Speaker 1: This episode is brought to you by our new Patreon
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Speaker 1: net slash join. What is the smallest habit I can
Speaker 1: do that will give me that outcome, whether that's less
Speaker 1: stress at work, or eating differently here, sleeping better? What
Speaker 1: have you? Welcome to the One you Feed. Throughout time,
Speaker 1: great tinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have.
Speaker 1: Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what
Speaker 1: you think ring true. And yet for many of us,
Speaker 1: our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 1: self pity, jealousy, or fear. Year we see what we
Speaker 1: don't have instead of what we do. We think things
Speaker 1: that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's
Speaker 1: not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 1: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 1: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 1: the right direction, how they feed their good Wolf Hey, everybody,
Speaker 1: It's almost the new year, so why not do us
Speaker 1: a favor and do a favor for your friend or
Speaker 1: family member or whoever you'd like, and recommend and share
Speaker 1: the One You Feed podcast. Let's all get on the
Speaker 1: right track and fulfill those New Year's resolutions. If you
Speaker 1: have any behaviors you'd like to change or modify or
Speaker 1: add for the new year, then you're in luck. Our
Speaker 1: guest on this episode is b J Fogg. He teaches
Speaker 1: innovators about human behavior. He has a doctorate from Stanford
Speaker 1: and founded a new Stanford Lab in and Today Eric
Speaker 1: and b J will discuss his new book Tiny Habits
Speaker 1: The Small Changes That Change Everything. I b J. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the show. Eric, thank you for providing me. It
Speaker 1: is a pleasure to have you on again. We're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about your book, Tiny Habits The Small Changes That
Speaker 1: Change Everything. But before we do, let's start like we
Speaker 1: always do, with the parable. There is a grandfather who's
Speaker 1: talking with his granddaughter and he says, in life, there
Speaker 1: are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle.
Speaker 1: One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness
Speaker 1: and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf.
Speaker 1: Which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And
Speaker 1: the granddaughter stops and thinks about it for a second
Speaker 1: and looks up at her grandfather and she said, well, grandfather,
Speaker 1: which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do. Wow, it's such a great parable.
Speaker 1: It has a lot of meanings I think right now,
Speaker 1: as with tiny Habits and what I'm teaching and researching,
Speaker 1: in some ways, the biggest meaning for that for me
Speaker 1: is are you going to focus on the positive? Are
Speaker 1: you going to focus on the negative in your life?
Speaker 1: And that, in some ways is one of the main
Speaker 1: messages of tiny habits is you change best by feeling good,
Speaker 1: not by feeling bad. Now, I wrote down some other
Speaker 1: interpretations in that parable, but let me just stop there
Speaker 1: that that's how I would think about it primarily right now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's great because that was kind of one of the
Speaker 1: places I was going to go very early in the conversation.
Speaker 1: So let's just go there now, which is that idea
Speaker 1: of people change best by feeling good, not by feeling bad.
Speaker 1: We tend to talk very negatively to ourselves in an
Speaker 1: attempt to get ourselves to change. But the research that
Speaker 1: you've done, and you know a lot of work that
Speaker 1: I've done and with different people kind of shows it's
Speaker 1: not really the way it works. So explain why feeling
Speaker 1: good is a better way to go about it than
Speaker 1: feeling bad. You know. It was about eight years ago,
Speaker 1: and it didn't come out of my Stanford Lab research.
Speaker 1: It came out of coach. I've coached probably a thousand
Speaker 1: people in tiny Habits, and I started sharing the tiny
Speaker 1: Habits method probably about four months earlier, so this would
Speaker 1: have been about eight years ago. And every week I
Speaker 1: was coaching two to three hundred people through email tiny
Speaker 1: habits and teaching them this way to great habits. It
Speaker 1: was really simple and really effective. And one day, about
Speaker 1: four months in, I got an email from a woman
Speaker 1: and in my book, I call her Rhonda, which isn't
Speaker 1: her real name, but from Randa, and she's and it
Speaker 1: was Wednesday in the five day program. That's the day
Speaker 1: where I really emphasized this technique I call celebration, which
Speaker 1: is a way to feel good. And she said, wow,
Speaker 1: b J, I now realized and thank you so much
Speaker 1: for helping me recognize that I've endured a lifetime of
Speaker 1: self trash talk. And I remember exactly where I was sitting,
Speaker 1: exactly the time of day, and my reaction it was like, oh,
Speaker 1: my gosh. I read it, and I reread it, and
Speaker 1: I was like, ah, because sure, we all criticize ourselves,
Speaker 1: so we all said really high standards for ourselves and
Speaker 1: so on. But I didn't feel like I had a
Speaker 1: lifetime of self trash doc And that made me shift
Speaker 1: pretty dramatically. It was one of the key moments in
Speaker 1: my career where I thought, this thing tiny habits, that's
Speaker 1: kind of this weird hobby I've been doing, you know,
Speaker 1: teaching all these people every week out to create habits.
Speaker 1: This can't just be a weird hobby. This needs to
Speaker 1: be something bigger and this. And then you know in
Speaker 1: the emails that in the hundreds of thousands of people
Speaker 1: later that I was coaching, I saw the pattern really
Speaker 1: clearly that in general, people are feeling really discouraged, beat up.
Speaker 1: They beat themselves up, their trash talk, and there's just
Speaker 1: this negative cloud over things. One of the big things
Speaker 1: I want from the books for people to understand that
Speaker 1: you can have positive valance to things you do, and
Speaker 1: that actually the change, the lasting changes. You do better
Speaker 1: by feeling good and not feeling bad. Right, That's such
Speaker 1: a fundamental thing that I've realized in doing this show
Speaker 1: and over time is just like that. To learn to
Speaker 1: sort of be a friend to yourself is such a
Speaker 1: fundamental shift of orientation. But it makes such a big
Speaker 1: difference in the quality of life. I mean, we're doing
Speaker 1: all these things, habits, behavior, change all this so that
Speaker 1: our life is better. But that one change of like,
Speaker 1: all right, you know what, I'm going to treat myself
Speaker 1: like a friend is so fundamental and important. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: let me give an example. I don't think this is
Speaker 1: in the book. There was so much I wanted to
Speaker 1: include in the book, and my editor would go, that's
Speaker 1: the next book, and that's a whole different book. But
Speaker 1: this may be too cliche topic. But I'll pick a
Speaker 1: thing that many people are trying to change how they
Speaker 1: eat so they are more fit and feel more fit,
Speaker 1: and when they slip up, or however they look at it,
Speaker 1: they beat themselves up. And one way to think about
Speaker 1: that is look at yourself as like a baby or
Speaker 1: a toddler who's just learning to walk. And when a
Speaker 1: baby is just learning to walk and that baby stumbles,
Speaker 1: you don't go, oh, that was terrible, that was awful.
Speaker 1: Why did you mess up? You just hope the baby
Speaker 1: gets up and keeps going, and you share the baby
Speaker 1: on for every tiny step it makes. And that's exactly
Speaker 1: how we should be looking at ourselves and the habits
Speaker 1: we want in our life, and more broadly, the way
Speaker 1: we want to change our lives. If I really want
Speaker 1: to emphasize it, I say it this way. How many
Speaker 1: people in this world on planet Earth have learned to walk? Okay, billions,
Speaker 1: almost everybody, not everybody, almost everything. How many of those
Speaker 1: have learned to eat in a way that keeps them
Speaker 1: at their optimal weight a much smaller number. So the
Speaker 1: challenge of eating in an optimal way is actually harder
Speaker 1: then walking. And that's not entirely true, but it's it's
Speaker 1: good to help make the point that you're like a
Speaker 1: little baby as you're trying to change all these ways
Speaker 1: that you eat, and when you stumble, when you take
Speaker 1: these little falls, no big deal. Just get up and
Speaker 1: keep going and you will figure it out. Right. I
Speaker 1: think that part of what happens with us and habits
Speaker 1: or all of these things is that we turn it
Speaker 1: into almost a moral failing. M M. And I see
Speaker 1: this in the coaching work I do with people, and
Speaker 1: you address it right away in the book. People show
Speaker 1: up and go, I'm the kind of person who I'm lazy,
Speaker 1: I'm undisciplined, I'm you know, it's all these things that
Speaker 1: are personality traits, which you know. One of the things
Speaker 1: I've learned, and I learned a lot of it from
Speaker 1: looking at your work, right, is that this is all
Speaker 1: stuff that we can learn, We can learn to change.
Speaker 1: We just have never been taught. Some people stumble their
Speaker 1: way into it, but most of us don't. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you're absolutely right. First part of tiny Habits I start
Speaker 1: right there. It's like, you know, you've probably tried to
Speaker 1: change and for some things you haven't succeeded. And guess what,
Speaker 1: that's not your fault. And um, it was about ten
Speaker 1: years ago and speaking at Stanford that I started getting
Speaker 1: really cranky. You know, I organized conferences and I speak
Speaker 1: at conferences, and then I just started getting up at
Speaker 1: health conferences and saying when you create a product or
Speaker 1: program to help people change and they fail that it's
Speaker 1: not a neutral experience. You have set that person back.
Speaker 1: You have damaged that person. So stop creating products and
Speaker 1: programs that set people up for failure. And I'm usually
Speaker 1: a super optimistic, positive guy. People think I'm a lot
Speaker 1: like Mr. Rogers, But when it comes to this, you know,
Speaker 1: creating a program that people put faith and they fail,
Speaker 1: I get cranky. And that's one of the big things
Speaker 1: I want to help people understand is you haven't been
Speaker 1: able to change habits or transform the life in the
Speaker 1: way you want. Like you said, it's not a personal failing,
Speaker 1: it's not a moral failing. You just haven't been given
Speaker 1: the right way to succeed yet. And that's what I
Speaker 1: hope to give people with tiny habits. Yep. I couldn't
Speaker 1: agree more so. Also, early in the book, you say
Speaker 1: that in order to design successful habits and change your behaviors,
Speaker 1: you should do three things, and I'll just read them
Speaker 1: and then we can just talk about them real briefly.
Speaker 1: We've kind of covered the first one, stop judging yourself right.
Speaker 1: Second is take your aspirations and break them down into
Speaker 1: tiny behaviors. And then finally, embrace mistakes as discoveries. And
Speaker 1: use them to move forward. And so that's sort of
Speaker 1: a three step process for what unfolds through the whole
Speaker 1: rest of the book. But let's talk about the second
Speaker 1: two of those. Take your aspirations and break them down
Speaker 1: into tiny behaviors. So important what doesn't work very well
Speaker 1: is to have something abstract that you want to achieve
Speaker 1: and just try to motivate yourself toward the abstraction. So
Speaker 1: if you, wow, I'm really stressed at work, I really
Speaker 1: need to get myself to not be stressed, and just like, hey,
Speaker 1: don't stress, don't stress, it's it's an abstraction. Or even
Speaker 1: eat differently or exercise or read more or sleep better,
Speaker 1: all of those things are not specific behaviors. Those are
Speaker 1: the results of doing specific behaviors. And the right way
Speaker 1: to do it is to figure out what is the
Speaker 1: smallest action or the smallest habit I can do that
Speaker 1: will give me that outcome, whether that's less stress at
Speaker 1: work or eating differently or sleeping better, what have you.
Speaker 1: And so as you saw in Tiny Habits that once
Speaker 1: you're clear on your aspiration, the very next step is
Speaker 1: to figure out what is the right behavior for me,
Speaker 1: the specific behavior, and often that's a new habit, and
Speaker 1: that's when you can design for that habit and reach
Speaker 1: the outcome. So you've got to go from the abstract idea,
Speaker 1: which I usually call an aspiration, say oh, I want
Speaker 1: to be more mindful, and then break that down into
Speaker 1: a very specific behavior that you want to do when
Speaker 1: you can do and you designed for that behavior, and
Speaker 1: through succeeding in that behavior, you can reach the abstraction.
Speaker 1: You can be more mindful or sleep better or whatever
Speaker 1: aspiration you have. Right, And I want to talk more
Speaker 1: in a few minutes about that concept of breaking down
Speaker 1: into tiny behaviors and sort of finding what you call
Speaker 1: golden behavior. So we'll head there in a second, but
Speaker 1: let's hit embrace mistakes as discoveries and use them to
Speaker 1: move forward real quick before we before we go there. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: let me give an example to happen about two weeks
Speaker 1: ago for me, I was speaking at an event and
Speaker 1: up on the stage on the table where I'm speaking,
Speaker 1: there's a cup of water. And as I was speaking,
Speaker 1: and I tend to be kind of a kinetic person.
Speaker 1: I move around a lot, and I like geting active
Speaker 1: and whatever, and I knocked the water over like I
Speaker 1: knocked it over and it's spilled on the papers and
Speaker 1: the hand outs I had, and I just kept going.
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, But my reaction wasn't man, VJ,
Speaker 1: You're so clumsy and why did you do it? Was
Speaker 1: just I kept going and my reaction was, Wow, you
Speaker 1: just kept going without missing a beat. Good for you.
Speaker 1: So the difference there is, Yeah, let's say maybe ten
Speaker 1: years ago, had I done that, I would have been like, Ah,
Speaker 1: you hit the water, you knocked it over, Could somebody
Speaker 1: please bring me a towel? You know, I'd be beating
Speaker 1: myself up. But because I practiced tiny habits and this
Speaker 1: thing of where you really emphasize the positive and the
Speaker 1: things that don't go like you want, you just let
Speaker 1: them go. You don't react to them. My natural reaction
Speaker 1: was not to react and then to go, wow, good
Speaker 1: for me. I just didn't miss a beat here. Now,
Speaker 1: there are ways you can learn to do that. And
Speaker 1: you know, like you said earlier, change can be learned.
Speaker 1: And the way I talked about as change as a skill,
Speaker 1: it's actually a set of skills, and one of those
Speaker 1: skills is to be able to feel good out uh
Speaker 1: a success, no matter how tiny it is. The flip
Speaker 1: side of that is when things don't go as you hug,
Speaker 1: just let it go. Don't obsess about it, don't be yourself,
Speaker 1: let it go. So you you upregulate the positive and
Speaker 1: you downregulate the negative, right, which is challenging to do
Speaker 1: but so important. And I think what you're talking about there,
Speaker 1: and and the thing that I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people when we when we talk about making habits small,
Speaker 1: is that a lot of people are caught in all
Speaker 1: or nothing thinking right. They're they're they're caught into well,
Speaker 1: either I'm going to go to the gym for an
Speaker 1: hour or it's not worth doing. And and what that
Speaker 1: leads to is a lot of not worth doing right.
Speaker 1: You know, a little bit of something is better than
Speaker 1: a lot of nothing right. And that's kind of the
Speaker 1: tiny habits piece. And I think the other important thing
Speaker 1: about Embrace mistakes is discoveries is that one of the
Speaker 1: things I've realized is that there is no perfection in
Speaker 1: this game, right, and expecting perfection is often what derails
Speaker 1: a perfectly good habit or behavior change. Things are going
Speaker 1: well and then slips happen or callum whatever you want.
Speaker 1: They're inevitable. But people don't know that, and so they go,
Speaker 1: I'm failing, which then kicks back into that first mindset
Speaker 1: of oh see, I knew I couldn't do it, And
Speaker 1: so I love that idea of mistakes as discoveries. What
Speaker 1: can I learn from this? You know, that's part of
Speaker 1: our culture, at least part of Western culture, California culture
Speaker 1: where I live. And I pushed on that. I thought,
Speaker 1: where did this come from? And as I looked at it,
Speaker 1: it seems to have come from. Uh. There's a guy
Speaker 1: in William James who wrote a textbook called Principles of Psychology,
Speaker 1: and chapter four of that textbook is about habits. Now
Speaker 1: the overall textbook to come ten years to write. And
Speaker 1: if the people listening to this haven't read William James
Speaker 1: Chapter four, go get it. You can buy a little
Speaker 1: book it for nine dollars online, or you can just
Speaker 1: download the whole text for free. But he talks about
Speaker 1: habits there and what I've found in that chapter in
Speaker 1: his work, which was so influential to set the foundation
Speaker 1: for how people thought about habits and behavior and human
Speaker 1: psychology for decades to come, he talks about as you're
Speaker 1: trying to change, he gives this analogy of it's like
Speaker 1: your winding yarn into a ball, and he says, don't
Speaker 1: ever miss a date. That's like dropping the yarn and
Speaker 1: it becomes all unwound. Well, he's he's wrong, but that's
Speaker 1: where that's possibly where the thinking came from. Now, to
Speaker 1: William James's credit, so many of the things he wrote
Speaker 1: in just Right on Just Bam, he nailed it. And
Speaker 1: a lot of the people that are talking about habits
Speaker 1: stats are basically just recycling William James. But the area
Speaker 1: where I think he gets it wrong is in that
Speaker 1: one case. And unfortunately, I think it's influenced or thinking that, yeah,
Speaker 1: you've got to be perfect and never miss a day,
Speaker 1: and so well, guess what, nobody's perfect. And it's just
Speaker 1: like practicing anything else, whether there's piano or basketball or tennis,
Speaker 1: are dancing, you're not going to be perfect. And if
Speaker 1: you stop as soon as you make a mistake, you'll
Speaker 1: never learn to play the piano or speak French or basketball.
Speaker 1: It's just part of the process. Yeah, I think that
Speaker 1: analogy of speaking French is a good one. I've used
Speaker 1: it sometimes recently talking with people about addiction about like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, you start learning to speak French, and at
Speaker 1: first you can only do it, like, you know, a
Speaker 1: couple of sentences. And then you take a class and
Speaker 1: you can sort of talk with the teacher and you're
Speaker 1: getting better than you go out in the world and
Speaker 1: you can order a croissant, you know, in French, and
Speaker 1: then you run into a real French speaker and they
Speaker 1: just start talking. You're like, I'm completely lost, right, And
Speaker 1: that's that's the normal evolution, and so you get better.
Speaker 1: And so what I see a lot of people do
Speaker 1: is I've got this behavior down in a lot of contexts,
Speaker 1: and then I hit a new context that I don't
Speaker 1: have it down in, and instead of going, Okay, well
Speaker 1: what can I learn about how to speak French when
Speaker 1: I'm in this situation, we go I'm just terrible at
Speaker 1: French and and and abandoned the whole thing. And you're right,
Speaker 1: if if we treat building habits like we would treat
Speaker 1: those other things, we'd accept learning as part of the
Speaker 1: process exactly. And that's right on one of the UM frameworks.
Speaker 1: And this isn't in the book. Some things related to
Speaker 1: it are in tiny habits. But when you look at
Speaker 1: a habit, it is a person doing an action in
Speaker 1: a given context. And I mentioned this briefly in the book,
Speaker 1: but I'll go a little bit further here. So a
Speaker 1: habit isn't just the action. It's not just the you know,
Speaker 1: eating broccoli for breakfast or exit walking around the block
Speaker 1: for an hour or meditating for twenty one minutes in
Speaker 1: the evening. It's a type of person doing an action
Speaker 1: in a given context. And if you change the context,
Speaker 1: then it's a different habit. So you working out while
Speaker 1: you're at home and your normal routine is a different
Speaker 1: habit than you working out while you're traveling in a hotel.
Speaker 1: And to build on your point, people don't recognize that's
Speaker 1: a different habit. So don't be hard on yourself when
Speaker 1: you travel and you don't work out, that's a different habit.
Speaker 1: You can create the habit, but don't expect the workout
Speaker 1: at home habit to transfer just automatically too when you travel.
Speaker 1: That's a really great way to put it and is
Speaker 1: absolutely true in my experience. It took me a long time.
Speaker 1: I traveled a lot for work until I started doing
Speaker 1: this full time, but it took me a while to
Speaker 1: figure out how to do things that I did at
Speaker 1: home pretty easily, and I would initially, like you said,
Speaker 1: be frustrated, but I kind of realized, like, oh, I
Speaker 1: need to have my own version of this for when
Speaker 1: I'm in a hotel. It looks very different and I
Speaker 1: need to not leave it to chance. Yeah. Well, let
Speaker 1: me give you a true example from my life. Very simple. So, uh,
Speaker 1: here at home, I have this rock solid habit of
Speaker 1: how I take vitamins. It's wired in. It happens of
Speaker 1: the time. I don't have to think about it. And
Speaker 1: then I'm on a trip and I noticed it's like
Speaker 1: noon or something at the conference and it's like, I
Speaker 1: haven't taken my vitamins. Well, I guess what. Because I
Speaker 1: don't have a recipe, a tiny habit recipe for that.
Speaker 1: I haven't wired it in. So I realized, like you said,
Speaker 1: I need to create habit for this. So the habit
Speaker 1: I have when I travel is I put my vitamins,
Speaker 1: I prepackaged them, and then in the morning, as I'm
Speaker 1: getting dressed in the hotel room, I take the vitamins
Speaker 1: and I put them in my pocket. I don't actually
Speaker 1: swallow the vitamins. I just put them in my pocket,
Speaker 1: and which kind of maps what I do at home,
Speaker 1: I take the vitamins and I put them in a
Speaker 1: little dish. I'm kind of shaking the dish right now,
Speaker 1: and through the day. At home, I take the vitamins
Speaker 1: because they're in the dish. But when I travel, what
Speaker 1: you know, I'll put my hands in my pocket and
Speaker 1: there are the vitamins and I'll take a couple. So
Speaker 1: I very specifically figured out what is the habit and
Speaker 1: will get me to take my vitamins even when I'm traveling.
Speaker 1: And realize that the habit I had home of putting
Speaker 1: in a little dish and taking my bottoms out of
Speaker 1: the drawer wasn't going to generalize to all contexts, and
Speaker 1: I just huge create a different habit for it, and
Speaker 1: once I have it done, it's done. Our first episode
Speaker 1: together we covered this, but that's a long time ago,
Speaker 1: and I think we should just do it again, and
Speaker 1: let's talk about the fog behavioral model, because I think
Speaker 1: understanding this unlocks a lot of how behaviors occur or
Speaker 1: don't occur. In explaining the model, you can explain it
Speaker 1: like two sentences. Behavior happens when three things come together
Speaker 1: at the same time, motivation, ability and a prompt and
Speaker 1: if in one of those three things is missing, the
Speaker 1: behavior won't happen. So that's probably the simplest explanation. And
Speaker 1: so let's define each of those real quickly. I think
Speaker 1: motivation most people understand it's it's a desire to do
Speaker 1: it right. Um Ability what what what do you mean
Speaker 1: when you're using the wordability in this case? Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: essentially your capacity. And I define ability and there's five factors.
Speaker 1: How much time it takes. Do you have the time
Speaker 1: required to do this? How much money it takes? Do
Speaker 1: you have the money required to do this? And some
Speaker 1: things require no money, some require a lot, uh, anywhere
Speaker 1: in between, how much thinking it requires? How much physical effort?
Speaker 1: And the last of the five, and this is maybe
Speaker 1: the most subtle, but it's really important, is how well
Speaker 1: does it fit into my routine versus breaking my routine?
Speaker 1: And so when you're looking at is a new habit
Speaker 1: easy to do? And I have a chain model. I
Speaker 1: call it the ability chain. You think of five links time, money,
Speaker 1: physical effort, mental effort, and routine As you look at
Speaker 1: a new habit like oh, I want to go to bed,
Speaker 1: you know, as soon as my favorite TV shows over now,
Speaker 1: is that easy to do? Do you have the time
Speaker 1: to do it? Probably? Do you have the money, probably? Uh?
Speaker 1: Do you have physical effort? Mental effort? Probably? But boom
Speaker 1: routine while it conflicts with my other routines of calling
Speaker 1: my mom or doing these other things, well, then that's
Speaker 1: not going to be easy. So the way I define
Speaker 1: ability is it's a function of the weakest link in
Speaker 1: that chain. So it can be any of those factors
Speaker 1: if it's required for that habit or the behavior. If
Speaker 1: it's a weak link and it's needed, then that's what
Speaker 1: makes it hard to do. And motivation and ability have
Speaker 1: a relationship with each other. Right. The harder something is
Speaker 1: the more motivation you need. The easier something is the
Speaker 1: less motivation you need, which really sits at the heart
Speaker 1: of the tiny habits model, which is if you do
Speaker 1: something really small, you don't need a ton of motivation,
Speaker 1: which is good because we all know motivation goes up
Speaker 1: and down. Yeah, And I used to call that a
Speaker 1: trade off relationship. You could have more or less than
Speaker 1: one or the other. And about five years ago some
Speaker 1: guy called me out and said, it's not a trade off,
Speaker 1: it's a substitute relationship. And I was like, well sort of.
Speaker 1: So I went looking like, what is the right word
Speaker 1: for this relationship? And I finally found it, and it's
Speaker 1: a big word. I'll probably stumble on it. It's a
Speaker 1: compensatory relationship, so they compensate for each other. And that's
Speaker 1: kind of a huge mouthful, but I'm geeking out now
Speaker 1: by saying it's a compensatory relationship. But the easier way
Speaker 1: to think about is they work like teammates. If one
Speaker 1: of them is weak, the other must be strong, and
Speaker 1: vice versa. They both can be strong, but they both
Speaker 1: can't be weak if you have low motivation and it's
Speaker 1: really hard to do. Guess what habits not going to form?
Speaker 1: So one can compensate for the other. And thinking of
Speaker 1: them as teammates where one picks up the slack for
Speaker 1: the other, I think it's a good way to Yeah,
Speaker 1: I really like that concept of being teammates. And you know,
Speaker 1: if one is weak, the other needs to be strong.
Speaker 1: And so you then talk about troubleshooting a behavior. So
Speaker 1: we want to do a behavior and we're not doing
Speaker 1: it for whatever reason, and you say that in order
Speaker 1: to do that, there are specific set of steps for troubleshooting.
Speaker 1: This common problem, and it goes through the pieces in
Speaker 1: your model, not in the order people might think exactly.
Speaker 1: So the behavior model, which is behavior happens when motivational, bility,
Speaker 1: your prompt all come together. That is a model. It's
Speaker 1: a way of thinking and it describes how behavior works.
Speaker 1: The broader category, the broader name from my work I
Speaker 1: call behavior design, which is a set of models. One
Speaker 1: of them is the far behavior model, and it's a
Speaker 1: set of methods. One of those is the tiny Habits method,
Speaker 1: and together it's a system. Everything works together. Behavior is systematic,
Speaker 1: and the way you designed for behavior systematic. Going to
Speaker 1: the behavior model and troubleshooting the question you asked me
Speaker 1: is a very specific thing and it's super helpful. When
Speaker 1: there's a behavior you want to happen and it's not happening,
Speaker 1: typically people get upset, so they go into motivation mode.
Speaker 1: Uh So, let's say I have asked my brother to
Speaker 1: send me the itinerary to the fishing trip and he
Speaker 1: doesn't send it to me. I could get upset and say, hey, Steve,
Speaker 1: where's the itinerary? You know I need this, I'm a
Speaker 1: busy person. That's the wrong move. What you do is
Speaker 1: you start from the other end of the model, you
Speaker 1: start with prompt and you say, was there something to
Speaker 1: remind my brother? Something to prompt or remind him to
Speaker 1: send me the itinerary for the fishing trip? And if not,
Speaker 1: make sure there's a prompt. That's step one. If it's
Speaker 1: still not happening. So if I know Steve is being
Speaker 1: prompted and he's not sending me the fishing itinerary, then
Speaker 1: I don't go to motivation yet I go to ability. Okay,
Speaker 1: what's making this hard for Steve to do because you
Speaker 1: have the time. Is it required too much thinking? So
Speaker 1: if I make it easier to do, Steve, all I
Speaker 1: needed to do is send me the start date and
Speaker 1: the end date. I don't need every little details. So
Speaker 1: I'm scaling back the behavior to something tiny and usually eric.
Speaker 1: In most cases, if somebody has a prompt and it's
Speaker 1: really easy to do, the behavior will happen. There are
Speaker 1: times it won't, and then you know you have a
Speaker 1: motivation challenge on your hands. So the troubleshooting order is
Speaker 1: not what most people think it is intuitively, and I
Speaker 1: used to think this until I studied it and mapped
Speaker 1: it out and figured out the system. It's checked the
Speaker 1: prompt first. If there's one there, check ability, make it
Speaker 1: easier to do. And then if you arrive at motivation,
Speaker 1: then you go and there's different ways to motivate and
Speaker 1: de motivate, and it's it's much trickier issue. So it
Speaker 1: actually we want to talk about helping friends and family
Speaker 1: do things we want them to do. It can really
Speaker 1: save or at least help you not damage a relationship
Speaker 1: because you don't go into like getting upset at your
Speaker 1: brother for not setting the generate instead of you help
Speaker 1: him be successful through setting a prompt or make it
Speaker 1: easier to do. So it's really a nice way, very practical,
Speaker 1: like everyday kind of thing where you think, okay, I
Speaker 1: don't want to get angry or upset or threaten. All
Speaker 1: of those are motivational strategies of prompt ability and then
Speaker 1: if you have to, you go into the motivation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's so important a in troubleshooting a behavior
Speaker 1: why something's not happening and be because most of us
Speaker 1: jump immediately to motivation and in any context not just
Speaker 1: changing behavior. I think guessing that someone else's motivation can
Speaker 1: get us in a lot of hot water because we
Speaker 1: just don't know well, and the people around me here
Speaker 1: about behavior design and tiny habits and behavior model all
Speaker 1: the time, so it's like just part of the language
Speaker 1: of how we discussed. So if my partner wants me
Speaker 1: to do something and I don't do it, and he
Speaker 1: reminds me to do something, and if he gets a
Speaker 1: little bit upset, I'll just say, Denny, this is not
Speaker 1: a motivation issue. It's in the issue. It's you know,
Speaker 1: I don't have the time right now, and I think
Speaker 1: that helps. It's like, so they understand, I'm motivated to
Speaker 1: do this thing you want me to do, but I
Speaker 1: just can't. It's an ability factor. How a motivation factor,
Speaker 1: and I think that, well, one it's true, and then
Speaker 1: to it helps people understand that you really do want
Speaker 1: to help them or comply with what they're saying. It's
Speaker 1: not a motivation lack. It is either a prompt that
Speaker 1: was missing at the right time, or somehow the task
Speaker 1: seems too hard to do right. And I want to
Speaker 1: get into troubleshooting ability in a minute, although we kind
Speaker 1: of talked about it, but I want to start with
Speaker 1: motivation briefly, because there's something you wrote in the book
Speaker 1: that really stood out for me, and I'll just read
Speaker 1: it because I think it's really useful. It's as hope
Speaker 1: and fear are vectors that push against each other, and
Speaker 1: some of those two vectors is your overall motivation level.
Speaker 1: If you can remove the vector of fear, then hope
Speaker 1: will predominate in your overall motivation level be higher. And
Speaker 1: I just I never thought of it in quite those
Speaker 1: terms that those two things combine to be motivation and
Speaker 1: one way to increase motivation is decreased fear. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: said it so well, and that's a more sophisticated use
Speaker 1: of the behavior model. Behavior model one oh one is
Speaker 1: a way you can describe it in two minutes as
Speaker 1: you're drawing it out right. And one thing I want
Speaker 1: people readers of Tiny Habits to be able to do
Speaker 1: is to be able to say, here's how behavior works,
Speaker 1: and explain it and draw it on in two minutes
Speaker 1: or less. And in fact, in Tiny Habits, I've written
Speaker 1: the word for words script for that. I got some
Speaker 1: pushback from my editor saying and I was like, no,
Speaker 1: this is really important. Let's put this in. It's in
Speaker 1: the appendix because being able to teach something helps people
Speaker 1: learn it better, and so this insight the motivation or
Speaker 1: vector's push. That's more like behavior model level three. But
Speaker 1: it's pretty easy to understand if I'm motivated to Let's
Speaker 1: say I'll call out an example from the book. There's
Speaker 1: lots of examples, but this is a fun goofy one.
Speaker 1: I think. Say you're at a company party and they
Speaker 1: hired a band and people are dancing, and part of
Speaker 1: you says, oh, man, I'd really like to be out
Speaker 1: there dancing. It would be fun. Maybe i'd look cool.
Speaker 1: So let's hope, you know, like, if I dance, then
Speaker 1: I'll have fun. If I dance, I might look cool.
Speaker 1: And then you have a d motivator, which is probably fair.
Speaker 1: What if I look like a fool out there? What
Speaker 1: if the boss sees me and and things poorly of
Speaker 1: me and doesn't promote me. So you have hope and
Speaker 1: fear pushing on each other. And if you can get
Speaker 1: rid of the fear, you'll get out on the dance floor. Now,
Speaker 1: some people do that through alcohol, which is not what
Speaker 1: I'm recommending, but in you know, so you know, when
Speaker 1: people drink, they get less inhibited and they don't worry
Speaker 1: so much about what others think. Um at a dance
Speaker 1: conference that I designed at Stanford. It's called Designed for Dance.
Speaker 1: Everybody danced. It would I had to drop a hat.
Speaker 1: Everybody jump up a dance. At a different health conference
Speaker 1: I organized, people didn't. There was just a lot of fear.
Speaker 1: But then I handed out sunglasses. What was funny about
Speaker 1: that was when people put sunglasses on, that took away
Speaker 1: a D motivator and people started dancing because they felt
Speaker 1: less watched. You know, sunglasses give you the sense of
Speaker 1: being more anonymous, and so that was really it wasn't
Speaker 1: a true I mean, it wasn't like a lab experiment.
Speaker 1: It was just sort of a field test of what
Speaker 1: if I handed out sunglasses, were more people dance? And
Speaker 1: the answer is yes. And it's for exactly this dynamic
Speaker 1: where you're not motivating people to dance, you are taking
Speaker 1: away a D motivator, a fear of looking stupid or
Speaker 1: feeling stupid. Yeah, And I just thought that was was
Speaker 1: so well put. So let's go back to maybe behavior
Speaker 1: design two hundred from the jump in the head to
Speaker 1: three hundred, and let's talk about you know, one of
Speaker 1: the core things you say with troubleshooting and behavior right
Speaker 1: is to ask yourself how can I make this behavior
Speaker 1: easier to do? You call it the breakthrough question, so
Speaker 1: you know, just to put all this in context of
Speaker 1: everything else, I've come up with an idea. I've come
Speaker 1: up with behaviors I'm gonna do and I'm not doing them.
Speaker 1: I've looked and I've got Okay, I don't think it's
Speaker 1: a prompt issue. Um, let me check in on ability, right,
Speaker 1: and and abilities about how easy is it to do?
Speaker 1: So what are some ways we can make a behavior
Speaker 1: easier to do? Well, there's three general ways, um, but
Speaker 1: before you dive into that, you ask yourself the earlier
Speaker 1: question like what's making it hard to do? And if
Speaker 1: you have some insight, is it time? Then when you
Speaker 1: solve for it, you say, how do I get more time?
Speaker 1: If it's money, how do I get more money? Or
Speaker 1: how do I make it cheaper if it's physical effort
Speaker 1: and so on. So let's say it's time. Let's say
Speaker 1: that you want to meditate and you know it's just
Speaker 1: too hard to do, and then you figure out it's
Speaker 1: a time factor. So really you have three options. Uh.
Speaker 1: One is you can train the person or train yourself
Speaker 1: so you have more time. Number two, you can put
Speaker 1: a tooler resource in your context that would reduce the
Speaker 1: time required to do that behavior in this case meditate.
Speaker 1: And the third option you can do any one of
Speaker 1: these or multiple is you take the action the meditation,
Speaker 1: you scale it back and make it smaller. So instead
Speaker 1: of thinking about meditating for thirty minutes, meditated for three.
Speaker 1: So those are the three levers you have to pull.
Speaker 1: You can change the person, train them, or scale them up.
Speaker 1: You might get more effective at meditating and short bursts.
Speaker 1: For example, you can put a tooler resource in your environment.
Speaker 1: It might be a podcast directs you in meditation. That
Speaker 1: might be when you start on the TV, it goes
Speaker 1: right to meditation. Or you just scale it back and
Speaker 1: make it tiny. And that third one is the hack
Speaker 1: and tiny habits. You take any new habits you want,
Speaker 1: and yes, you redesign your environment so it's easy, but
Speaker 1: you also take the action itself and you scale it
Speaker 1: back to make it super tiny. Not you don't flush
Speaker 1: all your teeth, you flush just one. You don't do
Speaker 1: twenty push ups, you do just to um. You don't
Speaker 1: have to read a whole chapter in the book, read
Speaker 1: one paragraph. And that's a skill. Knowing how to scale
Speaker 1: it back and make that behavior super tiny. And you're
Speaker 1: asking such a good question, so I'm gonna preempt the
Speaker 1: next question. When you make it super tiny, the thing
Speaker 1: that shifts dramatically is you don't need high levels of
Speaker 1: motivation to do something that's really easy. So now you're
Speaker 1: not relying on motivation anymore. And so by making a
Speaker 1: tiny you kind of I call it the motivation monkey
Speaker 1: in the book, you kind of outsmart the motivation monkey
Speaker 1: because you've made it so small. You don't need much
Speaker 1: motivation to meditate for three minutes or to do two
Speaker 1: push ups right. And then further to elaborate on the
Speaker 1: tiny habit method, you do the change the habit, the
Speaker 1: tiny one, and then you celebrate. Celebration is a big,
Speaker 1: big thing for you because what celebration does is effects
Speaker 1: motivation and ability. So let's talk about what celebration is
Speaker 1: and why it's so important to your method. So celebration
Speaker 1: is the word that I selected for a technique that
Speaker 1: you do something that helps you feel successful in that moment.
Speaker 1: So it could be a fist pump. I think of
Speaker 1: Tiger Woods doing a fist pump. It can be upraised arms.
Speaker 1: I think of Michael phelp, you know, setting a world's record. Uh,
Speaker 1: it can be a little dance, it can be smiling yourself.
Speaker 1: Whatever that thing is that helps you feel happy and successful,
Speaker 1: you can use it as a celebration. And this feeling
Speaker 1: is what wires in the habit. So it's not repetition
Speaker 1: that creates the habit and will probably get there in
Speaker 1: a minute. It is the emotion. It's the feeling of success.
Speaker 1: So celebration is the technique to feel successful, and by
Speaker 1: doing an effective celebration, you are super charging the speed
Speaker 1: of habit formation. What happens to either motivation or ability
Speaker 1: as we celebrate, Well, when you celebrate, not only does
Speaker 1: it rewire your brain and make the behavior more automatic,
Speaker 1: more of a habit, but it also makes you want
Speaker 1: to do it more in the future. So it has
Speaker 1: a direct effect on motivation. The effect on ability is indirect.
Speaker 1: The more we do a behavior, the easier it becomes.
Speaker 1: So more often I washed my dog, you know, the
Speaker 1: first time I washed my dog is gonna take a while,
Speaker 1: and the next time I us in the next time
Speaker 1: and it gets easier and easier to do. Now there's
Speaker 1: a point where it's about as easy it can get.
Speaker 1: But as we're creating habits, the more we do the behavior,
Speaker 1: the easier it gets. And if we don't feel successful
Speaker 1: the first time we do a behavior, we may not
Speaker 1: do it again. So there's a direct connection between celebration
Speaker 1: and forming the habit. There's a direct connection between celebration
Speaker 1: and your motivation to do it again, and there's an
Speaker 1: indirect but real effect on the behavior becoming easier to do.
Speaker 1: So all of those things benefit from this technique called celebration.
Speaker 1: And I know some people listening to me are gonna
Speaker 1: think I'm crazy, and because this is not what you've
Speaker 1: heard before, this is not a traditional way, but it
Speaker 1: is the right way. And so let's take someone who
Speaker 1: is typically hard on themselves, right, somebody who feels like
Speaker 1: I should be able to go to the gym for
Speaker 1: an hour and a half and now I'm doing two
Speaker 1: push ups? How on earth do I feel good about that?
Speaker 1: There's a few reasons to feel good about that. So
Speaker 1: let's take I mean, push ups are a really good
Speaker 1: starting point if somebody wants to have like a fall
Speaker 1: on kind of workout routine, Starting with just two pushups
Speaker 1: and recognizing that as a success is a great way
Speaker 1: to go Uh, it is a success because as you
Speaker 1: do to push ups, and as you do it consistently,
Speaker 1: you are actually changing your behavior. It may not be
Speaker 1: a huge change, but it is a change. It is
Speaker 1: a change. And so one way to think about it is,
Speaker 1: here's all the times I've tried to change my behavior
Speaker 1: and it didn't work, and boom, I did the two pushups.
Speaker 1: I actually made a change good for me. Now. The
Speaker 1: ability to feel good about a tiny success is a skill.
Speaker 1: So I can't tell you exactly you know here it is,
Speaker 1: just do it. You'll have to play around with it,
Speaker 1: just like I could tell you how to dance or
Speaker 1: play the piano. But you kind of got to do
Speaker 1: it yourself to figure out what works for you. But
Speaker 1: I'll just call it out that as you allow yourself
Speaker 1: to feel successful about even the tiniest of successes, that
Speaker 1: will then open the door to a lot of ripple effects.
Speaker 1: So what happens is you start making other changes in
Speaker 1: your life, and then that habit will also grow. So
Speaker 1: to push ups will naturally grow to more flassing. One
Speaker 1: tooth will grow flassing all your teeth. Reading one paragraph
Speaker 1: will lead to reading more, and so on. One of
Speaker 1: the keys and tiny habits. Well, the phrase I often
Speaker 1: use is plant a tiny seed in a good spot
Speaker 1: and it will grow without further coaxing. The tiny seed
Speaker 1: is like the new habit. And then you find a
Speaker 1: good spot. Where does this fit naturally in my life?
Speaker 1: And that's important. We haven't quite talked about that yet, Eric.
Speaker 1: And then if you put it in a good spot, key,
Speaker 1: but nurture, it will naturally grow. And that's exactly how
Speaker 1: habits work. So you can start them tiny. It's easy
Speaker 1: to keep tiny ones nurtured and going and be consistent,
Speaker 1: and then it will naturally grow. And then how do
Speaker 1: we know when it's time to grow a habit? What
Speaker 1: ways to habits grow? How much do I grow? You know? Like,
Speaker 1: so okay, I start, I buy into the method. I'm like,
Speaker 1: all right, this makes sense. I haven't had any success
Speaker 1: with what I'm doing, so I'm gonna do this. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do my two push ups. But after i do
Speaker 1: my two push ups for a little while, and I'm
Speaker 1: even trying to celebrate it. Three quick cancers and you
Speaker 1: can fall upon anyone one of them. Is the idea
Speaker 1: that as you start tiny, if you want to do more,
Speaker 1: you can you can always do more if you want,
Speaker 1: and so you might push yourself the eight or twelve,
Speaker 1: but the habit is always just two, so you keep
Speaker 1: the bar low. So that's one way to think about it,
Speaker 1: and it's a really helpful way to think about it.
Speaker 1: If you keep raising the bar on yourself, then it's
Speaker 1: no longer tiny, and you won't be as consistent with
Speaker 1: the number one number two as you do a new
Speaker 1: behavior bigger, small, even small ones. And then this impart
Speaker 1: is kind of for one of the breakthroughs in the method.
Speaker 1: As you feel successful on even doing new behavior that's
Speaker 1: super tiny, you will naturally start doing other behaviors that
Speaker 1: are consistent with that new one. So as soon as
Speaker 1: you start eating let's a cauliflower as an afternoon snack
Speaker 1: and you feel successful, you will then start making other
Speaker 1: eating habits. Naturally, success leads to success within the domain.
Speaker 1: And then the other thing that happens, and I mentioned
Speaker 1: this a little bit earlier, is that the tiny habit
Speaker 1: will grow. You will develop more capacity to cook more
Speaker 1: healthy vegetables, or do more push ups, or read more
Speaker 1: or what have you. That's just a natural growth. So
Speaker 1: you have a multiplication of the habit. And then you
Speaker 1: have the habit growing at the same time. So there
Speaker 1: are different ways that something tiny can grow big. And
Speaker 1: I don't like to tell people just be patient and
Speaker 1: trust the process of change, because nobody wants to hear
Speaker 1: be patient. But people need to understand that it is
Speaker 1: a process like growing a seed or a tiny plant,
Speaker 1: and if you keep it nurtured and if the roots
Speaker 1: get established, it will grow. So focus on getting the
Speaker 1: roots established firmly, that's the automaticity in your life, and
Speaker 1: then keep it nurtured and it will grow. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: have an example of this in my own life, and
Speaker 1: listeners have heard this story before, perhaps, but I had
Speaker 1: been on again, off again meditator for two decades, probably
Speaker 1: more than that, where I just would get all inspired
Speaker 1: and I try and meditate, and I'd read like, we
Speaker 1: need to meditate for thirty minutes a day. So I'd
Speaker 1: sit down and meditate for thirty minutes a day, and
Speaker 1: I might gut it out for a day, a week,
Speaker 1: a month, but inevitably it was too hard for me
Speaker 1: or I didn't have the time or whatever right, and
Speaker 1: it would it would die completely, and then three months
Speaker 1: might go by, or six months would go by. Inevitably,
Speaker 1: I would pick up another book and I'd read about
Speaker 1: how important meditation is and we'd we'd repeat the cycle.
Speaker 1: That's such a great example. Yeah, yeah. And so finally,
Speaker 1: it was shortly before I started the podcast, so we're
Speaker 1: six plus years. I just went all right, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: do three minutes. I'm gonna meditate for three minutes, but
Speaker 1: I'm going to do it every single day. And sure enough,
Speaker 1: that worked, and you know, now I meditate much closer
Speaker 1: to thirty minutes every day. Even there were some other
Speaker 1: changes I made to my mindset, some of the stuff
Speaker 1: that we've talked about here about being easier on myself
Speaker 1: and what I expected out of meditation, But that change
Speaker 1: was fundamental, which is why when I sort of stumbled
Speaker 1: into your work a little bit later, I was like, yes,
Speaker 1: that's exactly right, because because I sort of found my
Speaker 1: way there and it's made all the difference in the world.
Speaker 1: And and the only other thing I would add to
Speaker 1: that is if I miss which occasionally happens, and I
Speaker 1: start to struggle, I will give myself permission to drop
Speaker 1: back down from like, okay, well normally I do thirty minutes,
Speaker 1: but you know what, I'm struggling, So I'm going to
Speaker 1: give myself permission to do five or ten and get
Speaker 1: the habit kind of going again and then sort of
Speaker 1: allow it to build. Yeah, I think you did exactly right.
Speaker 1: Meditation is a hard habit to form, and one of
Speaker 1: the reasons is that as we are trying to meditate,
Speaker 1: we're not feeling successful. We're probably noticing how busy our
Speaker 1: minds are. And the thing that wires in a habit
Speaker 1: is the feeling of success, like I talked about earlier,
Speaker 1: So if you're feeling like a failure, then your brain
Speaker 1: doesn't want to do that again. Your brain wants to
Speaker 1: feel successful. So if you can feel successful, then it
Speaker 1: will become more and more automatic. And if you feel
Speaker 1: super successful the first time you do something, it can
Speaker 1: wire in. Like I call it an instant habit, meditation stuff,
Speaker 1: it's not going to become an instant habit because we
Speaker 1: just become aware of the business of our minds. So
Speaker 1: by scaling it back and lowering the bar giving yourself
Speaker 1: ref you did it exactly right. And one of the
Speaker 1: analogies that I talked about a little bit in Tiny Habits,
Speaker 1: and I really wanted to put it throughout the book,
Speaker 1: but my editors were like, no, we're not doing you know, now,
Speaker 1: don't dude too much of this. But I think it's
Speaker 1: a powerful analogy is to think of your habits as
Speaker 1: a garden. So imagine you have an acre of land
Speaker 1: and you've got different plants and trees growing there. You
Speaker 1: can either design them or not. If you don't design them,
Speaker 1: you'll get weeds. And every different plant or tree is
Speaker 1: going to be a different size, and there's going to
Speaker 1: be different places for the different plants and trees, just
Speaker 1: like there's different places in our life for different habits.
Speaker 1: And the meditation habit may not fit in a certain
Speaker 1: part of your garden, there's certain part of your day,
Speaker 1: but it may fit beautifully in a different spot. So
Speaker 1: one of the things that to be really good at
Speaker 1: creating habits, and this is a skill, and I explain
Speaker 1: how in the book is to find where does this
Speaker 1: new habit fit naturally in my day? Yes, you need
Speaker 1: to feel successful while you're doing it, so it wires in.
Speaker 1: But one of the keys is where does this fit naturally?
Speaker 1: If you're super busy in the morning, the meditation is
Speaker 1: probably not going to fit there, and less you make
Speaker 1: it really tiny, and I'm gonna keep extending the analogy
Speaker 1: here and you can. You can make it really tiny
Speaker 1: in the morning and then transplant once it gets going,
Speaker 1: and once you have some more skill and motivation, you
Speaker 1: can actually transplant to another part of your day. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you did that, Eric, but uh, in
Speaker 1: the people I've coached, that is a common thing. We'll
Speaker 1: start it in one place and then they'll transplant it,
Speaker 1: just like a plant, and it can go somewhere else,
Speaker 1: and then it will expand more. So if you don't
Speaker 1: have thirty minutes in your morning, you can get started
Speaker 1: with a tiny meditation habit, and then as you start
Speaker 1: building skill and motivation and feelings success around it, move
Speaker 1: it to another spot of your day where you have
Speaker 1: twenty or thirty minutes, so it can expand and fill
Speaker 1: that space. Yeah, that's a great metaphor, and it has
Speaker 1: kind of moved around depending on kind of what's happening
Speaker 1: in life and where it does fit. And I think
Speaker 1: what you said about success is so important. That was
Speaker 1: the other fundamental shift I made as I went. You
Speaker 1: know what, if I sit down and meditate, I get
Speaker 1: an A plus no matter what happens during that time
Speaker 1: and if I don't, then I don't. I got completely
Speaker 1: out of the m I any good at this game,
Speaker 1: because you're right sitting there, you just are like, why
Speaker 1: would I want to do something that I feel like
Speaker 1: I'm failing at literally every three seconds, and you did
Speaker 1: it exactly right now. The plant analogy, I said, My
Speaker 1: editors reined me in on that, and that's fine. I
Speaker 1: may write a lot more on that, uh later in
Speaker 1: a different book. But what the people working with me
Speaker 1: did very well. So I tend to be a person
Speaker 1: that's like, do this, do this, do this very instructional
Speaker 1: and very practical, and they're like, no, let's bring in
Speaker 1: these true stories. You've helped all these people transform their lives.
Speaker 1: Let's tell those stories in detail. And so helping me
Speaker 1: bring those stories in and helping me understand that a
Speaker 1: story that is two pages long is okay and that's
Speaker 1: what readers want. So there's a story about a woman
Speaker 1: who kicked her sugar addiction, a story about a woman
Speaker 1: who was super depressed, near suicidal and pulled out of
Speaker 1: it using tiny habits and celebration. Story about as you
Speaker 1: saw a man who had a terrible relationship with his
Speaker 1: adult son, and he used the troubleshooting part of Chinese
Speaker 1: habits to repair it. And a man who middle aged
Speaker 1: man who was overweight and couldn't seem to get on
Speaker 1: top of it, transformed his life and became almost like
Speaker 1: this fitness guru. And so I really appreciate the people
Speaker 1: who helped me bring in those true stories and see
Speaker 1: how valuable those are. That's not my natural way of teaching,
Speaker 1: because I just want to like, here's the information, now
Speaker 1: I apply it. But having these true stories, and I
Speaker 1: made it clear to them every story there has to
Speaker 1: be true. I'm a scientist. My integrity and credibility reads
Speaker 1: on being absolutely so all the stories are true. And
Speaker 1: then when I took like a month break from the book,
Speaker 1: be you do get a break, and I came back
Speaker 1: and read them as a a new naive reader. It's like,
Speaker 1: my gosh, I see why these are so powerful. I
Speaker 1: get it, I feel it. I'm not going to forget
Speaker 1: this story. And then there's instruction that tells me how
Speaker 1: to achieve the same thing. So I still tell people
Speaker 1: to how to everything. And you probably saw in the
Speaker 1: appendices the detailed flow charts which I wanted to put
Speaker 1: right in the book, like everything step by step, and
Speaker 1: they're like, oh no, no, no, somebody's gonna open the book,
Speaker 1: see a flow chart and close it and they're not
Speaker 1: going to buy it. So X can go on the
Speaker 1: appendix and and they're right. And so it was really
Speaker 1: great to have people help me understand the kind of
Speaker 1: book that can reach everyone, you know, telling the true
Speaker 1: stories of lives transform. Yeah. I agree. I think it
Speaker 1: is a very good summation of your work and really
Speaker 1: puts it into context when you see how people have
Speaker 1: actually used it. I think it really adds an element
Speaker 1: to it, and I think the book is really wonderful,
Speaker 1: and I think this is a good place for us
Speaker 1: to wrap up. You and I will talk a little
Speaker 1: bit more in the post show conversation and where we're
Speaker 1: gonna run through actually the seven steps in behavior design.
Speaker 1: We've kind of hit a couple of them here, but
Speaker 1: we're going to kind of stack it together and we'll
Speaker 1: do that in the post show conversation. Listeners, If you'd
Speaker 1: like access to that and all kinds of other good
Speaker 1: stuff and support the show, you can go to one
Speaker 1: you feed, dot Net, slash support Eric let me raise
Speaker 1: it the bar here a little bit. I will also
Speaker 1: share the name of the emotion that you feel when
Speaker 1: you're feeling successful. I did all this research called experts.
Speaker 1: There's no name for it, and so in the book
Speaker 1: I name it, and then the post show we'll talk
Speaker 1: about that perfect. All right, listeners, there you go. B J.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for coming on. It's been a
Speaker 1: pleasure talking with you again. Thank you. If what you
Speaker 1: just heard was helpful to you, please consider making good
Speaker 1: nation to the One you Feed podcast. Head over to
Speaker 1: one you Feed dot net slash support. The One You
Speaker 1: Feed podcast would like to sincerely thank our sponsors for
Speaker 1: supporting the show.