Speaker 1: Pushkin for starters. It was the last thing I particularly
Speaker 1: wanted to do. Like many young Americans back in nineteen seventy,
Speaker 1: Richard Ratner wasn't all that excited about going to war.
Speaker 1: I had just been married, and when I found out
Speaker 1: that I was going to Vietnam, we tried to figure
Speaker 1: out any way to get out of it, you know,
Speaker 1: which involved oh, I don't know, talking to the military instcene,
Speaker 1: whether it's a sign that could be changed. None of
Speaker 1: it worked. They were well prepared for people who didn't
Speaker 1: want to go. The Army didn't want to hear Richard's excuses.
Speaker 1: As a newly qualified doctor, he had just the skills
Speaker 1: that the military desperately needed. Richard was one of many
Speaker 1: American men who were plucked from their civilian lives and
Speaker 1: forced into the armed services September fourteen, zero zero one.
Speaker 1: There was even a televised lottery draw where young men
Speaker 1: were selected from military service and a stint in Vietnam
Speaker 1: based on their birthday. 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 Psigon as a twenty
Speaker 1: something new doctor was still a shock to the system.
Speaker 1: We are in buses where they have this steel mesh
Speaker 1: covering the windows, and I'm absolutely sure that any minute
Speaker 1: someone who's going to toss a bomb at us. But
Speaker 1: Richard wasn't a trained surgeon heading to Vietnam to take
Speaker 1: care of bullet wounds. He was a psychiatrist, but he
Speaker 1: still wouldn't be treating depression or even PTSD. Richard was
Speaker 1: about to use his training to wage a war against
Speaker 1: bad habits, the kind of behaviors we really want to
Speaker 1: change but somehow can't. Richard would soon learn that our
Speaker 1: habits don't always work the way we think. His findings
Speaker 1: not only shocked scientists, but also change the way that
Speaker 1: researchers think about the science of behavior. Your 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 hurt 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. You gotta have those shoes shined. You
Speaker 1: got to show up at formation. You know, you have
Speaker 1: to have your bed made. Richard. Soldiers were trapped in Vietnam,
Speaker 1: far away from home. Some were facing life or death
Speaker 1: situations on the battlefield, but according to Richard, the biggest
Speaker 1: enemy many soldiers faced was back in the barracks. It
Speaker 1: was boredom. Away from combat, soldiers spent their days doing
Speaker 1: repetitive tasks that they didn't enjoy, shining boots, dealing with
Speaker 1: annoying superior officers, and generally just not having anything fun
Speaker 1: to do. And that's why many of them wound up
Speaker 1: turning to a particularly bad habit, one that the army
Speaker 1: really didn't approve of. People would just kind of get high,
Speaker 1: and you know, not necessarily that different from if you
Speaker 1: come home from a hard day at the steel mill
Speaker 1: and you know, going to the bar and have a
Speaker 1: few drinks. It's not totally unlike that, yeah, but you know,
Speaker 1: what was available wasn't a few drinks, at least for
Speaker 1: the soldiers who weren't twenty one. What was available was
Speaker 1: like incredibly hardcore heroine exactly. The first phase was where
Speaker 1: soldiers were smoking marijuana. If you're smoking weed, it's not
Speaker 1: going to take too long for it to waft down
Speaker 1: to where the first sergeants which was and he'd come
Speaker 1: up looking for you. Conveniently enough, soldiers had access to
Speaker 1: a less smelly drug option. With the Golden Triangle, a
Speaker 1: massive area of poppy production just across the order, suppliers
Speaker 1: were ready and willing to sell an alternative drug to
Speaker 1: US troops, heroin. They could do it under the nose
Speaker 1: of their commanding officers, and it was a great deal
Speaker 1: more potent. As one GI addict told The New York Times,
Speaker 1: the skag was everywhere. Estimates vary, but it's generally thought
Speaker 1: that around twenty percent of low ranking soldiers used heroin.
Speaker 1: The Times called the addiction rates an epidemic. With hundreds
Speaker 1: of thousands of American troops stationed all over Vietnam, the
Speaker 1: government was worried that gis would return to their families
Speaker 1: as desperate junkies. This notion that we had a whole
Speaker 1: army full of drug crazed people who were going to
Speaker 1: be unleashed on these communities truly had people frightened, the
Speaker 1: Army announced that anybody who was dependent on heroin could
Speaker 1: report to the Amnesty Center. They would not be arrested
Speaker 1: or charged with criminal activities. They could come, they could
Speaker 1: detox and then go home. You know, no harm, no foul.
Speaker 1: The American public demanded action, and so, without a better plan,
Speaker 1: the Army opted to force the gis to go cold Turkey.
Speaker 1: When they came into the detox center. We did not
Speaker 1: taper them off on heroin. I really had no idea,
Speaker 1: and I was sort of frantically trying to get information
Speaker 1: on how does one properly detox somebody. But what Richard
Speaker 1: had even less of an idea about was how he
Speaker 1: was going to help soldiers stay clean once they got home.
Speaker 1: I mean, heroin isn't just any old bad habit, It's
Speaker 1: an incredibly addictive substance. By making his soldiers go cold Turkey,
Speaker 1: Richard could help his men get through the withdrawal phase,
Speaker 1: that first step to breaking the physical part of their addiction.
Speaker 1: But the bigger challenge was helping them avoid the behavioral
Speaker 1: parts of their addiction, that habit of turning to heroine
Speaker 1: in order to feel better whenever they were feeling depressed
Speaker 1: or bored or stressed, the almost automatic urge to reduce
Speaker 1: their craving with a quick hit. Simply hoping that these
Speaker 1: men would have the willpower to avoid heroin wasn't going
Speaker 1: to be enough. Here we have these guys who are
Speaker 1: eighteen nineteen, and when a little too much pressure is
Speaker 1: put on them, they pop. At the time, Richard was
Speaker 1: worried that there was no way to avert this wave
Speaker 1: of addiction. Sure, the men could detox at his center,
Speaker 1: but no one seemed to know what to do to
Speaker 1: help them and overcome their awful habit so that they
Speaker 1: could become healthier and happier. Now, I'm guessing most people
Speaker 1: listening to this podcast won't ever face a behavioral challenge
Speaker 1: as hard as kicking heroine. But like those soldiers, all
Speaker 1: of us have bad habits that detract from our health
Speaker 1: and happiness. You don't need to be an opioid drug
Speaker 1: user to understand that it can be difficult to change
Speaker 1: are not so good ways, and the science suggests that
Speaker 1: the everyday habits that plague us can sometimes be just
Speaker 1: as hard to overcome as the addictive kind. The problem
Speaker 1: is that the path to happiness requires changing a lot
Speaker 1: of these habitual bad behaviors. We need to stop griping,
Speaker 1: we need to put down our phones, and we need
Speaker 1: to stop craving material possessions. But how do we do that.
Speaker 1: If you're like me, it probably feels like changing these
Speaker 1: repeated behaviors is really really challenging. But what our lying
Speaker 1: minds don't realize is that we have a powerful mental
Speaker 1: tool that really could help us achieve lasting behavioral change
Speaker 1: with ease, if only we understood how that tool worked.
Speaker 1: I wanted to learn more about why our intuitions about
Speaker 1: behavior change were so bad, and I knew just the
Speaker 1: person to ask. My name is Wendy Wood. I am
Speaker 1: Professor of psychology and business here at the University of
Speaker 1: Southern California. Wendy is the author of a new book,
Speaker 1: Good Habits, Bad Habits, The Science of making positive changes
Speaker 1: that stick. Most of us are very good at understanding
Speaker 1: what we need to do better to be healthier, to
Speaker 1: be more financially stable, to have happier families. Most of
Speaker 1: us know what those things are. The problem, according to Wendy,
Speaker 1: is that most of us mistakenly think that changing our
Speaker 1: behavior requires willpower and hard work. I think that we
Speaker 1: admire willpower, and we view it as a very positive attribute.
Speaker 1: The way that the Puritans thought they would go to
Speaker 1: heaven is through self denial and showing that they were
Speaker 1: strong enough to resist temptations. But there's a problem with this.
Speaker 1: Willpower is next to godliness notion, and that is that
Speaker 1: willpower doesn't really work. When you exert willpower and control
Speaker 1: your behavior, what you're doing is you are thinking about
Speaker 1: the thing that you don't want to do, and in
Speaker 1: doing so, you give it energy to keep re emerging.
Speaker 1: So there's a sort of a self defeating aspect to
Speaker 1: willpower that gets in our way. So if willpower doesn't work,
Speaker 1: what can we actually do to successively tame our bad habits.
Speaker 1: The answer is that we need to be working smarter,
Speaker 1: not harder. When you observe people when they are being
Speaker 1: effective at controlling their behavior and doing the right thing,
Speaker 1: say eating healthfully or saving money for the future, what
Speaker 1: they're doing is they're not exerting willpower. What people do
Speaker 1: is they set up the situations around them to make
Speaker 1: it easy to repeat the desired behavior, and they repeat
Speaker 1: it over and over so that it becomes automatic. We
Speaker 1: don't realize how much of that we really could harness
Speaker 1: if we just knew how it worked. When we get
Speaker 1: back from the break, we'll do just that. We'll take
Speaker 1: a deep dive into how habits work and how you
Speaker 1: can harness them to behave in ways that promote your
Speaker 1: health and your happiness. The Happiness Lab will be right back.
Speaker 1: I get up in the morning, I walk into my
Speaker 1: kitchen and making coffee is the first thing that comes
Speaker 1: to mind. Psychologist and behavior change expert Wendy Wood knows
Speaker 1: that engaging in routine is the secret to changing our
Speaker 1: bad behaviors. I don't ask myself how to do it.
Speaker 1: I don't need to do that. I've done it so
Speaker 1: often in the past. I don't ask myself whether I
Speaker 1: want coffee? Am I really tired this morning? Do I
Speaker 1: need coffee? I don't ask those questions. I just do it,
Speaker 1: and then in the end I get the reward of
Speaker 1: repeating what I've done in the past, which is that
Speaker 1: great cup of coffee. And that's how people who are
Speaker 1: really successful at meeting their goals, that's how they do it.
Speaker 1: Wendy 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. Habits are just the
Speaker 1: behaviors we repeat until they become sort of mental shortcuts.
Speaker 1: There's shortcuts about what you can do that's likely to
Speaker 1: get you the same reward as you got in the past.
Speaker 1: Habits conformed 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 rewards. Here are just behaviors that meet your goals,
Speaker 1: behaviors that make you feel good, behaviors that achieved some
Speaker 1: outcome that you're looking for. For morning, Wendy, that reward
Speaker 1: was having the positive taste of a nice cup of coffee.
Speaker 1: But habit formation can involve lots of other kinds of
Speaker 1: rewards too. The endorphins that kick in after a good
Speaker 1: exercise session, the reduced boredom we feel after we do
Speaker 1: a quick social media check, or the satisfaction you get
Speaker 1: learning something new from your favorite podcast. Anything that feels
Speaker 1: nice or meets a goal can serve as a reward
Speaker 1: that leads to a new habit. But habits not only
Speaker 1: require a reward at the end, they also have a
Speaker 1: second critical component, the routine. A routine is the specific
Speaker 1: sequence of actions that gets us to a reward. For
Speaker 1: Wendy's caffeine habit, that might be each step she takes
Speaker 1: to make her morning coffee. If you're a yoga lover
Speaker 1: like me, your routine might involve grabbing your mat and
Speaker 1: driving to your favorite studio. The science shows that having
Speaker 1: specific routine is critical to habit formation, in part because
Speaker 1: our minds care about them a lot. In fact, when
Speaker 1: your brain experiences something wonderful, it drops everything to remember
Speaker 1: the exact sequence of whatever you just did to get
Speaker 1: that reward, and when it lays down a new memory
Speaker 1: of that sequence, it definitely doesn't want to screw anything up,
Speaker 1: and so it doesn't just remember what you did as
Speaker 1: a bunch of individual action steps. Instead, it stores your
Speaker 1: whole sequence of behaviors as a single solitary routine, what
Speaker 1: researchers call chunking. It even uses a totally different neural
Speaker 1: system to do so, when you're repeating a task that
Speaker 1: you have practiced many times in the past, you are
Speaker 1: relying on something called the sensory motor system, which involves
Speaker 1: the putamen, which is part of the basic anglia. And
Speaker 1: when you start a new task, in contrast, you're using
Speaker 1: much more of the frontal lobes because those are the
Speaker 1: active thinking parts of your brain. And these two things
Speaker 1: are definitely connected, but they also function somewhat independently, and
Speaker 1: that's why habits are such fantastic mental shortcuts, because we
Speaker 1: don't need our conscious thinking frontal lobes to remember each
Speaker 1: individual action. Whenever we want a reward, the unconscious bits
Speaker 1: of our brain can just hit go and our minds
Speaker 1: get the entire perfectly stored routine for free driving is
Speaker 1: the prototypic habit, right. It's something we have to think
Speaker 1: about when we first learn to do it, but then
Speaker 1: over time that thought becomes less and less necessary, and
Speaker 1: we start just responding automatically based on what we did
Speaker 1: in the past, and that achieves the goal of getting
Speaker 1: us somewhere we want to go, and it does so
Speaker 1: efficiently and quickly most of the time. Unless you live
Speaker 1: in la and then there's nothing efficient about driving. I
Speaker 1: want to focus in on this lack of awareness for
Speaker 1: a second, because it's really weird when you think about it.
Speaker 1: I mean, our driving routine involves tracking lots of complicated stuff,
Speaker 1: from where your right foot is to how fast your
Speaker 1: car is going, to whether there are pedestrians about to
Speaker 1: cross the street, to where other cars are moving, to
Speaker 1: when a traffic light might change, to when you need
Speaker 1: to click your turn signal, and to whether you have
Speaker 1: your radio set to your favorite podcast. It's amazing that
Speaker 1: we can juggle all that information at all, let alone
Speaker 1: that we can do so easily and unconsciously. But that
Speaker 1: is the amazing psychological power of habits. Once we form
Speaker 1: a new habit, we get to engage in all kinds
Speaker 1: of complicated behaviors without a moment's thought. And that's why
Speaker 1: habits are so much more effective than willpower for changing
Speaker 1: our behaviors. Once we make the things we want to
Speaker 1: do habitual, they don't require any more work. The problem, though,
Speaker 1: is that not all of our unconscious habitual behaviors are
Speaker 1: good for us. So sitting on the couch when you
Speaker 1: get home at night and eating potato chips that's just
Speaker 1: as much of a habit as going home and then
Speaker 1: just heading out to the gym. One looks habitual and
Speaker 1: structured to us, and the other might look sort of
Speaker 1: a bit lazier, but they're both habits in the same way. Sadly,
Speaker 1: those lazier, not so good for us routines are just
Speaker 1: as automatic as our positive habits, which means that our
Speaker 1: bad habits, the ones that inhibit our happiness, are really
Speaker 1: really hard to shed. We might want to shut those
Speaker 1: habits off, but we can't because our minds are on autopilot.
Speaker 1: But Wendy's work shows that we do have some control
Speaker 1: over when our habit routines get turned on, whether our
Speaker 1: minds unconsciously decided to execute that sit on the couch
Speaker 1: and munch behavior or the throw on our gym closed one.
Speaker 1: The answer comes from the third critical part of our
Speaker 1: habit loops, the context. The context is any part of
Speaker 1: our situation or environment that cues our behavior. For Wendy's
Speaker 1: coffee habit, the context was a location, being in her
Speaker 1: kitchen end, a time of day it was morning end,
Speaker 1: a preceding event she had just woken up. For Richard's
Speaker 1: Heroin Attics, the contacts might be their barracks or the
Speaker 1: site of other gis, using drugs, or just being in Vietnam.
Speaker 1: In our research, we've found that contexts can be pretty
Speaker 1: much everything around you that's not you. It can be
Speaker 1: the people that you're with. There are certain people who
Speaker 1: trigger certain behaviors that we've done with them in the past.
Speaker 1: You may have friends that you typically go and have
Speaker 1: a drink with, and if you see them again, that's
Speaker 1: what tends to come to mind. The moods we're in
Speaker 1: can also be triggers. So I think that one of
Speaker 1: the most common triggers for checking your cell phone is
Speaker 1: being bored. Even if you're in a meeting and it's
Speaker 1: quite rude, you may find yourself checking your phone. You
Speaker 1: don't want to be rude, but the idea of your
Speaker 1: phone just comes to mind when you're bored. When our
Speaker 1: brains notice a context that's associated with the habit, one
Speaker 1: that goes with a particular routine and a certain kind
Speaker 1: of reward, we get an incredibly strong urge to execute
Speaker 1: the habitual behavior, even if it's a behavior that's no
Speaker 1: longer useful or relevant. In fact, Wendy's work has shown
Speaker 1: that ques can ellicit habitual behavior even when the rewards
Speaker 1: from those behaviors aren't even there anymore. She tested this
Speaker 1: out in a clever study involving movie trailer screenings. One
Speaker 1: group of subjects watch the movie trailers on a computer
Speaker 1: in Wendy's lab, just like a typical study, but a
Speaker 1: second group of subjects got to watch the trailers inside
Speaker 1: a movie theater. Wendy was interested in whether the movie
Speaker 1: theater ques spurred on a habitual movie going behavior, popcorn eating,
Speaker 1: But she also wanted to know whether her subjects would
Speaker 1: engage in that habitual behavior even when it was no
Speaker 1: longer reward to do that. She varied the deliciousness of
Speaker 1: the popcorn she offered. Some people got popcorn that was stale,
Speaker 1: and it was really stale, so it had been sitting
Speaker 1: in our lab for a week in a plastic bag.
Speaker 1: It was pretty gross. Others got popcorn that was fresh
Speaker 1: that had just been popped. Very few people who watched
Speaker 1: the film in the lab ate the gross popcorn. They
Speaker 1: didn't have any cues that pushed them to engage in
Speaker 1: an otherwise yucky behavior. But what happened to the subjects
Speaker 1: who experienced all the normal cues of being inside a cinema, well,
Speaker 1: it depended on how they normally acted when watching movies.
Speaker 1: People who had habits to eat popcorn in the movie
Speaker 1: cinema ate just about the same amount of stale popcorn
Speaker 1: as fresh. They could tell us when we asked them
Speaker 1: that they hated the stale popcorn. They ate it anyway.
Speaker 1: People who didn't have habits deep popcorn in the movie
Speaker 1: cinema they did just what you'd expect. But rationally we
Speaker 1: think we would all do, which is eat the fresh popcorn.
Speaker 1: But if they got a bag of stale, just leave it.
Speaker 1: When our brains see a cue that's been associated with
Speaker 1: a 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 1: I bought a new car a few years ago that
Speaker 1: has all kinds of wonderful safety sensors, so it beeps
Speaker 1: when I get close to an obstacle. And I hated
Speaker 1: that at first. It really irritated me because I wasn't
Speaker 1: used to it. But I started responding to those signals automatically.
Speaker 1: Over time, you just stopped noticing them. When the car beeps,
Speaker 1: you just automatically respond to that. And I didn't realize
Speaker 1: how automatic that had become, how much of my driving
Speaker 1: habit that had become, until I rented a car and
Speaker 1: it didn't have that warning sensor system. And the first
Speaker 1: thing I did is I backed into a brick wall.
Speaker 1: The Happiness Lab will be right back. I am a
Speaker 1: Vietnam veteran, a X Marine medic, and an X more
Speaker 1: seen ADDI back. In nineteen seventy one, a documentary called
Speaker 1: GI Junkie followed a group of returning soldiers going through rehab.
Speaker 1: I don't need no peals, no warning. We're an needle
Speaker 1: in my arm. I mean, like, I'm there, I know
Speaker 1: what I want. I'm gonna go get it. The film
Speaker 1: argued that nearly forty thousand hardened GI Junkies were about
Speaker 1: to return to American soil and would soon become a
Speaker 1: major problem, but in reality, no such army of drug
Speaker 1: addicts actually existed. The kind of surprising key is that
Speaker 1: I think, you know, once these soldiers got on the
Speaker 1: plane and got back home, you know they were good.
Speaker 1: Their cravings didn't kick in. They weren't trying to find
Speaker 1: the stuff once they got back, exactly That's exactly right.
Speaker 1: And no one, I don't think 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 soldiers 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 were able to figure out
Speaker 1: the soldier's secret. They were able to use their contextual
Speaker 1: cues to break their bad habit. Probably the majority of
Speaker 1: users would basically kind of detox on their own. They
Speaker 1: would sell detox while they use this crutch to help
Speaker 1: them get through military life over there. They understood that
Speaker 1: the home environment is very different from this environment. Richard
Speaker 1: realized that a few hours on an airline and a
Speaker 1: change back into civy clothes was enough to break his
Speaker 1: soldier's habit routine. They weren't bored or stressed anymore, and
Speaker 1: they weren't hanging out with their drug taking buddies. They
Speaker 1: also didn't have easy access to cheap heroin. Nearly every
Speaker 1: single one of their habit cues was different. Most of
Speaker 1: these guys, they got home and they kind of reintegrated
Speaker 1: into their previous lives. Richard's veterans success Us and kicking
Speaker 1: heroine has now become a classic example in the science
Speaker 1: of behavior change. Because of a simple context switch can
Speaker 1: be powerful enough to help someone overcome heroin addiction. Imagine
Speaker 1: how powerful it can be for changing simpler behaviors like
Speaker 1: the ones many of us want to change. We did
Speaker 1: some research where we beaped people once an hour to
Speaker 1: figure out what they were thinking, feeling, doing, and what
Speaker 1: we found is that about forty three percent of the time,
Speaker 1: people are doing what they did yesterday and the day
Speaker 1: before in the same context, and they're doing it without
Speaker 1: thinking much about it. The idea that nearly half of
Speaker 1: our waking day is on autopilot, that we're constantly governed
Speaker 1: by cues and context is pretty shocking. But if that's true,
Speaker 1: then it gives us a powerful opportunity to change some
Speaker 1: of our daily behaviors. If we can use our conscious
Speaker 1: minds to exert some control over the context we find
Speaker 1: ourselves in, then we can shift our bad behaviors to
Speaker 1: the ones we want to adopt. Our environments can do
Speaker 1: the same thing for us in pushing us to help
Speaker 1: us meet our goals and making it hard for us
Speaker 1: to stray from the good behaviors 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. In
Speaker 1: one study, people had a bowl of apple slices and
Speaker 1: a bowl of hot buttered popcorn. When the apple slices
Speaker 1: were right in front of them and the popcorn was
Speaker 1: arms reached, people ate a third less calories than when
Speaker 1: the popcorn was right in front of them and the
Speaker 1: apples were a reach. I mean, we're talking a minimal
Speaker 1: distance that makes little sense to our conscious thinking cells,
Speaker 1: but to our habits and our automatic reacting cells, that's
Speaker 1: a big difference. We don't realize how much of a
Speaker 1: difference proximity makes to our behavior. But context doesn't just
Speaker 1: affect what we reach for when we're hungry. There are
Speaker 1: lots of simple ways we can use the cues around
Speaker 1: us to disrupt the autopilot behaviors we don't want to
Speaker 1: engage in. There are forces on our environments that make
Speaker 1: some actions more difficult and other actions easier, and those
Speaker 1: resisting forces 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 returned 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 heroine 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 heroine
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 heroine 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. In the middle of the last century,
Speaker 1: we all learned that smoking was bad for US. About
Speaker 1: half of America smoked at that point, but smoking still
Speaker 1: didn't go down. Smoking rates continued reasonably high until the
Speaker 1: US decided to put friction on smoking by taxing cigarettes
Speaker 1: so you can't afford them, as easily, banning smoking in
Speaker 1: public places, and by making it difficult to purchase cigarettes
Speaker 1: so that you actually have to ask somebody. And all
Speaker 1: of those things combined put enough friction on smoking so
Speaker 1: that the smoking rates in the US are now down
Speaker 1: to a level of only fifteen percent of US smoke.
Speaker 1: And that's because of friction. Even if you don't smoke
Speaker 1: or use illegal drugs. There's a lesson here for you.
Speaker 1: Think about the things you want to change in your life,
Speaker 1: the bad habits you want to stop, or the good
Speaker 1: habits you want to adopt. We can use the conscious
Speaker 1: part of our brain to increase friction, to inhibit our
Speaker 1: bad habits and break down the barriers that prevent us
Speaker 1: from doing the good ones. Are there social media apps
Speaker 1: that drive you nuts but you can't help checking whenever
Speaker 1: you pick up your phone, Well delete them. Do you
Speaker 1: want to call your mom more often, well, then choose
Speaker 1: a photo of her as your screensaver. Don't want to
Speaker 1: buy certain items in the store, plan your shopping trip
Speaker 1: to avoid the candy aisle. Or maybe you want to
Speaker 1: try some of the new habits that we've talked about
Speaker 1: in this season, like experiencing more gratitude, then download a
Speaker 1: gratitude app and stick it front and center on your phone.
Speaker 1: Or maybe you want to make better use of your time,
Speaker 1: then put that time windfall list somewhere you can see
Speaker 1: it easily. In all of these examples, you can hack
Speaker 1: the cues around you to help promote the kinds of
Speaker 1: behaviors that you want in your life. Wendy had to
Speaker 1: go through this exact same conscious process when her daily
Speaker 1: fitness habit took a nosedive thanks to motherhood. Rather than
Speaker 1: powering through or giving up, she analyzed where her growing
Speaker 1: family was adding a bit of friction to her workout plans.
Speaker 1: Every time I decided two o'clock, three o'clock, four o'clock,
Speaker 1: maybe a six o'clock tonight, I'll exercise, something always comes
Speaker 1: up when you have little children. So I decided I
Speaker 1: would have to start exercising early in the Although it
Speaker 1: was a really dreadful thing to start doing, once you
Speaker 1: get used to it, it actually is very efficient. So
Speaker 1: at six am, Wendy would be ready to exercise. But
Speaker 1: what exercise? Wendy realized it had to be something with
Speaker 1: as few frictions as possible. I didn't have much time
Speaker 1: to drive to a gym or do any fancy workout thing.
Speaker 1: I couldn't go to a class. I just didn't have
Speaker 1: that level of control over my time, so it had
Speaker 1: to be something that was very efficient and easy for
Speaker 1: me to do. And putting your running shoes on and
Speaker 1: going out the door is probably the most frictionless kind
Speaker 1: of exercise that you could imagine. I actually used to
Speaker 1: sleep in my running clothes. I hate to admit this,
Speaker 1: but that was another thing that reduced the friction. Talking
Speaker 1: with Wendy has really inspired me to think about how
Speaker 1: I can use my conscious brain to hack the autopilot
Speaker 1: of all my bad habits. I'm already strategies I can
Speaker 1: use to increase or reduce friction so I'll be able
Speaker 1: to reach my own well being goals literally without thinking.
Speaker 1: I hope you've gotten some insight into how you can
Speaker 1: hack your own habits, and I hope you'll be willing
Speaker 1: to form a new, happier habit and send up all
Speaker 1: your contextcuse to remind you to come back for the
Speaker 1: next episode of the Happiness Lab with me, Doctor Laurie Santos.
Speaker 1: The Happiness Lab is co written and produced by Ryan Dilley.
Speaker 1: Our original music was composed by Zachary Silver, with additional scoring,
Speaker 1: mixing and mastering by Evan Viola. Pete Notaton also helped
Speaker 1: with production. Joseph Friedman checked our facts and our editing
Speaker 1: was done by Sophie Crane mckibbon. Special thanks to mie
Speaker 1: La Belle, Carl mcgliori, Heather Fame, Julia Barton, Maggie Taylor,
Speaker 1: Maya Kanig, Jacob Weisberg, and my agent, Ben Davis. Inslav
Speaker 1: is brought to you by Pushkin Industries and me Doctor
Speaker 1: Laurie Santos