209. How to Set Habits You'll ACTUALLY Use [Solo]

Jan 16

listen to this episode:

In this week's solo episode, I discuss how to set healthy habits and achieve your goals this year using psychology! I'll be sharing my favorite psychology hacks on how to set achievable habits and goals before diving into my personal goals for 2025.

In this episode, I explain:

+ The difference between motivation & volition

+ Key frameworks that will help you achieve your goals

+ The importance of making plans & the most effective ways to set plans

+ Three psychology hacks for achieving your goals more quickly

+ Why you should start setting habits when pursuing your goals

+ Three ways to increase your likelihood of implementing a new habit

+ Common reasons why we get stuck & don't achieve our goals

+ Tips on improving your willpower so you can achieve your goals

+ Goals & habits that I'm looking to implement this year

+ so much more!

Mentioned In The Episode…

+ Mindset Theory of Action Phases

+ Healthy Through Habit

+ Episode on exposure therapy

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

Episode Sponsors

⚡ This week's episode is sponsored by Magic Mind. You can get 45% off the Magic Mind Bundle by using this link: https://magicmind.com/SHEPERSISTEDJAN.

About She Persisted (formerly Nevertheless, She Persisted)

After a year and a half of intensive treatment for severe depression and anxiety, 18-year-old Sadie recounts her journey by interviewing family members, professionals, and fellow teens to offer self-improvement tips, DBT education, and personal experiences. She Persisted is the reminder that someone else has been there too and your inspiration to live your life worth living.

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

Sadie: Welcome to She Persisted. I'm your host, Sadie Sutton, a 19 year old from the Bay Area studying psychology at the University of Penn. She Persisted is the Teen Mental Health Podcast made for teenagers by a teen. In each episode, I'll bring you authentic, accessible, and relatable conversations about every aspect of mental wellness.

You can expect evidence-based, teen approved resources, coping skills, including lots of D B T 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.

So let's dive in this week on She persisted.

if you are on Instagram reels, have you guys seen those super moody, super Low brightness entrepreneur videos.

They have the big microphones. They're like, never tell anyone your goals. Build in private, work in private, celebrate publicly. Never tell anyone what your plans are. Wrong. Psychologically, scientifically speaking, if you want to reach your goal, you will declare your goal publicly and you will Do so in person.

You will tell those around you what you're working towards, what you're trying to do, and you are exponentially more likely to achieve that goal than if you are the only one that is aware of that goal and holding yourself accountable.

Hello. Hello. And welcome to She Persisted. If this is your first episode, I'm so excited you're here. If this is not your first episode, welcome back. Happy 2025. We have a really exciting episode. It is going to set you up for success. I think this year with your goals and your habits and successes and failures and all the things we're going to dive into a lot of psychology research and all those topics that I'm gonna talk about my goals for 2025.

I know we're a little bit late. I'm recording this on January 12th. I know a lot of people do their goal setting content like end of December, very beginning of January. I was on a mental hiatus, after the fall semester and grad school apps and finals and all the things. I've been taking a little bit of a mental break, doing lots of reading, relaxing over winter break, but we're back.

I start my final semester at Penn in a couple of days, which is absolutely wild. And. I'm setting my goals right now for 2025 and I hope that this is helpful for you guys as well as you're starting school and that it's not too late and you guys still find value from this. Also, If you are just getting back into your school routine or you have new classes or a new schedule or any big changes happening, that is scientifically the best time to start new habits and routines because it's easier to implement them in a new environment than it is in your same environment with new behaviors because those cues are tied to old behaviors.

So hopefully this will be a good point for you guys to implement those things. And , I hope you guys find a lot of value from this episode and we're just going to dive right in. The first thing that we're going to talk about is the difference between motivation and volition.

So motivation is why we do something. It's a lot of times tied to our lived experiences or our emotions, our values, our interests. That's kind of what is urging us to do something, but our volition is how we do something. So that's what we're going to be talking about today. Our volition with regard to habits and routines and plans and goals and successes and failures.

Like how can we be more productive? Most effective and get the outcomes that we want and follow through and building on that idea within our volition. There are four different little steps that you could call them. I'm gonna give you guys a lot of frameworks and ways to think about goals and take what you like, leave what you don't.

But I feel like it's helpful to kind of hear different ways of thinking about these things and where you could potentially insert new thoughts and behaviors to be more efficient and improved. This one comes from an article called Mindset Theory of Action Phases and If Then Planning. It's from 2019. We can put it in the show notes.

But there are four steps that take place when an action occurs. So that's pre decisional. So that's like your pros and cons thinking about, if you want to do this thing, weighing your options, then we have our pre actional. So taking our steps to set ourselves up for success, what is going to happen? And we're going to talk a lot about this pre actional phase today.

There's the actional. So you actually do the thing. And then the post actional reflecting on it, getting feedback. Was that effective? What would I change next time, et cetera.

And so within that preactional phase, there is something that you can implement called an implementation intention. So this is a specific plan that is better than a goal intention. So a goal intention would be, I want to get better at running.

I'm going to start running. I am going to run a 5K. I'm going to run every day. Like those are goal intentions. An if then plan, and when we learned them in GritLab this past semester, which I'm pulling a lot from my notes for that, and you guys are going to get a GritLab recap episode, the next solo episode, which I'm really excited about.

We learned about them as when then plans, which it rhymes a little bit easier to remember and it makes more sense. But the when is the cue. So when I get home from school, when it turns five o'clock, when my alarm goes off in the morning, then I'm going to run one mile. Then I'm going to get up, put on my work clothes, go downstairs and walk two miles.

So one way we can set a goal, that's more effective than just saying, I'd like to do this, is an implementation intention. So when this thing happens, then I will do this some other characteristics of effective goals is that they're specific, they're challenging, and they're declared publicly in person, which if you are on Instagram reels, have you guys seen those like super moody, super Low brightness entrepreneur videos.

Another statistic that I'll give you related to this is that 7 percent of people achieve their goals without setting an intention. Only 7%. So if we're not setting specific intentions, if we're not being clear about what we want to achieve, we're not going to achieve that thing. It's not just magically going to happen or change in our life.

As humans, we're wired to do as little as possible. Like we're wired to conserve energy and stay in our routines and stay in our habits and stay in our comfort zone and not change or achieve. Move out of that, like evolutionary speaking, that's what we're meant to do. So creating new habits, setting new goals, pushing ourselves outside of our comfort zone is a really foreign and not intuitive experience.

So it's not just magically going to happen. We have to put effort and guardrails in place to allow us to get to that end point. And then another piece of an effective goal is that. You have to have a sub goal related to your performance. When you don't have a sub goal that's performance related, you don't have a goal at all.

So if we go back to the 5K example, if your goal is to run a 5K in under 30 minutes, I feel like, I've had friends that run 5K, I feel like they said 30 minutes was like, some time that people run a 5K in? I don't know. I don't run 5Ks. You will say, have sub goals related to your performance. I will run a mile in under 10 minutes.

I will run 2 miles in under 18 minutes. I will run 3 miles in under 25 minutes. And you will attach dates to those and specific measurable outcomes related to your performance. And you can be flexible with that. Maybe you have to push it back. Maybe you have to give yourself more grace. But those sub goals related to your performance are really important so that you eventually get to that outcome.

Because again, it's just not magically going to happen. We're wired against those goals magically happening. So we have to be really intentional and objective with the way that we measure if we're on the right track.

So I'm gonna give you guys another framework for goals before we talk about plans. And so there's this thing called the Rubicon model, and If you've ever heard of the phrase like crossing the Rubicon, it's like crossing a river. And the point is that once you've crossed, you can't go back. Like you've committed to something, you've made the decision, and now you're in the process of implementing that.

There's no reverse. You can't draw out of it. Like you've made the decision, you've made the commitment. So basically, in the Rubicon model, this model of actions and goals happening, the first step is deliberating, thinking about what the goal is. That's what we're doing right now. Then you're going to set a goal, and we're going to talk about all the best ways to set a goal.

We talked about specific, challenging, declared publicly, sub goals related to performance. We'll talk about more things that you can do. Your when, then plans will give you more frameworks, but you set your goal and that is crossing the Rubicon. Once you've set that goal, you can't go back. The goal's been set.

Now you either achieve it or you don't. After that, you plan, which we're going to also do today. So plan to set yourself up for success. You act, you actually do the behavior and then you evaluate. Did it work? Did not work? You get feedback, et cetera. And so that's one way that we can view goals. So again, deliberate, set a goal, plan, act, and evaluate.

So now we're going to kind of circle it on plans. What are plans? Why do we set them? What purpose do they serve? How can we be more effective with the plans that we set? And then we're going to continue along this cycle of like goal setting and what we're going to do. So plans are the articulation of an intended future action, and we could say when then's our plans. The implementation intentions are a version of plans, but plans are really powerful. There are studies that have been done about the specificity of the flu shot appointment and how likely it is that people actually get their vaccinations.

So they mailed out these little cards and some of them just said, just get your flu shot. Some of them said, get your flu shot at this date. Some of them said, get your flu shot at this date, at this time, at this time. this specific location and it was drastically different. How many people showed up and actually got vaccinated when they were given a specific plan with the location and the time and what was going to happen rather than just saying, do this, the implementation intention of like, get your flu shot or the goal intention.

I'm going to get vaccinated.

And the completion rate here is really wild. So 32 percent versus 71 percent completion rates when saying where and when you're going to do something versus again, just having that general idea of like, I'd like to do this thing in general at some point in the future.

And so we're going to get into habits, right? Habits are like we go on autopilot. We don't think through things. We just react. We have the cue and then the behavior. So you don't have that thought of like, should I do this? Should I not do this? Pros and cons. What are the benefits? Instead, you just say, I woke up, my alarm went off.

So then I did the thing. Implementation intentions and these really specific plans can kind of act as that. You're not thinking because you've already made the plan. It's a certain date, it's a certain time, so you do the thing. And again, 32 versus 71 percent difference in completion rates when you have that plan, that implementation intention of what time is it happening and where is it happening.

But plans don't always work. There's this really interesting thing called the planning fallacy. So we plan for the best case scenario, but we also expect the outcome to reflect that. And that's not the case. Our plans don't always go according to our intentions. The best case scenario isn't always going to happen.

So it's important to flag that. But they increase the likelihood of us being really flawed and inefficient at completing these goals as humans. It increases the likelihood of us actually following through.

So how can we set effective goals and make plans that increase the likelihood of us doing something? I'm going to give you guys a framework, and I'm hoping to have the scientists who came up with this on the podcast at some point. We're still figuring out scheduling, but it will be a really great episode when it comes out.

But this is called the WHOOP framework.

And it's been shown to increase GPA, improve school conduct, improve attendance. It's a really powerful framework in improving behavioral outcomes. And again, decreasing our human nature of not doing different behaviors automatically. So W. O. O. P. stands for Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, and Plan. So W. O. O. P. What's the goal that you want to achieve?

We're going to set that intention. The outcome. How will you feel when you achieve this outcome? We're going to talk about positive thinking, which actually decreases the likelihood of you achieving your goal, which is an interesting paradox. But how do you want to feel like, what is the positive that's on the other side of doing this hard thing?

Obstacles. What are the main obstacles? Are you going to procrastinate? Are you going to get distracted? Are you going to scroll on TikTok? Are you going to not want to do it and just decide not to? Like, what are the potential obstacles that would prevent you from completing this goal? And then plan. How are you going to tackle these obstacles?

Are you going to shut off your phone? Are you going to let your friends know in advance? Like, I can't do that this day. I have this thing that I'm trying to do. Are you going to prepare for the fact that you're going to procrastinate and write down a pros and cons? So in the moment, you know, like I've thought this out, this is really important to me and I'm going to do the opposite of what I want to do, which is procrastinate.

So that's the Woot method. effective, evidence based, simple, and you can use it for almost any goal.

I want to give you guys a couple little like facts, things to be aware of when it comes to human psychology and goals that I think can be helpful when you're creating these WHOOP goals and we're just generally structuring our plans and what we hope to happen. So the first is the importance of examples and models.

We learn faster and more effectively and better when we have an example of something or a model of something. So they did this study where they had people use chat GPT to write a cover letter, and they objectively rated the quality of the cover letter when people worked completely independently and on their own versus when they worked with ChachiBT to write a cover letter.

And they found that people learn faster and they produce better cover letters when they work with ChachiBT. Which was the opposite of the hypothesis. They didn't think that people would get better. They're not actually learning because they're working with something else and they're getting examples and the answers are quote unquote being handed to them.

But that wasn't the case. They learned more effectively by having an example and being shown what to do. This is also something you hear a lot in medicine. See one, do one, teach one. You observe, you have that model, you take it in, you then do one, you practice, and then you teach to really solidify and reinforce that learning.

So we learn really well by example. anytime you have a goal that the skill you haven't already established, what examples can you look at? If you want to start posting on Tik TOK or online more follow creators who are documenting their journey of posting regularly. If you want to learn how to edit videos, watch video editing tutorials.

If you want to get a certain grade in a certain class, compare past work that you've submitted versus a friend who's gotten a zone assignments. What are the differences? Go to the teacher and ask them for examples of past assignments that have gotten good grades.

Another piece of thing to keep in mind is that as humans, we have really social brains when they've done research on what sets us apart as humans as being really an exceptional species compared to like chimps or apes or maybe those are the same lions or dolphins. These other animals that are smart and have similar brains to us but are in nowhere near as innovative and, evolved as we are.

What sets us apart is not the structure of our brain, the number of neurons, the complexity is our social brain. It's our ability to relate with others and communicate with them and collaborate and work together. Like, that is what is unique about us, and it's allowed us to thrive as a species. So we use that to our example.

We learn socially. We learn with others. And so, Collaborate with others, get feedback from others. So those are two things that we're really going to expedite the rate that you're learning and executing on these goals, which is one, working with others and two, learning from models. And then the last thing that I'm going to mention here is this thing called the three box model or process theory, and this is a theory of emotions, and it comes from Dr.

Angela Duckworth and then a professor at Stanford, and it's technically four different steps, but she condenses it down to just three for the purpose of understanding this easily and implementing it. So we have our situation that we put ourself in our box one, the context. box 2 is our thoughts.

How do we interpret the situation? Technically, it's our attention and our appraisal. But like, what do we think about and react to with regard to this situation? And then three,

we have our response. How do we behave? Do we achieve the goal? Like what happens after we've been in a situation? We've thought about it. And then how do we respond? And we do a lot of episodes on this podcast about how we think about things because that's really powerful.

It can change how we feel. We do a lot about how we can change our behaviors, which then in turn changes our feelings and our thoughts. But for the purpose of this episode, I really want to emphasize that box one. And this is one of my biggest takeaways from this class, which we're going to again, do a recap on grit lab.

And you guys are going to hear all about this. Um, But the box one that you put yourself in is going to impact the thoughts you have and the actions you take. So are you putting yourself in a situation where you'll be held accountable, where you will have deadlines that help you towards a larger goal?

Do you have others achieving similar goals to you so you guys can work together and collaborate? Do you have models of what you should be doing, an example so that you can thrive and do what you're supposed to be doing? So what box one are you putting yourself in and are you giving yourself the best chance of success?

The example I'll give you guys of this is me doing my work Which is that when I go to my room at Penn and after class I like sit and relax and I read a book or I watch TV. I just hang out eat a snack. I will not do work I've tried It just doesn't happen. Maybe I'll do a little bit of work like three hours later, but it's not going to happen.

If I refuse and like white knuckle my way to not going to my room and I sit at a coffee shop or I sit in an empty building or I sit in a classroom, I will get my work done. I might be a little bit more tired. I might be like, I just want to be done for the day, but I will get my work done before I go back to my dorm.

When I go back to my dorm room after class, I'm like, Oh, I get to relax. I'm so excited. I'm done for the day. I'm not setting myself up for success. My box one is not conductive to me getting my work done when I go to Starbucks or I meet up with friends or I sit in a classroom and Intend to do my work.

I'm setting myself up for success because I know that I'm more likely to complete my work and then get to go home to my lovely room and get ready for bed and watch TV. So think about your box one. I think that's the most powerful thing you can manipulate when it comes to goal setting, because you don't have to like work against yourself with your emotions and your thoughts.

You're setting yourself up for success to be productive or whatever it is that the goal that you're achieving. So to recap so far, motivation is why we do something. Volition is how we do it. Our goals direct our energy. Our plans specify what we're going to do, and ideally when and where we're going to do it.

The more specific, the better. And then we have our WHOOP, which is our wish, our idea, our Outcome, our obstacle and our plan, really effective evidence based framework to set our goals and have a higher likelihood of achieving them.

So with that little summary, we talked about what goals are, what plans are, how do we set our goals? How can we set ourselves up for success there? A lot of your execution of your goals is going to come down to our habits because as humans. We're really bad at using willpower and self control.

We're just not good at it. requires a lot of emotional and mental energy. As humans, we're wired to conserve energy doing as little as possible. And so when we set goals that requires us to do the opposite of that, or like brains and body are fighting against us. So we can use willpower psychologically, but scientifically speaking, it's the least effective way to achieve our goals because it requires a lot of emotional energy, a lot of mental energy.

And the likelihood of you achieving your goal based on willpower and self control is low. What's more effective is habits because. We think about the box model, right? So we had our context that we put ourselves in, which is our box one. Box two is our attention and appraisals, or our thoughts.

And then box three is our response or our actions. A habit removes box two. Like, obviously we're always thinking, but for example purposes to explain this, we don't think, we just do. So we're in a context And the response is our habit. And there's a lot of different ways that we form habits and a lot of different contexts that these show up. We could think of like classical conditioning. If you've ever watched The Office where there's that episode where Jim trains Dwight every time he hears the computer ping, he asks for a breath mint.

this also happened with dogs. So, whenever they pressed a lever, food came out, so they would press the lever, they would expect food, they would salivate at the sound of the bell when they pressed the little lever. So, they're not thinking, they're not thinking, I'm hungry, I could go for a snack right now.

They've conditioned that response where they hear the cue, that box 1 happens, and the result is the habit, which is that they salivate or they want food. These also happen in more complex situations where there is some thought involved, but it's a lot less thought involved because you've already solidified that mental pathway.

Like, you know, your body knows this thing happens, this is how I respond. So an example might be when you pick up your toothbrush, you put your toothpaste on it, or after you brush your teeth, you floss.

We have bad habits. When I feel bored, I will open my phone and go on TikTok. Maybe when your alarm goes off in the morning, you sit up, you turn off your alarm, or maybe for me, my alarm goes off, I snooze. These are habits that, again, are a little bit more complex. Sometimes they're like multiple series of steps, but the, Context happens and you respond behaviorally.

And this is more effective long term than relying on your thoughts to overpower your internal urges to not do the thing every single time you want to execute a behavior.

Another really interesting thing about habits is these are states, not traits. We're putting ourselves in a context. It's not a certain ability or mentality that you have to already be in possession of to be able to thrive in this area. You don't have to have a certain thing to be able to thrive. You're just putting yourself in this state, and depending on how well you do that, that will impact the outcome you get.

I'm going to give you guys some learnings from a study we read called healthy through habit interventions for initiating and maintaining health behavior changes.

So, Improving health promoting behaviors. Things like working out eating healthy, et cetera, and how different interventions increase the likelihood of people engaging in those behaviors and maintaining them long term. So the findings were, the interventions are not super successful long term for short term behavior change.

They work like the first three weeks of January. But months and years down the line, they're not that effective. But breaking bad habits and forming healthy habits simultaneously, that's what leads to long term outcomes. So when we're setting our habits, we're not just like, I'm going to implement this new intervention, I'm going to start this new thing.

That doesn't work. But breaking a bad habit while replacing it with a healthier habit is effective to get that long term outcome.

Another thing worth noting, you're listening to a podcast, you're learning about behavior change and habits and goal setting. Knowing about something does not lead to behavior change. They've done a ton of research on educating people that like vegetables are good to have. They contribute to your health.

This is something that is a health promoting behavior. It's good for you. You'll get these outcomes. It doesn't lead to people eating more vegetables. So just because you know something, just because the knowledge is introduced and you're now aware of it, doesn't lead to behavior change. So take this episode with a grain of salt.

Actually implement it or it's not going to magically work.

And like I said, willpower is really ineffective and they found that in the study as well, which is that healthy behaviors are a result of habits, not willpower. People that engage in healthy behavior is like taking the stairs rather than the elevator, walking a certain amount every day, working out, eating healthy.

That's habits, that's not willpower. Every day they're not saying like, I'd like to do this thing and now I'm going to force myself to do it. They do it because it's a habit and they've done it before. Six thousand times before, so they're going to continue to do it again, and the key here is to make the choice easy by setting up that habit.

So there are three steps to habit formation, behavioral repetition, associated context, cues and rewards. So you repeating behavior. You have your cues that when, then statement, when this thing's happened, then I will do the behavior and then rewards. You have to reward yourself.

You have to make it enjoyable. A lot of the times the goals we're setting for ourselves aren't necessarily innately enjoyable, or we don't reap the rewards for like weeks, months, years. So, for example, if your goal is to study 30 minutes a day before every exam, rather than just like cramming right before the exam, I Maybe you buy yourself a special treat that you eat when you're studying, but you don't eat it any of the time.

Or you say, I'm going to watch an episode of my favorite TV show after I finished studying, but I won't let myself do that unless I do my 30 minutes of studying. Or I'm going to study with friends. If that works for you, it might not. So that that's rewarding in itself. A little fact about rewards the mint and toothpaste, there's no function. It's just rewarding. It's a positive experience. So people are more likely to brush their teeth when they have like a positive, good tasting mint toothpaste than if it was just like bland, disgusting paste.

Same thing with kids. They have these really intense, interesting flavors like bubblegum and Blue raspberry, like all of these really intense flavors, because it's more positive and rewarding and it gets kids to learn to brush their teeth than if they were using, for them, something aversive, which is mint

And we talked about this. You might be able to infer this, but habits are a lot more effective and bring results a lot more than intentions do.

You guys also might have heard that, like, it takes 18 times to form a habit, or some people say it's 200 days, sometimes it's 5 to 6 weeks. It really depends on the person. It's about repetitions. There's not a certain number of times you need to do a habit. There's not a certain number of days that you need to have that mentality.

It's going to be dependent on the person. So we talked about Context cues is being the thing that's going to initiate your habit. Again, we're not thinking about things. We just have the context, box one, and then our result, box three. So things that you can do as cues are the time of day, a location, a prior behavior, or a person.

So I'll give you an example for all of these for like brushing your teeth. Maybe it's the time of day. Morning, when I wake up, I brush my teeth. Before I go to bed, I brush my teeth. Maybe it's the location. When I'm standing in front of the bathroom sink, I brush my teeth. Maybe it's the prior behavior.

Okay. After I floss, I brush my teeth. After I wash my face, I brush my teeth. Maybe it's people. I don't know. I brush my teeth by myself. I'm a lonely person. Maybe when my, like, partner or spouse or whatever is brushing their teeth, I brush my teeth next to them. So these are different ways that those cues initiate the behavior, and you can do this for any behavior that you're implementing.

Do as many of them as possible. So like what time, what is the location? Is someone else going to be there? And what is the behavior that's happening before your implementation intention? Like I want to do this thing as a stepping stone towards the habit, but that's not enough, right? So like, I want to do this thing the, when, then.

That is going to allow you to get towards that goal, but it's not going to work entirely by itself. Another way that you can increase the likelihood of implementing a new habit is piggybacking or habit stacking. You guys have probably seen this all over social media. It's pretty popular. It's one of those like more widely known ways to build habits.

But the idea is that you stack an existing habit with a new one you want to build. So maybe you want to meditate. So you take a habit that's really solidified in your life. Brushing your teeth. You say during the two minutes that I'm brushing my teeth, I'm going to meditate. And so over time, you've already had that cue established.

So you're always going to brush your teeth. And because that's something that happens every day and that time is carved out and, you know, that's going to take place. You have a stack on top of that while I'm brushing my teeth and meditating.

We talked about that rewards are an important piece of habit formation. There's a couple of different ways you can implement rule. One is the intrinsic payoff. You feel good. You're proud of yourself. You did the thing. Maybe it's a sense of pride, maybe it's a sense of mastery, maybe if you're doing something like working out, there's dopamine involved.

So the intrinsic payoff is one way to have that positive reinforcement. A second is the extrinsic reward. So like watching a show, seeing a person, something externally that's rewarding. Another one is avoiding negative consequences, which is called a contingency contract.

So like, if you've ever heard of timeshares, when people sign timeshares, they have all these contingencies for what's going to happen if this person tries to like sell a timeshare, they owe a ton of money. They have to go to court. I don't really know. I've never signed a timeshare thing, but there's a lot of things in place that make it really aversive and really negative to pull out of a timeshare contract.

That's what you want to do if you don't fulfill your habit.

and avoiding negative consequences is a lot easier when someone else is putting them on you rather than you're the one in charge of having that negative consequence take place. but a really good example of this is putting on your seatbelt. So when you get in the car and you start driving without a seatbelt, the beep beep beep happens, right?

The way that you get that to stop is you put your seatbelt on, and that's a habit in itself. But you are avoiding the negative consequence of the aversive beeping noise by putting on your seatbelt. So that's how that habit is formed. The most effective reward that you can use when building your habit is an uncertain reward.

So this means it happens at a random interval. Again, this is something that is. Harder to do on yourself. But the best example of this is like the tick tock algorithm or gambling. Every couple of videos you get something really funny. Some of them are dead. Some of them are horrible, but every couple of videos you get something that's really enjoyable and you laugh and you enjoy it, but it's uncertain.

It's just a really effective reinforcement for scrolling on the algorithm. Similarly, you don't win every time you gamble. You don't win every five times or 10 times. It's not a predictable interval, but every so often. When you're least expecting it, you get that positive reward, which is a really positive experience.

Again, these are harder to do on yourself. So if you have any ideas of how to do a random reward interval schedule, let me know, and I can share it on the podcast, but if you can somehow manufacture that for yourself, that will be the most effective way to reward yourself for doing a habit.

So the three things that you're going to do when you're doing your habit, just to reiterate response repetition.

So when you have the cue, You do the response, you engage in the habit. You need to have a certain number of repetitions. It's different for each person, but you have to have enough repeats of your habit for it to actually solidify. The second is the stable cues. You have to have the same cues every single time.

Again, we talked about location, time of day, prior behaviors, people's, those have to be consistent and stable. So you know what to expect and you train yourself and then uncertain rewards. Again, you can use other rewards because those are easier to implement, but the most effective way to have a habit.

And form it quickly is uncertain rewards. So we talked about a couple of minutes ago, how it's not as effective to just introduce an intervention. It's best to break a bad habit and replace it with a good one. So for example, when I try to scroll less on Tik TOK, I say, I will not scroll on Tik TOK.

Instead, I will watch an episode of television. Is this great? Is this like, Perfect in intervention of no being on screens. No, but it's better. It's less engaging. It's less stimulating. It's a step in the right direction. So ways that you can break habits is cue disruption. So removing, for example, the time of day, the people, the location, the behavior.

I talked to you guys about how not going to my room after class makes me a lot better about getting all my work done before bed. Another one is environmental re engineering. I told you guys the beginning of this, having a new schedule, having a new routine is the best way to start new habits.

This is because you're breaking old ones. So a new location, a new routine, a new schedule, best time to break an old habit and third is vigilant monitoring and inhibition. Vigilant monitoring is literally just telling yourself, don't do it. It sounds dumb. Again, we're not relying on both power, but short term breaking habits research shows that it's really effective and people do this a lot when they successfully break habits is they tell themselves over and over again, don't do it, don't do it, don't do it.

And then the last thing I will give you for this little like habit overview from this article is to add or reduce behavioral friction. So, You guys have probably heard of this, and you probably do this in your own lives without being aware of it. But an example of this is the Screen Time app, right? So, you are increasing behavioral friction that when you go to open TikTok, you have to type in a password, or you have to click one more minute, 15 more minutes.

You're increasing the number of steps of energy it takes to engage in the behavior. You can also reduce behavioral friction. For example, if you're trying to work out in the morning, sleep in your workout clothes. You're reducing behavioral friction.

You don't have to wake up in the morning and go through the energy of picking out your outfit and getting dressed and getting ready. Nope, you wake up, the outfits on, you can immediately work out. So increasing or reducing behavioral friction, again, as humans were wired to conserve energy, making yourself do more to do the thing, you're less likely to do it, and doing less makes you more likely to do it.

Another little fun fact I'll give you about habits moving into more general things. There's not a personality type that's associated with your ability to build habits or maintain habits. It's not people that have a certain trait or think about things a certain way, but people vary with how much dopamine gets released when they engage in certain behaviors.

So people that have like an insane amount of dopamine released when they gamble, that's going to be a stronger solidified habit than people that have no mental response.

So What gets in the way of us achieving our goals and following through with our habits? A lot of the time it's our willpower and our ability to do the actual thing, right?

So we have this conflict between the easier choice, probably the more enjoyable one, and the habit or the goal that we've set for ourselves. You're like working uphill. I want you to remember when you're setting goals and habits, like give yourself some grace here because you're literally trying to tell yourself, do the worst thing, do the less fun thing, do the harder thing.

Like it's hard, it's not easy. And so give yourself a lot of grace, a lot of praise, a lot of reward because it's not easy to build new habits and your entire body and mind is wired against it. But the piece of advice here is to instead, going back, we said this at the beginning, change your box one, not your box three.

So your box three is your willpower, right? Trying to get yourself not to do the behavior. Box one is the situation you're putting yourself in that would result in the behavior at all. So again, if I don't go back to my room before a certain time, I'm not even in the position where I have to exercise willpower and say, so you don't sit in bed and scroll and tick talk to your work. Instead, I just have to do my work because I'm sitting in a random classroom with my laptop.

So again, change your box. One, not your box three, don't rely on willpower, put yourself in a situation that sets yourself up for success,

but I'm going to give you guys a couple of tips for how you can increase your willpower if you need it.

Again, I wouldn't recommend relying on this. It's not super effective long term. It's not efficient. But in those moments where you're like, I can't do this. Like, I really don't want to. Here's what you're going to do. The first thing is to deploy your attention. So pay attention to other things. A lot of you guys have probably heard of the marshmallow experiment.

They did this at Stanford a number of years ago where they had like three year old kids sit in a room, they gave them a marshmallow and they said, if you wait three minutes and don't eat this marshmallow, you'll get two marshmallows. And the kids that waited and used willpower, they had better outcomes longterm.

And there's like, a lot of drama with this study because they were kids of Stanford professors and that already they're more likely to have positive outcomes, whatever. We can discuss it at a later time. But basically, They observed these kids and they found that the older kids looked away from the marshmallow to increase their willpower.

If they weren't looking at it, they didn't have to mentally say, don't eat it. Don't do this. I'm not supposed to do this. The kids knew. They said, if I don't like the marshmallow, I'm not going to remember as vividly that it's there. So we don't have to exercise as much willpower. So distract yourself, listen to music, think about something else, watch a show, do something that takes your attention away from the thing that you want to do.

Another thing that you're gonna do is psychologically distance yourself from the situation. So you're literally gonna imagine yourself in the situation from third person. This increases your emotional regulation. This comes from Ethan Cross, who's an emotion researcher. But what you're gonna do is instead of being first person, being like, oh, should I go to the gym?

Should I not go to the gym? Pretend you're in a movie. Imagine looking at yourself in your room or at your desk wherever you're sitting when you're making this decision and imagine yourself going through the motions and doing the pros and cons, you're going to regulate your emotions more effectively, you're psychologically distanced, and you're more likely to engage in the positive behavior.

The next thing that you can do is to change the situation or environment.

So there's a number of ways you can do this. One of this is game theory. imagining that you're playing a game within yourself, like you're in a war against yourself. And the goal is to beat temptation. So you're using tactics to like outsmart yourself and increase your willpower.

Again, gamifying things is really effective in getting us to get our results. So imagine like you're at war with yourself and what tactics can you use to not get yourself to engage in the thing?

Another study that showed the impact of changing the environment was that the further away kids put their phones when they're studying, the higher their GPA was. So whether it was on the desk next to them, whether it was in their backpack on the floor, was it in the other room, was it not even on them when they were at the library, did they leave it at home?

The further their phone was from them when they were studying, the higher their GPA was. But there's also this really challenging paradox where people know that they should change the situation, but they just don't. So you know that like, situation modification is going to improve your goal accomplishment.

But again, knowledge doesn't always lead to that change of behavior.

So, here's a piece of knowledge, even though this isn't going to cause the behavior change, it can help you when you're doing that, like mental willpower and deciding to do these when then statements and create the habits. Changing the situation changes temptation.

When you change the situation, you feel less tempted. Another little fun fact is that the number of self control strategies that kids used correlated with their SAT score. So did they move their phone away? Did they study in a new environment? Did they use positive rewards after? Did they increase behavioral friction to getting to their phone?

The number of these strategies they employed, the higher their score. So again, what's your box one? Are you setting yourself up for success and doing everything possible to encourage that outcome you're hoping for?

So here's your little habit summary and then we're going to talk about my goals for this year and habits I'm trying to create. So habits circumvent the thought box, box two. So you go straight from your situation to your action. Consistent rewards are more effective.

Your routine should be as habitual as possible, so taking out the thought process as much as you can, trying to implement systems rather than just doing it and exerting that mental willpower because it's really not effective. And statistically speaking, if your goal or habit requires doing something that requires a lot of attention and thought and focus, doing it in the morning, statistically, you will have less distractions than if you do it later in the day.

So if you're trying to study or Learn a new skill if you can, if you have the schedule flexibility, do that in the morning at the beginning of your day, rather than at the end. So your little summary is that you always have an easier, more enjoyable alternative to doing your harder habit. We can use strategies to target, the context that we put ourselves in and the thoughts that we'll have or the lack of thoughts that we can influence the behavior or the outcome.

And. Again, habits are autopilot in response to our cues. So we intentionally make and break them. And I gave you guys a bunch of tips and tricks and skills that you can use to implement new habits when breaking old ones. So there's your habit 101. I hope that was helpful. And I hope you guys have a bit more information on.

How we can set goals, how we can set plans, how we can actually follow through with those using habits. And then we're going to talk a little bit about my habits and goals for 2025. And I want to hear what you guys are working towards. So send me a message, comment on Instagram, leave a comment on here and keep me posted.

I'm really curious.

So my ongoing goal and routine and habit is always my sleep. I'm not a good sleeper. It's been a problem since like middle school. It's somewhat physical. I have an ORA ring and I've never gotten above. Like an 85 above an 85, you get a crown. I've never gotten a sleep crown and I've had my aura ring for three years.

My average every year is in the sixties. I'm not a good sleeper. I'm always tired. That is where I can use improvement. And. we talked about how our goals need to be something that we can control. So I'm not going to set the goal of I'm going to sleep better. I'm doing things that are more sleep hygiene based.

So one of my biggest goals this year is to get up at the same time every day with a little bit of variation, but generally within one hour, And I'm going to like give myself grace. It's not going to be something crazy like 6am or 5am.

The earliest classes I have this semester are 10 15. So my goal is that throughout the whole semester, I'm going to get to the point where every single day, six out of seven days of the week, I am up by 9 a. m. And that is regardless of what time I go to bed the night before. Because when you sleep later and you keep snoozing, then it's harder to fall asleep that night and then it just becomes a whole recurring cycle that it makes it really challenging to break.

So my goal for myself this semester and this year is to wake up consistently, six out of seven days of the week, Give myself a little grace, by 9 a. m.

One of my biggest walls that I hit as far as habits and routines and all of these things that improve my mental health is my sleep and daily productivity. I find that when it's hard to fall asleep, I stay up late, I sleep in later, I end up behind on things, I'm napping during the day, I then can't be productive and get what I need to get done, and then I'm stressed, then I'm staying up later because I'm stressed.

It's a recurring cycle and it leads to so much unnecessary anxiety and overwhelm that's really preventable with a consistent sleep and daily routine.

Magic Mind is a really cool framework for looking at this and these basic foundational principles that we need to maintain to be able to thrive. They are sleep, diet, exercise, stress management, and exogenous compounds.

And all of these contribute to mental wealth. So investing in our habits that we can increase our emotional baseline, improve our resilience so that we're less susceptible to mental health challenges. When we do struggle with one of those pillars, for me, the biggest two is definitely sleep and stress management.

And one of my favorite hacks for this is magic mind. They just came out with sleep shots. I've already been using their focus shots for years at this point. It is a great natural alternative to increasing caffeine or other supplements To improve your sleep and focus.

You can use both shots for 24 hours of mental performance. Sleep shots help with better sleep and focus shots help with daytime clarity.

Their sleep shots have made such a difference in my nighttime routine and increasing that cue of it's time to go to bed, it's time to relax and wind down, and having an easier time falling asleep at night.

I love the magic mind, mental performance shot during the day. It really helps with focus and clarity and decreasing stress. I'm not a huge caffeine person because I'm really mindful of how it impacts my anxiety. I will do one, maybe two cups of coffee at the very most. So this is a great alternative because it has,

matcha and natural herbs that help decrease stress, increase your sense of calmness and improve your mood.

I pair it with my iced vanilla latte in the morning, and it's the perfect duo, especially on a heavy class load day or if I'm feeling extra stressed or overwhelmed.

You guys know I'm big on research. They've developed this over the past 10 years with hundreds of iterations for the perfect formula. There's over 200 studies behind every single ingredient.

I definitely recommend trying and you can target two really important parts of your mental health routine, your sleep and then your daily productivity and focus.

They're offering an amazing deal, which is 45 percent off the MagicMind bundle. You can use the link in the show notes, which is magicmind. com slash shepersistedjan. , that's magicmind. com slash shepersistedjan.

Make sure to check out Magic Mind Performance Shots and Sleep in their new bundle in the show notes.

Another goal is one that I've been doing for a couple of years now, but I again have the aura ring. And so I track a lot of my behaviors, like my sleep and my activity.

And I found that when I get above like 7. 5 thousand steps, I am out and about and doing things and generally being productive. It doesn't necessarily mean that Have classes that day or I'm getting an insane amount of work done or I'm working out, but it means I've been around campus. Maybe I went and got coffee.

Maybe I saw a friend on class days. It meant I was like walking to and from my classes. It's a good predictor that I physically have done something with the day. So six out of seven days of the week I'm aiming to get 7. 5 thousand steps and because I live on campus and Things are like a little bit spread out not too bad But like I can easily get seven and a half thousand steps if I'm going to class or just going somewhere throughout the day It's an achievable goal, but it also is a predictor that routine wise I'm in a good space mentally So that's another goal for myself this year.

I am constantly It's not even an uphill battle. there's no reason for why I don't post on tech talk more or do more short form videos or why I'm not on stories more often. I just don't do it. And I really, really want to get better at it.

Every single year. I'm like, I'm going to post on tech talk more. I'm going to do a series. I'm going to edit videos. And a lot of this comes from the fact that I do a lot of social media management, video editing for other people. I have social media clients that I help them on their podcasts and their platforms as part of my social media agency that I run. So by the time it gets as cheap as this did and this other content that I'm just making for fun, it tends to be, I'm more burnt out. Like there's not enough energy to expend, but I have to think about the box one that I'm putting myself in there. That's not a great box one.

I'm setting myself up for failure. So. My goal is to post at least three TikTok real short form videos a week and do stories at least three days a week. And that can just be like one or two slides. It can just be showing up and sharing with you guys the new episode. But the box one there that I'm going to give myself so I can be more effective is to plan out the prompts.

and do those the week before. It's going to be related to the insights and analytics of what's performed well on the account in the past. And it's going to be related to what I'm already talking about in the episode. So I'm decreasing the friction. Like I know what I'm going to talk about, decreasing the mental load.

And then time wise I'm going to do it when I'm getting ready in the morning, because it's engaging for you guys to watch. It's a habit that's already which is that I'm getting ready for the day, doing my hair and makeup, and I can. Just talk to the camera while I'm doing that. And so I'm reducing I'm decreasing the amount of energy I'm expending by planning the prompts and I'm making it achievable, which is like three days a week, which I can do.

So if I'm not posting, get mad at me because this is an achievable goal that I'm making very easy for myself. So I can do it.

Another goal that I've been working on is running. I am not a very athletic person. I love walking. It's like one of my favorite things. I'll walk around campus.

I listen to my Taylor Swift. Love it. I want to be able to like run a mile and not be dying. I'm okay at it. I have to be like, oh, this is horrible. I can do it. I like watch the mileage go down on the treadmill. So before break, I was pretty consistent doing run a couple of days a week on the treadmill.

I would walk and then I'd do my mile of running. I'd be really out of breath. And so I want to keep doing that. So I'm going to say once a week, I'm going to run a mile on the treadmill. I feel like that's realistic and achievable. And I have to do a couple of weeks of my schedule to determine what day will make the most sense to set myself up for success.

So I'm going to set a time. The location is going to be the gym in my building. I will set the time and the day so that I can be more effective with that goal. But, That is another goal that I'm setting for myself.

And then the last goal that I'll share with you guys is like exposure therapy related. We've done episodes in the past on exposure therapy. I think it's something that everyone could benefit from influencing in their life. Especially if you're a young adult, especially in social situations, whenever I'm like uncomfortable or feeling some avoidance in any social respect, I try and do a little bit of exposure therapy.

Whether it's talking to people in line when you're grabbing a coffee, making friends in class, getting someone's number to ask them a question about an assignment, those types of things. I try to do one of those like every week ish where I'm pushing myself outside of my comfort zone. I'm building those social relationships.

I'm building that skill set and I find that's really helpful for A, the mental health piece of feeling connected and engaged in your community, but also the exposure therapy piece of decreasing avoidance and anxiety around social relationships. So those are some of my goals. I really want to know what your guys are.

Leave a comment, DM me, all the things. If you guys enjoyed this episode, make Share on social media, leave a review. It really helps out the podcast. I also would love to hear what you guys want to hear about on the podcast this year. So if you have any guest requests or styles of episodes or things you want me to talk about, definitely keep me posted.

I'm very much open to suggestions and I have a lot of things in mind, but I'm really want to know what you guys want to hear. So keep me posted. Give me all your ideas. And with that, I'm going to hop off . I hope you guys have a great start to your spring semester in 2025, and you got this!

Bye!

Sadie: Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of she persisted. If you enjoyed, make sure to share with a friend or family member, it really helps out the podcast. And if you haven't already leave a review on apple podcasts or Spotify, you can also make sure to follow along at actually persisted podcast on both Instagram and Tik TOK, and check out all the bonus resources, content and information on my website.

She persisted podcast.com. Thanks for supporting. Keep persisting and I'll see you next week.

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