Speaker 1: Hey everybody, it's Eric from the one you feed and
Speaker 1: I'm back to do another mini episode. But before we
Speaker 1: get started, I want to remind you that the window
Speaker 1: to enroll in the coaching program is quickly closing. On
Speaker 1: Wednesday at eleven pm. Well you get it, We're gonna
Speaker 1: shut the whole thing down. And so if you want
Speaker 1: to learn more about the coaching program to decide if
Speaker 1: you're interested in enrolling, go to one. You feed dot
Speaker 1: net slash Coaching program or text Wolf to six six
Speaker 1: eight six six. So again, the window is quickly coming
Speaker 1: to an end. If you're interested one, you feed dot
Speaker 1: net slash Coaching program or text wolf to six six
Speaker 1: eight six six. And if you do either those things,
Speaker 1: you'll get the five biggest mistakes people make when they're
Speaker 1: trying to change behavior. Last week we talked about mistake
Speaker 1: number one, which was starting too large. This week we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about mistake number two, which is trying
Speaker 1: to end to behavior without putting something else in its place.
Speaker 1: There's that old saying that nature of horrors a vacuum.
Speaker 1: If we've been doing something for so long, it's such
Speaker 1: a habit, and it's become so mindless and effortless that
Speaker 1: when we stop doing it, we've got this void there
Speaker 1: that we need to somehow fill. So an example I'll
Speaker 1: use from my own recovery is, you know, that's one
Speaker 1: of the main ways that twelve step programs work is
Speaker 1: that the time that you spent drinking, you can now
Speaker 1: spend going to meetings. Uh, the socializing that you had
Speaker 1: at the bar, you can make up for by meeting
Speaker 1: people at the meetings. So it's a it's intended to
Speaker 1: kind of plug again that gap. Another example for my
Speaker 1: drinking days is after I stopped drinking this last time,
Speaker 1: I would drive every day by the bar that I
Speaker 1: would always stop at and have a drink, And so
Speaker 1: during that time I made it a ritual to start
Speaker 1: calling a friend and just talking to a person for
Speaker 1: a few minutes. Some of it was to keep me
Speaker 1: from going in, but it was really more about filling
Speaker 1: that space with something else, so I didn't feel it's
Speaker 1: absence and I didn't feel the temptation. The other principle
Speaker 1: that underlies this is that most times, if we're doing
Speaker 1: a negative behavior we want to get rid of, we're
Speaker 1: doing it for some reason. It's meeting some need of ours.
Speaker 1: So what can we put in its place that meets
Speaker 1: that need. So if every day after work, you're after
Speaker 1: work reward is to have a big snack right when
Speaker 1: you get home, and then you eat again a little
Speaker 1: bit later, and you're trying to cut that snack out,
Speaker 1: trying to watch the calories, you could put something in
Speaker 1: its place instead of doing that. You could take a
Speaker 1: walk around the block, or you could sit down own
Speaker 1: and read something from a book that is positive or encouraging,
Speaker 1: or you could play a video game if you like
Speaker 1: doing that thing. The point is to be very clear
Speaker 1: on what you're going to put in its place so
Speaker 1: that you're not drawn is easily back into that behavior.
Speaker 1: In behavior change, we talk a lot about a trigger.
Speaker 1: So a trigger happens and that that triggers a habit
Speaker 1: to to occur. Those triggers remain the same. So one
Speaker 1: of the great ways to change, you know, change a
Speaker 1: bad habit into a good habit, is you keep the
Speaker 1: trigger the same. The trigger is coming home from work,
Speaker 1: but what happens after that trigger changes from having the
Speaker 1: snack to taking a walk. But then you've got the
Speaker 1: trigger built in and it's a trigger that you're used
Speaker 1: to and it's a really good idea to figure these
Speaker 1: things out in advance so you know what they are,
Speaker 1: because you want this to become as habitual as the
Speaker 1: previous bad habit was, So you want to know that
Speaker 1: when X occurs, then I do why and have that
Speaker 1: very clear. Another variation on this principle is, if you
Speaker 1: want to eat well, you need to make sure that
Speaker 1: you have good food in the house because you're gonna
Speaker 1: get hungry. The trigger is going to be hunger, and
Speaker 1: if you don't have something good to eat around, then
Speaker 1: you're gonna eat something bad. This is probably the primary
Speaker 1: cause of when I have trouble with eating well. The
Speaker 1: reason why it's because I haven't put anything there that's
Speaker 1: particularly good, and so the time comes, I'm hungry and
Speaker 1: the nearest and most convenient thing is a vending machine.
Speaker 1: So that's it for this week. Remember if you're going
Speaker 1: to try and stop a bad behavior, find something positive
Speaker 1: to put in its place. And remember the one you
Speaker 1: Feed coaching program is enrollment is open until May PM.
Speaker 1: Go to one you Feed dot net slash coaching program
Speaker 1: or text wolf to six six eight six six. I
Speaker 1: look forward to hearing from many of you. Thanks for
Speaker 1: listening as always, and we'll see on Tuesday with another episode.
Speaker 1: Take care, bye,