriving in an incredible way in modern society, but there are plenty of instances where it just doesn't service very well. We evolved to be social, but not in an environment where you could post a tweet and 10,000 people could respond right away. So it's like, man, that's probably way too much stimulus. We evolved to lust and love and seek a partner in life, but probably not in a space where we could swipe on Tinder and see a thousand

of them in an hour. This is the rise of super-normal stimuli. Modern life has created heightened versions of the reality that we evolved in. And there's just a mismatch with how we know how to respond to that because we don't really know we're still like learning on the fly. Stay tuned more of our conversation is on the way after this. Celebrity feuds are high stakes. You never know if you're just gonna end up on page six or Du Moir or in court. I'm Matt Bellesai And I'm Sydney Battle and we're the host of Wonder E's new podcast Disantel where each episode we unpack a different iconic celebrity feud from the buildup why it happened and the repercussions

What does our obsession with these feuds say about us the first season is packed with some pretty messy pop culture drama But none is drawn out in personal as Britney and Jamie Lynn Spears. When Britney's fans formed the free Britney movement dedicated to fraying her from the infamous conservatorship, Jamie Lynn's lack of public support, it angered some fans, a lot of them. It's a story of two young women who had their choices taken away from them by their controlling parents, but took their anger out on each other.

And it's about a movement to save a superstar, which set its sights upon anyone who failed to fight for Brittany. Follow Dissentel wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or The Wondery app. BAM! BAM! Welcome back, we continue now our conversation

with James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits. I've heard you asked this before and I can't remember what the answer is. Is there a set amount of time it takes to form a habit? Because I often tell people meditate for five years now since my book came out. I've said to people if you're interested in meditation try doing a little bit every day for a month and then hit me on Twitter and tell me I'm a moron If you think it was wrong. And I've actually people call me a moron all the time, I've never for that.

So I've had this sense of like, hey, it probably takes around a month to kick in because that's the way it was for me. Is there any science to back up? What I'm saying here? So I don't think there's anything wrong with monthly challenges, partially because it gets people moving.

Same way that I don't really think there's anything wrong with New Year's resolutions. Is it the best way to change your behavior? No, probably not, but if that's the thing that gets you going, then that's fine with me, you know, like whatever it takes to take the first step. You hear all kinds of things, 21 days, 30 days, as you mentioned, 66 days is a very common one right now because there was one study that was done at University in London that found that on average it was about 66 days to form a habit but even in that study the range was quite wide like for something

simple like drinking glass of water at lunch it might be a few weeks for something more difficult like going for a run after work every day it might be seven or eight months so the range was so that I don't know 66 what it tells you anything. That strikes me as the killer here, which is that every habit will start kicking in to the pleasure systems of the rewards systems of your brain at different times. It's a meditation may take longer than running.

And we just talked about the social environment. Imagine if you're meditating in an environment where nobody else meditates, and they think it's weird, and they think it's something that only hippies do or whatever. Now, each time you do it, you kind of get made fun of a little bit. So that's going to feel worse, right? It's going to be hard to stick with it. I'll hear you. I'll hear you. Going to say living in an environment where you're praised for doing it,

or where it's seen as normal. Now, all of a sudden, you want to do it because it feels great every time you do it. So it can even be the same habit, but the environment changes maybe how fast it or slow it takes for it to stick. So can I conclude that your view is that we don't really know? Yeah, the view is, and it's not even that we don't really know, it's just that it depends so much that I don't know you can pin it down on a number. But I think the other thing to point out here is the true answer, the honest answer to

how long it takes to build a habit is forever. Because if you stop doing it, it's no longer a habit. And as soon as you realize that, I think you start to understand, oh, what I'm looking for is a sustainable change, a non-threatening change, something that doesn't intimidate me, that I can make part of my new normal, right? That can be, you know, like habits, habits are not really this finish line to be crossed. It's not this sprint that you do for 30 days and then you're done and you're good, you're healthy now. It's a lifestyle to be lived and if you look at

habits as a lifestyle to live as a new normal to make part of your routine, then I think you understand the importance of like scaling them down and making them easier to stick with for the long run. We've talked about meditation a lot. Do you meditate? Yeah, so I've done it in a variety of different ways over the years, but I've never had a consistent meditation habit. I'll define consistent in this case as doing it for a year or more.

I've had periods where I've done it for a few months, but never for a year straight. And I don't know. It's been interesting to question like why that is. And for whatever reason, it never feels important enough to me to stick with it for that long. And I wonder, this is just, I don't have any evidence for this being true,

this is just my theory. I wonder if it's because I spend a lot of time in really quiet environments anyway. Most of my day I work in silence and I'm writing. And so I don't feel overstimulated by the end of the day a lot of the time. And so I wonder if I just don't have the pang of the stress and anxiety and whatever

that I feel like I need meditation to curtail that enough. That makes sense to me. I mean, if, I mean, I think a big motivator to meditate is not necessarily just a yearning for quiet, but sure, that's a big one. Calm, quiet, peace, that's a big desire. But also, you mentioned you don't have a lot of sort of anxiety generally. That, I think, is it, that tells me something that you may not be somebody who, you know,

I've put at the top of a list of people who need this practice. I think it's healthy for everybody pretty much. Sure. But if you're telling me that generally speaking, you feel like you're productive and calm, and you've got quiet in your life, and you're not freaking. You don't feel like there's like a perpetual background static of kind of freaking out or wanting. I would still say meditation could be useful for you, but it doesn't seem as urgent.

Sure. I think that's probably right. For whatever reason, my personality feels like I've never been one to overworry or ruminate or things like that. I think about strategy and business a lot. So maybe my publisher would say that I overthink things. I don't know, we'll see. But I, yeah, I don't, in my personal life,

I don't feel that level of stress and anxiety. I think it is possible, I don't do this, but I think it is possible to overthink things without being frantic or anxious. Oh, here's another interesting element is,'s maybe I meditate but in a different way. So I kind of view going to the gym is like going to church for me. I can get in this kind of meditative state when I'm working out that that's the release valve

for whatever the stress or anxiety I feel throughout that builds up throughout a particular day. And because I get it there, maybe I don't need to get it elsewhere, I don't know. So I'll give you my stick on that. The bottom line is I don't know because I don't know what's going on in your mind. So just that's the most important thing. But everything else I'll say is kind of second to that. But I think there's no question in my mind,

as somebody who also goes to the gym, that it's really good for you, for you specifically and for one generally. But I think it's different from mindfulness meditation. So mindfulness meditation is the cultivation of a kind of meta-awareness, so the knowing that you know stuff stuff or knowing that you're thinking, we, as I often say, are classified as a species as homo sapiens, sapiens, the one who thinks and knows he or she thinks.

And the knowing that you have these thoughts all the time, these random, discursive, mostly negative, always self-referential thoughts, knowing that this is happening allows you not to be owned by them. And that, I don't think, is generated by most workouts. There are ways to do that, through a workout, but mostly in my experience workout is a release of endorphins, a release of stress. You feel virtuous, et. It's a lot of good stuff, but not necessarily this cultivation of what of mindfulness, this meta awareness.

I think it releases the stress. It doesn't necessarily drive that level of self-awareness that you're referencing. I'll take us on our own little tangent now. I feel like that knowing that you know, that process, might be the thing that really separates the human species from other animals. Oh, it absolutely is. Because this is like kind of a little bit of a threat on consciousness and what exactly that means. But even if you have like a bacteria and you place a chemotoxin in its environment, it will respond to that, like it will move away from that. Now what is that if not being conscious of the toxin, right? Like the bacteria knows that something is there and it must move away, even if it's at a

different level of mental engagement than what we would consider thinking. But does the bacteria know that it knows a toxin is there? And that, I would say almost certainly no. Well, so I would actually say yes to all that and most humans don't know that they know. They're yanked around. We are yanked around by this malevolent puppeteer of our ego, of our discursive thought process. A thought comes into our mind

and like a little dictator, as my meditation teacher likes to say, we just do the thing. Oh yeah, I should eat 75 cookies, alright? But yeah, I should say something am an actress. And we just do it, we just do it. There's no, there's no buffer between the stimulus and our reaction. Right. It's so quick, it's just a response. Yes. Meditations about building that buffer. And that, for me, has been, I mean, meditations about many things, but mindfulness meditation, one of the biggest benefits you see quickly is, oh yeah, I'm less owned by all of my neurotic obsessions.

So humans similar to the bacteria or other animals or whatever are often not in that state, but are capable of transcendental state and noticing and stepping outside and above your mind and seeing how things are working. You mentioned a few things at the beginning of the interview that I wanted to circle back to. One of them was the connection between identity and habits. Talk to me about that. So the word identity comes from the Latin and late Latin words, identity and it means you're repeated beingness. So it's the way that

you be, the way that you are again and again and again. And I thought that was so fascinating because it's like, well, what is that other than habits? And this got me thinking about this line, this connection between your identity, your self-image, the way that you look at yourself, and your behavior. Because when you're born, you're not a total blank slate, there are genes, like your height, for example,

is probably mostly baked in at that point. But it is true that culture pervades our mind to such a degree that most of the things we do and say and pick up are learned throughout life. And so you don't have these internal stories about who you are and what your personality is and what you should be focused on and what your identity is. You learn them over time. And I think the most powerful way that we learn them is through some kind of behavior that provides evidence

of being that kind of person. So, one way to think about this is that every action you take is like a vote for the type of person that you want to become or the type of person that you believe you are. So, every morning when you make your bed, you're casting a vote for being someone who is clean and organized. Every time you study biology for 20 minutes on Tuesday night you're casting a vote for being a studious. Every time you go to church you cast a vote for being religious.

And eventually over time as you build up these votes of certain aspects of your identity, it's like you have a body of proof, a body of evidence for being that kind of person. And you know, like if you go to soccer practice the first day and kick a soccer ball around, you might not think I'm a soccer player, but if you keep doing that for six months or a year or two years, at some point you kind of cross this invisible threshold and you're like, oh, maybe I guess being a soccer player is part of my identity. And so in this way, your habits enforce a certain identity. They, they're how you embody a particular aspect

of your identity. I felt this myself when I was a writer. I didn't look at myself as a writer early on. I just, I wrote, but it wasn't until, really, it wasn't until the book was published. I fully accepted it. That I had this visible proof that I was like, okay, I guess I'm an author now. And it was once the behavior had been repeated enough to reinforce the identity.

That was when I really glotlatched on to it. All right, so why is this important? So, identities can either work for you or against you, right? I've mentioned mostly positive ones here. I'm a writer, I'm a meditator, I'm clean, organized. But there are also many negative versions of an identity. I have a sweet tooth. I'm terrible with names. I am battered directions. I'm terrible at math. I'm a loser. Like these are stories that people repeat to themselves again and again. I'm guilty of these. And anytime you have a behavior that reinforces that story, then it's like another little vote, right,

that is cast on that pile and you start to latch onto it. And then there's a sort of a resignation that kicks in. Yeah, I can't help it, I'm a sweet tooth. I have a sweet tooth, what can I do about it? And it's interesting, the more I hear these little identity narratives like that, a lot of the time people don't even notice that they're doing it, it's so internalized that they don't even think it's a choice anymore.

It's like, oh no, that's just who I am, I have a sweet tooth. And so the natural question, if you buy into that, if you think it's this like two-way street between behavior and beliefs, is, well, what do we do about it? How can I change my identity then? How can I upgrade and expand my identity, revise it into something that's more powerful? And I think this is where habits come into play because I feel like they're the best method we have for reshaping your identity over time. Because this is going to be a hard process, right?

It's kind of like retouching a painting, you know, like you're gradually adjusting it. And this is a little bit different than what you commonly hear, which is like, fake it till you make it. Fake it till you make it is asking you to believe something without having evidence for it, right? Like you keep looking at yourself in the mirror and saying, I'm a healthy person, I'm a healthy person, even though you haven't gone to the gym yet or whatever. And I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with that that like if you're going to choose to tell yourself a story, sure choose the positive one, I think there's necessarily anything wrong with that that like if you're going to choose to tell yourself a story,

sure, choose the positive one. I think that's fine. But we have a word for beliefs that don't have evidence. We call it delusion. Right? Like at some point your brain doesn't like this mismatch between who you say that you are and what you're actually doing. But if you flip that around and you let the behavior lead the way and you start with the habit, it's like, well, you do one push up or you meditate for one minute or whatever. All right. It's meditating for one minute enough to transform my identity. No, probably not, but it does cast a vote for being a meditator. Right? And so I think this is one reason why habits, even when they're small enough that they don't

make a big difference in the outcomes in your life, they can still be meaningful because they cast a vote for being that kind of person. You get on a plane and you travel for five hours and you get off and you're exhausted and you get to the hotel and all you can do is five push-ups before you collapse on the bed, but at least you were the type of person who didn't miss workouts. And like that, you see, you cast a vote for being that person that day, even if you didn't transform your body. And I think over the long run, that ends up counting for a lot because there's something

very different between saying, I'm the type of person who wants this and I'm the type of person who is this. Right? Once you say, I am that, I am a writer, I am a runner, I am a meditator. Now it becomes much easier to stick to the habit and long run because you're not even really pursuing behavior change anymore. You're just like acting in alignment with the type of person that you already believe yourself to be.

And I think it requires less motivation at that point. And the way to make that happen is to cast those small votes by taking those small actions and little habits. You talk about habit formation as running a race, but it's not about getting to the finish line, it's focusing on the start. Can you expound on that? Well, so many of the habits and goals and changes that we try to make are outcome focused, right?

People always focus on the finish line. I want to double my income, I want to achieve, you know, reduce stress, I want to lose 30 pounds, whatever it is. It's very outcome focused. I think the point I'm trying to make here is just that instead, optimize for the starting line, not the finish line, right? So, so often we're trying to optimize for this end goal of how can I lose weight, for example, when instead it's like how can I make it easy to perform workouts? I like the quote, there's this quote by Ed Latemore, where he says the heaviest weight of the gym is the front door.

And it's that idea, right? How can I make it easy to open the front door? And we'll let the scale take care of itself later. But let me just make sure that I make it as easy as possible to show up. How about the shift you talk to from half to to get to? So in college, I played baseball. My strength conditioning coach, who was great, Mark Watts, he had the same, people will

often talk about all the things that are responsibilities in their lives, the things that they have to do. I have to work out today, I have to go to class today, I have to do this segment for work, I have to take my kids to soccer practice. And you can keep all those things the same and static, but just change one word. And instead of saying have to, you get to, right? I get to work out today.

I get to take my kids to soccer practice. I get to do this segment for work. And it's true. You still need to do those things. But it switches them from seeing the moments and experiences in your life from obligations to opportunities. Yeah, I mean, I could even see that with changing a diaper. Like, I get to do this.

I mean, it's hard to have a kid sometime. We struggle mightily to have a child, and we're lucky to have a spouse that we want to appropriate with, et cetera, et cetera. So even something is seemingly- As ridiculous as changing a diaper. Yes, right. Yeah, I buy that. There's something powerful about, this comes back,

I think it ties into meditation as well. We've talked a little bit about, creating more space between stimulus and response and that stage in my model being the craving or the prediction stage. It helps you tell a different story. It helps you predict something different about what this experience should mean and how I should act because of it. You know, like, my kid is sick and I have to stay home and take care of them. Well, you also get to stay home and take care of them.

And that can mean a whole lot of different things. You know, it can mean that you're role modeling good parenting and it can mean that you're showing them love, it can mean that you're even if they don't feel that well, that you get a couple extra hours together in your life that you otherwise wouldn't get. And I think just reframing it in that way helps you see the opportunities available in each moment of life throughout your application. You're talking about gratitude.

Yeah, for sure. Another expression you use is desire initiates pleasure or sustain. So this is a if you can see the model that I have mapped out in four stages. You've got the queue and the stimulus, then you have the craving, and then you have the response, and then you have the rewards. We're kind of going around here. So you have the queue, and then there's some kind of desire that drives you to take action and then it's actually the pleasure, the enjoyment that you get from it that sustains the behavior. So, for example, let's say that you buy a book on Amazon.

Well, you go to Amazon, you don't actually buy the book. You can't because you don't have it yet. You don't own it, right? What you buy is the image that the book creates in your mind. You buy your expectation or your desire of what knowledge or what entertainment or whatever is contained in that. Then you actually get it and you read it and then it's the enjoyment that you get from it that either gets you to purchase another one or buy the next book or read it again or whatever. And this is doubly true if you have some kind of habit that is repeated again and again. And this is doubly true if you have some kind of habit

that is repeated again and again. You look across the room and you see a donut. And it's not actually the donut that gets you to act. You don't have it yet. But the image that it creates in your mind, the desire of it gets you to walk over and take a bite. And it's the enjoyment, the pleasure of it that sustains it and gets you to come back again.

If you took a bite of the donut and it was terrible, if it tasted like, I was going to say an avocado, but you can't use that now because millennials love it, broccoli or something, then you wouldn't want to do it again, right? So the point is that desire motivates you to act, pleasure reminds you to act again in the future. Before we wrap up two questions one is did I forget to ask anything that I should have asked let's see

we haven't talked about genes and personality oh yes one of the things you invoke early that I didn't come back to so go for it so um... I haven't seen I've I should just first preface this by saying I think this is an area that's ripe for scientific exploration, and I haven't seen any other books talk about the connection between genes and personality and habits.

I think there's something there, I have a chapter in the book on it. So, the most robust measure of personality is what's called the Big Five. And the Big Five measures personality on five different spectrums. The one that people are most familiar with is interversion on one side, extroversion on another. But there's also other spectrums like agreeableness or conscientiousness or openness to experience and so on.

And these five spectrums are each linked to your underlying genetic code. They've been shown to have some connection to your actual genes in DNA, which, by the way, makes sense because the definition of your personality is the characteristics that remain the same from environment to environment. And what remains the same in every environment

more than your DNA, right? Like it's being carried around with you everywhere. So, all right, so what does this tell us about habits? Well, certain elements of personality, like, all right, so what does this tell us about habits? Well, certain elements of personality, like for example, people who are high in agreeableness tend to have higher natural levels of oxytocin. And agreeableness is a characteristic that makes you warm and kind and consider it. And you can imagine someone who has that kind of personality may be more inclined to performing a habit like writing thank you notes or hosting friends for dinner.

And so building certain habits might be easier for them than it is for someone who's low in agreeableness. Similarly, your genetic code or your personality may give you some indication about what your strategy should be. So for example, if you're low in conscientiousness, then that means you're less likely to be orderly and organized. And if you know that you're kind of a spontaneous, free willing person, you don't write to do lists, you're less likely to just remember to do it, then maybe certain strategies like environment design

and making sure you're surrounded by the right options could be more powerful for you because then you don't have to just remember to do it. It's right there. It's patholice resistance. It's easy. And so this is the punchline of that section of the book, which is a lot of the time people don't like to talk about genes because they think, oh, it must mean it's predetermined. And if it's predetermined or if it's destiny, why bother? Like, I guess I don't have any control. But that's actually not what genes tell us at all. Instead, they predispose you to certain things, but they don't predetermine anything. And so the lesson to take away is that genes don't tell you not to work hard because everything is destiny, and instead they

tell you where to work hard. On which aspects maybe you need a little bit extra help, or on which areas might be your strengths, and so you can focus there. And so I think there's a powerful connection there for maybe like the strategy that you take in aligning your ambition and the changes you want to make with your ability and what you're naturally inclined to be able to do. This has been great. But the last thing I'd like to ask folks is I have this semi-jokey little section at the end of the podcast called the Plug Zone. Can you just plug everything, your blog, your book, every social media, wherever we can

find you? Sure. I think the best follow-up to this is to read Atomic Habits. So the full titles, Atomic Habits, an easy and proven way to build good habits and break bad ones, you can find that at AtomicHabits.com. If you want to check out the rest of my writing or see social media profiles and so on, you can just go to jamesclear.com, click on articles and you can browse on my topic or click on books and you can check out what's there and links to social and so on are there

as well. Awesome. Such a pleasure to meet you. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Alrighty, back now in the studio, big thanks to James Clear. I got a lot out of that, actually. And just a quick update in case you're curious.

I have had some pretty good results with the advice he gave me about late night snacking. The thing about brushing my teeth when I'm putting my kid to bed so that I don't eat later, flossing and brushing when my son is doing it. So that after he goes to bed and it's eight or nine at night or whatever, after the time he's fully asleep, I'm not tempted or I'm not as tempted to eat. That is actually really helped. This the thing of social creating positive social pressure, so having my wife in on it

with me has been incredibly helpful, especially the whole idea about praising the good and ignoring the bad. And then another thing that's been really useful for me is just kind of tuning into the benefit. In other words, I see how horrible I feel when I eat late at night and just really noticing that powerfully disincentivizes me when I feel the urge arise to go back at the pretzels the next night. So all right, that's the update. and that's our time with James Clear. Let's do some voicemails.

Here's number one. Hi, Dan. This is Karina. I'm calling from Phoenix, Arizona, and my question is being kind of silly, but I am having a hard time figuring out whether meditation is best in the morning or a great or after work. I keep feeling like in the morning my brain's not into it and I'm afraid I'll fall asleep and at night I definitely fall asleep. And then afterwards I don't know it kind of feels strange to do it before I get into the whole evening ritual with kids and dinner and stuff. And I guess that's also part of trying to figure out if meditation is what you need to get ready

for your day or what you need to recuperate from your day. So I guess it's a two-fold question, but I'd love some help with that. I don't know if you've ever encountered it, but I'd love to hear your feedback. Thanks so much. Bye. And this is a great question and a sign of the brilliance of my producers that they picked this to put after the James Claire. So let me just echo some of what James said in that interview, which is, first of all, it's really important to look strategically at your schedule to figure out where this is going to work.

If the mornings are working for you and the evenings are not working for you, I think you're going to have to find at least experiment with some other times of day. I would probe you a little on this resistance you have to doing it after work before you launch into the evening routine. That actually feels like a pretty rich zone. Because I'll speak for myself that time when I'm finishing my work for the day and then diving into the domestic bliss that is my life being so much facetious here. I love my home life, but of course, temper tantrums and cat poop are a daily reality. So actually helping smooth out that transition with a little bit of meditation, and I'm serious about just being a little bit. He has the

two-minute rule. My little thing is one minute counts I think that can be that could be a place for you to try of course I don't want you to fight too much against the tide here if you're really resistant to it and you try it and the resistance doesn't go away Then then obviously that's not the spot Another thing to think about would be I don't know if you drive to work But when you pull up at the office before you go in, a minute or two in your car, lunchtime, if you have an office door, you can close, or if there's a quiet place where you work, or again, going back to the car, one or two minutes there. So those are just a few ideas, but I think just really taking a panoramic view of your schedule, and it's totally fine if you want to X out the

morning and the evening because you're just too sleepy. Fine, but there are, I think, a lot of other targets of opportunity. Think about maybe there's a time in the day when you habitually resort to a scrolling mindlessly through Instagram or Facebook. That's a good place where you could do a minute or two of meditation.

I'm not saying you can't look at social media. I'm just saying maybe you could take a slight bite out of that time. And then the second part of your question about is it is meditation better as something that prepares you for the day or helps you recuperate for the day? Yes, both. It's great for both. But I don't think it's more one or the other. In fact, speaking from just personally, I find that it's really not about either of those things. It's about just keeping up a kind of a regular practice so that you're building this muscle of mindfulness. You're building a lot of muscles, mental muscles, mental qualities when you meditate, but for me, the most important has been mindfulness, which is just this simple self-awareness that allows you to not be so yanked around by your emotions.

So anger arises, I know I'm angry, so that I'm less likely to be owned by it. And for that, the time of day doesn't matter so much. What matters instead is that you're doing it regularly at some point. And so for me, I do it at different times of the day all the time, but I do it regularly enough so that my mindfulness quotient is constantly improving. As not to say, I'm perfect. I'm imperfect in many, many ways. We don't have enough time to list them, but over time, you can keep getting better at this mindfulness thing. Among other things, like gratitude, compassion,

self-compassion, focus, I could go on. Ari Karina, thank you for that question. I hope that helped. Let's do voice mail number two. Hey, Dan. This is Patrick calling from Los Angeles. I want to first say thanks for your podcast and your app. It's really helped me deal with a lot of anxiety

and trying to kind of pull my mind and enhance performance and focus. So my first question is, I seem to be good at getting in the habit when I'm feeling anxious or down or things are out of place. And I start meditating, I start feeling better, more focused and centered, and then things seem to feel better and get better in my life. And then that's when I tend to fall off the wagon when things are good.

And I'm sure this is a common occurrence. And so could you just maybe speak a little bit to that and how to maybe overcome that and keep with the consistency and just with the consistency of meditating after things are good or getting better. And then I have a second question. I was listening to your conversation with Daniel Ingram and I was having the because when you're seeing these sensations arise and fall behind the waterfall, there's still that scene being entity person identity behind the waterfall watching it.

And I know Daniel kind of touched on this, but maybe a little more elaborate on your elaboration about does that person being entity melt away? Hope that makes sense. Thanks for everything you've done, appreciate it. All right, so there's still a lot to that question. This is one of these rare times where I didn't actually know the questions before.

I could just for a variety of logistical reasons I didn't get the questions in advance this time. So I was not prepared for the enormous, but I actually really awesome complexity of that question. So let's just tackle this simple, simpler part first, which had to do with the fact that your meditation habit, and this is you were right, super common, you meditate when things are tough, and then things are going well super common, you meditate when things are tough and then things are going well for you and you stop meditating. So, shaming you, lecturing you, wagging my finger at

you is not going to work, it's just going to make you feel guilty but probably not help you on the habit formation part. So, I'll tell you what works for me is to notice the pain and then notice the pleasure. In other words, co-opt the pleasure centers of your brain and the pain centers of your brain because that's a really good way. We do things because we get a result and that's a really good way to kind of get you moving and motivated. So when I say noticing the pain, noticing how bad it feels when you come out of one of these happy periods of your life where things externally are going really well, but you're not meditating, and then you get into a bumpy phase.

You notice how much worse it is, how much your inner weather is stormier, and your inner voice is obnoxious and louder and more prominent. Just tune into that. And I think that can provide a nice incentive to not allowing that to happen again. And on the flip side, it's really important, I think, to tune into the pleasure of the act of meditation itself. Because all you're seeing is, oh wow, when I meditate,

the anxiety, the volume on my anxiety gets turned down, and I'm not so owned by it, and that's amazing, and you definitely should tune into it. But when you can also tune into just the fact that taking a few minutes to sit there, and you have no job other than to sit there and to watch your breath or watch whatever your object of meditation is. You have nothing to do, nowhere to go, and you can feel as my friend Jeff Warren says, the raw animal pleasure of just sitting

there in your body, feeling the breath coming in and going out. That in and of itself can be pleasurable. And tuning into that can provide you another incentive that is way better than beating yourself up or having me beat you up. Yeah, and the final thing to know is, which we've said a bunch during the course of this conversation is, this is hard. Habit formation is incredibly hard.

And just knowing that can aerate the whole thing, can bring some light into the situation and lighten you up as you go through this process of trying to create an abiding habit, knowing that we all struggle with this. You're not alone here and it's totally normal and that you can just hop on the wagon anytime you fall off and nothing's been lost. All right, second part of your question. I think what you're asking is, okay, if you're behind the waterfall, in other words, the waterfall for those of you who haven't heard this before, is a common analogy used to describe mindfulness.

So if you think about the mind as a waterfall, the water is our non-stop stream of consciousness, mostly me, me, me thoughts. Mindfulness is like in this analogy, the crevice in the rock face behind the waterfall. So it allows you to step out of the stream and to view all of your passing thoughts and urges and emotions with some distance,

with some non-judgmental remove. And what I think you were asking, what I think you're driving at, Patrick, is if there's somebody viewing the thoughts and urges and emotions from behind the waterfall, well, isn't that also a self? Because one of the things we talk about in meditation a lot is that over time, you may start to get glimpses of the fact that the self, this autobiographical self, the sense

of a watcher, a doer, a knower, can we start to... there can be chinks in the armor there, and that's a really interesting, and actually very healing and helpful thing to see. So isn't there, so if you're watching, if you, quote unquote, are watching your thoughts and urges and emotions from behind the waterfall, well isn't that just another you? Yes, in some ways, it is, but it would,

that question is so excellent because you can see in and of itself starts to raise a whole bunch of doubt about where is the you and how solid is this self anyway? And if I feel like me when I'm thinking or I'm having an emotion, and I also feel like I'm me when I'm looking at my thoughts and emotions.

So where is the me? Exactly, exactly. And it is in the looking and the not finding, as teachers will tell you, that something really important can be learned, which is that, again, this solid sense of a separate, ego, little chunk of you located somewhere behind your eyes is an illusion that we re-up all the time.

And starting to see through that can be really beneficial because then you're not taking every neurotic obsession that knocks around your mind as being you, as being so personal. You can start to see it with some distance. So yeah, the very fact that you're asking this question, I think is another step on this kind of slow progression that at least I've gone through toward having a better sense of this illusion of itself. And it's an illusion that, of course, we need, you know, you need a

Patrick, you need a sense of Patrick in order to, you know, put your pants on and make a dentist appointment and blah, blah, blah, but also on some really important, deeper level, there is nothing there. And my experience, the process of getting deeper and deeper into meditation is to kind of hold those two ideas, which are sometimes referred to as relative reality and ultimate reality. Sounds a little like, as I've said before, like the kind of names you would give to a high school punk band, but relative reality and ultimate reality, to hold them together and to sort of live your life kind of sometimes toggling between the two is very interesting. And, and again, I think quite useful psychologically because just one more time.

If you have a sense of the illusion of the self, one of the benefits is anger doesn't feel so much like Patrick's anger. This is mine, this is my story, I'm never going to let it go. It just feels like an impersonal storm moving through and then you're much less owned by it. I know I say this a lot, but I hope that answer was helpful. I'm doing my best here and today I am unlike usually in recent episodes, I'm actually

ad-libbing these answers so thank you Patrick thank you Karina for the questions thank you to the producers of this show Ryan Kessler who runs the show and then also Samuel Johns and Grace Livingston from the Tempran happier company who do a ton of work here Mike D who's working the boards in the uh control room today as I record this thank you to you and thank you to the podcast insiders group who give us so much useful feedback and thank you to everybody who listens we'll be back next week with Sylvia Boerstein who is incredibly smart and

funnig. Peace. Hey hey prime members you can listen to 10% happier early and ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and ad-free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondery.com slash survey. survey at Wondery.com slash survey.