11: Building Success Habits

Welcome to the Women's Success Coach Podcast. A podcast created to inspire growth and to help you learn, achieve, and evolve in your life ongoing regardless of your age. I'm your host, certified coach, and licensed therapist Karen Vincent, and I'm here to guide you and provide you with concrete tips and strategies you can implement in your life. I'm also here to inspire you, challenge you, and cheer you on so that you can create the life of your dreams and beyond. In today's podcast episode, I'm talking all about habits. I'm sure you've heard a lot about habits, read books about building habits and or listened to other podcasts about building habits. The reason there's so much talk of them is because they can literally change your life for the better, or the worse. Did that last statement sound dramatic? Listen to today's episode to find out why it's not dramatic at all. Your habits can move you towards what you want your life to look like, or they can move you away from it. Today, I will give you specific examples of how this works, as well as specific strategies you can implement to create habits that support you in living the life you desire. So let's get to it. Hey there. I'm so glad you're here tuning into this episode where I'm talking all things habits. The good ones, the bad ones, the ones you want to hide from everyone, and the ones that have contribute to successes you've had in your life. Whether we are aware of all of them or not, we all have habits. We have hygiene habits, health habits, lifestyle habits, work habits, financial habits and habits that we bring with us to our relationships. Your habits, whether big or small, can work for you. For example, the habit of brushing your teeth likely works for you. You keep your teeth healthy, your mouth feels fresh, and people are not repelled in the way they would be if you didn't brush your teeth. Am I right? Another example would be the habit of exercising every day. This habit also likely works for you because it helps you be healthier and perhaps also helps you look the way you wanna look. A final example could be the habit of always hitting your deadlines at work. This is a habit that could work for you because it allows you to be successful in your job, as well as have positive work relationships. That all makes obvious sense, right? Each habit is reinforced by things such as healthy teeth, a fresh mouth, being healthy, and being successful at work. What you get in return for engaging in the habit makes it easier to continue to do the habit. In addition, the more immediate the reward or benefit, the easier it becomes to stick with a habit. This is the reason why exercise can sometimes be a struggle. If you are just starting out with an exercise habit, it doesn't always feel good, right? You may feel like that you are having to sacrifice something else to make the time. It may feel unpleasant when you're doing it. And if you're working towards a health goal, or a goal related to your physical appearance, you're not going to see any results for weeks or maybe even months. If there was a guarantee that you would see the results you want immediately after exercising, it would be much easier to engage in the behavior because the immediate gratification would pull you through that discomfort. All of this is also true about bad habits. When you engage in a behavior that you consider to be bad, yet you keep going back to it, it's because it's being reinforced in some way. What's important about this is once you understand what is reinforcing about the bad habit, it becomes easier to change it. For example, if you find yourself scrolling social media for hours a day and you keep telling yourself you want to cut back, but you don't, that's because the behavior is being reinforced or rewarded. Maybe it is being reinforced because it allows you to avoid doing something unpleasant like work or chores or if we go back to exercise, like exercise. Or, it allows you to stop thinking about something that does not feel good. In addition, it could be reinforced because maybe you're looking at pictures of places you may one day want to travel, or shoes you hope to purchase soon, or you're getting dopamine hits from the number of likes on your latest post. There are many possibilities and what's important is for you to identify the specific things that are rewarding or reinforcing the behavior. If you want to change the habit, it's important that you understand what keeps you going back to it, even when logically you're telling yourself you no longer want to do it. This applies to eating and drinking behaviors as well. The immediate feeling you get when eating or drinking can help you get relief from negative feelings, or it can reward your taste buds with yummy flavors, or it can give you a hit of dopamine if you're eating something with a lot of sugar. Even though logically you know that you'll feel worse after consuming certain things, you still engage in the behavior because of the immediate reward, which either offers relief from something you don't want to be feeling, or gives you an immediate positive experience. Habits such as being chronically late, biting your fingernails, or leaving dirty dishes in the sink are also being reinforced or rewarded in some way, which is likely very specific to you. Again, the key is to understand what the reward is for doing the bad habit that keeps you going back to it. In today's episode, I'm focusing on building success habits. But check out my next shorty episode where I'll be talking about how to get rid of those bad habits. So for now, let's get back to creating the positive habits. In a perfect world, you would feel highly inspired and motivated to create a new habit, and this motivation would be maintained at a high level over a long period of time. But you and I both know that's not the way it works, right? If it was, I would not have needed to record this podcast, and you would've not needed to listen to it. Motivation alone won't get you there. And this is coming from someone who knows how to help clients dial up their motivation, and I even teach other therapists and coaches how to help their clients do the same. Motivation can get you started, but motivational alone will rarely, if ever, get you to the finish line. In addition, if you have a huge surge of motivation to do something, In response to your strong feelings of motivation, you may risk setting goals that are too big to sustain. You may be able to do it on the days your motivation is at its best, but you won't be able to do it on the days when it dips. And my friend, it will dip. When highly motivated, you may tell yourself, go big or go home. However, the reality is that if you set a goal that is so big or so far outside your comfort zone, you'll end up going home. Your brain does not want you to make dramatic changes to your life. Your brain does not want you to go outside your comfort zone, and your brain definitely does not want you to do something that it thinks you are not really capable of doing at this point. Your brain is designed to keep you safe, to keep you comfortable, to help you stick with what's familiar, and to avoid expanding any unnecessary energy. For these reasons, if you try to go from zero to 100 with something, your brain will come up with every reason in the book for why you can't follow through. It will tell you that you don't have the time, that you don't have the ability, that you don't have the resources or the support, that you don't have the knowledge, and I could go on and on with that list. The key to creating habits that stick is to make them rewarding, doable, and something that stays top of mind. So, let's think this through. First, I want you to think about something you are wanting in your life. And this isn't something like, I want to exercise five days per week, or I want to have$25,000 in savings, or I want to get eight hours of sleep each night. This is a bigger picture thing that you want in your life. So if we stick to those examples, it's not about exercising five days per week, it's about why you want to do that. Perhaps it's because you want to avoid diabetes, or you want to lose some weight. It's not about having$25,000 in savings, it's about what this means for you. It's about wanting a financial safety net in case something unforeseen happens. It's also not about logging eight hours of sleep per night. Instead, it's about wanting to wake up refreshed and with mental clarity each day. Do you see the difference? What is it that you want to have that you don't have now? Getting clear on this is important because this is your WHY. Before you jump in and try to figure out the exact way to get what it is you want, just take some time and focus on the WHY. The goal is to get to the deepest WHY. The WHY you can really feel, and this WHY should feel motivating to you, and it will help carry you on the days you don't want to continue to pursue your new habit. Next, think about what it is you want to create in your life, WHY you want to create it, and now we can start to brainstorm the how. What will you need to do to get there? If you want to create a consistent exercise routine in order to avoid illness, how might you do this? Now the obvious answer is, okay, exercise four to five days a week. Right? But if that's all it took to develop that habit, we wouldn't be here right now. You, you would've already done it. We would all create all the habits we want. But if you are someone who doesn't exercise currently or who rarely exercises, and you tell yourself that you're going to start exercising for 30 minutes, four to five days a week, your brain will freak out. It will scream at you and it will tell you that you don't have time, that you're too out of shape, that it won't really make a difference anyway, that you're not athletic, or that you're not someone who exercises, period. To check in on another example, if you don't have any savings at all and out of the blue you tell yourself that you'll have$25,000 in the bank by the end of the year, your brain's gonna freak out. It'll start to do the math and tell you that you're not capable of saving that much money. It will start reminding you of all the other things that you need that money for, and it will create stress, which will make you want to avoid thinking about this goal, ever again. And to go to our sleep example, if you are someone who stays up until 1:00 AM and you have to get up for work at 6:00 AM and all of a sudden you tell yourself that starting tomorrow you're going to get eight hours of sleep per night, even with a strong why, your brain's gonna freak out. It'll tell you that you don't have enough time in your day, that you need your evening to get things done, or that this is the only time you have to relax. Or that you don't really need more sleep because you've been getting by just fine up till now. This is why gym memberships boom in January when everyone is fired up to make health changes going into the new year, and why within weeks they're back to their usual levels. Or why some people purchase a membership and never actually even step foot in the gym. It's why the second Friday in January is called National Quitting Day. In 2019, a research study was conducted and found that approximately 80% of people who made New Year's resolutions, quit by the second week of January. What? That's insane, and that's not going to be you when you start building your new habits, right? So when it comes to creating new habits that support you in creating something you want in your life, slow and steady is what wins the race. Remember, your brain has a job. It wants to keep you comfortable, and it is going to freak out if you try to do too much all at once. It will want to hold you back and keep you in your comfort zone. But when you start small, your brain's like, okay, we can handle this, and it won't fight you in the same way. For example, if you want to get healthier to avoid future health problems and you decide the exercise is a habit you want to create, don't start with the four to five days of 30 minute workouts. Start with walking for five to 10 minutes, two to three days per week, or maybe even less. Now if you have big health goals, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, what's the point of that? That's not gonna get me any results. But in creating habits this way, the goal isn't to get to the finish line as quickly as possible, it's to establish habits that get you what you want in your life on a permanent basis. And this requires starting small, forming the habit, and then building on it as you go. After you've been walking for five to 10 minutes, two to three days per week, you can decide to increase this habit. You could increase the duration of your walks, the intensity or speed of your walks, or the frequency of your walks. Maybe you go to four days a week and then five. Now you are someone who walks five days per. week. That is what you do. It's just part of your weekly routine. And once you're there, you could then decide that you walk for five days per week and your walks are 20 minutes each time. Do you see how you can keep upping the ante, but a little bit at a time so that your brain does not freak out and convince you to give up? If we look at the goal of getting$25,000 into savings, you may want to start with how to save$20 a week. That probably feels doable, and you may do this by skipping a cup of coffee, or not buying lunch out, or canceling the music streaming service you don't really use anymore anyhow. Once you no longer miss the coffee, the lunch out, or the streaming service, maybe you try to find how to save an additional$10 each week, or you decide to save$40 extra this month by getting the item out of your Amazon cart that you probably know you don't really need anyway. When you do this, you're creating the habit of slowly dialing back your spending without creating a situation where you feel like you're depriving yourself, while also creating the habits of challenging your spending habits and depositing money into your savings each week, which should feel good because it's moving you closer to your goal. Finally, if we look at wanting to have eight hours of sleep each night, instead of going to bed at 1:00 AM, try going to bed at 12:45 AM. Do that until it feels like it's the new normal routine, and then try 12:30, as is the case with the other two examples, going to bed 15 minutes earlier feels doable. However, all of a sudden going to bed three hours earlier feels overwhelming and you know what's gonna happen, your brain is gonna freak. So I think by now you get the point. Figure out what it is you want, get really clear on why you want it, and then decide how you're going to get there, and then start creating habits at a slow and steady pace. The other thing that can be helpful, is once you have a good habit locked in, stack another habit on top of it. For example, with a health goal, if you get to a place where you're walking consistently, let's say in the morning, perhaps you come back from your walk and you make a healthy breakfast. You'll likely feel motivated to do so after getting your exercise in, and then the healthy breakfast becomes a new habit that follows your walking habit. Your brain will likely not freak out, unless of course you're trying to create an elaborate gourmet breakfast, because it will make sense to fuel with some healthy food after doing another healthy behavior. The bonus to all of this is what happens to your mindset as you create habits in this way, you create a new identity based on your new habits. You see yourself as someone who exercises regularly and who eats a healthy breakfast in the morning. That becomes who you are at your core, which makes it much harder to make decisions that go against that identity. Or you become someone who saves more than they spend, so how you think about money changes at your core, and you are no longer making decisions that negatively impact your ability to save money. Finally, you become someone who values getting eight hours of sleep because you wake up refreshed and you are able to be more productive during the day When this happens and it's 10:00 PM and Netflix is ready to roll into the next episode of your favorite series, you just turn off the TV and you go to bed knowing that you can watch it tomorrow, and that waking up refreshed is more important. The behaviors become who you are, and it takes the mental struggle out of whether you're going to do a behavior or not. Just like with smoking. If you're not a smoker and someone offers you a cigarette, you're not going to debate your response at all. The answer is no, thank you. You're not a smoker, and therefore you would never say yes to smoking a cigarette. So if you're someone who walks five days a week and this becomes who you are, there's no debate in the morning over whether you're going to walk or not. You just do it. It's part of who you are. And that is true of all the other behaviors I talked about in this episode, as well as the thousands and thousands of other identities and behaviors that we can create for ourselves. Okay. I think I've hammered that point home, but I wanted to stress it so much because building success habits is not about making a massive, dramatic change in your behavior, it's about creating lasting changes that will help you create what you want in your life for the long haul. Now, as we do in all my episodes, let's take some action. I'm going to walk you through some action steps. You can also grab my free worksheet to help you work through this process by clicking the show notes or by going to www.karenvincentsolutions.com/successhabits. That's www.karenvincentsolutions.com/success habits and grab the worksheet that will help you go through this process that I'm going to talk you through right now. So first, when we're talking about taking action on this, I want you to think about what is it that you really want in your life that you do not currently have? And then for the WHY, WHY do you want that in your life? What is the deeper reason, the one that you feel you like you feel it in your body when you think about it, why it makes it so important for you? And then I want you to think about when you create this in your life, your life will be better because, and then fill in the blank. What will look better? What will feel better? And then you're going to go to the brainstorming section. So this is the HOW, but you're not going to decide. You're just going to brainstorm. What are all the HOWS that will get you there. So if we go back to health and the examples I gave in this episode, I started with walking, exercise. I could have started with healthier eating. I could have started with better sleep. There's lots of avenues. So just brainstorm what might be all the ways that could help get you there. And then once you kind of do that brain dump and have all that information, then you can decide on what's the one habit you're going to start with. And you want to be as detailed as possible about when and where you'll do it, for how long, how intense it'll be. Get as much detail as possible and make sure you scale it down to the point where you don't question it. You know with 100% certainty that you can do it. Then, you can take action on that habit. And once that habit becomes part of your normal routine, ask yourself how you can take it to the next level. Can you increase the frequency, the duration, the intensity? Can you add a little bit something more to it? Maybe shift it up a little bit, or as I did in the example with the walking and then the healthy breakfast, is there another habit you can stack on top of it that moves you further towards your goal? So I know that was a lot. All of these questions will be in the show notes, and you can also grab the free download I have at www.karenvincentsolutions.com/successhabits. You've got this, my friend. Oh, and one more thing before we go. If you like reading and want some more tips and strategies that will help you with things like managing your mindset, your stress, your anxiety and worry setting and achieving your goals, managing limiting beliefs, creating healthy success habits, challenging yourself beyond what you believe is currently possible, and lots of other topics related to creating a life of success, ongoing growth, and fulfillment, go to www.karenvincentsolutions.com/blog and check out my blog. That's a wrap. You should be proud of yourself for investing time in you, which is so critical for success and for overall life fulfillment. I look forward to having you join me for my next episode. And in the meantime, go click that subscribe button so you'll know when it's released, and you can also follow me on Instagram at Best Boss Lady Life that's at Best Boss Lady Life on Instagram. Also, remember that whatever it is that you're working on, you've got this and I'm here cheering you on.