--:-- Mel Robbins: Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast.
--:-- Mel Robbins: All right, today we have one of the most important topics ever. No matter what your goals are, you need habits to help you achieve them. And you're lucky because you've got a friend named Mel who happens to be one of the leading experts in the world on behavior change and the strategies that you can use to break bad habits and replace them with new habits.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I want to tell you something right now. If you've had a hard time changing your habits or trying to achieve your goals, I want you to hear something loud and clear before we jump into the foundational science, okay? You're not the problem. I'm going to say that again. If you've had a hard time achieving your goals or changing behavior or changing the way you think, you are not the problem.
--:-- Mel Robbins: You want to change? Me too. You're frustrated that you can't break those old habits? Me too. Here's the problem: you haven't had the simple, science-supported strategies and systems that help you create new habits and make them stick. That's it.
--:-- Mel Robbins: When it comes to the science of habits, this is one of those topics that when you have somebody break it down for you, you have this epiphany where you're like, "Are you kidding me? This is all I needed to know? Why did I make this so hard on myself?" That's how I felt when I learned everything that you're about to learn today.
--:-- Mel Robbins: My goal today is very, very simple. I am going to break down the complex and overwhelming topic of habit formation. And I'm going to give you the simple tools, takeaways, and techniques that you need in order to break bad habits that hold you back and create the positive new habits that are going to help you achieve your goals.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to a life-changing, science-packed episode of the Mel Robbins Podcast. No matter what your goals are, you need habits to help you achieve them. We're going to cover a tremendous amount of material in today's episode, and I also am going to unpack all of the foundational research for you.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Here's the other thing that I've done for you. This topic is so important. And while you might think, "Is this going to be boring, Mel? I'm not really up for some sort of psychology university lecture," don't you worry. This is not going to be boring. I freaking love this topic. This is the missing piece, so to speak.
--:-- Mel Robbins: You want to be happier? Of course you do. You want to make more money? Hell yes. Want to get healthier? Absolutely. Great. You just need to use science and hack your habits. Because the secret that you need to learn is that habits are neither good nor bad. Habits are just patterns of behavior.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I believe that most of us are basically a middle schooler stuck in an adult body. The habits that you have are habits that you've had for a very long time. They are in place. And here's the truth, everyone: habits repeat unless you replace them. I'm going to say that again. One of the reasons why behavior change is so difficult is that when you're dealing with habits that you've been repeating for years—whether it's a habit in terms of how you think or a habit in terms of your behavior—those habits by design will repeat forever unless you find them and you replace those habits with something new.
--:-- Mel Robbins: As we dig into this, I'm going to teach you how to do that. Behavior change is going to become very simple because again, you're not the problem. The problem is that you have not created simple systems to help you replace old habits with new ones. That's it. It's so exciting. Wait till you see what we're going to dig into.
--:-- Mel Robbins: There are three mistakes that we've all made. These mistakes are grounded in research. Mistake number one: you and I think we know how habits work. The truth is, this comes from Dr. Wendy Wood. Dr. Wendy Wood is the mother, genius, professor, doctor of habits. I love that it is a woman. She is a professor at USC, Dr. Wendy Wood. I don't care what book or article you have read about habits. I promise you, absolutely everybody is basically spinning off of her work. *Atomic Habits* is all about Dr. Wendy Wood. *The Power of Habit*, Charles Duhigg? Dr. Wendy Wood.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Dr. Wendy Wood's research says that even those of us that throw the word "habit" around like confetti, and we think we understand it, we don't. Even those of us that are kind of confident enough to say, "I know what habits are"—80% of us think that we know what habits are. But the truth is, let me ask you this: can you easily change your behavior and make it stick? No. In areas of our lives where we're struggling to change, we are not applying the science of habits. That's where this gets really important for you to understand habits, because half of your day—44% of your waking actions—are automatic. They're habitual. You don't even think about it.
--:-- Mel Robbins: The second thing that I want you to understand is that habits matter way more than you think. This was really important for me to understand personally, and I'll explain why in a minute. There's this big myth that you and I see somebody that's really successful, or they're super ripped, or they have a lot of discipline on the outside, and we think that people with success have more self-control. Not true.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Dr. Angela Duckworth, who's at UPenn, wrote that *New York Times* bestselling book on grit. She is also a major studier of human behavior and habits. She has proven that people that are successful on the outside, they don't have any more discipline than you and me. You know what they have? They have better habits. They have systems in place that support their habits. People that are successful or that appear more disciplined, they're not white-knuckling their way through life the way that I used to.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Do you want to know who she is describing in my life? She's describing my husband, Chris. I love Chris, but there are parts of Chris that drive me absolutely crazy. One of the parts about Chris that I am incredibly jealous of is he has this very steady, methodical way of just sticking to his habits. It's so annoying. There's no drama. He just rolls out of bed. He just consumes his gallon of water a day. He gets in his workout or two. He gets in the ice bath. He journals every morning. He meditates. I'm like, "What? How is it that I'm married to a human robot?"
--:-- Mel Robbins: What I've come to learn as I've looked more and more into the research of habits and as I study human behavior is that Chris is actually thinking about this stuff all day long. On the outside, he appears very disciplined. On the outside, he is very successful. But on the inside, what Chris is focused on are the systems that make him successful. For example, the gallon of water: the guy fills up his water the night before. He puts it on the kitchen island the night before so that when he walks into the kitchen after getting up and meditating and journaling, what's right there? Oh, the bottle that he needs to drink. He's made it easy.
--:-- Mel Robbins: That's why we're going to keep coming back to systems and strategies. You don't have to use willpower. In fact, you shouldn't. You don't have to white-knuckle your way through behavior change. There is an easier way to do this. See, this is why you're not the problem. I personally think maybe we're just really smart, you and me. That's why we're overcomplicating everything. We don't believe that this could really be that simple. But you must start to embrace this notion that, "Oh, it's not me. It's that I'm not getting serious about systems and tools and tactics to make these new behaviors easy."
--:-- Mel Robbins: You already have habits. This is good news, because when you start to recognize that you have tons and tons of habits that you don't think about, you realize, "Oh, I'm capable of doing this." Let's think about a habit that most of us share. The moment that the alarm goes off in the morning, you think, "Ugh." So what do you do? You look at your phone. Why? Because the second you look at your phone, you feel a little better. That's a little habit right there. You don't even think about it.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What's another habit that you have that you don't think about? You get out of bed, you walk into the bathroom, you brush your teeth. Right after you brush your teeth, you feel a little better because the carpet that was on your teeth is now gone. You just brushed it off. It feels better. What's another habit? Oh, you make a cup of coffee or a cup of tea. You don't even think about it. The second you sip that coffee, you feel a little better. You check your emails, you don't think about it. Now you feel needed.
--:-- Mel Robbins: At the end of the day, as you feel tired, what do you do? You just kind of slouch down on the couch and you automatically turn on the TV. These are all things that you don't think about. What's another thing that you do? You zone out on the phone. Why? Because it's kind of fun to distract yourself by scrolling through social media or laughing at videos on TikTok.
--:-- Mel Robbins: The important thing here about habits is that you don't even think about those things. You don't resist those behaviors. Let's just take the example of making a cup of coffee or making a cup of tea. Do you stand at the coffee maker in the morning and go, "I don't really feel like having coffee today. I don't know. This is going to be hard to push this button. Maybe I'll just do it later. It's raining outside." No. The power of a habit is it is hardwired into your subconscious brain. You do it automatically, which means that resistance to doing it is gone. You have no resistance when you pick up your phone and you start scrolling on social media.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Imagine if I could teach you how to create systems so that you could remove the resistance you feel before exercising, or working on the book you're writing, or picking up the phone and making a cold call so that you can grow your business. Imagine if we could use the three parts of habit formation and all the science that people have done and apply it to things that you want to be doing in your life. See, you're not the problem. The lack of systems and the lack of understanding about habit formation—that's the only thing standing in your way.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I want to explain some more good news. Another mistake that you and I make is that we have been told that it takes 21 days to form a new habit. That is complete bull cocky. That is not true. There's an important reason why you've got to understand that this is not something that necessarily takes 20 days, either good or bad. That's because we tend to hold ourselves to these impossible standards. Then when we don't end up acting like a robot, or when we're human and we miss a day, we beat ourselves up. We get impatient. We start to wonder, "Why is the resistance still there? I've been exercising and schlepping myself to the gym for 21 days. Why do I still hate this? Or I've been trying to drink more water now for 34 days. Why do I still hate this?"
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, I have the study right here. Let me grab it. I have the study. You know we love our studies here. This one is so important, and this is cited all over the place. This is from the *European Journal of Social Psychology*. The study is entitled "How Are Habits Formed?" The lead researcher is a professor by the name of Philippa Lally from the University College of London.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What she basically did in this study—and this is so important for you to hear—is they did this huge research study about the process of habit formation in everyday life. They studied people who were trying to change a behavior for 12 weeks. We're talking simple stuff on the surface, okay? Things like, "I'd like to just drink a bottle of water with lunch. I'm going to do that every day for 12 weeks." Or, "I think I'm just going to walk after dinner." Or, "I'm going to try to get a 15-minute run in every day." Simple behavior changes that people wanted to make.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Here's what's incredible. Basically what they found is it doesn't take 21 days to form a new habit. What does that mean? That means your resistance to doing it is gone because you have programmed your mind, body, and nervous system to learn this new pattern. Check this out: it took between 18 and 254 days. That's how long it took this study of people. And that's good news. You want to know why? Because it means that every one of us is a little bit different. The amount of resistance that you feel when you try a new behavior change is going to be dependent on you. It's going to be dependent upon the thing that you pick. It's going to be dependent upon the systems that you have in place. All of this is in your control.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I think that's really important to hear. I personally get down on myself when things don't feel easy. Knowing that it might take me, Mel Robbins, the stubborn learner, 200 days of pushing through this—that's kind of empowering. It may surprise you to hear that even the lady that invented the Five Second Rule, that is still not a habit. I still do it most days, but I still feel resistance. And it's been 14 years.
--:-- Mel Robbins: There are other things that I've added into my life, like drinking more water, taking the dogs for a walk every day, that it took me more like 18 days to lose the resistance. I think it's important that you hear that the resistance that you feel and the automatic nature of the behavior change that you're trying to make depends on you. It depends on the systems. It depends on the activity that you're trying to take on. The average is basically 66 days. I hope that you don't hear that as bad news. I think it's good news.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Here's the other thing that Dr. Lally discovered in this study that I also think is good news. Missing a day does not materially affect the habit formation process. Let me say that again. If you miss a day—let's just say you are taking on walking 15 minutes a day, and you're like, "That's it, this is the year I'm going to get healthy. I'm going to walk for 15 minutes a day"—and you've got this stupid notion in your head that by 21 days you're going to be an Ironman and this is going to be easy, that's mistake number one. Because if 21 days hits and you're still having trouble getting out the door, you're going to think you're a loser. That's not the case at all.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Second thing: if you miss two or three days, according to the research, you have not gone back to zero. It does not materially affect the habit formation process. That's good news. That means if you're a human being that has a normal life and you cannot act like a robot and you miss two or three days on something that you want to be changing, no problem. With the repetition of the behavior, the automaticity—that's the scientific term that's hard for me to say—increases. What does that basically mean? It means that once you start pushing the new pattern through your nervous system and your neuropathways, even taking a couple days and not doing it, you literally have not damaged that process. It's still there waiting for you when you pick it back up.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What we're going to talk about today are the three parts. One of the other things that I think a lot about that has helped me become way better at breaking old patterns and creating new ones is whenever something is taking longer than I want it to take, instead of beating myself up for being some loser with no discipline or being weak, or being like, "Why is it so easy for Chris but it sucks for me?" I get curious about, "How could I make this easier? How could I make this new pattern easier?"
--:-- Mel Robbins: We're going to talk about the three parts of how a habit forms in your brain and how it locks in as a new pattern neurologically and how dopamine plays a role in this in just a second. But I need to go through these mistakes we're making because there's so much good news here. How long the new habit takes to make is not the point, everyone. At some point, your resistance will lower. Even if it takes you 254 days to remove all the resistance and make it automatic—as automatic as making a cup of coffee or as automatic as brushing your teeth—imagine if going for a 10-minute walk every single day was as automatic as brushing your teeth. That would be cool.
--:-- Mel Robbins: It doesn't matter if it takes you 254 days to make that a reality, because you will never get to that automatic 254-day habit unless you commit to day one. Getting started is critical. Let's stop talking about how long it takes and let's just say, "Okay, great, I got it. I'm making a mistake. I don't have the systems. I'm really excited. It might take me less than 21 days, might take me more. I can hack this. This is freaking awesome."
--:-- Mel Robbins: Now let's talk about mistake number three that everybody makes. When I heard this information, everyone, this was super relieving because I used to think, "Okay, there's something wrong with me. How can all these other people get six-pack abs? How are all these other people finding all the time in the day and having so much discipline? And I am literally as weak as a piece of wet spaghetti. How can I become somebody that is like, 'Ooh, I got boundaries, I got this, I got that'?" This brings me to mistake number three. I'll be waiting for you after this short break. Stay with me.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Welcome back. It's your buddy Mel Robbins. You and I are digging into habits: what they are, how to break them, how to make them, and how to create new ones that really stick. Let me summarize what we've covered, because these three mistakes are the mistakes that everybody makes.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Mistake number one is telling yourself that you're the problem. You're not the problem. The problem is you're missing systems and tools and strategies to hack habits using all the science. Everybody gets habits wrong. There's nothing wrong with you. This is completely normal. And it's not going to happen to you anymore because you now understand the science.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Mistake number two is this notion that it takes 21 days for a new habit. That is malarkey. This is deeply personal. You can expect that to be shorter or longer depending upon your resistance. You can also start to get really curious. If it's taking longer, don't beat yourself up. There's nothing wrong with you. The research, as you also learned, has made it very clear that if you miss two or three days, if you miss a week, if you miss a month, whatever, it's not going to impact all the progress that you've made.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Mistake number three, which you are not going to do. I make this mistake. You make this mistake. I guarantee you, as you focus on what you want to change in your life, you're only focused on the behaviors and the actions you need to take. We're all guilty of it. "I'm going to eat healthy." So you focus on eating healthy. "I'm going to exercise." So you focus on exercising. "I'm going to make more money." So you focus on the income-producing activities. That's not how you create a new habit.
--:-- Mel Robbins: You are not going to create new behavior, new thinking patterns, and make them stick if you simply focus on what you need to do. There is science here, and this is where systems and strategies and tactics come into play. This is why you're not the problem. The science of habits shows us that the real problem is that there are three parts to every habit. Unless you get smart—which you are a smart cookie, you are capable of this—but unless you get smart about all three parts and how they work together and how to hack them to make habits easy and how to hack them to make habits stick, if you don't focus on the three parts, you are always going to have trouble changing your behavior. I did for almost 45 years. Seriously. I didn't know this stuff. I didn't learn this in college. I didn't learn this in law school. This research is so exciting.
--:-- Mel Robbins: There are three parts to every single habit that you have. There is a trigger, there's the behavior pattern, and there's a reward. I'm going to break this down, don't worry, but I want to give you an example. How do you train a puppy new behavior patterns? How do you train them? You don't just yell "sit" because the puppy has no clue what you're talking about. What we do is you raise your hand up—that's the trigger signaling behavior—and you say "sit." Then when the puppy finally does—and you know when you raise your hand up, they look up at you and they tend to sit their rear end down—when he does the behavior of sitting, what do you do? You give him a treat. You reward the behavior. We work the exact same way.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Most of us are screaming at ourselves, "Sit! Why can't you sit? Are you stupid? You weak? Just sit. Just don't drink that alcohol. Just don't eat when you're sad. Just get to the gym. What's wrong with you? Why can't you do it?" Most of us are yelling at ourselves for not sitting. And we have forgotten two of the three parts of the habit that we need to focus on in order to make the pattern stick and be automatic. You're not the problem. The problem has been that you and I do not have simple systems, tools, and strategies in place in order to hack the trigger and the reward that helps you automate the behavior pattern.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Habits, everybody, they're all about the trigger and the reward. The reward is hugely important for making the behavior encode. We're going to focus a lot of our time today on the role that rewarding yourself plays, because what research proves is that when you reward yourself, the reward triggers your brain to release dopamine. When the dopamine kicks in, that's that feel-good motivation drive chemical in your brain. Here's what happens: a habit loop is what is formed in your brain and your nervous system when the dopamine kicks in.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What's fascinating about the research, what's so cool, is that when I or you or my puppy, when you hear the trigger "sit," your brain doesn't even think about the physical action of sitting down. What does your brain think about? It jumps to the treat. That's why the resistance is gone. That's what happens when you create a habit loop. In any area of your life where you would love to create new behavior, where you would love to see new habits stick, we either are missing a great trigger to signal the behavior, or more likely, you do not have a reward that is good enough to make you excited to do the damn thing.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I'm going to give you two examples that are really, really important. Then I'm going to share a story from my own life about trying to change my own behavior and the power of a reward. I want you right now, as you're listening, to think about either a habit you want to break or a new behavior that you are so wanting to have just become something that you do. Something where you're like, "Why is it so hard for me to eat healthy? Why is it so hard for me to drink my water? Why is it so hard for me to get out of the house once a week and go work on my business? Why is it so hard for me to not drink during the week?"
--:-- Mel Robbins: First, I'm going to cover what it looks like and a simple trick for stopping old behavior. I'm going to use the example of, let's say, you had a goal of wanting to either stop drinking during the week, or another one that's very common is you want to wean yourself off caffeine. You want to stop drinking coffee. This is something I'm working on right now. I'm not drinking at all. One of the mistakes that I have made in the past is using willpower. Just being like, "I'm not drinking. I'm not drinking this week." I've tried to do it with friends so that I feel the peer pressure, and getting on the text chain really matters.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Let me tell you a really good hack that helps if you're trying to stop drinking or stop caffeine or stop emotional snacking—something where you're stopping old behavior. Here is rule number one: do not go cold turkey. This is not what you think I'm going to say, okay? Let's talk about something you've already learned. Behavior patterns repeat unless you replace them. If you're trying to break a bad habit, willpower alone is like torture. An easier way to hack the science on this is to break apart the bad habit into the trigger, the behavior, and the reward you feel. Then figure out what is something that you can do to replace that behavior.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Don't worry, this is covered in the worksheet that I'm going to give you at the end of this episode so that you can unpack all this for yourself and work through it. When you see it on paper, it is so fascinating. Let me just take making a drink at night. For me, the act of making myself a cocktail at night or pouring a can of beer—let me tell you the trigger. The trigger is the time of day.
--:-- Mel Robbins: There are five big triggers. The triggers for everybody are: time of day; other people can trigger behavior patterns; feelings or your emotional state, particularly negative ones—"I feel tired, I'm overwhelmed, I'm this, I'm that"; a place—and you know the thing about places because think about when you go visit your parents, all your habits fall right out. You're in a new place, or you go on vacation and all of a sudden you're like, "Oh, I'm going to walk on the beach every day," and yet you have not gotten out for a walk in a year in your own house. So places can trigger. And finally, preceding actions.
--:-- Mel Robbins: A really good example of a preceding action is when you get a notification. When you get a notification on your phone, it triggers you to repeat a behavior. What is it? Check your phone. What's the reward? You get a release of dopamine because you feel needed. That's a habit loop, everyone. Triggered by the action of a notification. You don't even think about it. That's why so many of us are like, "You've got to turn your phone off if you want to work," because you have a habit of getting distracted. You're not the problem. You're not the problem at all. You just have a system. The trigger is the notification. We're going to use this to our advantage.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Let's go back to my example of I'm not drinking for two months. The trigger is the time of day for me. When I'm done working, I have just had a very full day. My brain is taxed and exhausted, and I have a behavior pattern of making a cocktail. What is the reward? Oddly enough, the reward is not the alcohol. The reward is the ritual. The reward is the dopamine release that I receive because this act of muddling up mint and blackberries and then making a little cocktail with it—it's an act that I do to signal it's time to stop working, it's time to relax.
--:-- Mel Robbins: If I were to say, "That's it, cold turkey, not drinking. I'm just not drinking," I am going to feel so much agitation at the end of the day. Because we know that patterns repeat. The trigger is going to be there, right? It's 6:30 at night. I've programmed myself to repeat this behavior. The reward is relaxing, celebratory, winding down, this sort of ceremony of the whole thing. I'm going to be yearning not for the alcohol. I'm going to be yearning for that ceremonial ritual because it's a habit.
--:-- Mel Robbins: One way that you can support yourself—because remember, you're not the problem, it's the systems—is when I break this habit down that I want to replace on a piece of paper, I go, "Oh, interesting. Time of day. I can't change time of day, but I can replace the behavior." So what am I going to do? I'm going to remove the alcohol for those two months, and I'm going to make the world's greatest mocktail bar. Kombucha, non-alcoholic beer, juices, sodas, seltzers. I'm going to keep my wine glasses there. I'm going to replace the old behavior—making the drink—with a new behavior, but I'm going to get the same reward. The trigger stays the same, the behavior changes, and the reward and the dopamine is: I'm doing the ceremony, I'm having the ritual, I'm unwinding, and I'm making it special because that matters to me.
--:-- Mel Robbins: When it comes to coffee, make tea. Make decaf coffee. Make something else in the morning. Make the switchel. My grandmother drank that her whole life. That's the farmer's brew: apple cider vinegar, honey, lemon, and hot water. Replace the behavior. Don't you just love that? I love that.
--:-- Mel Robbins: You want to know what else I love? I love the sponsors of the Mel Robbins Podcast. We're going to take a quick pause, hear a word from our amazing sponsors. I'll be waiting for you after this short break. Stay with us.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Welcome back. It's your friend Mel Robbins. Thank you, thank you, thank you for being here with me today. I love the topic of habits. Let's pick up where we left off.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Let's say you want to stop biting your nails. There was a huge study done with people about biting their nails. Most people, believe it or not, who have a habit of biting their nails—do you want to know what the trigger is? If you really analyze it, the trigger is emotional discomfort. You're either bored or lonely or nervous. The pattern of chewing on your nails distracts you from that feeling. The reward that you get is a little bit of dopamine because you no longer feel bored or lonely or scared.
--:-- Mel Robbins: The only thing you need to do in that instance is if you can identify the trigger. You basically just say to yourself, "What am I feeling right now? Oh, I'm feeling tired." Instead of chewing my nails, what could I do? I could take a nap. I could do something else. Again, you're going to use this worksheet to identify the bad habit, the trigger, and the reward, and to replace it, okay?
--:-- Mel Robbins: Okay, so here's the most important takeaway, everyone. And this is where most of us really implode because we don't have the systems and tools and strategies in place. Can we ever get rid of uncomfortable feelings? Of course not. There's always gonna be moments in your life where you feel tired or lonely or scared. And as a little kid, you learned to cope by chewing your nails because it distracted you from those feelings. And it worked.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What I'm saying is, as an adult, you can never get rid of the triggers, but you can replace the coping mechanism that you no longer want to be reaching for. Whether that coping mechanism is eating a bag of chips, chewing on your nails, or zoning out in front of Netflix. When you break this down using science into what's the trigger—and for a lot of us, it's really negative emotions, like my trigger with grabbing alcohol might also just be brain tired, so I'm reaching for this habit that feels celebratory—when you unpack this on the sheet, it's super important.
--:-- Mel Robbins: You hear that quote online all the time: you can't control what's happening, but you can choose how you respond. But you can't do that unless you understand the trigger and unless you understand the reward that you're receiving for continuing to repeat this pattern. When you really start to use the science of habits to your advantage—trigger, pattern, reward. Trigger, pattern, reward. Sit, physically sit, get a treat. When you start to understand and break apart a behavior you no longer want, and you replace it inside this loop, you're going to make changing super easy.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Now let me explain an example about creating a whole new habit. For me, this is where the power of the reward comes in. The reward is something that is really important because the reward is what encodes the habit loop into your neuropathways. This is a story from my life about me trying to create a habit of exercising five days a week.
--:-- Mel Robbins: This was 2019. I was a brand new talk show host. I was living during the week at a hotel in New York City, and it was really important to me—because it was a super stressful job—that I get exercise in every day. The job required me to be at CBS Broadcast Center by 7 o'clock in the morning, and I worked most nights until at least 7 o'clock at night. I was not going to have the energy to exercise at night. I knew that about myself. So what this meant, if I had to be at the studio ready to go by 7 a.m., is I had to be exercising by 5:30 in the morning.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Now, I don't know about you, but I am not the kind of person that likes to get out of bed. The thought of being out of bed with my exercise tights on and standing in an exercise class at 5:30 in the morning—this was a whole new Mel Robbins. I knew damn well, I knew myself well enough, that there was no way I was going to get myself down to that gym at the hotel. I needed to be in a class where somebody was yelling at me if I planned on actually being there. I also knew that I needed to sign up the night before because if I had signed up, I would feel obligated to go.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So here's where it gets interesting. I find this location a couple blocks from the hotel. I set the alarm. I sign up the night before. I go to the class. I suffer through the whole thing. And if I hadn't got this next piece in place, I never would have gone back. It's the reward. Because I'm not the kind of person who is motivated simply because I feel good after I exercise. It's just not enough for me. For my husband, Chris, the sense of accomplishment is enough of a reward to lock in the habit of exercising every day. Not Mel Robbins. No way, no how.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I know that when I wake up at five o'clock in the morning, I'm going to feel better if I exercise. I still don't want to go, and I'm not going. That's where the science of habits comes in. I am not the problem. I am a normal human being who does not want to get up at five o'clock in the morning. I am not the problem. The problem is the systems.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Now I got the front end covered. I got the trigger: the alarm going off. The exercise clothes are on the floor. I already signed up. I know where I'm going. I triggered the behavior. But I was missing the reward. Until something happened. I walked past a coffee shop that was super cool. You know, like those super cool coffee shops? It almost looks like they don't really sell much of anything. They're super clean, and they've got the big Italian espresso machine thing that literally is the size of a New York City bus. And then they've got loads and loads and loads of pastries.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So I walk into this place and it looks almost like a high-end IKEA with a coffee shop in it. The barista, it's always somebody from Brooklyn. Beard, there's leather on the apron. You know the kind of place I'm talking about. The coffee smells amazing, but more importantly, they had breakfast burritos. And not just any breakfast burritos. They had these delicious breakfast burritos that had been dropped off by a woman that makes them, probably in her apartment. They were soft and gooey. When you bit into it, the flour tortilla was sort of moist and chewy. The eggs were soft and there was cheese in there and sausage in there. It was an explosion of awesomeness in my mouth. My stomach just growled thinking about it.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So I get a burrito, I get a great cup of coffee, I go back to the hotel. The next morning, my alarm goes off at 5 a.m. What do you think was the first thing that popped into my mind? The breakfast burrito. This is why the science of habits matters. When you have a reward tied to the new behavior, your mind, the second that the trigger hits—and for me, the trigger for the new behavior of exercising at 5:30 in the morning was the alarm going off and seeing my exercise clothes laid out on the floor—when you have a good reward, your mind skips over the behavior and focuses on the reward.
--:-- Mel Robbins: This is such powerful science. When I would be walking to that exercise class, you know what I was thinking about? The burrito. While I was doing abs and butt exercises and sweating like crazy, yeah, I was hating class, but you know what I was thinking about? The burrito. This is neuroscience. This is the power of breaking down the behavior into trigger, behavior, and reward.
--:-- Mel Robbins: If you want to try something new in terms of a new habit—whether it is water that you want to drink at lunch, or a walk that you want to take, or an exercise class that you want to go to, or spending more time working on your goals or your side hustle—please come up with a reward that really matters to you. And if we jump even deeper into the science here, according to Dr. Wood, the reward needs to either happen or you need to be moving toward it within two minutes of completing the behavior pattern. It's really important that that reward happen in close proximity with the behavior pattern because we want the dopamine in your brain to drop in a close relationship with the behavior pattern. That's what creates the loop. That's what removes the resistance.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Because when your brain starts to associate five o'clock in the morning and exercise tights on the floor with a big, juicy burrito, there is zero resistance to exercising. You can use this science to hack habits by focusing on the reward. And look, I want to say something loud and clear. The intrinsic "oh, it makes me feel good" has never been enough to motivate me. Never. I think if it were enough of a reward—knowing that when I'm done with my master's program, I'll feel good about myself—that doesn't make me study. "Oh, when I'm done with this class online, streaming a yoga class or a HIIT class, I'll feel much better." That does not motivate me. I need something else.
--:-- Mel Robbins: There's nothing wrong with you if simply knowing that it's going to feel good when you're done doesn't motivate you to do it. That's okay. That's not enough of a reward for most of us. I want you to embrace who you are. This is why it's not a one-size-fits-all. This is why in the biggest study around habits and how long it takes to form habits, it's between 18 and 254 days. And it's also why I want to tell you that if you're getting frustrated or the behavior isn't sticking, let's look at the reward. Look at the reward first, because you don't have a reward that matters to you.
--:-- Mel Robbins: My husband does not need a breakfast burrito to get to the gym. Mel Robbins does. Either that or an iced latte. I need something immediately following the exercise because that's what makes the habit stick. It's what makes the resistance go away. And it just is what it is.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Now, this brings me to a question I'm sure you're thinking about: if you've got a really big goal—and you should have big goals and big dreams—how do you use this science in order to keep your momentum up, to keep the small actions going? Let's just take a very common goal: losing some weight and getting healthier. You cannot attach the reward to losing all the weight. You have to figure out something that's awesome that makes it worth doing the exercise, or sticking with the healthy eating, or staying positive, or counting your steps, or whatever the behavior change is. You've got to come up with a daily reward.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Let me give you one. One of the things that works for me is that if I take on a goal with a friend, I love the reward of texting photos back and forth. There is nothing preventing you from reaching out to a friend, a family member, or a colleague and saying, "Hey, do you want to cheer each other on every day? I'm going to take on this goal of walking. I'm going to take on this goal of drinking more water. I'm going to take on this goal of writing and journaling every morning, writing three pages or writing five dreams down. How about you and I send a photo of ourselves each morning to one another doing it, just as a way to stay positive, connected, and to cheer each other on?"
--:-- Mel Robbins: To me, that was a big enough reward—knowing that I was part of a bunch of people doing something, or just two of us doing something—to keep me feeling motivated and to remove the resistance to doing it, because I was looking forward to taking the selfie of myself and putting it in the text chain. It doesn't have to be a breakfast burrito. It doesn't have to be something huge. It could be something that matters to you.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Going back to the foundational research from Dr. Lally about how long it takes to form a habit—18 to 254 days—if you're feeling like there's too much resistance, I want you to focus on the reward. I guarantee you the resistance is still there because you haven't come up with a reward that's made it worth it. You're going to realize, "There's nothing wrong with me. I've been trying to willpower this stuff and I'm still dealing with the triggers and I haven't replaced the behavior. No wonder. Oh, I don't have a reward for this other than guilt." That's not a reward. That's a punishment.
--:-- Mel Robbins: There's nothing wrong. This is amazing. When you stop beating yourself up for what you need and you start supporting yourself for where you are, you will change. It's almost hard to find the words to explain how important learning the science and hacking habits in your life is. But let me underscore it this way: I want you to create a life that you just love. I want you to become the person that you know you want to be. I want you to be happier and fulfilled because you deserve that.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I believe profoundly in an enormous body of research called behavioral activation therapy. Behavioral activation therapy is a very simple premise with decades of research behind it. That is: if you want to change your life, act like the person you want to become now. I'm going to say that again. If you want to change your life, act like the person you want to become in the future now.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I'll give you an example. Who doesn't love The Rock? I love The Rock. Let's just say that The Rock is my North Star. I want to become more like The Rock. If that's true, one way that you can hack improving your life is simply pick somebody who represents the kind of person you want to become. Then, as simple as it sounds, identify what are that person's habits. I would imagine The Rock exercises every day. I mean, I see him on Instagram doing it, so I'm assuming he's doing it every day. I would imagine that The Rock practices very positive mindset habits. I would imagine that The Rock has a pretty healthy diet. You can just start to list these things out.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Then what you're going to do is use the simple science of habits—triggers, behavior pattern, reward—to create systems to encode those new behaviors. When you do that, you are paving a pathway to the future you envision for yourself. I'm going to repeat one more thing: those folks that we all admire that are super successful or seem crazy disciplined, they're no different than you and me. They're not born with it. They don't have some superpower. They just have habits. That's it. They have systems and tools in place to remove the resistance and to encode new behavior.
--:-- Mel Robbins: The pathway to getting absolutely everything that you want is habits. Act like the person you want to become right now. Yeah, it's easier said than done, but my goal here is to empower you with this science so that you can crack the code and start thinking about systems that are going to help you hack the behavior change that you want and deserve in your life. That's the secret to locking in new habits and making them stick.
--:-- Mel Robbins: All right. I cannot wait to hear what you think about this. And in case nobody else tells you, I'm telling you: I love you. I believe in you. You know the science. You have the pathway. You know that between these triggers and these rewards, you have the hackable way to truly create a better life using science. I love you. I'll see you in the next episode.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I love talking about how you can create better habits. And most importantly, I love seeing—okay, what? Okay. Thank you so much for still being here. Not "still being here," what am I saying? Still being here. I just think that's super cool. So let's keep going. Could you do one? So let's pick up from where we left off. Great. I love that aim. Oh, great. Okay, great. Gotcha. Okay, great.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Oh, and one more thing. And no, this is not a blooper. This is the legal language that the lawyers write and that I need to read to you. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. I'm just your friend. I am not a licensed therapist, and this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional. Got it? Good. I'll see you in the next episode.
