The Liz Moody Podcast - Busy? Tired? 5 Tiny Habits That Will Make You Feel 10x Better

Starting point is 00:00:00 Today's episode is all about micro habits. Microhabits are teeny tiny habits, things that take less than five minutes. That research shows make a huge difference in our health and our happiness. I love them for a few reasons. The first being that because they are micro, they are quick. So they end up being much easier to actually incorporate into our lives. Research shows that we are much more likely to do tasks that take less perceived time and effort. But you probably do not need me to share science on that.

Starting point is 00:00:29 it is just very obviously true. It is much easier for me to convince you to do five squats than to do an hour-long routine at the gym. It fits into our lives easier and it just feels less hard and thus way less intimidating. Microhabits are one of the top hacks that high performers use to transform their lives, even when they have very limited free time. First of all, successfully sticking to a habit, even one that just takes a minute or two, triggers your brain's reward system, which releases dopamine and, encourages you to do other healthy habits in the future. You basically get a little ping of success,

Starting point is 00:01:04 and your brain is like, ooh, I like this. How can I get more of it? And you can get this with negative habits or with positive habits. We all have likely experienced days where we've had like a pastry or something sweet for breakfast, and that pings our brain's reward system. So we want more of that and we end up eating more sweets all day long. But if we start the day with something veggie pack, something more nutritious, we get that ping of treating our bodies well and we want to eat more veggies all day long. And that is in part due to this feedback system, this reward system. And you can trigger the reward system with larger habits. But since these habits, these micro habits are so quick and easy, you're just more likely to actually do them, which makes them a really good way to kick off this positive

Starting point is 00:01:52 feedback loop. The other thing I love about micro habits is you've heard us say this on the pod and it's actually in my book too, but neurons that fire together, wire together. So basically at any moment, we are creating and cementing in these neural pathways. And the more we've cemented in a neural pathway, the more likely our brain is to take that neural pathway in the future. So the thoughts that we think the most often shape the paths that our brain literally takes. So if you're meditating for 10 minutes a day, but you spend the rest of your waking hours being stressed, being angry, saying mean things to yourself, that 10 minutes a day isn't enough to counteract the neurons that are firing together all day long, which means the path that your brain is

Starting point is 00:02:37 going to be likely to take in the future will be filled with stress and anger and saying mean things to yourself. But, but there is good news. If we pepper in microhabits all day, we are firing those neural pathways that we want together all day long, which means we are wiring the neural pathways that we want together all day long, and our thoughts will gravitate towards healthier, happier places in the future. So there is an argument to be made that micro habits make an even bigger difference in our brains and our bodies than the larger habits that we talk about all of the time. And again, these just really work. They're really quick, easy path to feeling happier and feeling healthier. You can make a real true difference in your health

Starting point is 00:03:24 in just minutes. And I feel like it is a crime that more people aren't sharing that information. Welcome to the Liz Moody podcast where we believe that there is always something that you can do to create a life that feels amazing. And we help you figure out how to find the lever to pull at any moment to actually do that. Let's kick it off with micro workouts. This is one of my all-time favorite micro-habit. because there are so many benefits. Micro workouts combat the negative impacts of being sedentary of sitting all day, which most of us, to be honest, do. A researcher at Columbia wanted to find out the minimum amount of exercise needed to offset

Starting point is 00:04:03 the health risks of sitting, and that number was way less than he thought. Just five minutes every half an hour offered significant harm reduction, including reducing blood sugar spikes after a meal by almost 60%. And we get into this more in our metabolic health episodes, which I can link in the show notes. But those blood sugar spikes can create metabolic dysfunction, which is a contributing factor to everything from PCOS to Alzheimer's to cancer. And they can also just make us feel anxious or low energy lethargic in the moment. And these blood sugar spikes and dips are reduced because when we contract our muscles,

Starting point is 00:04:43 they pull glucose out of our bloodstream and into the muscle to be utilized, which helps lower overall blood sugar. There are a number of studies that show that incorporating your micro workouts before and after meals is particularly beneficial for this reason. I personally love taking an after-dinner walk, or if I'm just eating at my desk, which happens for more lunchtimes than I would like to admit, I'll just do some squats for a few minutes after, or I will dance around the room really vigorously to one song. But walking particularly is a powerful micro workout to do throughout your day because it increases creativity and problem solving, which will actually make you more effective at your job and

Starting point is 00:05:25 will make up for the time that you, quote unquote, lose throughout the day to the walking. A Stanford study found that as little as five minutes of walking was enough to show positive effects for creativity and productivity. And this is really interesting. Those effects were noticeable whether the participants walked out. or they walked on a treadmill just facing a blank wall, which surprise researchers. There are obviously other benefits to getting outside, but even if you grab a treadmill desk, even if you pace around your house, you will still get those creativity benefits.

Starting point is 00:05:58 The next micro workout benefit is wild. I actually could not believe it when I heard it, but I had an oncologist on the podcast to talk about why so many young people are getting cancer and what we can do about it. It is a great episode, and I can link it in the show notes for you. And he said that just four minutes a day of exercise was enough to significantly reduce cancer risk. And I said there is absolutely zero way that's true. And then I fact checked it. And it is indeed true.

Starting point is 00:06:29 In fact, these data come out of a pretty robust study of over 20,000 people over the course of seven years. And the study was published in JAMA, which is a top peer-reviewed journal. and they found that 4.5 minutes per day of vigorous intensity, physical activity performed in one-minute bursts was associated with up to a 32% lower risk of cancer. This is specifically micro-workouts, one-minute bursts of intense workouts that produce those results. I'm going to repeat that because it is wild. Just 4.5 minutes of vigorous activity spread throughout your day can reduce your risk of cancer by 32%. If that is not motivation to do a micro workout, I do not know what it is. And these workouts are things that are easy to integrate into our daily lives. There are things like walking uphill,

Starting point is 00:07:20 power walking, doing vigorous housework, carrying children or groceries for 50 to 100 meters, dancing around your room to Taylor Swift. Next, microhabit is microconnections. Microconnections are these little moments of connection to others that are a secret to happiness that nobody talks about, chatting with the person behind the counter at the grocery store, smiling and making eye contact with people on the street. This morning, Zach and I met a new neighbor on our circwalk, and we talked for 20 minutes about Buddhism and kittens and nomad life, and it drastically improved my mood for the rest of the day. I first learned about microconnections when I had Dr. Sue Varma on the podcast.

Starting point is 00:08:04 She's a psychiatrist who specializes in the science. of optimism. So we were talking about all of the ways that we can train our brains to become more optimistic. And one of the ways that she shared was to take advantage of micro-connections, which are these little moments that we connect with people in our lives, whether they're the people that are close to us or strangers. And there is a ton of research to back this up. Making eye contact releases oxytocin. So you get a rush of good feelings when you look someone in the eye and have a real conversation. Oxytocin helps reduce stress. It can increase pain tolerance. It can even support our immune systems.

Starting point is 00:08:43 It also increases your sense of feeling socially connected, which is hugely important. A very famous study found that lack of social connection was a greater risk to our overall health than obesity, smoking, and high blood pressure. In fact, it increases our odds of death by 50%. And here's the interesting thing. You don't, don't necessarily need a whole group of amazing friends to get the benefits of social connections, although, of course, that's awesome and we all want that too. But for these benefits, you need to feel connected to others. And having these micro moments within your community is a really powerful way to build that feeling of connection. But it's so important to note that that feeling of connection, it's not only going to improve your mood, your psychology, but your

Starting point is 00:09:33 physical health, your lifespan on this very real tangible level. I aim for at least one of these a day, if not more, but the ideal dose is dependent on you. So play around with it and see what makes you feel socially connected. And yes, sending a text or having a phone call is better than nothing, but this is one where you really want to do it in person if possible because you want those eye contact benefits. You want those local benefits of feeling part of your. You want those local benefits. your community. If nothing else, I use the research around micro connections to remind me to keep my phone in my pocket when I'm in line at the grocery store or on my cirquarks to look up, to look around, to smile at people. It's made my days and my entire life really feel so much

Starting point is 00:10:23 brighter. The next one is one of my absolute favorites. I learned this trick from Dr. Rick Hansen, the famous happiness psychologist when I had him on the podcast. And it goes back to what we were talking about earlier with rewiring our neural pathways and the neurons that fire together wiring together. Rick shared a trick to hardwire the brain to feel more happiness, essentially to wire the happiness, the savory neurons together so that in the future, your brain is more likely to fire those neurons making you feel happier. I love this trick because it is so specific. I love, love, love, an action step that brings legitimate science to life in a way that's easy to apply on a daily basis, and this is exactly that.

Starting point is 00:11:08 So what you're going to do, you're going to notice something good. It can be anything. It can be a great conversation. It can be flowers that smell really amazing. It can be the taste of a really delicious piece of chocolate, the feeling of the sun on your skin. That's one of my favorite feelings in the entire world. It can be how good it feels to laugh at a TV show.

Starting point is 00:11:28 Really try to tune into the good feelings and then even turn up the dial on how. how good they feel if you can. Just really savor it. And sit in that savoring for 10 to 20 seconds. And that action, that's going to help these positive emotion-based neurons wire together, which is going to help your brain overcome its negativity bias and help you feel more positive feelings in the future. The more you do it, the more positive wiring will happen.

Starting point is 00:11:58 And let me tell you, Rick is like a poster child for this practice. He has the gentlest, loveliest, happiest energy of any person that I have ever met. It is the micro-wist of micro-habits. We are talking literally less than 30 seconds. And it has these huge results in terms of our happiness. Did you know that more than two-thirds of protein powders tested have lead levels above California's Prop 65 safety limits? And in some cases, they have more than 10 times over. This is so important because protein is something that a lot of us consume ever.

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Starting point is 00:12:59 I want to shout out their creatine. I take it every single morning for my brain health. I have an entire episode about creatine, if you want to dive further into that. But TLDR, the hype is very real and very justified based on the research. And then I also take their fish oil, which has the specific ratio of DHA and EPA that my RD said is best for inflammation and for brain health. Right now you can get 32% off of your pure grass-fed way when you start a subscription, plus a free shaker worth $25 on your first order, totaling $49 in savings. Go to purie.com slash Liz Moody and use code Liz Moody at checkout for this exclusive offer. You're going to get a discount on any of their products if you use code Liz Moody, but then this is

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Starting point is 00:16:46 talk about is microjournaling. I love this one because for years, I just didn't journal because I thought the journaling meant writing pages and pages and I didn't know what to write. And also as someone who's done most of the writing in my life on a computer, my hand cramps up and it hurts really bad after like one paragraph. But then I tried a microjournaling. I use what I call the three two one method, which is writing down three moments of joy from that day, even if they're really tiny, two things that I appreciate about myself and how I showed up that day. And then one thing from the day that I don't want to forget. Here is why this works. Because I know at the beginning of each day that at the end of that day, I'll be writing down three moments of joy. I'm priming my brain to

Starting point is 00:17:34 look for more moments of joy, which means it will notice more moments of joy and I'll literally experience more joy that day. And then reflecting on that joy again at the end of the day gives me another opportunity to savor it, to amplify it, and to cement in those neural pathways. And then the qualities that I appreciate about myself is to overcome our brain's negativity bias, to train the voice in my head, to treat me kinder, to notice when I'm trying, when I'm showing up for other people, when I'm showing up for myself. This is a practice that I have not heard many people do, and it has made a world of difference in my own sense of self-love. It's probably the most pragmatic action step in terms of building self-love. that I have ever tried. It is also wild how it feels really hard at first, and then it gets

Starting point is 00:18:28 much, much easier the more that you do it. And you can just feel that sense of self-love, of self-resilience, of self-appreciation increasing. And then the last one is just because I feel like we always think we'll remember things and then we never do. I can't write paragraphs about my day, but I can jot down a sentence of one thing that I want to remember and then being able to look back on those single sentences jogs tons of other memories and it helps bring my life back to me. So again, we're talking about six total lines, not even six full sentences, and it has all of these benefits. The last microhabit that I want to get into, although we have a fun little quickfire round of a different type of microhabit that we will end with, but the last microversion of a

Starting point is 00:19:15 larger habit that reaps huge rewards is micro-tidying, microcleaning, baby. If you have been around here for a while, you know that I am very much in the running for the messiest person on the planet. I have been this way for as long as I can remember. Zach and I have had a million fights about it. We've paid for a cleaning person to come weekly since well before we could afford it because for us, it is basically almost as valuable as couples therapy. It helps halt that many arguments.

Starting point is 00:19:44 But this is the fun part. I also really love a clean space. I love how expansive it makes me feel. I love how calm it makes me, how happy it makes me. I have the world hardest time motivating myself to do a big cleaning session. So instead, I do micro cleaning sessions, five minutes between meetings where I just tackle the kitchen table or I just unload the dishwasher. I will either set a timer for a very limited amount of time or I will pick one very, very small. area and I will just clean that. I love this for a few reasons. First of all, we already talked about

Starting point is 00:20:26 in this episode how micro workouts help offset our sedentary lifestyles and how we essentially sit all day. And sitting increases our risk of type 2 diabetes and heart attacks. It increases our risk of cancer. It increases our pain. So doing these micro cleaning sessions offers a really easy way to get up to move my body in dynamic ways and to essentially get a micro workout in. And is another benefit. It helps fill those pockets of time when you finish one task and you need a break before diving into the next task and you don't want to just lay there and rot on social media. Do a micro cleaning session. And it really does add up. My house is not like the most tidy, but it used to be downright offensive. And I credit microcleaning sessions for that transformation.

Starting point is 00:21:13 So we've got micro workouts. We've got micro connections. We've got micro-happiness. We've got micro-journaling. We've got micro cleaning. And there's all of this incredible research that shows that these teeny pockets of time will genuinely change your life. The last thing that I want to touch on are a few habits that are inherently micro, meaning they're not bite-sized versions of habits that typically take a longer period of time, but habits that are naturally done super quickly, and I have found them to be very, very effective. And since the theme of this episode is things that you can do really quickly that have outsized results I figured I would share. The first is awe.

Starting point is 00:21:53 We have a whole podcast about awe featuring Dr. Dacker Keltner, but he says that just one minute a day of awe is enough to calm our nervous systems, boost our immune systems, and so much more. He suggests a ton of different ways to experience awe in the episode, including nature, collective effervescence, which is like a concert or a basketball game or going to church or anything where you're in a crowd and you're all experiencing something emotional together. He talks about music and a bunch more things. I can link that episode in the show notes so you can go and listen.

Starting point is 00:22:27 But interestingly, he said that one of the best ways to feel awe is just to look at things for a really long time. So go for a walk and stare at a flower or stare up at the sky. Because I think the point of this is that it's all magical, really. when you really think about it, when you really look at it. So that is a habit you can do that has an outsized impact on your well-being in this really, really tiny amount of time. We're talking about one minute, a single minute a day.

Starting point is 00:22:59 He also suggested sending gratitude texts or writing gratitude letters, basically expressing gratitude to other people, which he thinks is a more effective practice than simply thinking of things that you're grateful for from your day. And I have been doing this, and honestly, it's way more enjoyable too. We also have to shout out the cyclic sigh. This is in my book. I talk about it all of the time, but it is so powerful. In a Stanford study, it was found to be more effective in terms of creating positive mood

Starting point is 00:23:32 and decreasing anxiety than other forms of breathwork and mindfulness meditation. To do it, you just breathe in through your nose twice and then out through your mouth. So it's going to sound like, but I think. is really interesting is that this is what we naturally do when we cry, like you're crying, and crying and cried, and then you're like these two quick inhales and then that sigh of an exhale. Our bodies know these mechanisms intuitively. If you try this, you will immediately feel a benefit, but the study authors found that five minutes was the ideal amount of time to really experience a state change. I do this pretty much whenever I feel stressed or

Starting point is 00:24:18 overwhelmed. I do it before every single podcast interview, every time I go on TV, and it helps a ton. And then the last micro habit that I want to highlight is eating a spoonful of something fermented. This sounds weird and it doesn't really fit in with the rest of this list, but it's a habit that I do all of the time that takes less than a minute and it has outsized benefits, so I needed to share it. The health benefits of fermented foods are so, so incredible. They're amazing for your immune system. And because of that immune system cancer relationship, they actually help prevent the development of cancer. I have an interview coming up next week that gets into that in way greater depth. But it is wild. The doctor that I had on works with cancer patients. And one of the first things

Starting point is 00:25:05 that he has them do is eat as many fermented foods as possible. They also serve as a palate reset, which makes them help with sugar cravings a ton and they're great for gut health. And they just make me feel so much better. So if I have a day where I'm like, ugh, I haven't gone outside, I haven't moved my body a lot, I haven't eaten very well, what I do is I go to the fridge and I have a spoonful of sauerkraut or fermented carrots. It takes no time to prep. It's already there ready made for me. I just buy them already fermented. And it makes me feel so much healthier. It kicks off that healthy choice cascade that we talked about earlier, especially from a food perspective, I find that when I do this, I'm much more likely to make healthy food choices afterward. So I wanted to mention

Starting point is 00:25:56 that. That's my little food hack, my little food microhabit. I am very excited for you to try out some of these micro habits for you to start feeling the real results in these teeny tiny amounts of time yourself. If you want a downloadable microhabits menu with different microhabits for different goals like gut health, anxiety, energy, and more, go to lizmoody.substack.com. That is all for this episode of the Liz Moody podcast. If you enjoyed it, I would so appreciate if you would share it with somebody that you think would love it too. My goal is to get as much life-changing information out to as many people as possible.

Starting point is 00:26:34 And you sharing episodes is 100% the thing that makes that happen. And it is so, so appreciated. Okay, that is all from me. I love you, and I will see you on the next episode of the Liz Moody podcast. Oh, just one more thing. It's the legal language. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. It is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, a psychotherapist,

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The Liz Moody Podcast - Busy? Tired? 5 Tiny Habits That Will Make You Feel 10x Better

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