The Habit Expert : Master your Habits and Create Lasting Change “Neurons that fire together, wire together.”

I'd like to ship you a free copy of my book Habits of High Performers. If you come and join the 2026 goal setting workshop, I will ship you one of these today. The link is in the notes. Please come and join me to set up the very best 2026 you could imagine. If you've set up goals in the past or New Year's resolutions and they haven't substantiated, I'm here to help you across all the key pillars of your life nail your goals. I'll see you there.

You're a doctor in habits. You got a PhD in habits.

Neurons that fire together wire together when we're tired or stressed or fatigued or time poor. The more dopamine we get, the more pain we experience. We see a really high rate of things like addiction and drug misuse. There's no answer to this, which sucks. If you're feeling the urge to do an unwanted habit, just pause.

You said it was a traumatic experience.

My world just completely tore apart. The betrayal was deep and it was confusing. My mind said to me, if you were so wrong about him, what else are you wrong about? I developed agoraphobia, which is the fear of leaving your own house. The brain is incredible how overnight it can change.

Welcome to Lead on Purpose. I'm James Laughlin, former seven time world champion and now international keynote speaker and high performance leadership trainer. Each week I bring you an inspiring leader or expert to help you lead your life and business on purpose. Thanks for helping us be a consistently number one ranked show on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. I hope you enjoy today's show.

The Lead on Purpose podcast is made possible by our generous sponsor, NZ Mortgages. You can check them out at NZMortgages Co NZ. We are creatures of habit. I've been researching habits for a number of years and look our daily habits dictate our macro lives. So the results we want long term come down to the things that we think that we do, that we consume and that we don't do every single day. We make decisions every day. But when they can turn into habits, these become automated behaviors. Today we're going to speak to a world leading expert, Dr. Gina Cleo is going to join us today and go deep on the neuroscience, on the formation of habits, on the getting rid of old habits or unhealthy habits. It's just a phenomenal conversation. We go really deep on it. And I know that if you're interested in becoming a high performer, becoming a better person, becoming more productive, becoming prouder of yourself, a healthier version of yourself. This is the episode you do not want to miss. So please sit back and enjoy the show. Dr. Gina, a huge welcome to the Lead on Purpose podcast.

Thank you so much for having me. I am a big fan, so it's great to be here.

I'm so excited because often the people I have on the show are very high performers. They're doing incredible things. They've had high highs and low lows, but the one thing that underpins everything that they do is their daily habits. And I haven't had an habit expert on. I'm so excited to have you here.

Oh, thank you so much. There aren't many habit experts in the world, so it doesn't surprise me that you haven't had one on, but now you do. So we can talk about all the juicy habit things.

I love it. And the even more interesting thing is you're a doctor in habits. You've got a PhD in habits. How does one go about getting that?

I actually started my career as a dietitian. And so I was in healthcare. And I worked in that healthcare space for a decade. And I wanted more answers. I wanted to understand more about our brain, what motivates us, why we do the things we do. Why is it that some days I say I'm going to wake up and do this exercise and I end up scrolling on Facebook marketplace for two hours, like, why does that happen? And then on the days where I am motivated, how do I harness that and make that sustainable? So I was doing just my own research, and then I was invited by Bond University here in Australia to do a PhD in habits. So that's how I ended up, you know, doing four full years, full time, actually implementing studies, understanding more about our behavior and our habits. And at the end of that, became a doctor in habits. And I haven't stopped reading since.

I love it. Well, I'm so lucky to have you here. And so is the listener, because we are creatures of habit.

Yes.

And I think our daily little microhabits, they create our macro life, like what our life ends up becoming long term. It's determined by what we're doing today.

Right, Very true. Yeah. Those little microhabits that we do day in, day out become our lifestyle. They actually also become our identity. They become the story of our life. Our habits are not just whether we exercise or drink a glass of wine after work. Our habits are what we believe, how we think and respond to things. And there's 70%, up to 70% of everything we do every day is habitual.

That's really exciting, but also quite scary because we are like automated, responding to so many things. People, how people talk to us, how people cut us off in traffic, what we reach for, for food, what we reach for, for our devices. That's actually most of it automated.

It is, that's right. And we lean more and more into our habits when we're tired or stressed or fatigued or time poor. So we can actually become even more habitual if we've got things like chronic stress or we're going through a significant life change, for example. So our habits make a huge impact. And like you said, James, that can be a really good thing or it can be a scary thing depending on the quality of those habits. You know, are we living a life by default and just doing the easiest, most convenient thing, the, the dopaminergic, you know, pleasure seeking things and doing that habitually? Or are we living a life by design and really embedding healthy habits into our life that actually are moving us towards our goals and a higher calling?

100%. And what is a habit for somebody who's gone. I understand the word, but what. How would you define a habit?

A habit is a behavior that we've repeated so often that our brain moves it into that subconscious part of our brain. So it's something that we do without thinking about. It's not deliberate. It's generally quite automatic and it's always triggered. So a habit is triggered, a behavior is not. And that's one of the primary differences between the two. We tend to use the words behavior and habit interchangeably, but they are different. If you think of the first thing you do when you sit in your car is put your seatbelt on. The car triggers you to do the habit of putting your seatbelt on. You don't have to set a reminder to do it every time. So that's what a habit is. It's a triggered behavior that's found in the memory centers of our brain that is triggered when we, you know, when we're exposed to that particular habit trigger.

Makes sense, total sense. And for someone who's going, hey, I don't understand the difference between a healthy habit and an unhealthy habit, or an empowering one or a disempowering one, how can someone start to look at it a bit more objectively and go, this is a healthy one or not.

I really like that you use the words healthy and not so healthy. Because I don't like using good and bad. Because a good Habit for one person can actually be an unhelpful habit for somebody else. And somebody who, like, for example, I've worked, you know, when I was a dietitian, I worked with all sorts of people. And for one person, eating dessert every night was moving them away from their goals. They might have, like, type 2 diabetes, for example. That is not going to help them with their health goals. But somebody who's recovering from disordered eating or somebody who's significantly underweight, eating dessert every night is actually part of their healing. It's part of their recovery and their success. So a positive habit or a healthy habit is essentially something that aligns with your personal goals and values and it's moving you towards what you want to achieve. And that's the way we can think about it, is if I kept doing this habit for the next year or five years or 10 years, where is that going to lead me? And if that's in a place where you want to be, then that's going to be your healthy habit.

Hey, James here. I wanted to take a quick moment to let you know about something. Look, I get asked to deliver keynotes and workshops for teams and companies all over the world, from London to Antarctica, from America to Australasia, from armies to small businesses to large corporates, to sports teams. But I go in and deliver keynotes around the mindset of high performers, around the habits of high performers, about how we navigate change. If you would like me to come and speak to your team or speak at your conference or deliver a bespoke workshop, please get in touch with my team. Carolinejlochlan.com will be able to help. I'll also make sure that we put that in. In the show notes.

That's brilliant. So, so easy to distill it down like that and actually understand it tangibly. I appreciate that a lot. And in terms of, like my. My simple Irish mind, in terms of how I think of a habit is it's like a loop. So you've got a trigger, you've got the actual behavior or the action, and then you've got a reward. That's. That's. I've simplified it to that. Am I right or am I missing something?

Yeah, no, absolutely. That is called the habit loop. And it's. Those are the three ingredients found in every single habit. That's. There's that habit trigger, the habit itself, and then the reward. Now, that reward is going to be different for every person and for every habit, but it could be anything from dopamine, that feeling of pleasure. It could be just simply the comfort in routine. It could be external rewards, but it's generally also just a feeling of I'm doing what I want to do, like I did something that I wanted to do. Or it can also be this just feels pleasurable, like something like scrolling on our phone too much. That's still going to give us a reward, even though it doesn't necessarily align with what we want to do. So even our unwanted habits have a reward.

And that's, I guess, addictive, because dopamine is something that when we get it, we want more of it, right?

Yes, Dopamine has this. Dopamine is fascinating. And the more I learn about it, the more I'm just in love with this very intuitive and adaptive mechanism. Essentially, dopamine is the molecule of anticipation, makes us anticipate desire. The thing with dopamine, though, is that the more we have it in these huge bursts at a time, our body then has a like reverse effect. So if you think of a seesaw and pain sits on one side and pleasure sits on the other, pleasure is that dopamine. The more dopamine we get, the more pain we experience. We might call it a comedown or a post trouble blues or post wedding blues. What that essentially is, it's a huge comedown from this high that we've been experiencing. So our brain goes, hey, I want to feel that good again. So we need to seek another pleasure thing to get us, like, get that dopamine up again. The issue with, you know, having these huge peaks in dopamine is that we build a tolerance for dopamine. Firstly, half an hour scrolling on your phone's enough, and within a couple of weeks, it's nowhere near enough. And you're having to do an hour and then two hours and five hours just to feel normal again. Dopamine can come from things like sugar, phone scrolling, you know, sex, all like things that we do every day and they're not unhealthy. It's when we abuse or misuse those things, or then on the other side, things that give us huge amounts of dopamine are things like nicotine, illicit drugs, alcohol. And it's really hard to find natural sources of dopamine that are going to make us feel as good, which is why those things can be so addictive 100%.

And the fact that the habit loop is a fact, it works. When you get something negative like a drug, whether it's caffeine, whether it's alcohol, nicotine, the habit loop is so powerful, it's just self fulfilling. I remember going back to my late teens, early 20s. Every year we'd go to the World Drumming Championships and I was competing and I'd build up for all year and I was excited for it and I was driven by it. And you get to the World Championships and you either do well or you don't. But the next day, all of us, hundreds of drummers would agree that we all had a dose of the post world's depression. That's what we called it. Pretty ugly, but we felt dying, we felt sad. It's like another year to go. So what I tend to do because I was craving it, I would want to build more in the business or I'd want to earn more, or I'd want to travel more or I would drink more. Like after that low, I would then seek more pleasure, more dopamine from doing things that probably weren't very healthy for me. Is that normal?

I mean, you sound like the typical rock star to me. Definitely. You can appreciate why many, like actors, rock stars, comedians, will get off stage and have this huge low, which is why we see a really high rate of things like addiction and drug misuse in that cohort because what they do gives them so much pleasure. And there's nothing in nature that's going to make you feel that good. Like eating a carrot is not going to make you feel as good as being on stage drumming in front of the world.

This is so true. It's interesting. Like it's taken me a long time to really look and kind of remove myself from being in the thick of it. So for the last four years I haven't drank alcohol and it's been great. And I find other things that I enjoy, like getting into nature. I even. You'll laugh, but journaling, I rip through journals. It's such a pleasure.

Love that for you. That's amazing.

It's changed a lot.

Yeah. And I, you know, what you're doing is incredible. It's that you're finding your sources of pleasure and things that are still healthy for you. And, you know, I've, I've coached a few of Australia's leading comedians here and they're like, what do I do? You know, I feel awful as soon as I get off the stage. And I said, you got two options. You can either enjoy your job less, which is not at all what you want to do, or the second option is to know you're going to have a lull just. And ride it. Because when you can ride it out and yes, you're going to feel a bit lousy for a while, but it's going to come back to baseline and you'll be good again as long as you don't chase that dragon and try to get another high. So just ride it out. Do something gentle, whether it's, you know, an ice bath, that's not very gentle, is it? But something like a really cold shower, shower, getting in nature, spending time with loved ones, all those things. Give us a dopamine hit without making it addictive.

Brilliant. And Gina, my experience as a kid, I remember my mum saying, look, if you want a new habit, it's going to take you 21 days. And then I remember someone at school saying, it's 28 days. Now, university College London have done a piece of research that says, look, on average it takes a selected group of humans, took them 66 days to get the habit to the point of automaticity, that point where it's just automatic. Is that fairly accurate?

Yeah, I mean, you're quoting Philippa Lully's study from ucl. Great piece of literature. Something that's a real cornerstone of studies in the habit space. It's accurate for that cohort and it's certainly the baseline that we have. We, there is some other research that shows that that range is fairly accurate. So they had one group of people washing their hands and it took them two weeks to build the habit to the point of automaticity of washing their hands. Another group of people, they asked them to go to the gym and they took seven months to build that habit of going to the gym automatically. So that's a range, it's two weeks, you know, up to seven months. And that's similar to what that UCL study showed. That average of 66 days, I think is fairly good. I always say to people, just aim for 10 weeks, which is around that 66 days. The danger with saying it's going to be 21 days or 28 days, firstly, totally not evidence based, so let's chuck that advice out the window. Secondly, if you think something's going to take three weeks and three weeks goes by and you're like, I still have to work at this, you're going to give up. It's if. But if you know it's going to take longer and you do it in a shorter time, awesome, like that's a bonus. But knowing, having that sober understanding that it's going to take on average 10 weeks for you to build that habit, you're realistic, you're going to be more persistent, you're going to be more goal driven to it. And so I think it's much healthier to think, think of it on the higher end of that scale.

That's brilliant. And I guess in terms of what we're trying to do, everyone's going to have different habits. Some people might want to exercise more, want to eat healthier, journal whatever it might be that's starting new things. But what about old habits that we want to stop doing? Are they a 66 day thing to kind of get them to the point where you automatically don't do them, or is it a bit different?

It's definitely different. It's really hard to research this and I don't know that we'll ever have evidence to show how long it takes us to break a habit. And the reason for that is it is so individualized, not only by the habit that you are wanting to break, but by you as an individual. Things that will factor into that is how motivated you are to change it, how much you want to change it, how supportive your environment is. You know, are you being triggered all the time and having to resist that? Because that's going to be a lot harder than if those triggers aren't there altogether. You know, how much that habit aligns or disaligns with your identity. You know, I've worked with people who have broken their unwanted habits overnight and it's been incredible. Things like nail biting, they've just stopped. I've worked with others who have taken months to break unwanted habits because they had lots of lapses and they didn't have a supportive environment, for example, so. So there's no answer to this, which sucks. Like I'd love to have a number to like count down. I'd be like, oh yes, only 10 more days till this habit's out of my life. But we don't have that.

And what about the person who does want to break a habit before we look at forming new ones? Is there a few things they can do to help themselves break a bad or unhealthy habit?

Absolutely. There's two proven methods to breaking old habits and I talk about this in detail in my book. But the first way is to eliminate the trigger. So if we go back to that beautiful habit loop that you mentioned, James, there's the cue, the habit itself, and then there's the reward. Without the cue, there's no loop. The habit like the habit loop isn't there. It's the first ingredient. It's kind of like the keys to the engine. Without that you can't start the car. So if we eliminate the trigger, the habit's not there. So if you think, okay, every time I drive past this fast food chain, I feel like going in, you know, and I drive past it every day after work. Well, drive a different way home if you can. Like, try to avoid the trigger as much as possible. Now, that's not always possible because sometimes your trigger is getting home or getting in bed or sitting on the couch. So then the second method to break your old habits is replacing that unwanted habit with a healthier habit. So you can actually preempt it and say, I know when I sit on the couch, I'm triggered to scroll on my phone. And what I'm going to do instead is read a book. And so then to do those, you want to create barriers to accessing your phone and facilitators to having access to your book. That barrier might be putting the phone out of sight in a different room. And then the facilitator for your book is you have your book sitting on the couch ready, waiting for you. So it's much easier to pick up.

It's a friction. Thing is what I'm hearing is, like, we want to put friction between us and the bad habit, and we want to remove the friction between us and the newly desired habit.

Exactly. That's exactly what it is. I worked with a lady. This is a great, like, great analogy to this. I worked with a lady who wanted to reduce her drinking habits. So she used to come home, have some wine every night, and her doctor really wanted her to reduce her drinking, and so did she. But she come home, and before she even knew it, she'd pulled the glass of wine out of the cupboard, opened a new bottle, poured the glass, and she wouldn't realize what she was doing until she was halfway through that first glass of wine. And so the habit was really strong. Remember, our habits are mostly subconscious. So what I did is I helped her rearrange her kitchen. Firstly, I removed all the wine glasses from where they were and I replaced them with tea mugs. And then I moved the wine glasses and the wine in the top, like, top cupboard of a different room where she had to go get a stepladder from the garage to then be able to reach that wine. The first day, when she got home, after I did this little rearrangement, she walked straight into where the wine glasses used to be. And she was like, oh, that's right. The tea mugs are here now. And she was able to do that a few days later. She just really Felt like a wine. But she said to me, the effort of having to go get the stepladder, go to a different room, and that space created mindfulness for me to go, is that actually what I want? And she didn't actually want that. So she was able to break that habit just by that physical rearrangement of her environment.

That's incredible. The power is in the pause. Like, she took a moment to go, I'm going to be more aware. And she paused. And having it in another room and the stepladder was enough of a pause for her to go, I don't actually need it. That's amazing. Yeah.

The pause is so powerful. I like to say that, you know, the. The space between the cue and that habit, that's where our freedom lies, because that's the space where we get to create mindfulness, where we get to make a choice, where we're not just reflexive in what we're doing. So if we can just pause, you know, if you're feeling, like, the urge to do an unwanted habit, just pause, take a deep breath. If it's just for thinking, 30 seconds, that actually breaks the strength of that habit down and helps you to break it over time.

How simple. Like, we can all do that.

We can. I mean, it's hard, don't get me wrong, because if I really feel like chocolate, like, don't get in my way. Don't make me pause. But if I do, you know, if I am in a space of mindfulness, it changes everything. I often think, why did it even feel like doing that? Like, that's super lame. I don't need it.

And simple, not easy is what I'm hearing.

Yes, I always say that too. I say, look, the habit advice is simple. The formulas are simple. Implementing it is a whole other thing. Because human beings, we are complex, man. Like, we have all sorts of reasons why we do the things we do. And it's not based on logic all the time.

It makes sense. It's logical. What you're saying, our illogical behaviors is very logical.

Yes, it's true.

I know I'm thinking about the brain here for a second. So say 70ish percent of what we do is automatic responses. They're habitual. So if we go into the brain, my understanding is when we do something new, say we're developing a new habit, we develop new neurons, and then the neurons start to connect, and we have these little connections, and I guess the new habit might be running. First couple of days, it's a bit awkward, a bit difficult. But then those neurons, the connections between them, they start to get coated in myelin. I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing that right, but.

Really fatty tissue. And from what I understand is the brain goes. Those neurons that have the really fatty tissue connecting them, lots of myelin. They are priority behaviors, therefore will give them priority and they take less energy from the brain. Is that right?

That's right. They're the most efficient. Yeah.

Okay, so what else do we need to be aware of then, around how the brain functions in terms of habits?

So you've described here one of the most popular sentences in neuroscience, and that is neurons that fire together wire together. So if you say to yourself, at 7am I'm going to go for a run, then your 7am Neuron fires, and your running neuron fires every time you do, every time you run in response to it being 7am the more you do that, the stronger that neural connection happens in your brain. It gets stronger and stronger, it gets thicker, it gets more efficient, to the point where 7am just prompts you to go running. And you're not even thinking about it. Like, it's just something that you do. You know, if you've ever driven somewhere and been like, how did I get here? I don't even remember driving. That's because driving is, you know, the act of driving becomes habitual and subconscious. The more you repeat something, the stronger the habit gets. And in the same way, the less you repeat something, the weaker those neural connections get until the habit falls away. There's this thing called synaptic pruning and synaptic strengthening. The synaptic pruning is when our habits, those neurons get weaker and weaker and thinner, and our brain's like, we're not really using those anymore. So it gets rid of those connections altogether, and that's breaking habits. Synaptic strengthening is the exact opposite. The more you do something, the stronger these synapses get. And that's why habits are automatic. As soon as you encounter the trigger, that synapse go straight. You know that that neural connection just fires. And before you realize that you're already doing the. The responding action.

That's powerful. Thank you. I'd never heard of that. That's incredible. And I guess what Probably I look at my own experience when I've tried to do things like I get a gym membership and I go for like a month, and then I quit on myself. But what tends to happen is the first week I go like five times, and I go too hard and I maybe vomit because I just, you know, I've went too hard. And I'm like, this sucks. I didn't start small. And you talked start about with new habits to start small. Is there a too small way to start a new habit?

The advice that I like to give is start so small that it's hard to say no to doing it. It's so small. And I'm talking. Sometimes all it is is, James, just put your sneakers on today, Just put your activewear on, and that's all you need to do. I worked with someone who had significant excess weight that they were carrying, and they really wanted to start some exercise. And the idea of exercise was daunting. This guy hadn't exercised in over 25 years. And understandably, the idea of doing anything, even a walk around the block, felt like way too much. So I said to him, all I want you to do is put your shoes on for the first week. That's it. And I'll check in with you after a week. Just putting his shoes on gave him the confidence to start walking around the house and then eventually to his letterbox. Then he got curious about what was down the road. Then he went round the block, and eventually this Guy was walking 10km and he actually entered, like, a fun run, which was something he never imagined himself doing. And he said to me, if you had said to me, gina, if you said, I just want you to walk around the block, I would have been like, nah, too hard. Don't want to do it. And I would have just faltered and given up. But you gave me something that I knew I could achieve, and it was so small. I was like, well, this is okay. This is totally achievable, and that naturally, we naturally build on our habits. Our brain also only needs us to start. Those neural connections that we're creating isn't a connection for the whole habit. You don't need to do the whole habit. You just need to start, which is just get yourself to the gym and the rest will happen. You're not going to get to the gym and be like, well, now what do I do? Like, you're going to do something. And so if you just build the habit of starting and starting really small, that way you're not overwhelming your brain. You're still creating those amazing neural connections, and you're building the habit gradually.

Such great advice. And that's for the person who wants to read more. What you're saying is read the first sentence before you go to bed. Just the first sentence on the page that's it super small or fill your water bottle with water. I'm not telling you to drink 4 liters. Just fill your water bottle with water, not juice. Yeah, just start small.

Exactly. And everybody's small is going to be different. You know, for some people, their starting line might be a walk around the block, it might be 5km, whereas someone else is going to be just putting on your shoes.

So.

So you just have to think, what is the smallest, most achievable thing that I know I can do even when I'm tired, even when I'm fatigued, even when I'm busy? And I can do. And I can see myself doing this in a month's time. What does that look like? And we sometimes need to play around with that. You know, it's a messy middle, but once we have it, it's really powerful.

Incredible. And tell me about the habit revolution. So this is a book and everyone that's listening right now, they're listening because they want to level up their habits. They're keen to understand them. You've wrote a book on it, you're a doctor of habits. So if someone gets the book, what's going to happen for them when they read it? What are they going to explore and what are they going to learn?

They're going to have a complete life transformation.

Love it.

Revolution is really, you know, it's a. It's a culmination of all of my life's work. All the latest evidence in science that's accurately interpreted and it's put into very achievable practical steps. You know, at the end of most chapters, there's a little activity so that you can actually implement some of the content that's in each chapter. It's all about, you know, what is a habit? Why do we have them? How do we actually break our habits? How do we create new habits? Why does motivation fail us? Why is self compassion so important? So it's all the things around behavior change in the whole rounded. Like a holistic book. It's. It's a book that, you know, it comes with a lot of my own vulnerability. You know, I share stories of traumatic experiences I've had and how I was able to pull myself out of those with support, you know, of other people, but certainly of habit research. And there's also lots of stories of clients. I've worked with thousands of people and what I've learned from that experience of working with those people as well.

Incredible. I'm going to make sure to put a link in the show. Notes for someone that's listening or watching to go and get the book. But would you mind if we actually explored one of those stories about your own experience that you said it was a traumatic experience, perhaps. Would you be open to sharing that?

Of course. Yeah, not a problem at all. It was three years ago.

Actually. I'll start from the top. So 10 years ago, I met the man of my dreams. And, you know, I just saw that we were the perfect match. He was like a real life Kendall. He was just a beautiful, kind, gentle human being. And six years into our relationship, I started to notice that things just weren't feeling right. Something was off. And it was during COVID So, you know, his work was impacted. We had lockdowns here. We couldn't visit family. It was an isolating time. And he was saying, he was describing to me that he was explaining experiencing depression. So I totally understood that. I put my needs to the side to support him, whatever that looked like. Now, this went on for about a year, and then it was actually our wedding. I knew that getting married was a terrible idea, but it's something that he was really looking forward to. So I thought, oh, to help him get out of this funk, we'll. We'll go ahead with it. Six months after we were married, I was at home by myself. On this particular day, he was out at the shops, and I felt like just doing some baking. I was feeling really lonely. Like we were so disconnected. So I opened his laptop, which was just sitting on the kitchen bench, and these text messages started to pop up. And it was a live exchange because his phone and his computer were linked and these imessages he was sending to a sex worker. And he. The texts, you know, said how much? For 15 minutes. She started to, you know, talk about finances. He asked for photos, she sent photos. And my world just completely tore apart. I looked further into his computer and I found hundreds more like this, things that were happening. For that whole time he was feeling depressed, you know, like, well before the time we got married. This betrayal shook me completely because I thought he was just the kindest, most beautiful human and that it was almost like not capable of doing something like that. It's so out of character, like this couldn't be possible. At the same time, I've got a really big passion for helping women escape the sex trade. And I volunteered in all parts of Southeast Asia to help these women. I regularly would donate to organizations that rescue women who are trafficked. And in the same week, I would be donating to these organizations and my Husband was funding the very industry that I've been so passionate about since I was 16 years old.

Wow.

The betrayal was deep and it was confusing. And my mind said to me, if you were so wrong about him, what else are you wrong about? Is the sky even blue? Other people who claim to be your parents, even your parents, should we even brush our teeth? Like, I didn't know anything. It was like my mind cracked and I had no certainty. Nothing was normal, nothing was certain, and nothing was safe. I developed agoraphobia, which is the fear of leaving your own house. I went from running this successful global company, I was the head of student wellbeing at a university, to being completely riddled with fear, anxiety, panic attacks, unable to even go out to my letterbox. So this was a huge, huge transition in my life. And I didn't know what to do because I didn't believe anything about anyone. Like, I didn't. I was just scared. So for me, it really became about doing the things that I knew would help me and doing them consistently and setting those. Setting the bar really low. Like, I remember the first few days, I was like, gina, all you need to do today is brush your teeth. I'm pretty sure that's a good idea. So just do that. And that's all you need to do. And then a few days later, it was like, it's. It's probably a good idea to shower. So I'm going to brush my teeth and I'm going to shower, and that's. That's all I'm going to do. And I would notice that brushing my teeth the first day was hard. No, we've got a rhythm in our mornings. If you think of your morning, there's a routine, a structure, there's a flow. I had lost all of that because I was uncertain about anything. So I had to sort of relearn these basic behaviors again. But I noticed that the second day, brushing my teeth was easier. And it was easier again the third day and the fourth and so on. And I was like, ah, this is neuroplasticity. This is what I've been teaching about for years, is how my brain is rewiring and reshaping the things that it knows. And I was like, if I can do it with these things, I can do it with these trauma triggers. I can do it to trust and to love again. I can do it for anything, and I can completely reshape my brain. And I went on like a brain shaping adventure. And I worked so hard to bring myself out of that but to also. I'm remarried now. My husband and I, Mitch, we eloped in Mexico last year. And it was beautiful. And to be able to do that in a short space of time is such a testament to the power of habits, the transformations that we can create with perseverance and consistency. Mind blowing.

It's incredible. Gina, I just want to say thank you. Thank you for sharing that. That's pretty deep and dark. I can imagine it would have been horrific. As you were telling me, I could feel my body respond and I just can't begin to imagine how difficult that would have been to feel. I imagine very lonely and isolated and fearful.

Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for saying that. And it was. It was the most horrible time. I never want to go through anything like that again. You. The brain is incredible how overnight it can change. I understand now trauma triggers things like black cars, the smell of coffee because he drove a black car. We started our day with coffee. Like everything would trigger me and I'd experience this panic attack. But to be able to now smell coffee, see black cars, and the million other triggers and not have that adrenaline dump is something I never thought that the brain could do. I never thought that there's any way that PTSD could be treated the way that it can be. And I'm really blessed to have the knowledge in neuroscience to know what my brain was doing and to not repeat the patterns that weren't helping. Habit research totally changed. It saved my life. And that's why I'm so passionate about speaking about it. Because whatever your trigger is, whether it's. It is scrolling on your phone too much or having too much wine or whether it's a trauma trigger, you have the power to reshape your brain, to refresh your life and to really start over at any moment.

Seriously inspiring. And what I love about that is I think often in the fields that I'm moving in, in terms of high performing athletes, people think that, hey, habits are for high performers. But we are all habit driven and habit focused. So to hear your story, it goes, actually, every single one of us can reshape our brains. And where I was going to go before you told the story was, hey, what about people who have trauma? What about people who have mental health challenges? You just literally explained why no matter what you're going through, habit can be part of the pathway to get you moving forward.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think understanding the way our brain works is really powerful and something that we don't learn enough about, you know, to understand, for example, that my prefrontal cortex, or my logical brain is suppressed after a trauma. Your amygdala or your emotional brain is on high alert. So no wonder I am like, every time I hear a loud noise or whatever it might be, I'm like. Like, that's why I'm feeling scared, when that's not how I normally am. It's. My brain is. Is trying to save me. You know, my brain is like, we're in fight, flight, or freeze, and this world is not safe, and so we have to be super careful. And when I understood that, I'm like, okay, so I can practice mindfulness, which I know increases the activity in my prefrontal cortex. I can do all these things. And our brain's like a muscle. The more we use certain parts, the more they grow and they become more fluent. And so the work was really doing that kind of stuff. And it's. Yeah. I just think in any area of life, whether it is high performance or trauma.

We'Ve got so much more power than I think we've ever realized or been told that we have.

You're absolutely right. Lies within. And it's interesting you talked about earlier motivation, and I think a lot of us, me included, almost rely on am I motivated to do the thing that I know I should do or am I not? And looking into motivation, I feel like motivation is not all created equal. There's, like, intrinsic motivation, extrinsic. And I also think there's psychological and physiological. Soon when you start to look at the physiological, looking at the dopamine, the serotonin, there's all these different neuroepinephrines. I'm probably not saying that. Right.

Yeah. I mean, yeah.

Yeah, it's that kind of stuff. So motivation. What's your thoughts on motivation and how that impacts the listener's ability to actually move forward with habits?

I think we've been really disillusioned with this idea that motivation is the dominant paradigm that we need to align to in order to achieve our goals. If you think of motivation like a wave, it comes and it goes and it's up and down. And there are so many factors that influence it, from what you just ate to how well you slept to the conversation you just had with somebody, to your drive. Like, there are so many things that influence it, and we're not always in control of how motivated we are. What we do know is we tend to be motivated early on and in. That wears off over time. Which describes how you signed up to a gym and you were, like, super into it and Then crashed and burned. And that's such a typical story if you think of self control or motivation or discipline like a muscle. And the more you use it, the more exhausted it gets. Things like making decisions, driving through traffic, having frustrating conversations, being hungry, tired, sleepless, all these things deplete our levels of self control or motivation. And so no wonder, after a long, hard, emotional day, the last thing we want to come home to, salad. You know, we want wine, we want cheese, we want chocolate, we want all the comfort foods that we can get our hands on. And we're going to binge watch Netflix for way longer than we should. And we're going to not do all the things that we know we should do because we don't have that the resource to do it. And this is why, again, habits are so powerful. Because our habits don't need motivation. Our habits don't need self control or willpower. No matter how tired or exhausted or stressed you are, you will always put your seatbelt on in the car because it's a habit. It's something that you will always do. And so yes, we need motivation to start, we need motivation to get us going. But once that becomes a habit, then you can let that go and you can just rely on the rhythms and the routines that you've built and created in your life that are going to be triggered, because you've set up those triggers. So as soon as you're triggered, that habit will just happen and see the.

Trigger side of things. That makes sense to me a lot. So do we look at a new habit and go, okay, I want to read more? And I know I always brush my teeth. So the teeth brushing becomes the trigger to then read more. Is that a good thing to do or not?

It depends on the time. So some triggers don't work and some do. So if you say, you know, I'm going to read a book after I brush my teeth, does that actually work? Or do you have to go for a run and then get to work and do these things? So there has to be a flow with it. So if you've got to kind of think, when is it that I want to read? Like, what's the best time of day for me to read? It doesn't have to be specific time. It could be like after dinner or when I get home from work or something like that. Make that your trigger. So find the flow where it'll work. It's a trial and error. We don't always get it right the first time. And you can really track it by Using a habit tracker, which is essentially a tool where you tick off every time you've done your chosen habit. If you find that your tracker's missing a few ticks, like there's just big gaps in it. One of the things you might want to do is just check the trigger. Is it actually working? Would it be better to change it to a different time? And that's, you know, that's how we refine the plans.

You know what I love about what you just said, and the word that you said is flow. All the people I've chatted to about habits and high performance across the years, it's like almost rigid, militaristic, very masculine. You said flow to me, I'm like, that's awesome. Because there's a little bit of leeway there to go, hey, that's not working and those ticks are not happening. Okay, let's readdress the trigger. Rather than go, I suck. I can't do the thing and give up. It's like, just be gentle. Self compassion, as you said, and go, what's not working? Rather than give up, like, investigate a bit more, become a bit more aware.

So true. And I actually think that's the difference between people who succeed and people that completely fall off the wagon. The people that succeed don't fall any less times. They don't have any less setbacks than everybody else. The people that succeed are just really good at getting back up after a setback, at going, okay, you know, a light bulb takes a thousand attempts to be created. A habit is going to be a process of two steps forward, one step back. And this is just a step back. I'm just going to get up and I'm going to keep going. And that is the beauty and I think the grace and in behavior change and doing it with a lens of self compassion that we all share a human experience that we all have unwanted habits. Change is hard. It's. It's so taxing for the brain. The brain's like, yo, I'm really comfortable doing the same thing. And you're like trying to change things up. And that takes a lot of energy. And I'm just not really down with that. Like, the brain's not about it. And so we're pushing against our natural instinct. And that I think should be completely commended. No matter how small that change is, no matter how infrequently you're doing it, if you just do it once that week, that's more than you did last week. And that's awesome. Celebrate that and Keep going.

And do habits have to be daily to build a habit? It could be a weekly thing, it could be a monthly thing, even.

Yeah. Do you know, it can even be an annual thing. It's all about making sure that you respond with a habit when you've got the trigger. So an example might be, let's say somebody goes to church just at Christmas time, and that is their habit. And they've done that three or four years in a row. When the fifth year comes along and Christmas comes along, they're going to be like, oh, we go to church. So that actually becomes a habit, even though they're only doing it once a year. So it's actually more about the repetition and the consistency rather than the frequency. It doesn't have to be done frequently. It just has to happen every time. Or like most of the time when you're triggered, if you miss a trigger response. So if Christmas comes along and you don't go to church the following year, your brain's going to be like, I don't know what we do now, because, like, sometimes we go to church, sometimes we don't. And now you have to make a conscious decision what to do so it's no longer automatic.

That's brilliant description. And what about the person? And I've been this person a lot. You get to January 1st and you're like, okay, I'm going to run a bit more, I'm going to eat a bit better. I'm going to drink a little less alcohol. The chocolate's going to be cut out for 30 days. No caffeine. Five new habits. Here we go. What about the person that does that? Is that smart?

I think ambition's a wonderful thing.

Good response. I'm liking that.

But our brains are only capable of making up to three changes at one time. And this is one of the most common reasons why we falter on our habits, especially New Year's resolutions. Because we love the idea of overhauling our lives of, you know, wanting to do all the things at once. A fresh year, like New Year, New Me. There's not a quote on Earth I hate more than that.

Yeah, I hate it. So same with go hard or go home. I can't. I can't. Yeah. It goes completely against behavioral research.

So if we just focus on just one change at a time, we are not only more likely to achieve it, but we are much more likely to sustain it long term. Yes, the brain can make up to three changes, and yes, that is our cap. I have tried to do four and five Even little ones. I was like, I can beat this. I'm a habit researcher. I'm a high achiever. I've got this. No, it didn't work. Three worked anymore, did not work. I just wasn't consistent enough with it. But if we can just get ourselves to just do one thing, it's going to be even better. And it doesn't mean it's one thing the whole year. It's like when that one habit becomes more automatic and feels more natural. Bring in the next one and bring in the next one and just you can continue with that pattern until you've achieved all your goals.

It's like a 1% mentality where you're just changing direction by 1% at a time. All of a sudden, three years later, you're in a totally different world.

Yeah, that's right. And that 1% is going to look different for every person. Right. The idea is just incremental, incremental changes, 100%.

Now there's going to be listeners and viewers going, right now I want to get started. So a couple of things I'm going to help them. One, I'm going to put a link in the show notes to your website where they can go and grab the book. But also if they're not a reader and they want to get started in a different way, do you have any other ways that they can engage with you to get started?

I do. Well, the book also comes in an audio book, so you can listen to my voice for eight hours. Another option is that I've got a free habit course that I send you five videos straight to your inbox. They're short videos and it's. They're all about creating new habits, breaking old ones, why motivation doesn't work, and really understanding more about why you do the things you do. So you can sign up for that completely free. I will not spam you, I promise. So you can do that. And I've also got like other bigger courses. So if you like that free course and you're interested in doing another habit course, a more comprehensive one, you can jump on board and just sign up to one of those as well. They're all online.

That's amazing, Gina. I'm going to check it out myself. Definitely put myself on that mailing list because I want to level up habits. It's. It's a part of every day. So I appreciate it.

Thank you. I appreciate that.

May I ask you one last question before we wrap up? Yeah. So I'd like you in your mind to fast forward Many, many years into the future, and you're highly aware that it's your last day here on Earth.

Oh, gosh.

And someone very young that you care deeply about, you love them, come into the room and they say, gina, how can I lead my life on purpose? What would you say to them?

I would say silence the noise around you and just go within to find what it is that you want to do. What does your lifestyle, what do you want your lifestyle to look like? If it's not a 9 to 5, Monday to Friday, great. Don't do that. Find what works for you. But in order to do that, we really have to silence the noise, the social norms, the societal pressures. So I'd be like, go out to a farm for like 10 days and just like, really find your set of values and what it is that you want to do. You know, how does this short time on earth for you, what is going to bring you the greatest joy and passion and purpose and connection? I think that's what I would say is that silencing?

That's beautiful. And I know that there's a listener or a viewer right now that needed to hear that. So I appreciate you sharing that from the heart. And I just want to say just before we part ways, thank you for starting a global habit revolution.

Oh, thank you. That means so much. Thank you.

We need you in this world. We're all creatures of habit, right at a macro or micro level. Right to a macro level, of politicians and world leaders. We all need it. So keep doing the great work you're doing and I imagine we'll have you back on the show one day soon.

Thank you. It's a huge honor and I'm so grateful to be here. So thank you, James. I really appreciate it.

Thanks, Gina. The Lead on Purpose podcast is made possible by our generous sponsor, NZ Mortgages. You can check them out at NZMortgages Co NZ.

Thanks for tuning in today and investing in your own personal leadership. Please hit that subscribe button and I'd love if you'd to, like, leave me a rating and review. I've got some amazing guests lined up for you in the coming weeks and leaders. It's that time to get out there and lead your life on purpose.