244. stop forcing habits in 2026: do this instead

Jan 6

listen to this episode:

this year, we’re NOT setting any more new year’s resolutions we can’t follow through on. in this solo episode, i’m breaking down how you can achieve all your personal, career, and wellness goals in 2026– and no, we’re not just manifesting, we’re using science.

tune into this episode to find out the consistent, invisible habits you can use for reaching all your goals this year (without sacrificing on any much-needed self-care).

i talk about:

i the best way to set yourself up for success when setting new goals/habits
game-changing habits i tried out in college + my post-grad job this year
a mentality shift you can try to improve your quality of sleep
examples of how you can follow through with healthy habits in the new year
why you should be making your relationships a priority in 2026
life hacks for finding time for friendships even when you’re busiest
how my habits helped me pick my post-grad job?!
and SO much more!

mentioned:

SHOP GUEST RECOMMENDATIONS: https://amzn.to/3A69GOC

About She Persisted

She Persisted is THE Gen Z mental health podcast. In each episode, Sadie brings you authentic, accessible, relatable conversations about every aspect of mental wellness. Expect evidence-based, Gen Z-approved resources, coping skills (lots of DBT), insights, and education in each piece of content you consume. She Persisted offers you a safe space to feel validated and understood in your struggle while encouraging you to take ownership of your journey and build your life worth living.

a note: this is an automated transcription so please ignore any accidental misspellings!

Sadie: [00:00:00] Welcome to She Persisted, the Gen Z Mental Health Podcast. I'm your host, Sadie Sutton. Let's get into it.

this really fundamentally altered the way I approach my life,

this year I started adapting my approach

I actually started to get the results that I wanted to with things like relationships and productivity

if you are stuck right now with a habit or routine or some aspect of your mental health, I think this will be a really helpful mindset shift to make.

I want to give you consistent, sustainable, doable things to make a difference in our life, but also feel better about ourselves in the process.

Hello, hello and welcome back to She Persisted. I am so glad you guys are here today. We are entering the new year

And you guys might know this about me but I love New Year's goal setting. I like to make a mood board. I like to do a little vision board moment, though I'm not as like intense and insane about it, I will say my best vision board moment was My sophomore year of college, I made my mood board. I put so much stuff on it. A lot of it is like recurring every single year, [00:01:00] like feeling connected in relationships and feeling balanced and physically and mentally healthy and things for the podcast and school and blah, blah, blah.

I on a little New York Times logo. I like wanted the podcast to be highlighted, seen in the New York Times. Like that just seemed like an insane goal. Like shoot for the stars. What's the craziest thing? Put the New York Times logo on there and I'm sitting in lab doing my volunteer hours, data cleaning in February.

And I get this email from this dad who lives in Seattle, and he is like, I saw your podcast in the article and I just wanted to let you know that there's a link on your website that's broken. I'm like thank you so much because I never would've known. And the website is always broken in some capacity.

What article are you talking about? And he was so sweet. he goes, I am so excited to be the one to share this with you. And he sends this photo of she persisted in the Sunday New York Times.

There had been an [00:02:00] article that talked about Gen Z and teens and young people in phone use, and next the article, they had spotlighted recommended content. It was like, listen, read, watch, different pieces of content that paired well with the article that talked about Gen Z mental health and increased screen in technology.

And She Persisted was a recommended listen. And I had no idea. No one ever reached out if that amazing dad out of Seattle had never emailed me to let me know my website is broken. I never would've known my podcast was in the New York Times. I call my family, I'm freaking out. I order like six copies on the New York Times website because I hadn't gotten the paper delivered to me.

My dad for my birthday. Got it. Printed out in a frame. It's hanging on my wall in my apartment. And I don't know about the whole vision board thing. I'm not as bought into it as some people, but that was a crazy, wild moment and that's the only time anything like that has ever happened.

But this episode will not be about manifesting and not taking [00:03:00] action towards your goals and things magically happening because that's not the vibe of she persisted. There are some podcasts out there that will do that. That is not me, that's not the show.

I want to give you very consistent, sustainable, doable, validating things that we can do to make a difference in our life, but also feel better about ourselves in the process. And so I thought it would be fun to talk about the, like invisible, quiet, meaningful habits that kept me okay this year. It was a really crazy year. 2025 was one for the books. graduated college, I wrote my thesis. I heard back from grad schools. I applied to, I moved to upstate New York, living by myself, working a full nine to five job.

I got to have some incredible, amazing moments with my college friends before we all parted ways and spread out around the country.

I got to spend a lot of really amazing, incredible time with family. Definitely didn't have a boyfriend. Watched [00:04:00] a lot of Taylor Swift content really locked in on that this year. That was always something that happens. Anyways, all of this to say eventful year, And when I look back on this year, it didn't feel like, wow, these amazing life changing shifts are happening. It really felt like it was defined by these stable, consistent habits and shifted ways that I was approaching and thinking about things. So the first thing that I will say I started doing this year that I really had never done before, was putting myself in situations to force myself to do things. And whether you've made this choice or not in your life. You absolutely have done this on many occasions.

you have completed years of school because you showed up at school every day. 8:00 AM to 3:00 PM and were put through the motions of classes. You got better at a sport because your parents dropped you off at practice after school ended. You ran the mile because you were stuck in PE class and given a grade for it. We do a lot of things because we're in a situation that requires them [00:05:00] and for some reason when we are setting goals for ourselves, we don't apply the same thinking. We're like, I should be able to mentally get myself to do this.

If I want this thing for myself. I should just be able to white knuckle and be so motivated and use all the willpower and just magically get this result. And having spent a lot of time around Angela Duckworth's research and her class and her work

her way of approaching this really fundamentally altered the way that I approach my life, which is that the least effective way to do anything in life is to rely on It is like the most scarce resource we have as humans. And when you ask people who are incredibly successful at what they do and have put huge amounts of effort towards that thing, they don't tell you that they relied on willpower.

They loved the process, and they had people holding them accountable, and they were in situations that helped them reach that goal.

And I think we don't give ourselves the same grace, especially when it comes to these smaller goals [00:06:00] like mental health or daily routines. We think that should come naturally to us, that we should just be able to do it. And if it doesn't happen easily, we should be able to use willpower and white knuckle our way through it with ease.

And then when that doesn't happen, we feel really ashamed and then we avoid it. And then the spiral continues. At least if you're me, that's what happens. And so this year I started adapting my approach and I also find myself noticing how much more challenging it is to do things when I don't use this approach. And that is that I will confine myself to a certain situation or context to do a thing. So for example. I know that when I get home from work, I'm mentally tired, I'm physically tired. I would like to sit on my couch and eat dinner and watch TV and then get ready for bed and do nothing.

So what I've done over the past couple of months, when I have deadlines for social media clients or the podcast or grad school applications, I stay at work until I do that thing and I'm not doing this to an unrealistic degree. I'm not like I'm gonna write [00:07:00] my entire personal statement in one sitting in 30 minutes before I go home for the day. I will give myself reasonable tasks that I know can be achieved and done within a short period of time if I just sit down and do it.

And so by placing myself in the situation of work I can really efficiently and effectively get those things done and then leave. I also give myself a lot of grace and know that I'm mentally tired when I get home.

I know that I've conditioned myself to not do work when I get home. know that I have really strong mental associations of like being at work, being at my desk, or getting things done. So it's easier to do in that context. I know that it's more reinforcing and rewarding when I finish the work in my office and then get to go home and do nothing versus getting home knowing I could do nothing.

But then instead deciding to do work at home. Like instead of fighting against myself, I'm working with myself and I wanna give you guys some other ways that I implemented this year that I had never thought about and never intentionally done, but it was really effective at [00:08:00] changing my behavior.

When I was working on my thesis I ended up working with one of my peers. We were kind of working on them together, getting feedback from a teacher and in this context together where it was like, we are working on this thesis until we have to go home and go to bed. And while we are here, we are focusing and we're holding each other accountable.

If I had spent those 12 hours sitting in my dorm room, I can absolutely tell you with complete certainty, I would not have gotten as much done, if anything at all. Sometimes if I am motivated and committed to doing a workout, instead of doing literally anything when I get home, I'll put on my workout clothes and then go to the gym before I even have a chance to think about it. This happens very often. That's gonna be a 2026 endeavor of having a more consistent workout routine.

But not giving yourself the choice, not giving yourself that opportunity to have to exercise willpower and have to exercise. Self-control makes things a lot easier. Another example of this though, this wasn't as intentional, but in hindsight, it's absolutely true, is my sleep routine.

I've talked about this before. I'm a [00:09:00] bad sleeper. I don't get good sleep. My sleep hygiene is something that I have to be really intentional and rigid about to try and get better sleep. Having a nine to five and being like, I have to be there in the morning and there until a certain time of evening has been an absolute game changer when it comes to having a consistent sleep routine.

This was something I struggled with immensely in college, napping during the day, falling asleep during the day going to bed at crazy late times and not getting enough sleep. Anything you can imagine when it comes to sleep. I was struggling with, and I think one of the biggest reasons for this was it wasn't that set structure.

there was a pseudo schedule I would give myself of like, I wanna wake up at this time and I'll go get coffee before class, or I'll do work before then, but I didn't have to be somewhere at a certain time every day. And so I was left to use that self-control and willpower and just will my way through it.

And that was really ineffective. And it meant that for a very large amount of the time I fell into these like really [00:10:00] ineffective sleep habits. Whereas having this Monday through Friday, sometimes going in on the weekends, morning through evening, I'm out of the house.

I'm doing this thing,

has been an absolute game changer for my sleep. So those are some examples that come to mind. I'm gonna throw out a couple others that you guys could try, but I think the example of like not going back to your house or not going back to your dorm or apartment until you finish something.

Go to the library, go to a coffee shop, stay at school. Like whatever it is that you can do to get something done that you don't wanna do is really effective.

Signing yourself up for things like workout classes or sports or clubs that are meeting. Super effective way to get yourself like active and moving and consistent with that habit.

I also think that's also true for social relationships. Take the same classes as your friends. Sign up for a similar club, work in the same lab. I want you to consider these opportunities for built-in friends, built in community, built-in relationships. when I was deciding what to do After graduation, I knew I wanted to get full-time research experience, which is called like a post back or [00:11:00] a post baccalaureate. Listen to the episode I did with my friend Olivia.

We did a two part episode on like everything you need to know if you're a psychology major or want to do psychology research. I heavily considered what the social dynamics would be like in my workplace, and I ended up choosing between two roles.

One, there was two or three other people that were my age and in the same role. It was a lot smaller of a lab and they would work remote a good amount of time or some of the time. So not everyone was in the office every single day from nine to five, and the study that they were doing was also remote.

So you were on Zoom talking to people that way. The job that I'm currently in, the role that I accepted, there are five other people that are in the same job as me, so they are also full-time, nine to five post-back researchers. We have a lot of grad students, we have a lot of undergrads.

My boss is very hands-on. We see 'em every single day. this study we do is in person, so we have families coming in every day.

for three hour appointments and we are the ones interacting with them in [00:12:00] person. Another element of like a, that's great experience to have if you wanna go into psychology, but also B, in humans who need connection and need to interact with people. And knowing that I feel really great when I'm interacting with people in person and feeling like I'm helping others

which situation will help me fill that need. Choosing to have built in friends and built in connection and built-in community, in the workplace, in person. On a very frequent basis was not only something that was really important from like a career perspective of like being able to better get to know people, which is super important in any job, but also from a social standpoint of I moving to a new place where I know no one,

what can I do to have some built in friends and connection and community without me, again, having to exercise self-control or willpower or go out into the community and sign up for activities and try and meet all these new people? That was something that I was really intentional about and I am so glad I did it.

[00:13:00] looking back at 2025, this was probably the biggest mindset shift that I made, and it had such a huge impact. And this is very full circle because if you listen to last year's episode, going into the new year, I talked about what I learned about habits and routines from Angela Duckworth's Grit Lab class.

And coming in with an Angela Duckworth. Mindset, hack trick, take away whatever you wanna call it, which is to stop asking yourself what is wrong with me? And asking what is wrong with this situation? And she's done so much research showing how this applies to every single area of life, whether it is like long-term success and reaching huge goals and grades and all these different things. But I found this to be especially true for my mental health and things like my sleep routine and my relationships and my hobbies, which is that I stopped trying to fix myself and shaming myself for not doing something or feeling like I needed to try harder or push on through, or have more discipline or use more willpower.

And instead, I started [00:14:00] asking what would make the situation easier? so instead of looking at things I wasn't doing as a character flaw, I looked at it as a logistics problem of where could I myself to make it easier for me to do this thing. and this approach of choosing easy on purpose, being intentional, working with myself instead of against myself meant so much less self-judgment and shame and overwhelm.

And I actually started to get the results that I wanted to with things like my sleep routine and relationships and productivity and working towards longer term goals.

And so the real takeaway is that the progress doesn't come from fixing yourself. You're not deficient, you're not wrong.

A lot of progress comes from the situations we find ourselves in the context. We put ourselves in the environments that are contributing to our behaviors and our outcomes. So how can we shift those to, again, not fight an uphill battle, not be battling against our own brains at every step and making this a logistical problem, not an emotional one.

So if [00:15:00] you are stuck right now with a habit or routine or some aspect of your mental health, I think this will be a really helpful mindset shift to make, which is that the answer might not be more effort you have tried your best, you are doing your best, and you can still get better.

The DBT tried and true dialectic, and the better might come from the situation and the environment and the context, not necessarily you. And so I want you to think instead what situation can I put myself in? What context can I put myself in? What environmental changes can I make to make this easier on myself?

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