Why you fail with some habits and succeed with others. Lets fix it.

We unpack a simple, revealing contrast - the same person, the same goals, and the same low-energy, being sick week produced 2 outcomes: 1 habit failed, 1 succeeded - and the difference came down to this.

Our goal is to help you build habits that work when life doesn’t. If you design the path so the right action is the easiest action, consistency stops relying on willpower and starts relying on structure.

If this conversation helps you see change through a systems lens, follow the show, share it with a friend who’s stuck, and leave a quick review to spread the word. What’s the one habit you’ll redesign this week?

Transcript

Framing The Habit Problem

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Hey guys, and welcome back to another episode of Change Wired Podcast. My name is Angela Shorina. I'm your host, I'm your change partner, partner in our personal and collective transformation, Executive Health and High Performance Coach 360. And we're here again to talk about change. And specifically today, by the end of this podcast, hopefully you'll understand why certain habits stick with you and certain habits don't. Or you'll also get a better skill set and understanding of how to help others to change their behaviors without saying a word. So this is all about, guys, to make change easier. The change that you don't just implement once, but actually stick with it, or it sticks with you. It also is a very useful podcast episode if you are a leader trying to make the right behaviors in your team happen a lot more consistently. It will give you one of the most important insights in behavior change in general. And when you get it, like really get it, and you start using it as your default method for either changing yourself or changing behavior of other people, you're gonna get a lot, a lot better results than a lot of uh leadership in companies all over the world. Millions and thousands of people do the change wrong because they don't look at it through this lens of system thinking, behavior design, behavior change, or just human psychology. But without further ado, let's jump into the episode. So we're gonna start with a story, a simple story from a coaching client of mine. We're working with him on healthy behaviors, healthy eating, living um habits. And he recently got sick, and when he came back from being ill, we uh you know it's really good time to reflect on uh the habits that are really sticking and the habits that you know need a little bit more work because when we're sick, our energy levels and motivation and discipline and everything is a lot lower just because our body is struggling with a lot of things and need that energy, and your brain, you know, is the hungriest organ for energy in your body. And so when your energy in your body goes lower, your brain especially feels it. You're gonna feel less motivated, you're gonna feel less disciplined, everything's gonna feel like a lot of hard work, even though when you're healthy it doesn't. So it's a really good time to see where your brain defaults to habits and what habits stuck with you, and what habits are you know still work in progress. So, anyhow, the client came back from being ill. And yeah, it's it was just such a good moment because it became apparent to him that he doesn't like willpower or motivation or discipline. All he lacks most of the time for habitual behaviors is better system design. Let me explain what I mean by that. So back to the story. We're working, we've been working on two habits uh eating protein, eating enough protein, and eating uh well not eating, drinking water. And so when he came back from being ill, two things we saw two things. One habit stuck with him, eating enough protein, and then one habit almost collapsed, drinking water. And you would even think like drinking water is easier, well, at least from my perspective, because it's just drinking, you don't have to cook it, you didn't have to sort of do sometimes even shopping and buying, because very often you can it's something you can get from your tap and maybe use filters or not, but anyhow, water seemed to be uh less difficult, and yet that's one war, that's one habit that collapsed. And when we looked into why is that, you know, the same person, same type of behaviors, but one went really, really well, and one almost didn't like there was some water, but not not enough. Same person, same goal, same level of discipline and motivation, but different systems and different outcomes. So we looked back at why why that happened. And with protein, he kept hitting hitting his protein number for the day because the weekend before he had prepared all the chicken for the week. That's his chosen source of protein for additional protein. He bought it, he cooked it, he put it in in containers. So when there was lunchtime when he was ill, he thought about you know what to eat, about snacking on something, and then he remembered there was like all this chicken waiting, so he also didn't want to waste it, and it was there already, easy, already prepped. And so he ate it. And he continued eating it because it was there, and he wouldn't get you know hungry from time to time, and so he would eat it. And then water did not survive exactly the disruption, and the reason was because when we were working on the habit, we linked the habit to things that he had to do outside, like going for work and doing his workouts and coming back from work, and when doing stuff at home, doing it around his work as well, work routine. And so he got sick, and we realized, well, that actually wasn't a good anchor because he would travel and there were weekends, and there are quite a few things that could interrupt with that specific routine. But guess what happened consistently in his day? His meals. And we decided, okay, let's then reinvent the system for the next time. Let's put water before each of your meals. 500 milliliters, so you get your 1.5 uh liters for the day, and the rest you can get in teas and in foods like soups and fruit and uh salads which contain a lot of water. And so the moral of the story, the water did not survive because there was the system that broke, the system wasn't good enough. It's the same person, same goals, again, same motivation, same being ill, but one habit was super strong and the other just wasn't. And also the another point is sometimes the systems that we design don't work from attempt number one. And the more you test the system in uh different conditions and the more it sticks, the more you know that hey, that actually works. Another example from my personal life taking my supplements two times per day. Like in the morning, I usually take it all the time. It's like breakfast supplements. But with dinner, the life, well, my day gets usually quite busy, and I just don't think about a lot of things. And so I told you this story already. When I moved from one place to another, in my old place, the supplements were out there when I would have my dinner. So when I had my dinner, I would remember to take the supplements. And in a new place, my supplements were in the cupboard and they were out of sight. And so uh at dinner I actually forgot to take them the first time in like a decade. And and so now I understand like supplements have to always be out for me to remember to take them. The same principle. It's not like uh all of a sudden my memory became less effective specifically with supplement taking. No, it just my system changed or it didn't work, and so you always want to think about your system that works in all the different contexts of your life, whatever possible. The same as let's see your exercise. In your normal routine, perhaps you have a gym. Okay, but when you are out of your routine, what if you travel? What if you get sick? What if something interrupts your morning routine? What if, what if, what if the more of those scenarios you go through and figure out a very clear step-by-step solution, the more there is a chance, it's almost a guarantee actually, that the habit you want to do happens. A lot of times, most of the time, our habits don't happen because a there is not enough clarity, b, we don't make it easy. And by easy, I mean we don't have the schedule, the reminders, the stuff ready to go, ready to eat, ready to, I don't know, pick up, put up and start doing it. We really overestimate our ability to act on willpower and discipline and motivation consistently, and we so underestimate what a huge role putting in place the right system plays in us actually doing anything consistently. And the example I gave to you was from lifestyle, from something you do personally for yourself, but that equally works in workplace or any other situation before blaming the person or before blaming yourself. Get into a habit of asking yourself what how like first of all, what habit keeps us failing right now, and what kind of system do you need to design to make this habit succeed? And I'll just also like to bring up this example that the same seed and that may be a seed of your habit, the same seed, when you put it in different soil, let's say five type of types of soil, and you put the same seed into each type, what what do you think is gonna happen? If you're into gardening at all, what do you think is gonna happen? The better the soil, the better the fruits, right? The better the sprout. And the also different soils will produce different outcomes in each single case. So the context is the king. So never look at your behavior or your habits in isolation. In fact, research shows that the best way to change your habitual ways is to change your context. Let's say you lived in one place, you now live in the other place. If you want to all of a sudden you know completely reinvent your lifestyle and become a fitter, healthier, better version of you, guess what? When you change the environment, it will be a lot easier to stick with that new behavior and make it work. That's why also they say for different kinds of addictions like alcohol addictions or drug addiction, the best way to stop it is to put the person into a completely different environment where there are no habitual triggers to sort of remind the person of that behavior and the reward that they get from certain behaviors triggered by something in your environment, in your day-to-day life or work life. So the point of this podcast, guys, today is to help you understand that personal or collective change almost never is up to your willpower and discipline and all of those things. It's almost always up to the system where you plant the seed of that habit. So, again, next time you're trying to change your behavior, behavior of your friends, of your family, behavior of your team or leadership, anyone as far as humans are concerned, then look what's around you, what's around people, the environment, the soil, the systems, not the person, and ask yourself have I made this easy, visible, rewarding? Have I made it almost a guaranteed success without the need again for willpower and discipline and remembering a lot of stuff and going an extra mile? Have I done that? And if you did that, the chances are you're gonna succeed a lot, a lot more than a lot, a lot more than a lot of other people. And that's it for today, guys. From small to big, from big to small, from personal transformation to collective change, as far as again as human brain is concerned, the same laws apply. But I would argue that on a larger scale transformation, when there are a lot, a lot more people that you're dealing with, systems become even more so important than when we're talking about one-on-one change. If you found this podcast useful and you'd like more people to think this way, people who are in charge of making changes, then please do share the short, very lightweight podcast episode with them. Also, if you know someone struggling with healthy eating habits and have been struggling for like years, give them this podcast and help them to realize maybe the reason they're failing isn't them, maybe it's what's around them and that they can design. Share review rate to uh to help this podcast to reach more ears, guys. And till next time, keep learning, keep doing better, and keep growing.