53. The power of microhabits

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Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties, the podcast where we talk through some of the big life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to the podcast for another episode, another bonus episode. I should say welcome. If you are listening to this right now, you are one of my top listeners, you're one of my paid subscribers. I just want to say a huge thank you. I've got you all in one place, all right here, so I just want to say thank you so much for you know, wanting to listen to the sound of my voice multiple times a week. It is had a weird feeling, but I'm so so grateful that you care about this podcast. You care about this show, and you care about what we're trying to do, which is apply psychology something that can often seem really inaccessible and distant to every area of our life, every area of our life in our twenties, and hopefully learn something new every week about what we're experiencing, what we go through, and how that interacts with our mental well being and the psychological processes that underpin it. So I just want to say a huge thank you to all of you who are listening to this episode right now. You guys chose the topic this week as well. We're talking about microhabits. I gave you, guys two options on my Instagram, so if you don't follow me there, that's normally where I make the decision about what I want to record this week. And I gave you two options, either a bonus guest episode or an episode on microhabits, and here we are. You chose right. I'm very excited to be recording this today. And the research was so fascinating some of the studies, some of the things that I found out, I was like, this is crazy, Like I'm learning so much. I also just want to say we hit a huge milestone this week, which was one million listeners, and I honestly still can't fathom that, Like I genuinely am so like honestly baffled, a bit confused, a bit overwhelmed, to be honest, that there are so many people listening to this show. Like I started this as like a side project, as like a hobby, just to kind of verbalize the things that I was going through and to be able to have an outlet for the research I was doing and the things that I love to talk about with my wonderful friends. Shout out to them if they're listening, You guys are amazing. And suddenly it has an audience. So it's been really unexpected and I'm so grateful. I think the other thing I've been really worried about is that as this show grows, it might become less authentic. I just that's something that's really been on my mind. What I want to be able to do is continue post the things that I really want to talk about, and then I hope other people want to hear about, not just things that I feel pressure I need to speak on or following trends. I don't know. I just don't want to lose that authenticity, and I think that's why a lot of people listen to this because I don't know. I'm someone in my twenties. I'm dealing with this stuff as we all are, so I don't know some of my fears and anxieties for the people who listen to the bonus episode, So take away whatever you want from that, but once again, thank you for listening. Let's get into what we're talking about today. Microhabits. It is such a fascinating, fascinating topic. They've become, like the term microhabits has become quite a trendy saying or a trendy term or concept in wellness communities recently, and I think for mostly really really good reasons. So what they are is they are these small, simple actions that you're able to take every day or integrate into your life really easily, that help you achieve big results. They're basically just small habits, microhabits. Sometimes when we think about you big overhauls of our entire lifestyle, it can seem really overwhelming, but we can use microhabits, which are just small actions that we can change day to day to transform I think, any area, any facet of our lives that we might not be entirely satisfied with, by starting really small, by starting from the ground up and keeping you know, the end goal in sight, but making it easier for us to get there and to ease into those changes and those transformations, and to ensure that the changes we want to make to our lives are sustainable. You know, there's no point putting a lot of effort into something, putting all your eggs in one basket dedicating yourself entirely to some goal, if if you're going to give up after one month because you're mentally and physically exhausted. But microhabits are a really, I think, sneaky, amazing way around that, and there's so much fascinating psychology around them. When we set ourselves big and ambitious and sometimes ambiguous goals like I don't know, I want to eat healthier, or to be more active, or fix my anxiety, make new friends, it can be super overwhelming to a try and stick to it b figure out how we're going to achieve that goal through concrete steps, you know, saying something like I want to make new friends. It's such a scary and daunting goal, Like how do we actually get there? And I think it's really hard to know when when your goal has been achieved. How do you know when you're no longer anxious? How do you know when you're healthier? Like, yes, you'll feel it, but how exactly did you get there? If the goal is a huge thing that you want and you're pining after, and you get there, and you know, how do you know that you could do it again? How can you maintain those lifestyle changes? I think big goals are always going to be really hard to achieve, hence that saying, you know, if it was easy, everyone would do it. The reason is that they offer require major lifestyle overhaul and changes to our daily habits, which we've become rather attached to. But what if you could achieve those exact same goals by just doing something small every day that sounds you know, kind of amazing. And that's the idea behind microhabits. You are still able to make those big changes, but by making a series of small ones instead, tasks that are so small and so you know, convenient that you don't even notice them half the time and you don't really have an excuse not to do them. And when you keep these small habits up, and when you keep these promises to yourself, not only are you able to see progress and reach your goals sustainably whilst also ensuring that your healthy habits stick, but you also gain confidence over time. You know, I think when we set out to achieve big goals and we're really pushing so hard in those first few weeks, in those first few months, when we are you know, we fail or we have a small setback, can be really easy to see all that progress being, you know, to sense that that progress has been undone, or to feel a sense of failure. But microhabits allow us to achieve those goals over time and sustainably, so that we're allowed to have small setbacks as long as we keep up these small habits. So let's talk about some examples. When I was doing this research and just from like my general overall view of how the term microhabits is used. They're often applied to, you know, fitness and weight loss and diet culture and physical health, which of course I appreciate, and I think it's so important that people want to take care of themselves and whatever capacity that might be. But I kind of want to discuss them in other areas of our lives because I think that although a lot of the time, people especially in our twenties, are really worried about how we look and whether we're active and whether we're physically healthy, sometimes it's not the only focus. And I kind of don't like to talk about that too much on my show. I think it can contribute and easily become a discussion about things that actually are unhealthy and aren't you the best for ourselves? So let's talk about some other areas. For example, if you want to start a podcast, what is a microhabit that can build that. I get people ask me or asking me all the time, like I want to start a podcast, and my first answer is always like, yes, absolutely, you should do it. There is room for everyone, and you know, you definitely have something to share. And their second question is and the second kind of statement is always like, how do I do it? A microhabit could be I don't know right three, write down one idea every day for what you want to talk about on your show, or record just one episode a week, even if you only do five minutes each day. That's a really achievable goal, you know, writing something down in your notes app once a day, some idea that you've had for content or for an episode. It's not going to take too much from you. It's not going to take too much effort, and it's really doable. Another one that I hear a lot from my friends is spending less time on social media. What's the simple microhabit you can do for that, you know, put your make a promise to yourself. I can go on my phone as much as I want throughout the day. But I'm going to put it down at ten PM or between the hours of you know, every thirty minutes, I have to turn my phone off, you know, for the rest of that half hour into the next until the next hour, just so you have those small breaks or okay, I want to slowly decrease the amount of pickups I have. I don't know. If you have an iPhone, you can see how many times you pick up and you open social media app like Instagram or TikTok, say that's like fifty times a day, Be like, okay, by tomorrow, I want it to be forty nine, and then maybe forty eight and forty seven next week, not even like on a day to day. Just trying to think about small things you can do, small goals you can set. Getting over heartbreak that's a massive topic we talk about on the show because you know, I think we all have been through that in our twenties and it's often really fucking brutal. How do we make sure that How can we apply microhabits to heartbreak? What about just checking their messages less being like, okay, my only the only thing I need to do today is to only check to see if they've messaged me once or twice. I can't check it compulsively throughout the day, but I'm still allowed to because I still want to know. Or if you're getting over heartbreak, setting a goal of like, okay, well I'm going to listen to one song I really really love and just have like a wild dance manic singing moment just once a day to make myself feel better. Another way that it's I think microhabits are often applied as productivity and creativity as we enter into full time work, or we're struggling with UNI and we have jobs and things to do and bills to pay, in relationships to maintain, and I don't know, cleaning, I don't know whatever you're doing with your life. We're all pretty busy, and sometimes the first thing to go is the things that really fuel our soul, our creative passions and our hobbies. So maybe one of your microhabits, if you're someone who's realizing that they're a little bit disconnected from that creative right side of their brain, is to read just one page of a book each night, or simply list five things you're grateful for if you want to get into journaling, or you know, just only you'll need to spend five minutes a day doing like a meditation or a yoga pose, or watching a really interesting video that you can contribute to. Conversations with those don't sound too hard, do they? They sound really doable. Everyone has five minutes in their day to do one small thing that might actually make your life a lot better. And over time these habits build and become bigger, and we're able to challenge ourselves to set a new microhabit that actually feels a lot less significant than if we'd started with that step to begin with. Small blocks can still build really big towers, and it's harder to take them apart, harder to take that final structure, that final lifestyle that you're looking for apart. If those habits that have contributed to it are really easy to do and are really sustainable. So why are we talking about them today? Why are we talking about them in the context of our twenties. I think personally, in our twenties, we have a responsibility to ourselves to decide what kind of lives we want to have. It's often, I think, what we again to recognize unhealthy habits or patterns of thinking that might not be the healthiest that may have come from our upbringing may have come from our childhood. If you want to listen to the Childhood Trauma episode, we talk about this a little bit more about how our perspectives and our ways that we see ourselves and the habits that we form really to begin in our early infancy. Even but when we get to adulthood, when we get to our twenties, we might want to improve ourselves for the better. We have the emotional and the mental capacity to recognize what's not working, to have self awareness. I feel like many of the people who listen to the show are doing so out of an eagerness to improve themselves, their well being and their lives, or because there's something they're struggling within their day to day lives. Honestly, no matter your circumstances, whatever you're going through right now, implementing these daily micro habits can actually lead to massive improvements to what area of your life you want to change or improve. One of the microhabits that I've set myself recently is I found that because i work full time and I'm doing this podcast, and you know, I've got to keep up with my chores and with my friends, and trying to be active. The one thing that's kind of fall enough the radar is being physically active and feeling like my body is doing what I want it to do. So I've set this microhabit of like any time I'm want to go into the office and my officers in the city, I have to walk in. It's a forty five minute walk. It's not that far. It takes like thirty five minutes on the train. And that's a really easy habit to implement for me because it's not every day that I have to do it, but it's and it's really small, it's really doable, and it's really rewarding as well. I think we do often think of physical health when we think of lifestyle change, but it can be so much more than that. We can use microhabits to reduce anxiety, promote how be more productive, creative, get over a bad breakup, make more connections. Their beauty is in their simplicity, but also their universality. They're so easy to integrate into our lives and into really any area of our lives. So let's talk about why they work and really hyping these up today and making them sound like some kind of universal antidote. But there's a reason why microhabits are a lot easier to implement. And I know it sounds intuitive, but there's some stronger science backing it as well. Basically, they limit how often we can apply an all or nothing mindset and consequently the likelihood of failure. So the all or nothing mindset, it's a way of thinking that kind of relies on extremes, and particularly the extreme of either success or failure. You know, you've got this goal in mind, and you're either doing everything completely right, meet your goal instantly, you're sticking with all of your habits, you're doing everything you need to do perfectly all the time, or you don't do that, you make a slip up, you forget to do something, and you fail. You can't go forward. That's done. You know, like it's success or failure and there's nothing in between. All or nothing thinking usually leads to really unrealistic standards for yourself and for others, and it's really hard to maintain motivation because we're humans, We're going to make mistakes. Life gets in the way of implementing healthy habits, and this type of thinking it's known as a cognitive distortion, which essentially is an exaggerated pattern of thought and of thinking that derails our progress and can lead us to viewing things in a way that's false to how they truly are. You know, say that one of your goals is like, oh, I want to use social media less, and you've been really stricted only an hour a day and that's that, and then one day you go over and to hour and five minutes, like, well, I've ruined it. Perhaps I've ruined it, like this shows that I don't have self discipline and I can't meet my goal. And this all or nothing distortion is exactly is exactly what we're talking about in this instance. If we engage too frequently in this style of thinking, particularly when we are trying to achieve a goal, it can be really difficult to forgive our failures to make progress or feel satisfied and ensure that the goal is sustainable because we're always going to make mistakes. We are forgetful creatures, we are funny creatures, we're messy creatures. But microhabits they're able to interrupt that extreme way of thinking, that feedback loop of success or failure. We're able to not only have smallest successes but teach ourselves that our energy does not need to be a hundred million percent committed and tied to one goal with no slip ups allowed. They allow us to break things down into smaller, bite size pieces, which we know are easier for our brains to digest, and they're easier to implement because they require less challenge and less change, and we're more likely to be successful. So the other reason they work is to do with dopamine. I know we talk about dopamine so often on this show, like all the time, but it's because it's so crucial to so many of our behaviors and our actions and our daily lives. It's like it is one of the most important neurotransmitters we have in our artillery. Often the habits we see as being unhealthy, I'm when we use the TikTok example again, like scrolling TikTok for hours. TikTok don't asume me because I'm defaming you or whatever, But you know, scrolling TikTok for hours before bed or sleeping in or eating food that makes us feel bad, these habits actually bring us some of dopamine, Like we get a dopamine hit or we feel comfortable. So when we attempt to interrupt those habits and overhaul our lives, not only do we prevent activities that our brain actually relies on for dopamine, the chemical that motivates us and creates pleasant feelings and stability, but we also alter our mental comfort space. And that's kind of the area. That's like the things that make our brain feel safe, and often routine habits, even if they cause long term damage, do make us feel safe, and often that causes us to withdraw back into our old habits quicker when we are challenged with other, possibly uncomfortable situations in the external world. I think we see this so often people set out with big goals, for example, to quit drinking or stop smoking like cold turkey. But those habits bring comfort and dopamine and serotonin. So as soon as something else challenges us and we no longer have that, you know, that stability that's created by that habit, we're likely to fall straight back into them. You know. But if we say instead of like I'm in a completely quick drinking and then you know, you go through a breakup or you know, you get a parking fine, or you have a shit day at work and suddenly you know, you're back on it. What if we instead said, you know, I'm going to drink one less drink that I normally would on a night out, or I'm only going to drink drinks with lower levels of alcohol, or only drink one to two days a week. We give our brains time to adapt to these new habits, which makes them easier and our goal is more sustainable, while still giving ourselves the comfort that something we enjoy might provide. So how do we implement these How do we implement microhabits? I think often when we have a big goal, we are particularly patient and we want to reach it right now. We're like, Okay, I've decided I want to be fit and healthy, so I want to be able to run a marathon in like five days, and that's so sexy and like fast. Results are exciting and we want them right now, especially in the modern world where we can get things that we want so easily. But trust me, doing small, boring things gets the job done much more sustainably and much more reliably because of all of those reasons that we've talked about. You know, it doesn't leave us completely devoid of the dopamine attached our old habits. They prevent us from having that all or nothing thinking, they're easier to implement into our lives, they cause less disruption. But I think that it's important to also have a sense of balance here and not go overboard with the microhabits, you know what I mean, because then essentially you're doing exactly what you would have done if you'd done that all or nothing thinking. And we're completely committed to a goal, it's probably best to not have more than three to five. You know. Your three might be I'm going to drink one extra glass of water a day, I'm going to wake up thirty minutes earlier, and I'm going to read one page of a book at night. So simple. But if you're like I'm going to read one page of a book at night, I'm going to eat an extra sever vegetables, and I'm going to wake up at seven thirty instead of at eight. And I'm also going to call one friend every single day, and I'm also going to do one hundred million things. Firstly, that just sounds really hard to keep track of, but also you know, yeah, you're not going to be able to keep up, and it's going to become really mentally exhausting, and you're probably going to have more failures and successes. So try and make it easier for yourself and just choose three to five five, five, even it's probably a few too many, but maybe just three that target things you really want to change in your life. And I think once you start implementing those little practices every single day, those series of small winds and those confidence boosters that you give yourself allows you to build momentum and allows you to sustainably get to the goal that you ultimately want. At the end of the day. It might take a little bit longer, you're still going to get there. You have time, and when you do get there, it's going to be sustainable. Thank you so much for listening. This is such a fun episode. It was a shorter one, but I was like, this is so fascinating to me, and I think such an important ritual and idea to implement into our lives, especially in our twenties when we're trying to construct the lifestyle that we want to lead, and we're trying to fix things that may have gone wrong in childhood and fix unhealthy habits that we might have. So I really hope that if this is something you're considering, you give it a go. You try it out and see what happens. You know, you really don't have anything to lose, and it's so easy, you know. Oh my god, I sound like this is some like microhabits as like a brand that's like sponsoring me. I swear, it's like I just think it's a great idea, and hopefully you do too. Before we wrap up, I do just want to say a huge thank you again for subscribing for bonus content. You really allow me to do what I love and that is such a huge privilege, Like it's crazy. So I want to thank you so much, and I hope that you continue to support the show and you continue to love the content that we're putting out. Well I don't know why I say, wait, it's or only me. And if you have any feedback, if you have any suggestions for episodes, shoot me a message on Instagram. I love hearing from you and hopefully I can I can do them. And yeah, let me know what you think of the show. Leave it a five star rating on Spotify if you get the chance and if you feel cooled to do so, And thank you again for listening. I will see you in our main episode for this week, which is why rejection stings. Thank you so much. Have a lovely, lovely day.