The Science Of Habit Formation: How To Build Lasting Habits

Today we're going to be talking about the science of habit formation. We're going to be talking about how to build lasting habits in your life. And when you start to think about habits, one thing that really surprises a lot of people is did you know that almost half of what you do on a daily basis is a habit? There was a Duke University study that we actually went through and found that said that about 40% of our daily actions are actually driven by habits rather than new decisions. Which means that you are basically unconsciously taking action in certain habits in your life and not actually making real decisions. Which means almost half of what you do on a daily basis you're unconsciously just doing because it's a habit. So we're gonna talk about what is a habit today. We're gonna talk about how to go through habits, how to figure out how to work through them. And I'm gonna give you a step by step process of how to create new habits and also break habits that you wanna get rid of as well. Before we dive into it, what is a habit when we're actually diving into it? A habit is just an automatic routine that controls your daily action. It could be the simple act of just brushing your teeth. As soon as you wake up in the morning, you go to the bathroom, that's a habit. You go and you brush your teeth, that's a habit. You get dressed, that's a habit. You go and you make some coffee, that's a habit. And it could be really simple things like that, but it could also be really complex cognitive processes based off of how you react to somebody because of past traumas that you've had in the past. Sometimes you can have somebody say something to you, and you're immediately put into a habit and triggered in some sort of way. And you're not even realizing why you're doing it. You didn't even really think about it, it just kind of happened. That's also a habit as well. And so when you look at habits, the first question that I always think is, why is this built into the human system? Why does the brain make habits? What's the actual point of making habits? Well, the real thing that you have to realize is that critical thinking, like actually sitting down and thinking through a problem, or making a plan, or doing a math equation, whatever it might be. Any critical thinking is one of the most energy consuming things that your body actually does. Your brain is only about 2% of your body weight, but it's about 20% of your energy throughout the day. And so you've probably done this before. I know I've done this. I work online. My whole business is online. I've sat down at my computer, I've worked for eight hours. I've barely stood up except for go to get some snacks and go to the bathroom. And my body doesn't move a whole lot throughout the day, but my brain is working really hard throughout the day. And at the end of the day you're just like exhausted. Right, because you use so much critical thinking. So the place that habits comes in and really helps you is habits help reduce the cognitive load of everyday tasks and allow us to focus on the things that we really need to put our effort in our mind to. And so habits are a great thing because of the fact that you can kind of go into a habit, not have to think about it and you're fine now, that's okay if you're working on something. Like if a habit is to go to the gym, that's a great habit. But if your habit is to, you know, start drinking alcohol, that's not really a good thing. So we're going to talk about good and bad habits today and really the role of habit formation in our lives. Habits themselves are extremely important to humans and they carry out our tasks every single day with minimal effort and then free up a lot of space for us to have more complex tasks we can work on. Which is awesome. But it's also really a double edged sword because as we were just saying, one hand that's really good for mental efficiency, but on the other hand it can lock us into patterns and behaviors that can be really hard to change. Especially when those habits that you've picked up over 20, 30, 40 years of your life are really unhealthy. So when you can understand the science of habit formation, it really understands what you can start to understand why you do what you do and then use that understanding to actually make changes in your life. But when you look at a habit, how is a habit formed? And then how can we use habit formation to build lasting, healthy habits? Well, when you think about the actual science behind the habits, really what it comes down to is something that Charles Duhigg actually wrote in his book the Power of Habit. Atomic Habits kind of took this. I don't want to say stole, because it didn't steal anything. He took it and added an extra step to it. But I'm going to go old school, I'm going to go original. I'm actually going to use Charles Duhigg's exact three Points of how to create a habit, how a habit actually works. And the way you want to think about it is there's a cue, there's a routine, and there's a reward. Okay? And so as I'm going through this, I want you to start thinking about habits in your life that you have that you want to break, but also habits that you want to create. So the cue. The cue is a trigger that initiates a habit. The trigger can be an external environment cue, like, you know, a notification on your phone or a certain location that you're in or a time of day. Those could be external, but it could also be internal as well. And so it could be an emotional state. It could be a reaction to somebody else. It could be any of those things. And so let's take, for instance, one of my favorite ones is there's a lot of people in the world, especially when you go over to Europe, and I travel over Europe, There's a lot of people that smoke a lot of cigarettes over there, Right? And so we know that nicotine can be very, very addicting. But what's really interesting is most people don't realize that nicotine only stays in your system for about 100 hours. So someone's actually only addicted to nicotine, the actual chemical, for about 100 hours. If that's only four days, if somebody just goes four days without smoking, wouldn't they break that habit? They would break their start to break their chemical addiction to it. But what they're usually addicted to is the habit of the external environment and the internal environment. So let me show you the cue itself. They're usually addicted to the cue. So some people, they wake up and the first thing they do is they wake up and they have a cigarette while reading the paper. So they're addicted to the cue, which is waking up in the external environment of the routine of sitting down and reading the paper while smoking a cigarette. One of my cousins, he's been addicted to cigarettes for almost 20 years now. About 20 years now. And he's a chef. And he's been a chef for about 15, 16 years. He's a chef. And he's tried to quit over and over and over and over and over again. And it's been so hard for him to quit. Why? Because the actual act of working, a lot of other people that work with them smoke cigarettes as well. And so the. The. The cue is actually being at work and having a break. And so he can't really go if he's trying to. I've talked to him about it many times is when he's trying to stop smoking, he can't go into the area outside where there's a break room, like an outdoor break room area, because that's where he used to smoke. That's where everybody else smokes. And so he's actually addicted more than the, you know, another time when he always does is driving. So driving is another cue that he's addicted to with the cigarettes. If you're not addicted to cigarettes. A lot of people listening to this right now are addicted to caffeine. You're addicted to coffee, right? And the cue would be waking up in the morning and watching the sunrise maybe, and enjoying a warm cup of coffee first thing in the morning. The cue could be the external environment or it could be the internal environment. So external cues are way more than you realize. You are constantly being influenced by your environment. For instance, a lot of people watch too much TV or they play too many video games, right? And so sitting down on the couch could be the cue. Watching TV is then the routine, and the reward is turning off your mind for a little bit. And so the actual environment influences you and actually makes you want to start it. Now, if you were to take that TV off the wall and put books on the coffee table, your environment changes. Your routine has to change as well. So those are external cues, but there's also internal cues. An internal cue could be like getting stressed out. I get stressed out and I want a cigarette, or I get stressed out and I want a glass of wine, or I get stressed out and I want to work so that therefore, I don't get to think about the stress and feel the stress. And so the first part of it that you need to realize before you start diving into your habits is what is the internal or external cue that cues the routine, which is the habit. Which brings us to part number two of a routine of a habit, which is the routine. So there's the cue number one, and there's a routine number two. This is the behavior itself that we want to change or that we want to reinforce. So this is what we typically think about when we think about habits. The routine is the habit itself. So, you know, like I said, cue could be getting stressed out, routine, smoking a cigarette, and then you come to the reward, which is what we're going to go into in a second. Number one. Cue number two, Routine number three now we're gonna go into is the reward. Every habit that you have has some sort of reward to it, Even if you don't Want that habit anymore. It might not feel like you have a reward to it, but it has a reward to it. This is the positive reinforcement that follows the routine. It's the reason why we keep doing the behavior and eventually form a habit out of it. And so the reward satisfies a particular craving and makes our brains associate the routine with. With some sort of beneficial thing that we get from doing this thing. And so I'll give you a few examples just to kind of put it into context to make a whole lot more sense. Okay, I'll give you some bad examples. I'll give you some good examples. So let's say the first cue is getting stressed out or getting anxious. I know a lot of people. I had a video go super viral on TikTok a couple days ago and it was about anxiety. And in like four days it got 2 million views. So obviously there's a lot of anxious and stressed out people. But let's say the cue is an internal cue. You get stressed out, for some reason, you're stressed out. I don't know why it is, but let's just say you get stressed. The routine, AKA the habit, is eating until you're uncomfortably full, right? If you've ever done this before, that's the routine. The reward is the body has to send a lot of energy to digest the food. And the more energy that goes to digesting the food, the less energy goes to your brain. And so it actually can cause you to feel relaxed, it can calm your brain down. A lot of people don't realize that a lot of people that eat food, that they don't want to feel, they don't want to. Excuse me. If they eat food they don't want to be eating or they eat too much, it's not really the food. It's actually a lot of times people trying to calm their brain down because they don't have a way to self pacify. And so the cue in here is getting stressed out. The routine, AKA the habit, is eating until you're uncomfortably full or just completely full. The reward is that you feel more relaxed because your brain has to take energy away. Your body has to take energy away from your brain, send it to your stomach so that you could put more energy towards digestion, which makes you feel like you're calm. So same reason why people drink, why people smoke cigarettes, why people numb, why people play video games, all of this, right? What's another thing that a lot of people want to change? A lot of people that bite nails, you know, they bite Their nails. The cue usually for people biting their nails is feeling nervous, feeling bored, or feeling anxious in some sort of way as well. And so what do they do? They bite their nails. That's the routine, that's. And then the reward is a distraction from their uncomfortable emotions. Even just the little bit of biting their nails, giving themselves something to do takes their thoughts away from a lot of uncomfortable emotions. So the cue, feeling nervous, bored, anxious, the routine, biting the nails. The reward is the distraction from the uncomfortable emotions. But if you could go through this with bad habits, could you also go through this with good habits? Yeah, of course. So let's give a few examples of good habits. Let's say that you want to exercise daily, right? The cue can be coming home from work. That's an external environment. You're walking in the door of your house. Immediately, the routine, changing into your workout clothes, putting on a 30 minute workout on YouTube and just getting it done. That's the routine. And then the reward is feeling accomplished and proud of yourself for showing up, maybe how relaxed you feel after a workout. The good thing about a reward is rewards themselves are completely subjective. You can celebrate yourself and, you know, I talk about this deeply in my book, you can celebrate yourself for just doing something and your brain will actually release dopamine. It's of an entire section dedicated to it, which is the dopamine reward system. How to actually fall in love with your habits. And so the cue can be coming home from work. The new routine that you want to start is immediately, as soon as you come home, you change into your workout clothes and you do, you go to YouTube, you turn on a 30 minute workout or you go for a run or whatever it is that you want. And the reward is the feeling of, oh man, I'm so proud of myself for doing this. Or maybe it's the way that your body feels after it that can help you with your daily exercise. Maybe you want to eat healthier. The cue is, okay, it's lunchtime. I normally eat around this time. My body's starting to tell me that I'm hungry. That's the cue, right? And so the routine is, now what I'm gonna do is Instead of eating McDonald's, I'm gonna choose to eat a chicken salad and eat healthier. And then the reward is enjoying a tasty meal, feeling good about a healthy choice, having way more energy after. Because when I don't have crappy food, I don't have to have so much energy, go to digestion, and I actually have more energy after and you know, I could be like, you know what? I chose a healthy choice, so I deserve a cup of coffee after this. Right? And that could be a reward as well. You can put multiple rewards to this if you really want to, to really try to lock it in. And so once again, eating health, eating healthy is the thing that you want to go for. The cue you get hungry at lunchtime, the routine you decide to choose a chicken salad over McDonald's. Reward, enjoying a tasty meal, feeling good about yourself. And you can reward yourself with a cup of coffee if that's what you want. Right? Let's say that meditation is a habit that you want to get better at. I'm going to use the same cue that we talked about earlier, which is feeling stressed and anxious. Now, most of the time when people feel stressed and anxious, they want to turn their brain off, they want to run from it, they want to go to numbing, they want to go to food, they want to go to alcohol, they want to go to cigarettes, they want to go to playing video games, they want to play to overworking, so they don't pay attention to it. But you could actually have the exact same cue and change your routine so you can change your body, change your mental state. So let's say the cue is feeling stressed. Let's say it's feeling anxious. Instead of eating, drinking, smoking, scrolling on social media, any of that stuff, the routine is when I start to feel stress. Okay, I'm going to sit in a quiet spot for three minutes and I'm going to do deep breathing. Just three minutes, I'm going to put in. It's very simple to do. I've done this many times. I start to feel myself getting too much in my head. I've got a lot of shit to do today. I've got a large to do list. And instead of going and actually putting all of my effort into, you know, thinking about all the things that I have to do and getting stressed and anxious about it. I'm like, you know what, I'm just going to calm my body down before I do anything else. And so the routine is sitting down for three minutes, putting a timer on my phone, and just do deep breathing, just into the nose, long exhale out through the mouth. And you just do that for three minutes. At the end of three minutes, you'll so much better. So that's the new routine when I get stressed and anxious. And now the reward is feeling calm, feeling centered, feeling more at peace. Right? So that's a cue, routine, reward and the habit loop. This is a habit loop. That's what it's actually called, is deeply rooted in our neurobiology. When we encounter a cue, whatever that cue might be, our brain actually releases dopamine. And in the anticipation of getting the reward. And so our neurotransmitters, a neurotransmitter, dopamine, is a neurotransmitter that triggers our reward system and drives us to perform the habitual routine to achieve the reward. And when we get the reward, what happens? Our brain then releases more dopamine when we get our reward to say, this was good. You should do this again. Even if it's a bad habit, you still get the dopamine. And this process is facilitated by a part of the brain that's called the basal ganglia, which plays a central role in habit formation. And so each time we go through the habit loop, this connection, our brain gets stronger. So each time we do it every single day, the more that you smoke those cigarettes, the more that you eat the food, whatever it is, it makes the habit more ingrained and more automatic in your brain. And it's actually known as what they call he's law. And he's law, which is neurons that fire together, wire together. If you can think of your neurons in your brain. Our brain works off of electrical signals. And so when they say fire together, wire together, the fire together is an electrical signal between one neuron and another one. So every time they fire together, they wire together, which means when they fire together, the stronger the wiring becomes. This is why it seems like older people are so set in their ways. It's not impossible to change at any age. You could change at any age. They're just way more resistant because they have 20, 30, 40, 50 years of that ingrained habit. So let's go into now that you know how habit works. Let's talk about tips to creating lasting habits. And so we're going to go through it. The first thing that I'll tell you is this. Coaching thousands of people over the past 17 years, I've realized that if you listen to this podcast, you're probably a type of person who wants to be an overachiever. You want to go over and above, right? And what I usually find with people is that they go, I'm going to start a habit. And then they go, I'm going to start this habit and this habit and this habit and this habit and this habit. They try to overhaul their entire life. That's the best way to fail and to give up on your habits. So what I always recommend is start really small. This is also a thing that Charles Duhigg talks about. Start really, really small. One of the biggest mistakes is people try to go too big in habit formation. It's important to break down your habits into really small, manageable chunks. The smaller and more specific, the better. Okay, so like, for instance, let's say you want to meditate. Instead of going, you know what, I'm going to sit down, I'm going to meditate for 30 minutes every single day. You're going to be very resistant, very resistant to 30 minutes every single day. Say, I'm going to meditate for one minute every day. I'm going to do just really deep breaths, not meditate for 30 minutes. The lower the barrier to entry, the more likely you are to do it. So you say, I'm going to meditate for one minute. I'm going to put on my timer, I'm going to do. Or you could just say, I'm going to close my eyes and I'm going to do 10 deep, intentional breaths, and then I'm done at the point that point. You could do that if you want. And here's what happens at the end of those 10 breaths. If you want to get up, you can get up. You're allowed to. But what usually happens is you get 10, 10 deep breaths and you go, okay, I could stay for a couple extra minutes. But the lower the barrier to the entry, the more likely you are to do it. Like, one of the things that Charles Duhigg talks about is instead of if you want to floss your, you know, get into flossing your teeth, floss one tooth and say, hey, I'm just going to floss one tooth. Just low bared entry. So biggest key that I can give you first off is to start small. The next one, obviously, if you've been listening, is to identify your cues and identify your rewards. Remember the habit loop. Identify specific cues that will trigger routine to ensure that there's a reward that satisfies your craving and actually start to plan out your new cues, your new routines, your new rewards. This reward doesn't have to be a tangible thing. It doesn't have to be a piece of chocolate. It can be a piece of chocolate, like a tiny piece of chocolate. It could be any of that stuff, but it could be just like I said, the sense of accomplishment, the actual celebrating of yourself and being excited about it because of the fact that it is completely subjective, will release dopamine in your brain, which makes you more likely to do it again. That is the reward that your brain is actually craving more than anything else, which is the chemical addiction of dopamine. That's the next one. Identify and start to plan out your habit. Habit loop, the cue, the routine, the ward. Next one is just try to be as consistent as possible. Don't go more than two days without, you know, if you said you're gonna work out every single day and you miss today, don't miss two days in a row, Right? Regular repeating the behavior strengthens the neural pathways associated with the habit loop. Neurons that fire together, wire together. The more that you do it, the more that you fire all of these different neurons, the more that they wire together, the more it makes it easier to continue to keep doing it. So consistency is really, really key. Next one is to build on existing habits. It's another thing I write about in the book, but it's something called habit stacking. BJ Fogg, who's a scientist at Stanford, created this thing called habit stacking, which is take an old habit that you do every single day and put another habit on the back of it. So if you're going to take one habit that you do, like for instance, brushing your teeth every single day, and you're going to take another habit that you want to create and put it on the back end of it. So like, for instance, you brush your teeth every single morning, maybe you want to get better at affirmations. Maybe you're terrible with self love. Maybe you talk a lot of trash to yourself, right? Maybe you have three affirmations that you want to repeat to yourself three times each. Well, as soon as you get done brushing your teeth, you immediately go, you look at yourself in the mirror and you say these three habits, you go on about your day, you do that in the morning, you do it in the evening, and now you're actually habit stacking. You're taking a habit, AKA brushing your teeth, and putting another habit on top of it and stacking them together. So that's the next one. Next one is to try to reinforce these strategies. Positive reinforcement, like rewards, can help you strengthen the habit loop. Negative reinforcement, which is what most people do, they talk trash to themselves, they try to negatively motivate themselves, can actually really hurt you. And so try to use positive reinforcement strategies, whatever that might be. It might be, like I said, a cup of coffee might be a small piece of chocolate. It might be just being excited about yourself, but start to think about how you can have positive reinforcements. You know, we went to Go train our dog recently. And the thing that I love about training a dog nowadays is that it's all positive reinforcement. And you can still train the dog without ever, you know, hitting the dog's butt or yelling at the dog or doing any of those things. Positive reinforcement works better in most of the time than negative reinforcement does. So how can you train yourself the same way to train a dog with positive reinforcement? Next thing is, try to start tracking it. Try to use habit tracking. Keep track of your progress so that you can actually use it as a source of motivation. Get a blank calendar, mark off every. You know, get a calendar, put it on the wall somewhere there. It's very visible. And every single time you do your, you know, three minutes of breathing, you just put a big X on that day, and you see it every single day. And it starts to become motivating to keep the. That chain going and to continue to keep actually hitting your habits every single day. And then, last tip I'll give you around this is just be patient and be persistent. Habits are not formed overnight. They require time. They require patience. There will be days where you will mess up, and that is completely fine. But it's really important not to get discouraged, because it's really important. Like I said, with positive reinforcement, if you go four days of working out and you miss one day, you can get really pissed off about that one day. Or, or you can say, you know what, Rob? You did really good the past four days. You did great the past four days. And you celebrate yourself for it and say, I'm not going to miss tomorrow. I'm not going to miss two days in a row. Because it's. Remember, it's about progress, not perfection. You will not be perfect in any of these things. And over time, the more you do it, the more that behavior becomes automatic. So, you know, if you do something 60 days in a row, it becomes much easier. And that goes into, well, how long does it take to create a habit? Well, going to tell you, it's not really known at this point. They think it's about 66 days. So that the University College of London actually did this and tried to figure out how long it would take to put a habit into somebody's day. They used 96 participants, and the researchers found that on average, it takes about 66 days for something to become automatic. But there was a wide range in this study of individuals. Some of them had really small habits, and some of them had really complex habits. The range of how long it took in these 96 participants was anywhere between 18 to 254 days. It's a big, big gap. What I want you to realize is that it takes about 66 days. And so if you just said, you know what, I'm going to try to do this 66 days in a row every single day. You know, if you have a simple habit, it's going to get locked in quicker. If it's a really complex habit, it might take a little bit longer. But all that matters is progress, not perfection. And then prepare for setbacks. You're going to mess up. It's okay. You're not going to be perfect. They will happen. Don't beat yourself up. Instead, use it as a learning opportunity and try to grow and improve from there. So that, my friends, is a habit. The Science of Habit Formation. Once again, if you love this podcast episode, please do me a favor, go ahead and share this with someone that you love. Share it on your Instagram stories. And once again, if you want to go ahead and pre order my book, I would greatly, greatly appreciate it. Pre orders matter a ton of and getting into some of the best sellers lists. And so if you go to robdial.com book, you can order right now. Level up, which is my brand new book, comes out October 3rd and it is Level up, how to get focused, stop procrastinating and upgrade your life. With that, I'm gonna leave you the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission. Make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.