Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to blow your mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Okay, he wasn't a stuff with where
Speaker 1: your mind. My name is Robert Lamb and Julie Douglas.
Speaker 1: You know, Julie. We're in a new year, essentially a
Speaker 1: new studio, whole new set of rules and a Since
Speaker 1: this new year, everybody is talking about, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: what you're gonna change, how this year is going to
Speaker 1: be different. Last year, we're just gonna go to write
Speaker 1: that one off. But this year, this is the year
Speaker 1: it's gonna happen, or this is the year it's not
Speaker 1: gonna happen, I swear. Okay, blank slate, Folks, how are
Speaker 1: you going to fill it in? What you're gonna do,
Speaker 1: what you're gonna change? Yeah, we have an artificial news
Speaker 1: start going virtue of the calendar. So so yeah, what
Speaker 1: what does it take to change behavior? That's the big question,
Speaker 1: And a lot of people have put in the other
Speaker 1: two cents on this. A lot of people have sold
Speaker 1: their two cents um this to a public that is
Speaker 1: ever interested in changing themselves for the better. Well, first
Speaker 1: of all, there's that three weak myth that persist, this
Speaker 1: idea that in order to change a habit or make
Speaker 1: a new one. All you need is twenty one days
Speaker 1: consecutive days, and boom, there you go. You are now
Speaker 1: going to be a Mandarin expert or some other uh
Speaker 1: jiu jitsu warrior of knowledge and something. Yeah, which, of
Speaker 1: course is ridiculous when you pair it up with the
Speaker 1: with the other addedge, you hear a lot about ten
Speaker 1: thousand hours, isn't it? The ten thousand hours towards something?
Speaker 1: And you'll be you'll be, you'll be great at it.
Speaker 1: Ten thousand hours a good bit longer than twenty one days.
Speaker 1: But where does the twenty one days thing come from? Well,
Speaker 1: you start trying to track it down, you kind of
Speaker 1: lose your path in the in the history. But it
Speaker 1: seems to have grown increasingly popular back in the nineteen
Speaker 1: seventies due to a self help book called psycho Cybernetics,
Speaker 1: which sounds like a good source. Who wouldn't trust the
Speaker 1: bettering of their their their their their humanity to a
Speaker 1: book called psycho Cybernetics and from the seventies, from the seventies,
Speaker 1: which I'm just I haven't looked it up yet, but
Speaker 1: I can already imagine that the cover to that book
Speaker 1: because I have looked at some nineties books on self help. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and again that's where this idea came from. The self
Speaker 1: help book said, hey, just twenty one days, that's how
Speaker 1: it takes. But as we're going to discuss, it's much
Speaker 1: more complex than that, and we'll get to an idea
Speaker 1: of what it takes in terms of days the consecutive
Speaker 1: amount of time. But before we do that, let's talk
Speaker 1: about the habit loop and what's happening inside of our brains.
Speaker 1: New York Times business writer Charles Doig says, habit loops
Speaker 1: they contain three parts. Okay, First, there's a cue or
Speaker 1: a trigger that tells your brain to go into automatic
Speaker 1: mode and let a behavior unfold. Okay. Second, he says,
Speaker 1: there's the routine, which is the behavior itself. And then
Speaker 1: the third step, he says, is the reward, something that
Speaker 1: your brain likes that helps it to remember that habit
Speaker 1: loop in the future. So, like an example of this
Speaker 1: would be the trigger. What's setting this off is, oh,
Speaker 1: I feel kind of low energy in the afternoon, and
Speaker 1: then what should I do? All Right, the automatic behavior
Speaker 1: is I should go and have a soda. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: have the big sugary grape soda. And then the reward
Speaker 1: is I feel at least a temporary boost due to
Speaker 1: all that sugar in my body. Right, And if you
Speaker 1: keep doing that over and over again, eventually those cues,
Speaker 1: those environmental keys will start to work on you. You know,
Speaker 1: maybe it's three o'clock and you're tired and you need
Speaker 1: that break, and you get that. You look at the
Speaker 1: clock and you see that three o'clock, and that becomes
Speaker 1: one of the cues that adds up in this database
Speaker 1: of I want the soda. Yeah, it's time for the soda.
Speaker 1: The soda. Time to to press the hot key on
Speaker 1: soda behavior. Now, in part, we can trace habit making
Speaker 1: back to the basil ganglia, which also plays a key
Speaker 1: role in the development of emotions, memories, and pattern recognition.
Speaker 1: So decisions meanwhile, though, they are made in the prefrontal cortex.
Speaker 1: And this is really interesting is as a behavior becomes automatic,
Speaker 1: the decision making part of your brain goes into a
Speaker 1: kind of sleep mode. Yeah, And and in this the
Speaker 1: basal gangla is essentially it takes the behavior and turns
Speaker 1: it into an automatic routine. It's essentially a hot key,
Speaker 1: you know, like like when you're using Photoshop or any
Speaker 1: other program, you have that hot key like you know,
Speaker 1: it's all control or whatever. I used to have a
Speaker 1: bazillion of a memorize when I was using in Design
Speaker 1: for a Living and uh, and so you just go
Speaker 1: to this automatic behavior, all right, just push these these
Speaker 1: quick keys and we'll do some sort of automatic function
Speaker 1: on the page you're working on. Uh. And we do
Speaker 1: that in our lives. We do that when we as
Speaker 1: we're driving to work, as we're trying to navigate the
Speaker 1: hallways of our house without you know, busting our elbow
Speaker 1: and something. Well, Android says that there's a real boon
Speaker 1: to us when we do that, because, in a sense,
Speaker 1: your brain starts working less and less, and he says,
Speaker 1: the brain can almost completely shut down. And this is
Speaker 1: an advantage because it means that you have all of
Speaker 1: this mental activity that you can devote to something else.
Speaker 1: It's why you can listen to stuff to bow your
Speaker 1: mind while walking to the bus stay and while driving
Speaker 1: to work, or while doing you know, data entry in
Speaker 1: an Excel spreadsheet. Right. So, because it's all this has
Speaker 1: become habituated and wrote and routinized, and we need all
Speaker 1: this stuff, right, we need this kind of predictability. But
Speaker 1: of course the problem becomes when we want to change
Speaker 1: that behavior. And he says that if you want to
Speaker 1: change it or create a new one, you have to
Speaker 1: gain those three aspects. You have to gain that trigger
Speaker 1: or that queue and know that it could be boredom
Speaker 1: or that you're tired, and acknowledge that that is the reason,
Speaker 1: not just at three o'clock and it's time for that soda.
Speaker 1: You kind of have to break it down and kind
Speaker 1: of goes slow mo with your thinking. Um. He also
Speaker 1: said that you have to disrupt the routine and the reward.
Speaker 1: You have to figure that out too. You have to say, okay, fine,
Speaker 1: this might give me a temporary lift, but how gross
Speaker 1: am I going to feel a half hour later when
Speaker 1: all that sugar is sitting in my belly? Um. And
Speaker 1: then he also said that you can replace that reward,
Speaker 1: so instead of having that soda, you can take a
Speaker 1: walk exactly. Yeah. And this was really helpful to me
Speaker 1: when I quit drinking, actually, because I had noticed that
Speaker 1: between hours of six and eight pm at nine that
Speaker 1: were sort of my witching hours, and I would go
Speaker 1: and work out instead of reaching for a glass of wine. Uh,
Speaker 1: and that's replaced that reward for me, and it disrupted
Speaker 1: the routine. So it was really helpful. Yeah. I mean
Speaker 1: he stress that with a lot of things are related
Speaker 1: to behavior. A lot of it is just realizing the
Speaker 1: patterns of behavior, being able to look in the mirror
Speaker 1: and and be self aware of what's going on. And
Speaker 1: you have to remember we've talked about this a lot
Speaker 1: before that these are neural pathways that once you did
Speaker 1: just have it over and over again, they become really
Speaker 1: grooved in your brain. Okay, so that is a pathway
Speaker 1: that's easy for those signals to trot upon. So if
Speaker 1: you do it less, then it becomes you know, the
Speaker 1: strength of those pathways decreases. It will always be there
Speaker 1: because you created the pathway. Yeah. And and ultimately it's
Speaker 1: creating new behaviors. Forging new pathways, it's easier as opposed
Speaker 1: to getting rid of old ones. I mean, you can
Speaker 1: think of it, think of it in terms of, all right,
Speaker 1: you have a road between two cities, and what are
Speaker 1: you gonna do. Are you gonna shut down one road
Speaker 1: completely and then build another one that you're gonna You're
Speaker 1: gonna build an additional road and then you're gonna sort
Speaker 1: of and then and then that new road is going
Speaker 1: to replace the old one. If you just cut off
Speaker 1: the road, then how are we gonna get where we're going?
Speaker 1: How am I going to deal with the the trigger
Speaker 1: effect of needing that soda in the afternoon. I like
Speaker 1: that idea that there are parallel paths and that's how
Speaker 1: you replace the one after a while, and you kind
Speaker 1: of put the detour signs on the other one. It
Speaker 1: always exists with the detour signs. Yeah. Um. And that's
Speaker 1: one of the problems with any sort of habit that
Speaker 1: you pick up again a bad habit, is that as
Speaker 1: soon as you you engage in that behavior, those pathways go, oh,
Speaker 1: I remember this road. I haven't taken it in a
Speaker 1: long time. And like you said, the environment is a
Speaker 1: big thing. I like if I if I I don't
Speaker 1: know why I chose the soda habit. I haven't actually
Speaker 1: had a soda in for every but it's a good,
Speaker 1: good model because I know a lot of people have
Speaker 1: this temptation. Uh So in this case, in this example,
Speaker 1: I'm drinking sodas in the office. So the office is
Speaker 1: the environment in which this behavior has become ingrained. So
Speaker 1: one thing that actually helps is stepping outside of the environment.
Speaker 1: That that that that that makes this behavior acceptable. Now,
Speaker 1: changing your environment is not a cure all, but it
Speaker 1: can disrupt some some of that that routine. And that's
Speaker 1: why going on a vacation is often cited as a
Speaker 1: good example of a of a time to to try
Speaker 1: to break away from a routine. And it's also why
Speaker 1: vacations are often really comforting because we're breaking away from
Speaker 1: a number of routines, even if they're not necessarily you know,
Speaker 1: bad for us. Maybe they're just you know, you're you're
Speaker 1: free from some of the change you weren't even aware of.
Speaker 1: It was so much easier to slow down in that
Speaker 1: automated behavior, look at it and say, oh, why am
Speaker 1: I reaching for this? Why am I doing this? You're right,
Speaker 1: because you don't have those environmental triggers. Now, there is
Speaker 1: a kind of average of days, at least in one
Speaker 1: study that shows that there are certain habits that you
Speaker 1: can pick up good habits. Let's say and sixty six days. Now,
Speaker 1: this is the average of days that it took participants
Speaker 1: to have a behavior become automatic. This is a study
Speaker 1: led by Philippa Lally and she's a psychologist at University
Speaker 1: College London. So we are talking about this length of
Speaker 1: time varying anywhere from eighteen days to two hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty four. Sixty six was just the average, and some
Speaker 1: habits were talking about drinking a bottle of water after
Speaker 1: lunch turned out to be a lot stickier, only took
Speaker 1: fifty nine days on the average, because that's how difficult
Speaker 1: is that? Now you're just tipping the bottle. But what
Speaker 1: about doing fifty sit ups each morning? Much harder ninety
Speaker 1: one days. So other findings were that missing a single
Speaker 1: day did not reduce the chance of forming habits. That's
Speaker 1: good news. In a subgroup, it turns out took a
Speaker 1: lot longer than the others to form their habits, and
Speaker 1: this suggests that some people are habit resistant. And of
Speaker 1: course other types of habits may take much longer than
Speaker 1: make you know, two fifty four days for instance for me,
Speaker 1: the sit ups that would that would be like three
Speaker 1: sixty five days for me. So what about you, what
Speaker 1: would be the easiest thing and the hardest thing? Like
Speaker 1: what would take you eighteen days? And what would take
Speaker 1: you two? Well, I guess obviously something I enjoy doing Um,
Speaker 1: a lot of people who who write are aware of
Speaker 1: this hundred words a day thing where the idea is,
Speaker 1: all right, your life is busy, but you really want
Speaker 1: to work on you know, that novel, or work on
Speaker 1: short stories, or write a little poetry, so you just
Speaker 1: make sure you take out time, just carve it just
Speaker 1: a sliver of time to do one hundred words, just
Speaker 1: you know, open up your your word document, you know,
Speaker 1: grab a notebook. One words, then you can move on.
Speaker 1: So that would probably be easier for me, just because
Speaker 1: obviously the reward, the reward is also in doing it.
Speaker 1: It's something that I enjoy doing, and so that would
Speaker 1: be something would be easier for me to do. And
Speaker 1: you already have a huge writing muscle, yeah, exactly, so
Speaker 1: that one would be an easy Also I'll have to
Speaker 1: do is open a document or or grab a pet
Speaker 1: but uh, one of it would be much harder. And
Speaker 1: one that I also would very much like to do
Speaker 1: would be, you know, to do yoga on a much
Speaker 1: more regular basis these days. But for that, obviously I've
Speaker 1: got to carve out a much larger piece of time,
Speaker 1: like you know, at least twenty minutes ideally like an hour.
Speaker 1: I need to either go to a space where I
Speaker 1: can do the yoga or find a space both uh,
Speaker 1: both physical and mental in which to do it every
Speaker 1: day or a few days a week, and it becomes
Speaker 1: increasingly complex. I read that if then statements help with
Speaker 1: this because a lot of times we'll say we want
Speaker 1: to do this, but when we find reasons not to
Speaker 1: do things. And the idea is that instead of finding
Speaker 1: those reasons not to do it, you say to yourself,
Speaker 1: if it's Monday and it's noon and I have thirty minutes,
Speaker 1: I'm going to go to X space and do yoga,
Speaker 1: and that that becomes more of an action item in
Speaker 1: your brain as opposed to a plan. Really well, it's
Speaker 1: like a program, you know, because it reminds me like
Speaker 1: the settings in email, if you've ever looked at that,
Speaker 1: where you can set things like if this, then that
Speaker 1: then X. So yeah, it's like and essentially that's what
Speaker 1: we're talking about, reprogramming the self to incorporate new actions
Speaker 1: or in some cases a limit other actions or choose
Speaker 1: one action over another. Of course, all of this require
Speaker 1: self control and will power. And we'll take a quick
Speaker 1: break and when we get back, we're gonna talk about
Speaker 1: this muscle of self control that we can cultivate for ourselves. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're back and you're going to talk about you roll
Speaker 1: a self control and will power because of course you
Speaker 1: can't just have this um then like moment with your
Speaker 1: brain where you slow everything down and you examine how
Speaker 1: and why you're doing things. You also have to have
Speaker 1: the will to change that habit. Yes, and we've we've
Speaker 1: podcasted exclusively on will in some past episodes before and it's, uh,
Speaker 1: it's a fascinating topic because it's, like most things in life,
Speaker 1: it's not quite what you think it is when you
Speaker 1: actually stop and examine. Willpower is not a set level.
Speaker 1: It's not like you know, playing Dungeons and Dragons where
Speaker 1: you you roll the dice and you have that that
Speaker 1: set number that that you may modify with some magical
Speaker 1: spells here. And it's it's something that that fluctuates throughout
Speaker 1: the day based on where we are, where our attention
Speaker 1: is that, what our diet consists of, what kind of
Speaker 1: uh stimuli we're exposed to. And the good news is
Speaker 1: that it is a behavior and not something that's hardwired,
Speaker 1: so it can be changed. In fact, in a two
Speaker 1: thousand meta study of self control Mark Moravin and Roy F. Baumeister,
Speaker 1: we've heard from him before. They set out to answer
Speaker 1: the question does self control resemble a muscle? And yes,
Speaker 1: they say, if willpower is like a muscle, and muscles
Speaker 1: can get stronger over time training, will power similar can
Speaker 1: be trained and strengthened. And they found this and that
Speaker 1: meta study. In addition, Australian researchers Megan Otan and Ken
Speaker 1: Chang looked at this question and they took a group
Speaker 1: of people through a customized two month exercise program. What
Speaker 1: do they find. Well, of course the people got stronger,
Speaker 1: um they developed more muscles, but they also found that
Speaker 1: their behaviors there, their self control, their willpower changed with
Speaker 1: the addition of the actual physical muscles. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: pretty amazing and that they throw out the example there's
Speaker 1: like a like a pebble in a lake. There's this
Speaker 1: ripple effect. You start in selling willpower into one area
Speaker 1: of your life and it actually bleeds over into other
Speaker 1: areas of your life because the overall willpower level increases.
Speaker 1: I was thinking about this in the context of the
Speaker 1: bit we found out about how a full bladder can
Speaker 1: actually help with willpower at least you know, temporarily, because
Speaker 1: if you have a full bladder, your brain is suppressing
Speaker 1: the urge to p on yourself essentially, and as a result,
Speaker 1: it is suppressing everything else. So not just you over
Speaker 1: eating at the buffet, but controlling your bladder and perhaps
Speaker 1: not having a cigarette at that very moment. It's why
Speaker 1: drinking more water is such a no brainer for for
Speaker 1: for New Year's resolutions, because more water good for your body.
Speaker 1: You're mostly water anyway, right you can, you can line
Speaker 1: up all the health and ifit's there, but your bladder
Speaker 1: is going to be more full more of the time,
Speaker 1: thus allowing you to better suppress other temptations in your life.
Speaker 1: There you go. That's a tip right there. More water,
Speaker 1: all right. So let's talk about the specifics of the
Speaker 1: study we're talking about again a two month period in
Speaker 1: which the participants hit the gym three times a week,
Speaker 1: and before, during, and after the exercise, the group was
Speaker 1: tested on a visual task that measured will power via
Speaker 1: distraction and thought suppression. Now, after two months, the air
Speaker 1: rate went down for the group from twenty three to
Speaker 1: twelve percent, so, in other words, they were able to
Speaker 1: not pay attention to those distractions to be more focused,
Speaker 1: and they had that decrease in their brain just sort
Speaker 1: of going willy nilly about things. Yeah. And the crazy
Speaker 1: thing too, is that when I first started reading some
Speaker 1: of those thinking, all right, the other areas they're gonna
Speaker 1: be affecting their life, It's going to be like, oh,
Speaker 1: well they ate a little more broccoli or something easy
Speaker 1: like that. But now the the improvements that they saw
Speaker 1: related to stuff like cigarette smoking, alcohol consumption. He'll be eating, exercise,
Speaker 1: and household chores. So I mean the fact that cigarettes
Speaker 1: and alcohol were also affected things that you often think.
Speaker 1: I was having their talents a little deeper into the
Speaker 1: psyche um to see to see those areas affected as
Speaker 1: well by this ripple effect. It's really encouraged. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: the behavior was all over the place. It might be
Speaker 1: that someone missed appointments a lot, in which case they
Speaker 1: found that a person went from missing an appointment every
Speaker 1: day to like once a week, or in the case
Speaker 1: the cigarettes down from fourteen cigarettes a day to just three.
Speaker 1: That is amazing. Yeah. Alright, So coming back to the
Speaker 1: old idea that we talked about at the beginning of
Speaker 1: the episode, the idea that I apply X amount of
Speaker 1: time towards something, towards a new skill, a new discipline,
Speaker 1: a new subject. I can become an expert. I can
Speaker 1: make this my own, I can own this content all right.
Speaker 1: Because if you think about someone being a master of
Speaker 1: their universe, you typically think of like Ben Franklin or
Speaker 1: Leonardo de Venture. These are people who were true poly mass,
Speaker 1: who could attack new topics, consume them, and by habit
Speaker 1: they could do this right now, Some people would say
Speaker 1: that that was the dreds. The world was much smaller,
Speaker 1: that there are a fewer tones to go through and
Speaker 1: become an expert. Now we have so much more knowledge,
Speaker 1: so it's a lot more difficult. And you could say
Speaker 1: that in some senses are our willpower, our ability to
Speaker 1: really concentrate has been deluded by all of this knowledge.
Speaker 1: But it remains that if you do something, namely repetition,
Speaker 1: that you can still learn new things and you may
Speaker 1: even become an expert. And you know that ten thousand
Speaker 1: hours that Malcolm Cloud will always talks about, that's a
Speaker 1: possibility in there too. But if you just want to
Speaker 1: sort of pick up guitar or you know, stop smoking, drinking,
Speaker 1: all of these things are available to you. You just
Speaker 1: need to document it and uh repeat wash, repeat, yeah,
Speaker 1: making making a pattern of it, regularly consuming it, be
Speaker 1: at a hundred words a day, be a guitar lessons,
Speaker 1: or be it. Hey, here's a good one. You can
Speaker 1: listen to a new episode of stuff to blow your
Speaker 1: mind every day for a year. I think we have
Speaker 1: enough now, oh dear, oh yeah, And you have to
Speaker 1: document it. This is the important part. And this is
Speaker 1: where we bring up Karen X Chang. Okay, she is
Speaker 1: kind of the I think the best example of this
Speaker 1: kind of muscle flexing of self control. Now, she not
Speaker 1: only was a program manager of Microsoft Excel. At the
Speaker 1: same time that she was doing this full time job,
Speaker 1: she decided, oh hey, I think I want to teach
Speaker 1: myself computer graphics. She did within a six month period,
Speaker 1: and then she got a new job as a designer
Speaker 1: at Exact, this is a startup in San Francisco. Along
Speaker 1: the way, she taught herself all sorts of things like
Speaker 1: guitar and she began to realize that she had a
Speaker 1: process in place that could allow her to enjoy and
Speaker 1: explore all the things that she found fascinating. And she
Speaker 1: started a website called give It one dot com and
Speaker 1: This is based on her own video that went viral.
Speaker 1: Some people may be familiar with this, in which she
Speaker 1: taught herself to dance in a year and every day
Speaker 1: she documented herself and it's a great video because it
Speaker 1: starts out with her doing these sort of awkward popping
Speaker 1: looks like I'm doing right now but you can't see,
Speaker 1: and then she becomes this beautiful fluid dancer after three
Speaker 1: d and sixty five days. So what what did she
Speaker 1: give it? A hundred off? Well, the idea is that
Speaker 1: one hundred one hundred days is something that a person
Speaker 1: can sort of do like that what she did, although
Speaker 1: sort of three sixty five light right. So in other words,
Speaker 1: you pick a project, you document yourself. Every day you
Speaker 1: upload a video. I think there's only like ten to
Speaker 1: fifteen seconds of the video that shows on the site,
Speaker 1: but you can see real progress after a number of days.
Speaker 1: And that's one of the things that she says is
Speaker 1: really important in trying to learn something new or do
Speaker 1: something that you not just document that you do it
Speaker 1: over and over again, but that you can see where
Speaker 1: you're going with this. Yeah, and so the YouTube us
Speaker 1: of YouTube here achieves that also is a great documentation system. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, if anybody's interested, I would say check that out. Um. Personally,
Speaker 1: I'm playing around with the idea of doing that because
Speaker 1: I would love to conquer the accordions are enough playing
Speaker 1: around with it, pretending like I'm in some Parisian cafe
Speaker 1: entertaining folks and having their ears bleed. Well, what you
Speaker 1: need to do is do it on your drive to work.
Speaker 1: That's a great idea. Yeah, I think it would work, Okay.
Speaker 1: I mean, because things are pretty automated when when it
Speaker 1: comes to driving, why not you get you get one
Speaker 1: of those those little little little cameras that go on
Speaker 1: the dashboard. Uh, turn it your yourself, and then every
Speaker 1: morning as you drive to work, you're playing the accordion.
Speaker 1: I think that the lawyers of Discovery dot com are
Speaker 1: gonna love this. I think they will, and that secretly
Speaker 1: they will love it. Um. But but I should also
Speaker 1: mention the hundred words a day thing I'm talking about earlier. Now,
Speaker 1: I am remembering that in the the official, uh prescribed
Speaker 1: version of that, Um, you are keeping track of your
Speaker 1: word count, like you're saying, yes, I did I did
Speaker 1: a hundred two hundred day before and all that. So
Speaker 1: that you. You have some level of accountability too. That's
Speaker 1: because presumably somebody is looking at your YouTube videos. Presumably
Speaker 1: somebody is looking at the you know the little ticker
Speaker 1: that you have at the bottom of your web page
Speaker 1: that says how many how many words you're you're pumping out? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know about give it one dot com, but
Speaker 1: I do know the one hundred words a day. If
Speaker 1: you don't write, they will send you an email a
Speaker 1: little nasty Graham saying hey, you need to do this,
Speaker 1: which is always really helpful. And that's probably a good, good,
Speaker 1: good bit of info for me. Though about all this
Speaker 1: is because I should if I'm going to do the
Speaker 1: hundred words a day, I should maybe do the official
Speaker 1: version to where there's a little more accountability and it's
Speaker 1: not just though I forgot for three weeks. Yeah, so, um,
Speaker 1: you know, as I moved through this year and master
Speaker 1: the accordion and then make everybody's ears bleed, have about
Speaker 1: in six months time? Should we say six months? We
Speaker 1: we all meet back here in six months I'll play
Speaker 1: for you guys. Um, as I think about this, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna think about that habit loop and those triggers, right,
Speaker 1: um and gonna think about my little basil ganglia. I'm
Speaker 1: going to ask you to back off. Well, although I
Speaker 1: might say, hey, you can go ahead and do this
Speaker 1: when I get really good and it becomes an automated behavior,
Speaker 1: but I'm also going to think about that repetition, and uh,
Speaker 1: we'll see after sixty six days to where I land
Speaker 1: on this. If this becomes uh pretty decent in terms
Speaker 1: of my ability to play, uh you know, real quick,
Speaker 1: I want to come back to Charles do Hig, the
Speaker 1: author of the Power of habit Um. He also went
Speaker 1: talked about alcoholics anonymous A little bit don't sound very interesting.
Speaker 1: He's just talking about that with a A. There's no
Speaker 1: scientific basis behind it originally at all. Like apparently there
Speaker 1: are twelve steps because there are twelve apostles, So it's
Speaker 1: there's a lot of of of of A is wrapped
Speaker 1: up in this kind of you know, appealing to a
Speaker 1: higher power to help you. But what he says, what
Speaker 1: he points out is that that A of course really works,
Speaker 1: and it's it has a great tracklate record because it
Speaker 1: is essentially a big machine for changing habits around alcohol consumption,
Speaker 1: and it gives people a new routine. Uh, other than
Speaker 1: going to a bar and then drink or what have you. Uh,
Speaker 1: And it's something that doesn't work when people do it
Speaker 1: on their own, so it's new routine accountability. UM. I
Speaker 1: found that interesting, and that is really interesting. Some people, uh,
Speaker 1: that twelve step program doesn't appeal to them or it
Speaker 1: doesn't work for them either because they're not sure about
Speaker 1: the philosophy behind it. But you're right, there are certain things,
Speaker 1: uh that do work in that program, and there are
Speaker 1: alternatives to a A but they use the same sort
Speaker 1: of ideas of distraction really in creating new routines. Um.
Speaker 1: And to that end, I do have a quick email.
Speaker 1: Let's see if Arnie can bring that on over. And
Speaker 1: this has to do with our three years of Word
Speaker 1: Salad episode. This is from Brenda, says hid Lane Robert.
Speaker 1: I just want to thank you for your confession, so
Speaker 1: to speak, on how the podcast has changed your life
Speaker 1: podcast about giving up alcohol. I didn't want to be
Speaker 1: presumptuous and imply any labels that you yourself did not apply,
Speaker 1: but what you said did resonate with me because my
Speaker 1: uncle went through something perhaps similar. I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people tend to view alcohol problems as almost kind
Speaker 1: of binary. Either you're in terrible shape and have a
Speaker 1: serious life ruining problem, or there's no problem at all
Speaker 1: in reality, though it's much grayer now. She goes on
Speaker 1: to describe how people around her uncle actually doubted his
Speaker 1: need to quit drinking simply because he didn't fit a
Speaker 1: stereotype of an alcoholic or exhibit wild behavior, and she
Speaker 1: says She ends by saying, I don't know if I'm
Speaker 1: reading too much into what you said. Maybe you didn't
Speaker 1: actually have anything problematic going on. You just didn't like
Speaker 1: the idea of what alcohol does as you learned more
Speaker 1: about it. I have another friend who has never had
Speaker 1: a drinking problem, but doesn't drink simply because he doesn't
Speaker 1: like what it does to other people. But either way,
Speaker 1: thank you for sharing your situation. I hope it might
Speaker 1: help even one person to realize that one doesn't have
Speaker 1: to hit rock bottom to make a change like that,
Speaker 1: and that not drinking is just as valid a choice
Speaker 1: as drinking is. So thinks Brenda, that was really, I
Speaker 1: think a very helpful email, because you're right, I was
Speaker 1: playing it safe in that episode and not labeling myself
Speaker 1: because you know, not drinking is still something that I'm
Speaker 1: turning around in my head and trying to figure out
Speaker 1: for myself. But I think you make an excellent point
Speaker 1: that a lot of people feel like it is a
Speaker 1: black and white issue and it is not um and
Speaker 1: just being able to explore that as a great idea
Speaker 1: is one of the reasons I could get to the
Speaker 1: point where I could stop drinking alcohol in the first place,
Speaker 1: because for many years I had to find that as
Speaker 1: a black and white issue, and it really hindered my
Speaker 1: ability to to get where I need to be in
Speaker 1: terms of breaking habits. All right, well, there you have it.
Speaker 1: Hopefully this podcast will serve as uh, you know, kind
Speaker 1: of a pep talk, a little dose of enthusiasm for
Speaker 1: whatever you are deciding to change or or tweaked this year.
Speaker 1: In so as you continue, as you go on this journey,
Speaker 1: we would love to hear from you your thoughts on
Speaker 1: the application of this information towards your particular issue, your
Speaker 1: thoughts just on the information in general. You can find
Speaker 1: us at all the normal places. Stuffable your Mind dot
Speaker 1: com is the mothership. That's the main page. Go there.
Speaker 1: You've never been there before, Go to it, go check
Speaker 1: it out. All the podcast episodes are there, all the
Speaker 1: blog posted there. We have videos, we have links out
Speaker 1: to our various social media outlets and other web pages
Speaker 1: we use, you know, stuff like Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, Google Plus, SoundCloud,
Speaker 1: you name it. Um. And if you want to try
Speaker 1: a more old fashioned method of getting in touch with us, Julie,
Speaker 1: what can they do? Can take out this keyboard thing, okay, okay,
Speaker 1: and you find an email program and then in the
Speaker 1: two field you simply put below the mind at discovery
Speaker 1: dot com and let us know what you're thinking. And hey,
Speaker 1: if you guys actually have any episode request, let us
Speaker 1: know there too. For more on this and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics, visit how stuff Works dot com