Welcome to Sheeper Assisted. I'm your host Sadie Sutton, a 19
year old from the Bay Area studying psychology at the
University of Pennsylvania. Sheeper Assisted is the teen
mental health podcast made for teenagers by a teen.
In each episode I'll bring you authentic, accessible and
relatable conversations about every aspect of mental Wellness
you can expect. Evidence based teen approved
resources, coping skills including lots of DBT insights
and education and each piece of content you consume.
She Persisted offers you a safe space to feel validated and
understood in your struggle while encouraging you to take
ownership of your journey and build your life worth living.
So let's dive in this week on She persisted.
If you are on TikTok or Instagram reels, you guys seen
those super Moody, low brightness entrepreneur videos.
They have the big microphones. They're like never tell anyone
your goals. Build in private, work in
private, celebrate publicly. Never tell anyone what your
plans are wrong. Psychologically, scientifically
speaking, if you want to reach your goal, you will declare your
goal publicly and you will do so in person.
You will tell those around you what you're working towards,
what you're trying to do, and you are exponentially more
likely to achieve that goal than if you are the only one that is
aware of that goal and holding yourself accountable.
Hello, hello, and welcome to Cheap Assisted.
If this is your first episode, I'm so excited you're here.
If this is not your first episode, welcome back.
Happy 2025. We have a really exciting
episode. It is going to set you up for
success, I think this year with your goals and your habits and
successes and failures and all the things.
We're going to dive into a lot of psychology research and all
those topics. And then I'm going to talk about
my goals for 2025. And I know we're a little bit
late. I'm recording this on January
12th. I know a lot of people do their
goal setting content like end of December, very beginning of
January. I was on a mental hiatus after
the full semester and grad school apps and finals and all
the things. I've been taking a little bit of
a mental break, doing lots of reading, relaxing over winter
break. But we're back.
I start my final semester at Penn in a couple of days, which
is absolutely wild. And I'm setting my goals right
now for 2025. And I hope that this is helpful
for you guys as well as you're starting school and that it's
not too late and you guys still find value from this.
Also, you are just getting back into your school routine or you
have new classes or a new schedule or any big changes
happening. That is scientifically the best
time to start new habits and routines because it's easier to
implement them in a new environment than it is in your
same environment with new behaviors because those cues are
tied to old behaviors. So hopefully this will be a good
point for you guys to implement those things.
And I hope you guys find a lot of value from this episode and
we're just going to dive right in.
The first thing that we're going to talk about is the difference
between motivation and volition. So motivation is why we do
something. It's a lot of times tied to our
lived experiences, our emotions, our values, our interests.
That's kind of what is urging us to do something.
But our volition is how we do something.
So that's what we're going to be talking about today.
Our volition with regard to habits and routines and plans
and goals and successes and failures.
Like how can we be most effective and get the outcomes
that we want and follow through and building on that idea within
our volition? There are four different little
steps that you could call them. I'm going to give you guys a lot
of frameworks and ways to think about goals and take what you
like, leave what you don't. But I feel like it's helpful to
kind of hear different ways of thinking about these things and
where you can potentially insert new thoughts and behaviors to be
more efficient and improved. So this one comes from an
article called Mindset Theory of Action phases.
And if then planning is from 2019, we can put it in the show
notes. But there are four steps that
take place when an action occurs.
So that's pre decisional. So that's like your pros and
cons thinking about if you want to do this thing, weighing your
options, then we have our preactional.
So taking our steps to set ourselves up for success, what
is going to happen? And we're going to talk a lot
about this preactional phase today.
There's the actual, so you actually do the thing and then
the post actual reflecting on it, getting feedback, was it
effective, what would I change next time, etcetera.
And so within that pre actual phase, there is something that
you can implement called an implementation intention.
So this is a specific plan that is better than a goal intention.
So a goal intention would be I want to get better running, I'm
going to start running, I am going to run a 5K, I'm going to
run everyday. Like those are goal intentions,
an if then plan and when we learn them in grit lab this past
semester, which I'm pulling a lot from my notes for that.
And you guys are going to get a grit lab recap episode, the next
solo episode, which I'm really excited about.
We learned about them as when then plans, which it rhymes a
little bit easier to remember and it makes more sense.
But the when is the cue? So when I get home from school,
when it turns 5:00, when my alarm goes off in the morning,
then I'm going to run one mile. Then I am going to get up, put
on my work at clothes, go downstairs and walk 2 miles.
So one way we can set a goal that's more effective than just
saying I'd like to do this is an implementation intention.
So when this thing happens, then I will do this.
Some other characteristics of effective goals is that they're
specific, they're challenging, and they're declared publicly in
person, which if you are on TikTok or Instagram Reels, you
guys seen those like super Moody, low brightness
entrepreneur videos. They have the big microphones.
They're like never tell anyone your goals build in private,
work in private, celebrate publicly.
Never tell anyone what your plans are wrong.
Psychologically, scientifically speaking, if you want to reach
your goal, you will declare your goal publicly and you will do so
in person. You will tell those around you
what you're working towards, what you're trying to do, and
you are exponentially more likely to achieve that goal than
if you are the only one that is aware of that goal and holding
yourself accountable. Another statistic that I'll give
you related to this is that 7% of people achieve their goals
without setting an intention, only 7%.
So if we're not setting specific intentions, if we're not being
clear about what we want to achieve, we're not going to
achieve that thing. But it's not just magically
going to happen or change in our life.
As humans, we're wired to do as little as possible.
Like we're wired to conserve energy and stay in our routines
and stay in our habits and stay in our comfort zone and not
change or move out of that. Like evolutionary speaking,
that's what we're meant to do. So creating new habits, setting
new goals, pushing ourselves outside of our comfort zone is a
really foreign and not intuitive experience.
So it's not just magically going to happen.
We have to put effort and guardrails in place to allow us
to get to that end point. And then another piece of an
effective goal is that you have to have a sub goal related to
your performance. When you don't have a sub goal
that's performance related, you don't have a goal at all.
So if we go back to the 5K example, if your goal is to run
a 5K in under 30 minutes, I feel like I've had friends that run 5
Ki feel like they said 30 minutes was like sometime that
people run a 5K in. I don't know.
I don't run 5 KS. You will say have sub goals
related to your performance. I will run a mile in under 10
minutes. I will run 2 miles in under 18
minutes. I will run 3 miles in under 25
minutes. And you will attach dates to
those and specific measurable outcomes related to your
performance. And you can be flexible with
that. Maybe you have to push it back.
Maybe you have to give yourself more grace.
But those sub goals related to your performance are really
important so that you eventually get to that outcome.
Because again, it's just not magically going to happen.
We're wired against those goals magically happening.
So we have to be really intentional and objective with
the way that we measure if we're on the right track.
So I'm going to give you guys another framework for goals
before we talk about plans. And so there's this thing called
the Rubicon model. And if you've ever heard of the
phrase like crossing the Rubicon, it's like crossing a
river. And the point is that once
you've crossed, you can't go back.
Like you've committed to something, you've made the
decision, and now you're in the process of implementing that.
There's no reverse. You can't draw out of it like
you've made the decision, you've made the commitment.
So basically in the Rubicon model, this model of actions and
goals happening, the first step is deliberating thinking about
what the goal is. That's what we're doing right
now. Then you're going to set a goal
and we're going to talk about all the best ways to set a goal.
We talked about specific challenging, declared publicly
sub goals related to performance.
We'll talk about more things that you can do your when.
Then plans will give you more frameworks, but you set your
goal and that is crossing the Rubicon.
Once you've set that goal, you can't go back.
The goal's been set and now you either achieve it or you don't.
After that you plan, which we're going to also do today.
So plan to set yourself up for success, you act, you actually
do the behavior and then you evaluate.
Did it work? Did not work, you get feedback,
etcetera. And so that's one way that we
can view goals. So again, deliberate, set a
goal, plan, act and evaluate. So now we're going to kind of
circle in on plans. What are plans?
Why do we set them? What purpose do they serve?
How can we be more effective with the plans that we set?
And then we're going to continue along this cycle of like goal
setting and what we're going to do.
So plans are the articulation of an intended future action.
And we could say when thens are plans, the implementation
intentions are a version of plans.
But plans are really powerful. There are studies that have been
done about the specificity of a flu shot appointment and how
likely it is that people actually get their vaccinations.
So they mailed out these little cards and some of them just said
just get your flu shot. Some of them said get your flu
shot at this date. Some of them said get your flu
shot at this date, at this time, at this specific location.
And it was drastically different how many people showed up and
actually got vaccinated when they were given a specific plan
with the location and the time and what was going to happen.
Rather than just saying do this, the implementation intention of
like get your flu shot or the goal intention, I'm going to get
vaccinated. And the, the completion rate
here is really wild. So 32% versus 71% completion
rate when saying where and when you're going to do something
versus again, just having that general idea of like, I'd like
to do this thing in general at some point in the future.
And so we're going to get into habits, right?
Habits are like, we go on autopilot.
We don't think through things. We just react.
We have the cue and then the behavior.
So you don't have that thought of like, should I do this?
Should I not do this? Pros and cons?
What are the benefits? Instead, you just say, I woke
up, my alarm went off. So then I did the thing.
Implementation intentions. And these really specific plans
can kind of act as that. You're not thinking because
you've already made the plan. It's a certain date, it's a
certain time, so you do the thing.
And again, 32 versus 71% difference in completion rates
when you have that plan, that implementation intention of what
time is it happening and where is it happening.
But plans don't always work. There's this really interesting
thing called the planning fallacy.
So we plan for the best case scenario, but we also expect the
outcome to reflect that. And that's not the case.
Our plans don't always go according to our intentions.
The best case scenario isn't always going to happen.
So it's important to flag that, but they increase the likelihood
of us being really flawed and inefficient at completing these
goals as humans. It increases the likelihood of
us actually following through. So how can we set effective
goals and make plans that increase the likelihood of us
doing something? I'm going to give you guys a
framework, and I'm hoping to have the scientist who came up
with this on the podcast at some point.
We're still figuring out scheduling, but it will be a
really great episode when it comes out.
But this is called the WOOP framework, and it's been shown
to increase GPA, improve school conduct, improve attendance.
It's a really powerful framework and improving behavioral
outcomes and again, decreasing our human nature of not doing
different behaviors automatically.
So WOOP stands for wish, outcome, obstacle and plan.
So wish, what's the goal that you want to achieve?
We're going to set that intention, the outcome.
How will you feel when you achieve this outcome?
We're going to talk about positive thinking, which
actually decreases the likelihood of you achieving your
goal, which is an interesting paradox.
But how do you want to feel like what is the positive that's on
the other side of doing this hard thing?
Obstacles. What are the main obstacles?
Are you going to procrastinate? Are you going to get distracted?
Are you going to scroll on Tiktok?
Are you going to not want to do it and just decide not to?
Like, what are the potential obstacles that would prevent you
from completing this goal? And then plan how are you going
to tackle these obstacles? Are you going to shut off your
phone? Are you going to let your
friends know in advance? Like I can't do that this day, I
have this thing that I'm trying to do.
Are you going to prepare for the fact that you're going to
procrastinate and write down the pros and cons?
So in the moment, you know, like I thought this out, this is
really important to me and I'm going to do the opposite of what
I want to do, which is procrastinate.
So that's the WOOT method, effective, evidence based,
simple, and you can use it for almost any goal.
I want to give you guys a couple little like facts, things to be
aware of when it comes to human psychology and goals that I
think can be helpful when you're creating these loop goals.
And we're just generally structuring our plans and what
we hope to happen. So the first is the importance
of examples and models. We learn faster and more
effectively and better when we have an example of something or
a model of something. So they did this study where
they had people use ChatGPT to write a cover letter and they
objectively rated the quality of the cover letter when people
worked completely independently and on their own versus when
they worked with ChatGPT to write a cover letter.
And they found that people learn faster and they produce better
cover letters when they work with ChatGPT, which was the
opposite of the hypothesis. They didn't think that people
would get better. They're not actually learning
because they're working with something else and they're
getting examples. The answers are quote UN quote
being handed to them, but that wasn't the case.
They learned more effectively by having an example and being
shown what to do. This is also something you hear
a lot in medicine. See one, do one, teach, 1.
You observe you have that model, you take it in, you then do 1,
you practice and then you teach to really solidify and reinforce
that learning. So we learned really well by
example. Anytime you have a goal that the
skill you haven't already established.
What examples can you look at? If you want to start posting on
TikTok or online more, follow creators who are documenting
their journey of posting regularly.
If you want to learn how to edit videos, watch video editing
tutorials. If you want to get a certain
grade in a certain class, compare past work that you've
submitted versus a friend who's gotten A's own assignments.
What are the differences? Go to the teacher and ask them
for examples of past assignments that have gotten good grades.
Another piece of thing to keep in mind is that as humans, we
have really social brains when they've done research on what
sets us apart as humans, as being really an exceptional
species compared to like chimps or apes or maybe those lions or
dolphins. These other animals that are
smart and have similar brains to us but are in nowhere near as
innovative and evolved as we are.
What sets us apart is not the structure of our brain.
The number of neurons, the complexity is our social brain.
It's our ability to relate with others and communicate with them
and collaborate and work together like that is what you
is unique about us and it's allowed us to thrive as a
species. So we use that to our example.
We learn socially, we learn with others and so collaborate with
others, get feedback from others.
So those are two things that we're really going to expedite
the rate that you're learning and executing on these goals,
which is one, working with others, and two, learning from
models. And then the last thing that I'm
going to mention here is this thing called the three box model
or process theory. And this is a theory of
emotions, and it comes from Doctor Angela Duckworth and then
a professor at Stanford. And it's technically four
different steps, but she condenses it down to just three
for the purpose of understanding this easily and implementing it.
So we have our situation that we put ourselves in our box 1, the
context box 2 is our thoughts. How do we interpret the
situation? Technically, it's our attention
and our appraisal, but like, what do we think about and react
to with regard to this situation?
And then three, we have our response.
How do we behave? Do we achieve the goal?
Like what happens after we've been in a situation?
We thought about it, and then how do we respond?
And we do a lot of episodes on this podcast about how we think
about things because that's really powerful.
It can change how we feel. We do a lot about how we can
change our behaviors, which then in turn changes our feelings and
our thoughts. But for the purpose of this
episode, I really want to emphasize that Box 1, and this
is one of my biggest takeaways from this class, which we're
going to again, do a recap on Grit Lab and you guys are going
to hear all about this. But the box one that you put
yourself in is going to impact the thoughts you have and the
actions you take. So are you putting yourself in a
situation where you'll be held accountable, where you will have
deadlines that help you towards a larger goal?
Do you have others achieving similar goals to you so you guys
can work together and collaborate?
Do you have models of what you should be doing?
An example so that you can thrive and do what you're
supposed to be doing? So what box 1 are you putting
yourself in and are you giving yourself the best chance of
success? The example I'll give you guys
of this is me doing my work, which is that when I go to my
room at Penn and after class I like sit and relax and I read a
book or I watch TV or just hang out, eat a snack.
I will not do work. I've tried, it just doesn't
happen. Maybe I'll do a little bit of
work like 3 hours later, but it's not going to happen.
If I refuse and like white knuckle my way to not going to
my room and I sit at a coffee shop or I sit in an empty
building or I sit in a classroom, I will get my work
done. I might be a little bit more
tired. I might be like, oh I just want
to be done for the day, but I will get my work done before I
go back to my dorm. When I'm go back to my dorm room
after class, I'm like, oh I get to relax.
I'm so excited. I'm done for the day.
I'm not setting myself up for success.
My Box 1 is not conductive to me getting my work done.
When I go to Starbucks or I meet up with friends or I sit in a
classroom and intend to do my work, I'm setting myself up for
success because I know that I'm more likely to complete my work
and then get to go home to my lovely room and get ready for
bed and watch TV. So think about your Box 1.
I think that's the most powerful thing you can manipulate when it
comes to goal setting because you don't have to like work
against yourself with your emotions and your thoughts.
You're setting yourself up for success to be productive or
whatever. It is the goal that you're
achieving. So to recap so far, motivation
is why we do something. Volition is how we do it.
Our goals direct, our energy, our plans specify what we're
going to do and ideally when and where we're going to do it.
The more specific the better. And then we have our woo, which
is our wish, our outcome, our obstacle and our plan, a really
effective evidence based framework to set our goals and
have a higher likelihood of achieving them.
So with that little summary talked about what goals are,
what plans are, how do we set our goals, how can we set
ourselves up for success there? A lot of your execution of your
goals is going to come down to our habits because as humans,
we're really bad at using willpower and self-control.
We're just not good at it. It requires a lot of emotional
and mental energy. As humans, we're wired to
conserve energy, doing as little as possible.
And so when we set goals that require us to do the opposite of
that or like brains and body are fighting against us so we can
use willpower psychologically, But scientifically speaking,
it's the least effective way to achieve our goals because it
requires a lot of emotional energy, a lot of mental energy,
and the likelihood of you achieving your goal based on
willpower and self-control is low.
What's more effective is habits because we think about the box
model, right? So we had our context that we
put ourselves in, which is our box 1.
Box 2 is our attention and appraisals or our thoughts.
And then box 3 is our response or our actions.
A habit removes box 2. Like obviously we're always
thinking, but for example, purposes to explain this, we
don't think, we just do. So we're in a context and the
response is our habit. And there's a lot of different
ways that we form habits and a lot of different contexts that
these show up. We could think of like classical
conditioning. If you've ever watched The
Office where there's that episode where Jim trains Dwight,
every time he hears the computer ping, he asks for breath mint.
This also happened with dogs. Whenever they pressed a lever,
food came out. So they pressed a lever.
They would expect food. They would salvate at the sound
of the bell when they pressed a little lever.
So they're not thinking. They're not thinking I'm hungry.
I could go for a snack right now.
They've conditioned that response where they hear the cue
that box 1 happens and the result is the habit, which is
that they salvate or they want food.
These also happen in more complex situations where there
is some thought involved, but it's a lot less thought involved
because you've already solidified that mental pathway.
Like, you know, your body knows this thing happens.
This is how I respond. So an example might be when you
pick up your toothbrush, you put your toothpaste on it.
Or after you brush your teeth, you floss.
We have bad habits. When I feel bored, I will open
my phone and go on TikTok. Maybe when your alarm goes off
in the morning, you sit up, you turn off your alarm.
Or maybe for me, my alarm goes off, I snooze.
These are habits that, again, are a little bit more complex.
Sometimes they're like multiple series of steps, but the context
happens and you respond behaviorally.
And this is more effective long term than relying on your
thoughts to overpower your internal urges to not do the
thing every single time you want to execute a behavior.
Another really interesting thing about habits is these are
states, not traits. We're putting ourselves in a
context. It's not a certain ability or
mentality that you have to already be in possession of to
be able to thrive in this area. You don't have to have a certain
thing to be able to thrive. You're just putting yourself in
this state and depending on how well you do that, that will
impact the outcome you get. I'm going to give you guys some
learnings from a study we read called Healthy through Habit
interventions for initiating and maintaining health behavior
changes. So improving health, promoting
behavior is things like working out, eating healthy, etcetera.
And how different interventions increase the likelihood of
people engaging in those behaviors and maintaining them
long term. So the findings were the
interventions are not super successful long term for short
term behavior change, they work like the first three weeks of
January, but months and years down the line, they're not that
effective. But Breaking Bad habits and
forming healthy habits simultaneously, that's what
leads to long term outcomes. So when we're setting our
habits, we're not just like I'm going to implement this new
intervention, I'm going to start this new thing that doesn't
work, but breaking a bad habit while replacing it with a
healthier habit is effective to get that long term outcome.
Another thing worth noting, you're listening to a podcast,
you're learning about behavior change and habits and goal
setting. Knowing about something just not
lead to behavior change. They've done a ton of research
on educating people that like vegetables are good to have,
they contribute to your health. This is something that is a
health promoting behavior. It's good for you.
You'll get these outcomes doesn't lead to people eating
more vegetables. So just because you know
something, just because the knowledge is introduced and
you're now aware of it doesn't lead to behavior change.
So take this episode with a grain of salt.
Actually implement it or it's not going to magically work.
And like I said, willpower is really ineffective.
And they found that in the study as well, which is that healthy
behaviors are a result of habits, not willpower.
People that engage in healthy behaviors like taking the stairs
rather than the elevator, walking a certain amount every
day, working out, eating healthy, that's habits.
That's not willpower every day. They're not saying like, I'd
like to do this thing and now I'm going to force myself to do
it. They do it because it's a habit
and they've done it 6000 times before, so they're going to
continue to do it again. And the key here is to make the
choice easy by setting up that habit.
So there are three steps to habit formation, behavioral
repetition, associated context cues and rewards.
So you're repeating the behavior.
You have your cues that when, then statement, when this
thing's happened, then I will do the behavior and then rewards.
You have to reward yourself. You have to make it enjoyable.
A lot of the times the goals we're setting for ourselves
aren't necessarily innately enjoyable or we don't reap the
rewards for like weeks, months, years.
So for example, if your goal is to study 30 minutes a day before
every exam, rather than just like cramming right before the
exam, maybe you buy yourself a special treat that you eat when
you're studying, but you don't eat it any of the time.
Or you say I'm going to watch an episode of my favorite TV show
after I finish studying, but I won't let myself do that unless
I do my 30 minutes of studying or I'm going to study with
friends. If that works for you, it might
not. So that that's rewarding in
itself. A little fact about rewards.
The mint and toothpaste, there's no function.
It's just rewarding. It's a positive experience.
So people are more likely to brush their teeth when they have
like a positive, good tasting mint toothpaste than if it was
just like bland, disgusting paste.
Same thing with kids. They have these really intense,
interesting flavors like bubble gum and blue Raspberry, like all
of these really intense flavors because it's more positive and
rewarding and it gets kids to learn to brush their teeth than
if they were using for them something aversive, which is
mint. And we talked about this.
You might be able to infer this, but habits are a lot more
effective and bring results a lot more than intentions.
Do you guys also might have heard that like it takes 18
times to form a habit or some people say it's 200 days,
sometimes it's five to six weeks.
It really depends on the person. It's about repetition.
So there's not a certain number of times you need to do a habit.
There's not a certain number of days that you need to have that
mentality. It's going to be dependent on
the person. So we talked about context cues
as being the thing that's going to initiate your habit.
Again, we're not thinking about things, we just have the context
box 1 and then our result box 3. So things that you can do is
cues at the time of day, a location, a prior behavior or
person. So I'll give you an example for
all of these for like brushing your teeth, maybe it's the time
of day, morning when I wake up, I brush my teeth.
Before I go to bed, I brush my teeth.
Maybe it's the location when I'm standing in front of the
bathroom sink, I brush my teeth. Maybe it's the prior behavior.
After I floss, I brush my teeth. After I wash my face, I brush my
teeth. Maybe it's people I don't know.
I brush my teeth by myself. I'm lonely person, maybe when my
like partner or spouse or whatever is brushing their
teeth, I brush my teeth next to them.
So these are different ways that those cues initiate the
behavior. And you can do this for any
behavior that you're implementing.
Do as many of them as possible. So like what time, what is the
location? Is someone else going to be
there? And what is the behavior that's
happening before your implementation intention?
Like I want to do this thing as a stepping stone towards the
habit, but that's not enough, right?
So like, I want to do this thing, the when, then that is
going to allow you to get towards that goal, but it's not
going to work entirely by itself.
Another way that you can increase the likelihood of
implementing a new habit is piggybacking or habit stacking.
You guys have probably seen this all over social media.
It's pretty popular. One of those like more widely
known ways to build habits. But the idea is that you stack
an existing habit with a new one you want to build.
So maybe you want to meditate. So you take a habit that's
really solidified in your life, brushing your teeth.
You say during the two minutes that I'm brushing my teeth, I'm
going to meditate. And so over time, you've already
had that cue established. So you're always going to brush
your teeth. And because that's something
that happens every day and that time is carved out and you know
it's going to take place, you have it stacked On top of that,
while I'm brushing my teeth, I'm meditating.
We talked about that rewards are an important piece of habit
formation. There's a couple of different
ways you can implement rewards. One is the intrinsic payoff.
You feel good, you're proud of yourself, you did the thing.
Maybe it's a sense of pride, maybe it's a sense of mastery.
Maybe if you're doing something like working out, there's
dopamine involved. So the intrinsic payoff is one
way to have that positive reinforcement.
A second is the extrinsic reward.
So like watching a show, seeing a person, something externally
that's rewarding. Another one is avoiding negative
consequences, which is called a contingency contract.
So like if you've ever heard of timeshares, when people sign
timeshares, they have all these contingencies for what's going
to happen if this person tries to like sell the timeshare.
They owe a ton of money, they have to go to court.
I don't really know. I've never signed a timeshare
thing, but there's a lot of things in place that make it
really aversive and really negative to pull out of a
timeshare contract. That's what you want to do if
you don't fulfill your habit. And avoiding native consequences
is a lot easier when someone else is putting them on you
rather than you're the one in charge of having that negative
consequence take place. But a really good example of
this is putting on your seat belt.
So when you get in the car and you start driving without a seat
belt, the beep, beep, beep happens, right?
The way that you get that set up is you put your seat belt on and
that's a habit in itself, but you are avoiding the negative
consequence of the aversive beeping noise by putting on your
seat belt. So that's how that habit is
formed. The most effective reward that
you can use when building your habit is an uncertain reward.
So this means it happens at a random interval.
Again, this is something that is harder to do on yourself.
The best example of this is like the TikTok algorithm or
gambling. Every couple of videos you get
something really funny. Some of them are dead, some of
them are horrible, but every couple of videos you get
something that's really enjoyable and you laugh and you
enjoy it, but it's uncertain. And so it's a really effective
reinforcement for scrolling on the algorithm.
Similarly, you don't win every time you gamble.
You don't win every five times or 10 times.
It's not a predictable interval, but every so often, when you're
least expecting it, you get that positive reward, which is a
really positive experience. Again, these are harder to do on
yourself, so if you have any ideas of how to do a random
reward interval schedule, let me know and I can share it on the
podcast. But if you can somehow
manufacture that for yourself, that will be the most effective
way to reward yourself for doing a habit.
So the three things that you're going to do when you're doing
your habit, just to reiterate response repetition.
So when you have the queue, you do the response, you engage in
the habit, You need to have a certain number of repetitions.
It's different for each person, but you have to have enough
repeats of your habit for it to actually solidify.
The second is the stable cues. You have to have the same cues
every single time. Again, we talked about location,
time of day, prior behaviors, people's.
Those have to be consistent and stable so you know what to
expect and you train yourself. And then uncertain rewards.
Again, you could use other rewards because those are easier
to implement, but the most effective way to have a habit
and form it quickly is uncertain rewards.
So we talked about a couple minutes ago how it's not as
effective to just introduce an intervention.
It's best to break a bad habit and replace it with a good one.
So for example, when I try to scroll less on TikTok, I say I
will not scroll on TikTok and said I will watch an episode of
television. Is this great?
Is this like perfect an intervention of no being on
screens? No, but it's better.
It's less engaging, it's less stimulating, it's a step in the
right direction. So ways that you can break
habits is cue disruption. So removing, for example, the
time of day, the people, the location, the behavior.
I talked to you guys about how not going to my room after class
makes me a lot better about getting all my work done before
bed. Another one is environmental re
engineering. I told you guys the beginning of
this, having a new schedule, having a new routine is the best
way to start new habits. This is because you're breaking
old ones. So a new location, a new
routine, a new schedule, best time to break an old habit.
And 3rd is vigilant monitoring and inhibition.
Vigilant monitoring is literally just telling yourself don't do
it. It sounds dumb.
Again, we're not relying on both power, but short term breaking
habits. Research shows that it's really
effective and people do this a lot when they successfully break
habits as they tell themselves over and over again, don't do
it, don't do it, don't do it. And then the last thing I will
give you for this little like habit overview from this article
is to add or reduce behavioral friction.
So you guys have probably heard of this and you probably do this
in your own lives without being aware of it.
But an example of this is the screen time app, right?
So you are increasing behavioral friction that when you go to
open TikTok, you have to type in a password or you have to click
one more minute, 15 more minutes.
You're increasing the number of steps in the amount of energy it
takes to engage in the behavior. You can also reduce behavioral
friction. For example, if you're trying to
work out in the morning, sleep in your workout clothes, you're
reducing behavioral friction. You don't have to wake up in the
morning and go through the energy of picking out your
outfit and getting dressed and getting ready.
Nope, you wake up, the outfit's on, you can immediately work
out. So increasing or reducing
behavioral friction, again, as humans were wired to conserve
energy, making yourself do more to do the thing you're less
likely to do it, and doing less makes you more likely to do it.
Another little fun fact she'll give you about habits moving
into more general things. They're not a personality type
that's associated with your ability to build habits or
maintain habits. It's not people that have a
certain trait or think about things a certain way, but people
vary with how much dopamine gets released when they engage in
certain behaviors. So people that have like an
insane amount of dopamine released when they gamble,
that's going to be a stronger solidified habit than people
that have no mental response. So what gets in the way of us
achieving our goals and following through with our
habit? A lot of the time it's our
willpower and our ability to do the actual thing right.
So we have this conflict between the easier choice, probably the
more enjoyable one, and the habit or the goal that we've set
for ourselves. You're like working uphill.
I want you to remember when you're setting goals and habits,
like give yourself some grace here because you're literally
trying to tell yourself, do the worst thing, do the last fun
thing, do the harder thing like it's hard.
It's not easy. And so give yourself a lot of
grace, a lot of praise, a lot of reward because it's not easy to
build new habit and your entire body and mind is wired against
it. But the piece of advice here is
to instead going back, we said this at the beginning, change
your box 1, not your box 3. So your box 3 is your willpower,
right? Trying to get yourself not to do
the behavior Box 1 is the situation you're putting
yourself in that would result in the behavior at all.
So again, if I don't go back to my room before a certain time,
I'm not even in the position where I have to exercise
willpower and say say, don't sit in bed and scroll on TikTok to
your work. Instead, I just have to do my
work because I'm sitting in a random classroom with my laptop.
So again, change your box 1, not your box 3.
Don't rely on willpower. Put yourself in a situation that
sets yourself up for success. But I'm going to give you guys a
couple of tips for how you can increase your willpower if you
need it. Again, I wouldn't recommend
relying on this. It's not super effective long
term, it's not efficient. But in those moments where
you're like, I can't do this, like I really don't want to,
here's what you're going to do. The first thing is to deploy
your attention. So pay attention to other
things. A lot of you guys have probably
heard of the marshmallow experiment.
They did this at Stanford a number of years ago where they
had like 3 year old kids sit in a room.
They gave them a marshmallow and they said if you wait 3 minutes
and don't eat this marshmallow, you'll get 2 marshmallows.
And the kids that waited and used willpower, they have better
outcomes long term. And there's like a lot of drama
with this study because they were kids of Stanford professors
and that already they're more likely to have positive
outcomes. Whatever we can discuss at a
later time. But basically, they observed
these kids and they found that the older kids looked away from
the marshmallow to increase their willpower.
If they weren't looking at it, they didn't have to mentally say
don't eat it, don't do this. I'm not supposed to do this.
The kids knew. They said if I don't like the
marshmallow, I'm not going to remember as vividly that it's
there, so we don't have to exercise as much willpower.
So distract yourself. Listen to music, think about
something else, watch a show, do something that takes your
attention away from the thing that you want to do.
Another thing that you're going to do is psychologically
distance yourself from the situation.
So you're literally going to imagine yourself in the
situation from third person. This increases your emotion
regulation. This comes from Ethan Cross,
who's an emotion researcher. But what you're going to do is
instead of being first person, being like, should I go to the
gym? Should I not go to the gym?
Pretend you're in a movie. Imagine looking at yourself in
your room or at your desk wherever you're sitting when
you're making this decision and imagine yourself going through
the motions and doing the pros and cons.
You're going to regulate your emotions more effectively,
you're sychologically distanced, and you're more likely to engage
in the positive behavior. The next thing that you can do
is to change the situation or environment.
So there's a number of ways you can do this.
One of this is game theories, imagining that you're playing a
game within yourself, like you're in a war against yourself
and the goal is to be a temptation.
So you're using tactics to like outsmart yourself and increase
your willpower. Again, gamifying things is
really effective in getting us to get our results.
So imagine like you're at war with yourself and what tactics
can you use to not get yourself to engage in the thing?
Another study that showed the impact of changing the
environment was that the further away kids put their phones when
they're studying, the higher their GPA was.
So whether it was on the desk next to them, whether it was in
their backpack on the floor, was it in the other room?
Was it not even on them when they were at the library?
Did they leave it at home? The further their phone was from
them when they were studying, the higher their GPA was.
But there's also this really challenging paradox where people
know that they should change the situation, but they just don't.
So you know that like situation modification is going to improve
your goal accomplishment. But again, knowledge doesn't
always lead to that change of behavior.
So here's a piece of knowledge. Even though this isn't going to
cause the behavior change, it can help you when you're doing
that like mental willpower and deciding to do these when then
statements and create the habits.
Changing the situation changes temptation.
When you change the situation, you feel less tempted.
Another little fun fact is that the number of self-control
strategies that kids used correlated with their SAT score.
So did they move their phone away?
Did they study in a new environment?
Did they use positive rewards after?
Did they increase behavioral friction to getting to their
phone? The number of these strategies
they employed, the higher their score.
So again, what's your box 1? Are you setting yourself up for
success and doing everything possible to encourage that
outcome you're hoping for? So here's your little habit
summary, and then we're going to talk about my goals for this
year and habits I'm trying to create.
So habits circumvent the thought box box too.
So you go straight from your situation to your action.
Consistent rewards are more effective.
Your routine should be as habitual as possible.
So taking out the thought process as much as you can,
trying to implement systems rather than just doing it and
exerting that mental willpower because it's really not
effective. And statistically speaking, if
your goal or habit requires doing something that requires a
lot of attention and thought and focus, doing it in the morning,
statistically you will have less distractions than if you do it
later in the day. So if you're trying to study or
learn a new skill, if you can, if you have the schedule
flexibility, do that in the morning at the beginning of your
day rather than at the end. So your little summary is that
you always have an easier, more enjoyable alternative to doing
your harder habits. We can use strategies to target
the context that we put ourselves in and the thoughts
that we'll have, the lack of thought so that we can influence
the behavior or the outcome. And again, habits are autopilot
in response to our cues. So we intentionally make and
break them. And I gave you guys a bunch of
tips and tricks and skills that you can use to implement new
habits when breaking old ones. So there is your habit one O 1.
I hope that was helpful. And I hope you guys have a bit
more information on how we can set goals, how we can set plans,
how we can actually follow through with those using habits.
And then we're going to talk a little bit about my habits and
goals for 2025 and I will run here what you guys are working
towards. So send me a message, comment on
Instagram, leave a comment on here and keep me posted.
I'm really curious. So my ongoing goal and routine
and habit is always my sleep. I'm not a good sleeper.
It's been a problem since like middle school.
It's somewhat physical. I have an OR ring and I've never
gotten above like an 85. Above an 85 you get a crown.
I've never gotten a sleep crown and I've had my OR ring for
three years. My average every year is in the
60s. I'm not a good sleeper.
I'm always tired. That is where I can use
improvement. And we talked about how our
goals need to be something that we can control.
So I'm not going to set the goal of I'm going to sleep better.
I'm doing things that are more sleep hygiene based.
So one of my biggest goals this year is to get up at the same
time every day with a little bit of variation, but generally
within one hour. And I'm going to like give
myself grace. It's not going to be something
crazy like 6:00 AM or 5:00 AM. The earliest classes I have this
semester are 1015. So my goal is that throughout
the whole semester, I'm going to get to the point where every
single day, six out of seven days of the week, I am up by
9:00 AM. And that is regardless of what
time I go to bed the night before.
Because when you sleep later and you keep snoozing that it's
harder to fall asleep that night.
And then just becomes a whole recurring cycle that it makes it
really challenging to break. So my goal for myself this
semester and this year is to wake up consistently 6 out of
seven days of the week, give myself a little grace by 9:00
AM. One of my biggest walls that I
hit as far as habits and routines and all these things
that improve my mental health is my sleep and daily productivity.
I find that when it's hard to fall asleep, I stay up late.
I sleep and later I end up behind on things.
I'm napping during the day, I think can't be productive and
get what I need to get done. And then I'm stressed and I'm
staying up later because I'm stressed.
It's a recurring cycle and it leads to so much unnecessary
anxiety and overwhelm that's really preventable with a
consistent sleep and daily routine.
Magic Mind is a really cool framework for looking at this
and these basic foundational principles that we need to
maintain to be able to thrive. They are sleep, diet, exercise,
stress management, and exogenous compounds, and all of these
contribute to mental wealth. So investing in our habits that
we can increase our emotional baseline, improve our resilience
so that we're less susceptible to mental health challenges when
we do struggle with one of those pillars.
For me the biggest too is definitely SLEE and stress
management, and one of my favorite hacks for this is Magic
Mine. They just came out with slee
shots. I've already been using their
focus shots for years at this point.
It is a great natural alternative to increasing
caffeine or other supplements to improve your sleep and focus.
You can use both shots for 24 hours of mental performance.
Sleep shots help with better sleep and focus shots help with
daytime clarity. Their sleep shots have made such
a difference in my nighttime routine and increasing that
queue of it's time to go to bed, it's time to relax and wind down
and having an easier time falling asleep at night.
I love the Magic Mind mental performance shot during the day.
It really helps with focus and clarity and decreasing stress.
I'm not a huge caffeine person because I'm really mindful of
how it impacts my anxiety. I will do one, maybe 2 cups of
coffee at the very most. So this is a great alternative
because it has matcha and natural herbs that help decrease
stress, increase your sense of calmness, and improve your mood.
I pair it with my iced vanilla latte in the morning and it's
the perfect duo, especially on a heavy class load day or if I'm
feeling extra stressed or overwhelmed.
You guys know I'm big on research.
They've developed this over the past 10 years with hundreds of
iterations for the perfect formula.
There's over 200 studies behind every single ingredient.
It definitely been trying and you can target 2 really
important parts of your mental health routine in your sleep and
then your daily productivity and focus.
They're offering an amazing deal, which is 45% off the Magic
Mind bundle. You can use the link in the show
notes, just magicmind.com/she persisted Jan.
Again, that's magicmind.com/she Persisted Jan Make sure to check
out Magic Mind Performance Shots and Sleep and their new bundle
in the show notes. Another goal is one that I've
been doing for a couple of years now, but I again have the OR
ring and so I track a lot of my behaviors like my sleep and my
activity. And I found that when I get
above like 7.5000 steps, I am out and about and doing things
and generally being productive. It doesn't necessarily mean that
I have classes that day or I'm getting an insane amount of work
done or I'm working out, but it means I've been around campus.
Maybe I wouldn't got coffee, maybe I saw a friend class days.
It meant I was like walking to and from my classes.
It's a good predictor that I physically have done something
with the day. So 6 out of seven days of the
week, I'm aiming to get 7.5000 steps.
And because I live on campus and things are like a little bit
spread out, not too bad. But like I can easily get 7 1/2
thousand steps if I'm going to class or just going somewhere
throughout the day. It's an achievable goal, but it
also is a predictor that routine wise I'm in a good space
mentally. So that's another goal for
myself this year. I am constantly.
It's not even an uphill paddle. There's no reason for why I
don't post on TikTok more, do more short form videos or why
I'm not on stories more often. I just don't do it.
And I really, really want to get better at it.
Every single year I'm like, I'm going to post on TikTok more,
I'm going to do a series, I'm going to edit videos.
And a lot of this comes from the fact that I do a lot of social
media management video editing for other people.
I have social media clients that I help them on their podcasts
and their platforms as part of my social media agency that I
run. So by the time it gets to
cheaper assisted and this other content that I'm just making for
fun, it tends to be I'm more burnt out, like there's not
enough energy to expend. But I have to think about the
box one that I'm putting myself in there.
That's not a great box one. I'm setting myself up for
failure. So my goal is to post at least
three TikTok real short form videos a week and do stories at
least three days a week. And that can just be like one or
two slides. It can just be showing up and
sharing with you guys the new episode.
But the box 1 there that I'm going to give myself so I can be
more effective is to plan out the prompts and do those the
week before. It's going to be related to the
insights and analytics of what's performed well in the account in
the past. And it's going to be related to
what I'm already talking about in the episode.
So I'm decreasing the friction. Like I know what I'm going to
talk about decreasing the mental load.
And then time wise, I'm going to do it when I'm getting ready in
the morning because it's engaging for you guys to watch.
It's a habit that's already happening, which is that I'm
getting ready for the day, doing my hair and makeup, and I can
just talk to the camera while I'm doing that.
And so I'm reducing friction, I'm decreasing the amount of
energy I'm expending by planning the prompts and I'm making it
achievable, which is like three days a week, which I can do.
So if I'm not posting, get mad at me because this is an
achievable goal that I'm making very easy for myself so I can do
it. Another goal that I've been
working on is running. I am not a very athletic person.
I love walking. It's like one of my favorite
things. I'll walk around campus.
I listen to my Taylor Swift, love it.
I want to be able to like run a mile and not be dying.
I'm OK at it. I have to be like, oh, this is
horrible. I can do it.
I like watch the mileage go down on the treadmill.
So before break, I was pretty consistent doing a run a couple
days a week on the treadmill. I would walk and then I'd do my
mile of running. I'd be really out of breath.
And so I want to keep doing that.
So I'm going to say once a week I'm going to run a mile on the
treadmill. I feel like that's realistic and
achievable. And I have to do a couple of
weeks of my schedule to determine what day will make the
most sense to set myself up for success.
So I'm going to set a time. The location is going to be the
gym in my building. I will set the time and the day
so that I can be more effective with that goal.
But that is another goal that I'm setting for myself.
And then the last goal that I'll share with you guys is like
exposure therapy related. We've done episodes in the past
on exposure therapy. I think it's something that
everyone could benefit from implementing in their life,
especially if you're a young adult, especially in social
situations. Whenever I'm like uncomfortable
or feeling some avoidance in any social respect, I try and do a
little bit of exposure therapy. Other it's talking to people in
line when you're grabbing a coffee, making friends in class,
getting someone's number to ask them a question about an
assignment, those types of things.
I try to do one of those like every week ish where I'm pushing
myself outside of my comfort zone.
I'm building those social relationships, I'm building that
skill set and I find that's really helpful for a the mental
health piece of feeling connected and engaged in your
community, but also the exposure therapy piece of decreasing
avoidance and anxiety around social relationships.
So those are some of my goals. I really want to know what your
guys's are. Leave a comment, DM me all the
things if you guys enjoyed this episode, share on social media,
leave a review. It really helps out the podcast.
And also would love to hear what you guys want to hear about on
the podcast this year. So if you have any guest
requests or styles of episodes or things you want me to talk
about, definitely keep me posted.
I'm very much open to suggestions and I have a lot of
things in mind, but I really want to know what you guys want
to hear. So keep me posted, give me all
your ideas, and with that, I'm going to hop off and I hope you
guys have a great start to your spring semester in 2025.
And you got that?