In the final video of her "30 Days of Radical Healing" series, Dr. Jameca Cooper explains why lasting behavior change is difficult and offers a single, actionable tip for making New Year’s resolutions stick. She notes that roughly 43% of daily actions are habitual, meaning the brain runs them on autopilot without conscious effort. To transform a habit, she argues, the new behavior must be made fun and rewarding so that it triggers dopamine release, which reinforces the action and eventually turns it into a habit. Dr. Cooper advises viewers to identify personal rewards that are enjoyable and sustainable, and to practice the new behavior consistently for 30‑120 days to cement the habit. She also briefly discusses how dopamine responses vary among individuals and cautions against relying on substances like nicotine or alcohol for motivation. The video concludes with a call to like, subscribe, and continue the radical healing journey.
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Hi, thanks for joining us on this whole entire series of 30 Days of Radical Healing. I'm Dr. Jameca Cooper. Make sure you like this video and subscribe to this channel. Hopefully you've been joining us on all of these videos that I've put out to make you aware of different things you can do every day for 30 days to become more aware of and heal from something. One of the things you might have been struggling with in 2021 was trauma, dysfunctional families, narcissistic abuse, et cetera, et cetera. Make sure you check out all of our other videos about what you should be healing from in a radical way. So this is the last video in our 30-day series, and today we're going to talk about how to heal. I have one big tip for you on how to heal from everything. If you just put it together like one big box, one big category, How to heal, how to move forward, and it's really more about New Year's resolutions and how to break free of old behaviors, how to really change a behavior. You know what? It's not easy. A lot of people struggle with it. I see people in therapy all the time who struggle with making changes every day in their lives. That could be eating, working out, relationships, communication, sleep, you name it. Everyone struggles with when it's time to really change behavior. And did you know that 43% of all the behaviors that we do are habitual? So that means that 43%, studies show 43% of all the things that we do on a day-to-day basis are habitual. So think about it, from the time you wake up in the morning, right? Waking up out of bed, you probably turn and get up out of bed the same way every day. Then you probably walk the same way. When you go to the bathroom, think about how you wash your face, when you brush your teeth, how you put your clothes on, how you make your coffee. All of that is habitual. These are things that we're doing the same way every day, sometimes even at the same time. But it's habitual because after doing it so many times, the brain just kind of goes on rote memory, right? It just kind of repeats the pattern, repeats the cycle. Therefore, we don't have to keep thinking every morning, like, gosh, how do I brush my teeth? How do I do this? Because the brain already knows. The brain has done it before, so it's just repeating. So therefore, the brain doesn't have to keep putting out all this energy on how to form new routines and behaviors. It already knows how to do certain things. So that's the good thing. So basically, your big task is to get into a routine of something, right? So, studies show that when they've looked at people who are able to stick to their New Year's resolutions, what they found is that the people that are more likely to stick with their New Year's resolutions do so because they've made it fun and enjoyable, or they perceive those changes to be fun and enjoyable. That says a lot, right? So that's my one tip for you on what you need to do to make your New Year resolutions stick. You have to make the change fun and enjoyable. How do you do that, right? You make it fun because you make it something that you know that you like, right? I like chicken. I wouldn't reward myself with physical activity with chicken. Somebody might do it and it might work. It wouldn't work for me because I would go too far. I've already gone way too far in a lot of areas, so I wouldn't do that. But there are other things that can be rewarding for you in it that The key is that you have to make it rewarding for you because as you do something and you feel rewarded, it signals your brain to produce dopamine. When we are rewarded, when we feel like something great is happening, hey, this feels good to me, that's when your body is releasing some dopamine. Everyone knows a little bit about dopamine. It is that hormone, that neurotransmitter in our brain that makes us feel good, right? And so once our brain produces that, little trickle-down piece of dopamine, then that ties the behavior to make it a habit. So you get it? The steps are: you do something you like to change a behavior, right? You do it, you feel rewarded by it, it triggers the dopamine release, and then the dopamine ties your behavior to become habit after a certain amount of time. So that's how it becomes just like brushing your teeth, because now it's stored in your brain as a habit. So that's my tip for you to make your change, your New Year's resolution fun and enjoyable. You have to figure out what the reward is for you. Hopefully you can make it a reward that actually works for you and something that's doable, something that's sustainable, something you can keep going at least for the next 30, 60, or 90, hopefully 120 days, because we want to keep this thing going, right? So that's my tip for you today. Make sure you make your New Year's resolution fun and enjoyable, and make sure you make it so rewarding that it triggers some dopamine. Everyone knows about dopamine, right? You know what else triggers dopamine? Crack. I'm just kidding, it doesn't. But nicotine and alcohol can trigger dopamine releases. That's why when you're out in public places, let's say a club, um, you notice people that are drinking alcohol, and certain people react to alcohol differently because everyone's brain is wired differently. Some people have more of a release of dopamine when they drink alcohol, and therefore they feel better, they feel happier, they may appear to be more manic. So dopamine does different things in different people, but everyone has the same effect from dopamine. It's just, it just depends on the variation of that. And we're all genetically wired to respond differently to certain things in our brain. So remember, change is not bad. It's possible. This year we're doing radical healing of lots of different things. You're going to make your New Year's resolutions and your changes fun. Enjoyable and rewarding. That way you're going to make sure you stick to it. Thanks for joining us on this 30 Days of Radical Healing. Join us more. Like this video, subscribe to this channel, and I'm Dr. Jameca Cooper Cooper. I thank you so much for joining us. Drop some comments, and I hope to see you around later.
