Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hey, Happiness Lab listeners, welcome back to our special
Speaker 1: series on spring Cleaning Your Happiness. In honor of this
Speaker 1: season of new beginnings, we're clearing out all our outdated
Speaker 1: behaviors and mindsets so that we can refresh our emotional
Speaker 1: junk drawers, so to speak. We'll also be doing our
Speaker 1: own Happiness Lab closet refresh as we head back into
Speaker 1: the episode archives to find throwback insights from past episodes
Speaker 1: that you might have missed, And in today's episode from
Speaker 1: the archives, we're diving into a very tough spring clean
Speaker 1: up job. We'll be exploring how to freshen up our habits. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm going to go out on a limb and guess
Speaker 1: that there's at least one routine that you do on
Speaker 1: autopilot all the time, even though it makes you feel
Speaker 1: kind of crappy. Wouldn't you like to break free, to
Speaker 1: toss out that bad habit like an old pair of genes,
Speaker 1: and replace it with a routine that fits your current
Speaker 1: goals a bit better. That sounds awesome in theory, you're
Speaker 1: probably thinking, but is it really possible to break a
Speaker 1: well learned bad habit? Turns out yes, totally possible, but
Speaker 1: the process is way easier if you have a more
Speaker 1: nuanced understanding of the way our brains structure habits and
Speaker 1: how they really work. And that is what you're going
Speaker 1: to learn in our episode. Today. You're going to meet
Speaker 1: a scientist who sleeps in her running gear and a
Speaker 1: Vietnam war doc who turned to heroin addicts to debink
Speaker 1: some important misconceptions about habit change. By the end of
Speaker 1: the show, you'll have gained some practical tips for dropping
Speaker 1: your own not so great routines and for building healthier ones.
Speaker 1: Sound good, We'll get ready to clear out all your
Speaker 1: bad habits with this week's Spring Cleaning Happiness Lab throwback
Speaker 1: coming up right after this quick break.
Speaker 2: For starters. It was the last thing I particularly wanted
Speaker 2: to do.
Speaker 1: Like many young Americans back in nineteen seventy, Richard Ratner
Speaker 1: wasn't all that excited about going to war.
Speaker 2: I had just been married, and when I found out
Speaker 2: that I was going to Vietnam, we try to figure
Speaker 2: out any way to get out of it, you know,
Speaker 2: which involved oh, I don't know, talking to the military
Speaker 2: and Stane whether it's assignment could be changed. None of
Speaker 2: it worked. They were well prepared for people who didn't
Speaker 2: want to go.
Speaker 1: The army didn't want to hear Richard's excuses. As a
Speaker 1: newly qualified doctor, he had just the skills that the
Speaker 1: military desperately needed. Richard was one of many American men
Speaker 1: who were plucked from their civilian lives and forced into
Speaker 1: the armed services. September fourteen, zero zero won. There was
Speaker 1: even a televised lottery draw where young men were selected
Speaker 1: from military service and in Vietnam based on their birthday.
Speaker 2: April twenty four is zero zero two.
Speaker 1: Richard was lucky enough to delay his service until after
Speaker 1: his medical training, but arriving in Saigon as a twenty
Speaker 1: something new doctor was still a shock to the system.
Speaker 2: We are in buses where they have this steel mash
Speaker 2: covering the windows, and I'm absolutely sure that any minute
Speaker 2: someone is going to toss a lamb at us.
Speaker 1: But Richard wasn't a trained surgeon heading to Vietnam to
Speaker 1: take care of bullet wounds. He was a psychiatrist, but
Speaker 1: he still wouldn't be treating depression or even PTSD. Richard
Speaker 1: was about to use his training to wage a war
Speaker 1: against bad habits, the kind of behaviors we really want
Speaker 1: to change, but somehow can't. Richard would soon learn that
Speaker 1: our habits don't always work the way we think. His
Speaker 1: findings not only shocked scientists, but also change the way
Speaker 1: that researchers think about the science of behavior change even
Speaker 1: decades later, and his story provides some important hints for
Speaker 1: how we can win our own personal battles with the
Speaker 1: bad habits that her our happiness. Our minds are constantly
Speaker 1: telling us what to do to be happy. But what
Speaker 1: if our minds are wrong? What if our minds are
Speaker 1: lying to us, leading us away from what will really
Speaker 1: make us happy. The good news is that understanding the
Speaker 1: science of the mind can point us all back in
Speaker 1: the right direction. You're listening to the Happiness Lab of
Speaker 1: doctor Laurie Santos.
Speaker 2: You got to have those shoes shined. You got to
Speaker 2: show up at formation. You know, you have to have
Speaker 2: your bed made.
Speaker 1: Richard's soldiers were trapped in Vietnam, far away from home.
Speaker 1: Some were facing life or death situations on the battlefield,
Speaker 1: but according to Richard, the biggest enemy many soldiers faced
Speaker 1: was back in the barracks. It was boredom. Away from combat,
Speaker 1: soldiers spent their days doing repetitive tasks that they didn't enjoy,
Speaker 1: shining boots, dealing with annoying superior officers, and generally just
Speaker 1: not having anything fun to do. And that's why many
Speaker 1: of them wound up turning to a particularly bad habit,
Speaker 1: one that the army really didn't approve of.
Speaker 2: People would just kind of get high, and you know,
Speaker 2: not necessarily that different from if you come home from
Speaker 2: a hard day at the steel mill and you know,
Speaker 2: go into the bar and have a few drinks. It's
Speaker 2: not totally unlike.
Speaker 1: That, yeah, but you know, what was available wasn't a
Speaker 1: few drinks, at least for the soldiers who weren't twenty one.
Speaker 1: What was available was like incredibly hardcore heroine exactly.
Speaker 2: The first phase was where soldiers were smoking marijuana. If
Speaker 2: you're smoking weed, it's not going to take too long
Speaker 2: for it to waft down to where the first sergeants
Speaker 2: Woch was and he'd come up looking for you.
Speaker 1: Conveniently enough, soldiers had access to a less smelly drug option.
Speaker 1: With the Golden Triangle, a massive area of poppy production
Speaker 1: just across the border, suppliers were ready and willing to
Speaker 1: sell an alternative drug to US troops heroin.
Speaker 2: They could do it under the nose of the commanding officers,
Speaker 2: and it was a great deal more potent.
Speaker 1: As one GI addict told The New York Times, the
Speaker 1: skag was everywhere. Estimates very, but it's generally thought that
Speaker 1: around twenty percent of low ranking soldiers used heroin. The
Speaker 1: Times called the addiction rates an epidemic. With hundreds of
Speaker 1: thousands of American troops stationed all over Vietnam, the government
Speaker 1: was worried that gis would return to their families as
Speaker 1: desperate junkies.
Speaker 2: This notion that we had a whole army full of
Speaker 2: drug crazed people who were going to be unleashed on
Speaker 2: these communities truly had people frightened. The Army announced that
Speaker 2: anybody who was dependent on heroin could report to the
Speaker 2: Amnesty Center. They would not be arrested or charged with
Speaker 2: criminal activities. They could come, they could detox and then
Speaker 2: go home. You know, no harm, no foul.
Speaker 1: The American public demanded action, so, without a better plan,
Speaker 1: the Army opted to force the gis to go cold
Speaker 1: turkey when they.
Speaker 2: Came into the detox center. We did not taper them
Speaker 2: off on heroin. I really had no idea, and I
Speaker 2: was sort of frantically trying to get information on how
Speaker 2: does one properly detox somebody.
Speaker 1: But what Richard had even less of an idea about
Speaker 1: was how he was going to help soldiers stay clean
Speaker 1: once they got home. I mean, heroin isn't just any
Speaker 1: old bad habit, It's an incredibly addictive substance. By making
Speaker 1: his soldiers go cold turkey, Richard could help his men
Speaker 1: get through the withdrawal phase, that first step to breaking
Speaker 1: the physical part of their addiction. But the bigger challenge
Speaker 1: was helping them avoid the behavioral parts of their addiction,
Speaker 1: that habit of turning to heroin in order to feel
Speaker 1: better whenever they were feeling depressed or bored or stressed,
Speaker 1: the almost automatic urge to reduce their craving with a
Speaker 1: quick hit. Simply hoping that these men would have the
Speaker 1: willpower to avoid heroin wasn't going to be enough.
Speaker 2: Here we have these guys who are eighteen nineteen, and
Speaker 2: when a little too much pressure is put on them,
Speaker 2: they pop.
Speaker 1: At the time, Richard was worried that there was no
Speaker 1: way to avert this wave of addiction. Sure, the men
Speaker 1: could detox at his center, but no one seemed to
Speaker 1: know what to do to help them and overcome their
Speaker 1: awful habit so that they could become healthier and happier. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm guessing most people listening to this podcast won't ever
Speaker 1: face a behavioral challenge as hard as kicking heroin. But
Speaker 1: like those soldiers, all of us have bad habits that
Speaker 1: detract from our health and happiness. You don't need to
Speaker 1: be an opioid drug user to understand that it can
Speaker 1: be difficult to change are not so good ways, and
Speaker 1: the science suggests that the everyday habits that plague us
Speaker 1: can sometimes be just as hard to overcome as the
Speaker 1: addictive kind. The problem is that the path to happiness
Speaker 1: requires changing a lot of these habitual bad behaviors. We
Speaker 1: need to stop griping, we need to put down our phones,
Speaker 1: and we need to stop craving material possessions. But how
Speaker 1: do we do that? If you're like me, it probably
Speaker 1: feels like changing these repeated behaviors is really really challenging.
Speaker 1: But what our lying minds don't realize is that we
Speaker 1: have a powerful mental tool that really could help us
Speaker 1: achieve lasting behavioral change with ease, if only we understood
Speaker 1: how that tool worked. I wanted to learn more about
Speaker 1: why our intuitions about behavior change were so bad, and
Speaker 1: I knew just the person to ask.
Speaker 3: My name is Wendy Wood. I am Professor of Psychology
Speaker 3: and Business here at the University of Southern California.
Speaker 1: Wendy is the author of a new book, Good Habits,
Speaker 1: Bad Habits, The Science of making positive changes that stick.
Speaker 3: Most of us are very good at understanding what we
Speaker 3: need to do better to be healthier, to be more
Speaker 3: financially stable, to have happier families. Most of us know
Speaker 3: what those things are.
Speaker 1: The problem, according to Wendy, is that most of us
Speaker 1: mistakenly think that changing our behavior requires willpower and hard work.
Speaker 3: I think that we admire willpower and we view it
Speaker 3: as a very positive attribute. The way that the Puritans
Speaker 3: thought they would go to heaven is through self denial
Speaker 3: and showing that they were strong enough to resist temptations.
Speaker 1: But there's a problem with this. Willpower is next to
Speaker 1: godliness notion, and that is that willpower doesn't really work.
Speaker 3: When you exert willpower and control your behavior, what you're
Speaker 3: doing is you are thinking about the thing that you
Speaker 3: don't want to do, and in doing so, you give
Speaker 3: it energy to keep re emerging. So there's a sort
Speaker 3: of a self defeating aspect to willpower that gets in
Speaker 3: our way.
Speaker 1: So if willpower doesn't work, what can we actually do
Speaker 1: to successfully tam our bad habits. The answer is that
Speaker 1: we need to be working smarter, not harder.
Speaker 3: When you observe people when they are being effective at
Speaker 3: controlling their behavior and doing the right thing, say eating
Speaker 3: healthfully or saving money for the future, what they're doing
Speaker 3: is they're not exerting willpower. What people do is they
Speaker 3: set up the situations around them to make it easy
Speaker 3: to repeat the desired behavior, and they repeat it over
Speaker 3: and over so that it becomes automatic. We don't realize
Speaker 3: how much of that we really could harness if we
Speaker 3: just knew how it worked.
Speaker 1: When we get back from the break, we'll do just that.
Speaker 1: We'll take a deep dive into how habits work and
Speaker 1: how you can harness them to behave in ways that
Speaker 1: promote your health and your happiness. The Happiness Lab will
Speaker 1: be right back.
Speaker 3: I get up in the morning, I walk into my
Speaker 3: kitchen and making coffee is the first thing that comes
Speaker 3: to mind.
Speaker 1: Psychologist and behavior change expert Wendy Would knows that engaging
Speaker 1: in routine is the secret to changing our bad behaviors.
Speaker 3: I don't ask myself how to do it. I don't
Speaker 3: need to do that. I've done it so often in
Speaker 3: the past. I don't ask myself whether I want coffee?
Speaker 3: Am I really tired this morning? Do I need coffee?
Speaker 3: I don't ask those questions. I just do it, and
Speaker 3: then in the end I get the reward of repeating
Speaker 3: what I've done in the past, which is that great
Speaker 3: cup of coffee. And that's how people who are really
Speaker 3: successful at meeting their goals, that's how they do it.
Speaker 1: Wendy's morning coffee making illustrates a willpower free strategy that
Speaker 1: all of us can use to change our behavior for
Speaker 1: the better. It's called habit formation.
Speaker 3: Habits are just the behaviors we repeat until they become
Speaker 3: sort of mental shortcuts. There's shortcuts about what you can
Speaker 3: do that's likely to get you the same reward as
Speaker 3: you got in the past.
Speaker 1: Habits canform for any repeated behavior that gets us a reward,
Speaker 1: whether that reward is ultimately good for us, like a
Speaker 1: nice cup of coffee in the morning, or bad for us,
Speaker 1: like a shot of heroin. But Wendy's work has shown
Speaker 1: the good habits and bad habits work exactly the same way.
Speaker 1: They have a very particular structure, one that involves three
Speaker 1: critical parts. The first critical part of habit formation is
Speaker 1: the reward.
Speaker 3: Rewards here are just behaviors that meet your goals, behaviors
Speaker 3: that make you feel good, behaviors that achieve some outcome
Speaker 3: that you're looking for.
Speaker 1: For morning, Wendy, that reward was having the positive taste
Speaker 1: of a nice cup of coffee. But habit formation can
Speaker 1: involve lots of other kinds of rewards too. The endorphins
Speaker 1: that kick in after a good exercise session, the reduced
Speaker 1: boredom we feel after we do a quick social media check,
Speaker 1: or the satisfaction you get learning something new from your
Speaker 1: favorite podcast. Anything that feels nice or meets a goal
Speaker 1: can serve as a reward that leads to a new habit.
Speaker 1: But habits not only require a reward at the end.
Speaker 1: They also have a second critical component, the routine. A
Speaker 1: routine is the specific sequence of actions that gets us
Speaker 1: to a reward. For Wendy's caffeine habit, that might be
Speaker 1: each step she takes to make her morning coffee. If
Speaker 1: you're a yoga lover like me, your routine might involve
Speaker 1: grabbing your mat and driving to your favorite studio. The
Speaker 1: science shows that having a specific routine is critical to
Speaker 1: habit formation, in part because our minds care about them
Speaker 1: a lot. In fact, when your brain experience is something wonderful,
Speaker 1: it drops everything to remember the exact sequence of whatever
Speaker 1: you just did to get that reward, and when it
Speaker 1: lays down a new memory of that sequence, it definitely
Speaker 1: doesn't want to screw anything up, and so it doesn't
Speaker 1: just remember what you did as a bunch of individual
Speaker 1: action steps. Instead, it stores your whole sequence of behaviors
Speaker 1: as a single solitary routine, what researchers call chunking. It
Speaker 1: even uses a totally different neural system to do so.
Speaker 3: When you're repeating a task that you have practiced many
Speaker 3: times in the past, you are relying on something called
Speaker 3: the sensorymotor system, which involves the protament, which is part
Speaker 3: of the basic anglia, and when you start a new task,
Speaker 3: in contrast, using much more of the frontal lobes, because
Speaker 3: those are the active thinking parts of your brain. And
Speaker 3: these two things are definitely connected, but they also function
Speaker 3: somewhat independent line.
Speaker 1: And that's why habits are such fantastic mental shortcut because
Speaker 1: we don't need our conscious thinking frontal lobes to remember
Speaker 1: each individual action. Whenever we want a reward, the unconscious
Speaker 1: bits of our brain can just hit go and our
Speaker 1: minds get the entire perfectly stored routine for.
Speaker 3: Free driving is the prototypic habo. It's something we have
Speaker 3: to think about when we first learn to do it,
Speaker 3: but then over time that thought becomes less and less necessary,
Speaker 3: and we start just responding automatically based on what we
Speaker 3: did in the past, and that achieves the goal of
Speaker 3: getting us somewhere we want to go, and it does
Speaker 3: so efficiently and quickly most of the time, unless you
Speaker 3: live in la and then there's nothing efficient about driving.
Speaker 1: I want to focus in on this lack of awareness
Speaker 1: for a second because it's really weird when you think
Speaker 1: about it. I mean, our driving routine involves tracking lots
Speaker 1: of complicated stuff, from where your right foot is to
Speaker 1: how fast your car is going, to whether there are
Speaker 1: pedestrians about to cross the street, to where other cars
Speaker 1: are moving, to when a traffic light might change, to
Speaker 1: when you need to click your turn signal, and to
Speaker 1: whether you have your radio set to your favorite podcast.
Speaker 1: It's amazing that we can juggle all that information at all,
Speaker 1: let alone that we can do so easily and unconsciously.
Speaker 1: But that is the amazing psychological power of habits. Once
Speaker 1: we form a new habit, we get to engage in
Speaker 1: all kinds of complicated behaviors without a moment's thought. And
Speaker 1: that's why habits are so much more effective than willpower
Speaker 1: for changing our behaviors. Once we make the things we
Speaker 1: want to do habitual, they don't require any more work.
Speaker 1: The problem, though, is that not all of our unconscious
Speaker 1: habitual behaviors are good for us.
Speaker 3: So sitting on the couch when you get home at
Speaker 3: night and eating potato chips that's just as much of
Speaker 3: a habit as going home and then just heading out
Speaker 3: to the gym. One looks habitual and star structured to us,
Speaker 3: and the other might look sort of a bit lazier,
Speaker 3: but they're both habits in the same way.
Speaker 1: Sadly, those lazier, not so good for us routines are
Speaker 1: just as automatic as our positive habits, which means that
Speaker 1: our bad habits, the ones that inhibit our happiness, are
Speaker 1: really really hard to shed. We might want to shut
Speaker 1: those habits off, but we can't because our minds are
Speaker 1: on autopilot, but Wendy's work shows that we do have
Speaker 1: some control over when our habit routines get turned on
Speaker 1: whether our minds unconsciously decide to execute that sit on
Speaker 1: the couch and munch behavior or the throw on our
Speaker 1: gym closed one. The answer comes from the third critical
Speaker 1: part of our habit loops, the context. The context is
Speaker 1: any part of our situation or environment that cues our behavior.
Speaker 1: For Wendy's coffee habit, the context was a location, being
Speaker 1: in her kitchen and a time of day it was morning,
Speaker 1: and a preceding event she had just woken up. For
Speaker 1: Richard Heroin addicts, the context might be their barracks, or
Speaker 1: the site of other gis using drugs, or just being
Speaker 1: in Vietnam.
Speaker 3: In our research, we've found that context can be pretty
Speaker 3: much everything around you that's not you. It can be
Speaker 3: the people that you're with. There are certain people who
Speaker 3: trigger certain behaviors that we've done with them in the past.
Speaker 3: You may have friends that you typically go and have
Speaker 3: a drink with, and if you see them again, that's
Speaker 3: what tends to come to mind. The moods we're in
Speaker 3: can also be triggers, so I think that one of
Speaker 3: the most common triggers for checking your cell phone is
Speaker 3: being bored. Even if you're in a meeting and it's
Speaker 3: quite rude, you may find yourself checking your phone. You
Speaker 3: don't want to be rude, but the idea of your
Speaker 3: phone just comes to mind when you're bored.
Speaker 1: When our brains notice a context that's associated with the habit,
Speaker 1: one that goes with a particular routine and a certain
Speaker 1: kind of reward, we get an incredibly strong urge to
Speaker 1: execute the habitual behavior, even if it's a behavior that's
Speaker 1: no longer useful or relevant. In fact, Wendy's work has
Speaker 1: shown that cues can elicit habitual behavior even when the
Speaker 1: rewards from those behaviors aren't even there anymore. She tested
Speaker 1: this out in a clever study involving movie trailer screenings.
Speaker 1: One group of subjects watched the movie trailers on a
Speaker 1: computer in Wendy's lab, just like a typical study, but
Speaker 1: a second group of subjects got to watch the trailers
Speaker 1: inside a movie theater. Wendy was interested in whether the
Speaker 1: movie theater cues spurred on a habitual movie going behavior,
Speaker 1: popcorn eating, but she also wanted to know whether her
Speaker 1: subjects would engage in that habitual behavior even when it
Speaker 1: was no longer rewarded to do that. She varied the
Speaker 1: deliciousness of the popcorn she offered.
Speaker 3: Some people got popcorn that was stale, and it was
Speaker 3: really stale, so it had been sitting in our lab
Speaker 3: for a week in a plastic bag. It was pretty gross.
Speaker 3: Others got popcorn that was fresh that had just been pomped.
Speaker 1: Very few people who watched the film in the lab
Speaker 1: ate the gross popcorn. They didn't have any cues that
Speaker 1: pushed them to engage in an otherwise yucky behavior. But
Speaker 1: what happened to the subjects who experienced all the normal
Speaker 1: cues of being inside a cinema, Well, it depended on
Speaker 1: how they normally acted when watching movies.
Speaker 3: People who had habits to eat popcorn in the movie
Speaker 3: cinema ate just about the same amount of stale popcorn
Speaker 3: as fresh. They could tell us when we asked them
Speaker 3: that they hated the stale popcorn. They ate it anyway.
Speaker 3: People who didn't have habits deep popcorn in the movie cinema,
Speaker 3: they did just what you'd expect, but rationally we think
Speaker 3: we would all do, which is eat the fresh popcorn,
Speaker 3: but if they got a bag of stale, just lave it.
Speaker 1: When our brains see a cue that's been associated with
Speaker 1: the habitual behavior, we can't help but execute that behavior,
Speaker 1: even when the behavior is no longer rewarding. But despite
Speaker 1: the power of these cues, Wendy has found that we
Speaker 1: don't often realize how much context affects our behavior, and
Speaker 1: that means we often forget that we can't count on
Speaker 1: our habitual routines once the cues go away, and Wendy
Speaker 1: has seen the negative effects of removing our habitual cues firsthand.
Speaker 3: I bought a new car a few years ago that
Speaker 3: has all kinds of wonderful safety sensors, so it beeps
Speaker 3: when I get close to an obstacle, and I hated
Speaker 3: that at first. It really irritated me because I wasn't
Speaker 3: used to it, But I started responding to those signals automaticly.
Speaker 3: Over time, you just stop noticing them. When the car beeps,
Speaker 3: you just automatically respond to it. And I didn't realize
Speaker 3: how automatic that had become, how much of my driving
Speaker 3: habit that had become, until I rented a car and
Speaker 3: it didn't have that warning sensor system, and the first
Speaker 3: thing I did is I backed into a brick wall.
Speaker 1: The Happiness Lab will be right back.
Speaker 2: I am a Vietnam veteran, a ex marine medic, and
Speaker 2: an ex morphine addic.
Speaker 1: Back in nineteen seventy one, a documentary called GI Junkie
Speaker 1: followed a group of returning soldiers going through rehab.
Speaker 2: I don't need no pills, no warning or a needle
Speaker 2: in my arm.
Speaker 1: I mean, like, I'm there, I know what I want.
Speaker 3: I'm going to go get it.
Speaker 1: The film argued that nearly forty thousand hardened GI junkies
Speaker 1: were about to return to American soil and would soon
Speaker 1: become a major problem, but in reality, no such army
Speaker 1: of drug addicts actually existed. The kind of surprising key
Speaker 1: is that I think once, you know, once these soldiers
Speaker 1: got on the plane and got back home, they were good,
Speaker 1: Their cravings didn't kick in, and they weren't trying to
Speaker 1: find the stuff once they got back.
Speaker 2: Exactly That's exactly right. And no one, I don't think
Speaker 2: anyone could have predicted.
Speaker 1: That psychiatrist Richard Ratner had been sent to Vietnam to
Speaker 1: diffuse what one newspaper called a time bomb. And that's
Speaker 1: what made Richard's soldier's outcomes all the more surprising. A
Speaker 1: team of researchers followed addicted Vietnam vets after they came home.
Speaker 1: The scientists interviewed the men about their recent opioid habits
Speaker 1: and even conducted drug tests using urine samples, and what
Speaker 1: they found pretty much stunned everyone, including Richard. Only a
Speaker 1: very tiny percentage of soldiers continued their drug use after
Speaker 1: they got home. More than ninety percent of soldiers stayed clean.
Speaker 1: Compared to the typical heroin user, Vietnam vets seemed to
Speaker 1: have little trouble kicking the habit. The study was so
Speaker 1: shocking that at first researchers didn't even believe it, but
Speaker 1: slowly behavioral scientists like Richard to figure out the soldier's secret.
Speaker 1: They were able to use their contextual cues to break
Speaker 1: their bad habit.
Speaker 2: Probably the majority of users would basically kind of detox
Speaker 2: on their own. They would self detox while they used
Speaker 2: this crutch to help them get through military life over there.
Speaker 2: They understood that the home environment is very different from
Speaker 2: this environment.
Speaker 1: Richard realized that a few hours on an airline and
Speaker 1: a change back into civy clothes was enough to break
Speaker 1: his soldier's habit routine. They weren't bored or stressed anymore,
Speaker 1: and they weren't hanging out with their drug taking buddies.
Speaker 1: They also didn't have easy access to cheap heroin. Nearly
Speaker 1: every single one of their habit cues was different.
Speaker 2: Most of these guys, they got home and they kind
Speaker 2: of reintegrated into their previous lives.
Speaker 1: Richard's veteran's success in kicking heroin has now become a
Speaker 1: classic example in the science of behavior change. Because of
Speaker 1: a simple context switch can be powerful enough to help
Speaker 1: someone overcome heroin addiction. Imagine how powerful it can be
Speaker 1: for changing simpler behaviors like the ones many of us
Speaker 1: want to change.
Speaker 3: We did some research where we beeped people once an
Speaker 3: hour to figure out what they were thinking, feeling, doing,
Speaker 3: and what we found is that about forty three percent
Speaker 3: of the time, people are doing what they did yesterday
Speaker 3: and the day before in the same context, and they're
Speaker 3: doing it without thinking much about it.
Speaker 1: The idea that nearly half of our working day is
Speaker 1: on autopilot, that we're constantly governed by cues and context
Speaker 1: is pretty shocking. But if that's true, then it gives
Speaker 1: us a powerful opportunity to change some of our daily behaviors.
Speaker 1: If we can use our conscious minds to exert some
Speaker 1: control over the context we find ourselves in, then we
Speaker 1: can shift our bad behaviors to the ones we want
Speaker 1: to adopt.
Speaker 3: Our environments can do the same thing for us in
Speaker 3: pushing us to help us meet our goals and making
Speaker 3: it hard for us to stray from the good behaviors
Speaker 3: that we're trying to practice.
Speaker 1: This is something you can do right now, whether in
Speaker 1: your home or at your workplace. Think of it as
Speaker 1: feng shui for habits, but with an actual scientific basis.
Speaker 1: Make small changes in your environment that provide the cues
Speaker 1: you need to promote good behaviors. Wendy's research has shown
Speaker 1: that simple changes like these work time and again.
Speaker 3: In one study, people had a bowl of apple slices
Speaker 3: and a bowl of hot buttered popcorn. When the apple
Speaker 3: slices were right in front of them and the popcorn
Speaker 3: was arms reach, people ate a third less calories than
Speaker 3: when the popcorn was right in front of them and
Speaker 3: the apple slices were a reach. I mean, we're talking
Speaker 3: a minimal distance that makes little sense to our our
Speaker 3: conscious thinking cells, but to our habits and our automatic
Speaker 3: reacting cells, that's a big difference. We don't realize how
Speaker 3: much of a difference proximity makes to our behavior.
Speaker 1: But context doesn't just affect what we reach for when
Speaker 1: we're hungry. There are lots of simple ways we can
Speaker 1: use the cues around us to disrupt the autopilot behaviors
Speaker 1: we don't want to engage in.
Speaker 3: There are forces in our environments that make some actions
Speaker 3: more difficult and other actions easier, and those resisting forces
Speaker 3: can be termed friction. It just becomes too difficult.
Speaker 1: The same sort of friction help Vietnam bits avoid drug
Speaker 1: use when they return home. Many had never taken heroin
Speaker 1: before going to war, so they'd actually have to find
Speaker 1: a dealer, and the heroin available in the States was
Speaker 1: a far lower quality, which meant that soldiers would have
Speaker 1: to inject it rather than snort or smoke it. The
Speaker 1: price was also far far higher, and the GI's mood
Speaker 1: had shifted completely. Those feelings of boredom that drove them
Speaker 1: to use opioids. Those were replaced by the excitement of
Speaker 1: being home and just the pace of normal life. Each
Speaker 1: and every one of the cues that prompted that heroin
Speaker 1: routine was gone. And this is super important because these
Speaker 1: contextual changes were more powerful than any of the detox
Speaker 1: ideas the army came up with. The new cues meant
Speaker 1: that soldiers just didn't think about the reward of a
Speaker 1: quick heroin hit because their entire habit chains were disrupted.
Speaker 1: But frictions can also be introduced to tackle the problems
Speaker 1: associated with legal drugs.
Speaker 3: In the middle of the last century, we all learned
Speaker 3: that smoking was bad for US. About half of America
Speaker 3: smoked at that point, but smoking still didn't go down.
Speaker 3: Smoking rates continued reasonably high until the US decided to
Speaker 3: put friction on smoking by taxing cigarettes so you can't
Speaker 3: afford them as easily, bannings smoking in public places, and
Speaker 3: by making it difficult to purchase cigarettes so that you
Speaker 3: actually have to ask somebody. And all of those things
Speaker 3: combined put enough friction on smoking so that the smoking
Speaker 3: rates in the US are now down to a level
Speaker 3: of only fifteen percent of US smoke. And that's because
Speaker 3: of friction.
Speaker 1: Even if you don't smoke or use illegal drugs, there's
Speaker 1: a lesson here for you. Think about the things you
Speaker 1: want to change in your life, the bad habits you
Speaker 1: want to stop or the good habits you want to adopt.
Speaker 1: We can use the conscious part of our brain to
Speaker 1: increase friction to inhibit our bad habits and break down
Speaker 1: the barriers that prevent us from doing the good ones.
Speaker 1: Are there social media apps that drive you nuts but
Speaker 1: you can't help checking whenever you pick up your phone,
Speaker 1: Well delete them. Do you want to call your mom
Speaker 1: more often, well, then choose a photo of her as
Speaker 1: your screensaver. Don't want to buy certain items in the store,
Speaker 1: plan your shopping trip to avoid the candy issle. Or
Speaker 1: maybe you want to try some of the new habits
Speaker 1: that we've talked about in the season, like experiencing more gratitude,
Speaker 1: Then download a gratitude app and stick it front and
Speaker 1: center on your phone. Or maybe you want to make
Speaker 1: better use of your time, Then put that time windfall
Speaker 1: list somewhere you can see it easily. In all of
Speaker 1: these examples, you can hack the cues around you to
Speaker 1: help promote the kinds of behaviors that you want in
Speaker 1: your life. Wendy had to go through this exact same
Speaker 1: conscious process when her daily fitness habit took a nose
Speaker 1: dive thanks to motherhood. Rather than powering through or giving up,
Speaker 1: she analyzed where her growing family was adding a bit
Speaker 1: of friction to her workout plans.
Speaker 3: Every time I decided two o'clock, three o'clock, four o'clock,
Speaker 3: maybe six o'clock tonight, i'll exercise, something always comes up
Speaker 3: when you have little children. So I decided I would
Speaker 3: have to start exercising early in the morning. Although it
Speaker 3: was a really dreadful thing to start doing, once you
Speaker 3: get used to it, it actually is very efficient.
Speaker 1: So at six am, Wendy would be ready to exercise.
Speaker 1: But what exercise? Wendy realized it had to be something
Speaker 1: with as few frictions as possible.
Speaker 3: I didn't have much time to drive to a gym
Speaker 3: or do any fancy workout thing. I couldn't go to
Speaker 3: a class. I just didn't have that level of control
Speaker 3: over my time. So it had to be something that
Speaker 3: was very efficient and easy for me to do. And
Speaker 3: putting your running shoes on and going out the door
Speaker 3: is probably the most frictionless kind of exercise that you
Speaker 3: could imagine. I actually used to sleep in my running clothes.
Speaker 3: I hate to admit this, but that was another thing
Speaker 3: that reduced the friction.
Speaker 1: Talking with Wendy has really inspired me to think about
Speaker 1: how I can use my conscious brain to hack the
Speaker 1: autopilot of all my bad habits. I'm already planning strategies
Speaker 1: I can use to increase or reduce friction so I'll
Speaker 1: be able to reach my own well being goals literally
Speaker 1: without thinking. I hope you've gotten some insight into how
Speaker 1: you can hack your own habits, and I hope you'll
Speaker 1: be willing to form a new, happier habit and set
Speaker 1: up all your context cues to remind you to come
Speaker 1: back for the next episode of The Happiness Lab with me,
Speaker 1: Doctor Laurie Santos