Episode 218: The facts behind developing helpful habits and habits that hinder with Dr. Gina Cleo of Habit Change Institue
Any kind of behavior change requires a lot of motivation, a lot of reminding yourself, and a lot of consistency. In today’s episode, Fiona talks to Dr. Gina Cleo, Founding Director of the Habit Change Institute / Assistant Professor of Habit Change. Tune in as they talk about interesting facts about habits and how it affects us!
Topics discussed in this episode:
Introduction
How Dr. Gina started her business
On COVID's impact on people's ability to stick/form habits
How habits start
On Motivation's impact on our habits
Habits of Dr. Gina
Recommended resources of Dr. Gina
Myths around habits
Fear versus habit
Resources that have helped Dr. Gina
How to connect with Dr. Gina
Conclusion
Get in touch with My Daily Business Coach
Resources and Recommendations mentioned in this episode:
The brain is so complex and there are so many reasons why we don't stick to those habits that we want to create. One of the reasons is sometimes we'll go too hard too soon so our brains are only capable of changing up to three things at once. If you think of even a change in a work environment, we're trying to exercise more, or we're trying to meditate more, all those things are using up self-control until they become habitual. Once they are habitual, you don't need your self-control then. Initially, any kind of behavior change requires a lot of motivation, a lot of reminding yourself, and a lot of consistency.
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Welcome to episode 218 of the My Daily Business Coach Podcast. I'm excited that you're going to be sharing this episode with me. Pat yourself on the back because this is a good one, especially if you are somebody who plans all these things but doesn't feel like you execute them or you don't stick to stuff that you said you're going to stick to. Yes, my guest is absolutely in the realm of solving that. It's such a fun episode. I'm glad that you're here.
Before we get stuck into that, I want to acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of this beautiful land on which I record this podcast, the Wurundjeri and the Woi Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation. I pay my respects to their elders past, present, and emerging, and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded. I also welcome and pay my respects to any other indigenous people who might be here. Thank you so much for choosing this podcast. On to this episode’s small business interview.
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If you have been reading this for a while or maybe you've caught the odd episode here and there, you may know that I have been on a journey of health for two years. Not just health like eating right and exercising more, but health in terms of spiritual health and holistic health. I was watching a documentary series that was on ABC or SBS a while ago on TV about health transformation that people in all sorts of areas were doing. They had this guest on and I listened to her talk. I thought, “She is interesting.”
She's a doctor who specializes in habits. How do we change our habits? How do we form our habits? She’s a habit scientist. She's got a Ph.D. and she’s helping so many people around the world understand how the brain works in relation to habits and how we can transform our way of either sticking to habits or removing those habits that may not be the best for us. I asked Dr. Gina if she would be interested in coming on and talking about habits in relation to small businesses.
I have worked with thousands of small business owners for over six and a half years since I started this business. It’s my seventh year in 2022. What I can say is that there are a lot of people who will tell me, “I have this bad habit of X, Y, Z,” or, “I can't get in the habit to do X, Y, Z.” I'm definitely not somebody who's like, “Hustle, hustle, hustle.” I don't believe in productivity for the sake of productivity but I do know that you can garner good habits when you can cultivate them, I call them helpful habits.
If you've got my book, Passion. Purpose. Profit., you will have seen in there I talked about a whole section on helpful habits and habits that hinder. It’s differentiating the two and looking at the habits that are kind of hindering you and transforming them into habits that can help you. Our guest, Dr. Gina Cleo is the leading expert on that. I absolutely had to have her on and talk about why we come up with habits, is there any truth in things like, “It takes 21 days to break a habit,” and how can small business owners take on the science to transform themselves and create, start and stick to the habits that they know will most help them in business and in life? Here is my conversation with Dr. Gina Cleo, a habit scientist, and an all-around guru when it comes to habits.
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Hello, Dr. Gina. Welcome to the podcast.
Thank you so much, Fiona. It's great to be here with you.
You're so welcome. How are you feeling? Where are you coming from? Where are you right now?
I'm feeling good and the sun is shining. It's a lovely day on the Gold Coast. Right now, I'm in my office so I work part-time at Bond University.
Are you all safe? You're not in any way impacted by the floods right now.
I am, thankfully. My neighbors weren't so lucky. I do live in a low-level spot. I'm on acreage and my house backs onto a river. It did get a little bit high but thankfully, my house is a couple of steps up so I was okay. We were pulling out water from the neighbor's house.
That is so heartbreaking. Of all of the things. I’m glad you're okay. I hope your neighbor will be okay, as well.
Thank you.
You're so welcome. I mentioned your business in the intro but I'd love you to tell us a bit more about it. How did it start? When did it start? Most importantly, why did you start it?
I finished a Ph.D. a few years ago in habit change and there are only about five habit researchers in the world. I did a lot of media interviews about one of the studies that I published. A lot of the time the journalists would say, “Where can people find out more?” “What’s next?” I had nowhere to send people and that's when I realized that there wasn't a lot of evidence-based content about the habits space out there. I put together a little course about habit change. When I say a little course, it was a big cause of changing habits and understanding the neuroscience of habit change. That's why it started and I started it a few years ago.
Do you serve all sorts of people or are there particular people? When you said you work at Bond university, are you working with academics? Are you working with students?
I do a bit of everything so the courses that I run originally were for people that wanted to work with others so it was for coaches and health practitioners who wanted to understand habits so that they can help their clients. I then expanded and now I've written courses for everyday people. My work at Bond is helping students understand a bit more about study habits but I also work with academics so I do things like organizational habits. Once you understand the theory of the world of habits, you can apply it to any area of life. I do a lot of research in the habit space here as well.
Habits are one of those things that everybody, every single person on the planet will have habits that are good, habits that are not so great, or not so helpful. I always talk to clients about habits that help habits that hinder in terms of business. We're still going through this pandemic and so many people are finding it hard to either stick to habits or maybe they developed new habits that are either good or bad or somewhere in between, during the last few years. As an expert in this field 1 of 5, that's crazy. Given how many habits we're trying to change, I would have thought there are more people that study it. As an expert, how do you think that the pandemic has and is continuing to impact people's ability to stick to habits or to form positive or helpful habits?
It has been absolutely fascinating seeing how habits have been shaken up in this pandemic. The reason for that is habits are very much associated with our environment and also, the more stressed we are the more we fall back onto habits. The more rushed we are or whenever we're time-poor or energy-poor, we will fall back onto habits.
With a pandemic, if you think of how many things we used to do, as part of our daily routine, whether that be a commute or things that we did in the office or things that we did with work colleagues that we no longer did if say we were working from home, then all of those habits fell away. We started to create new habits in these new routines where we were working from home and we weren't able to go out to the gym or go into the office or things like that so our habits changed. Now that people are transitioning back or some people are transitioning back into their old routines, it's interesting to see some of these frozen habits as I like to call them come back into people's worlds again. It's been so fascinating to see how habits have been changing because of this pandemic.
There's so much in that. I love how you call them frozen because they're not gone. They just need to thaw out and come back. I'd also love to hear about how habits even begin because you've mentioned the environment but I know that this is a small business podcast. A lot of people who are here run small businesses. I'm wondering if you could talk us through how they start. We spend a lot of time trying to fix them, change them, or develop new ones but how do they even come about, especially the ones we're not even aware of until somebody else points out, “It’s a bit of your habit.”
It's crazy how much. Habits are completely mindless. It's definitely not something we are aware of because they are our automatic behaviors. It is so interesting when you point out people's habits and they're like, “I didn't realize that I do that all the time.” Every habit requires three key ingredients. They are a cue or a trigger, the routine, which is the habit itself, and then the reward, which is the reason why you continue to do that habit.
Habits are energy preserving so we will generally form habits because it's either essentially saving our brain power from having to think about having to do that thing. It's when our brain starts to recognize, “Every time I turn on my computer, the first thing I do is check my emails and I've done that every day for the last few days.” Your brain starts to create these neural pathways that create this automatic response.
Every time you open your email, your brain goes, “I know what's next. We check our emails.” As soon as we turn on the computer our brain then prompts us to check out emails. It's essentially a pattern. When you repeat something in the same context, which is the same time or the same place, the more you repeat it in that context. As soon as you encounter the context, your brain goes, “I know what's next,” and that's when we start to do that habit. The more you do it, the more automatic it becomes until eventually, it becomes second nature.
Habits are always triggered by something else and one of the examples I like to give is that when you put on a seatbelt when you sit in the car, it's the only time you're ever prompted to put on your seatbelt. You don't get the urge to put on your seatbelt at any other time but sitting in the car is the trigger and putting on your seatbelt is the routine. The reward that you get from that is abiding by the law or keeping yourself safe. That's how it is formed. It's a cue, routine, and reward cycle.
Is there always a reward? With the seatbelt, there's some unconscious thing of, “I'm keeping myself safe.” Especially, if you've got kids, definitely I will triple-check my kids’ seat belts so they’re in and they're safe. There is that, “They're safe now. God forbid anything happens.” Sometimes there must be a bunch of things that we're doing where it doesn't seem like a reward. If somebody's at home thinking, with the email, for instance, is that a hit of dopamine? Is that, “I'm important. Somebody's validated me by sending me emails.” What would be the reward? Is it just, “I'm doing this and it makes me feel important.”
There's always a reward and the reward will be different for every person but there's always some kind of reward even if you're not aware of it. Even if you're in denial of what the reward is, there’s always a reward. Otherwise, your brain wouldn't have this reinforced behavior that is doing over and over again. If something is painful for us, we're not going to keep doing it.
If something's inconvenient, unpleasant, or painful, we're not going to keep doing it, and certainly not habitually. Their award can be reducing your anxiety because you're going to have less emails tomorrow if you get them done today. It could be that validation or that sense of importance. There are so many different things. It could be because this is the routine and you're rewarded. We're comfortable in routines so it could be that you're playing that out.
This is fascinating. On the flip side, we've talked about how they start. Let's think about a habit you want to form that's a positive one. Why do you think people can't stick to those habits? For example, I work with lots and lots of clients from all sorts of walks of life but quite often they'll say, “I've mapped out my week and I figured out how I can do more time blocking.” “I figured out that I can set some boundaries with clients by only getting back to them at this time of day,” or all sorts of things that they're trying to do, or making time for exercise or making time to meditate.
When I usually start clients, we do one-minute deep breathing. Even with that, sometimes I'll hear them going, “I have never even taken a minute to myself to breathe.” They know that they want to do this or they'll say, “I want to get off Instagram and stop checking it all the time,” yet, they won't stick to it. Is it purely a habit of doing it for a certain amount of days or doing it for a certain amount of weeks, and then it will stick?
The brain is so complex and there are so many reasons why we don't stick to those habits that we want to create. One of the reasons is sometimes we'll go too hard too soon so our brains are only capable of changing up to three things at once. If you think of even a change in a work environment, we're trying to exercise more, or we're trying to meditate more, all those things are using up self-control until they become habitual. Once they are habitual, you don't need your self-control then.
Initially, any kind of behavior change requires a lot of motivation, a lot of reminding yourself, and a lot of consistency. On average, a habit takes 66 days to form. We're told it's 21 days or 28 days but it's not. On average, it’s 66 days. We need to keep on keeping on. The more consistent you are with a habit, the more likely you are to sustain it but also, it's important to address our triggers.
All that cue that I was talking about earlier. When you want to perform a new habit, it's important to say, “At this time, when I turn my computer on in the morning, I'm going to do one minute of deep breathing.” It has to be associated with something else, which is turning on your computer or entering the office or whatever it might be. That's the only way that you're going to be consistent with it without having to constantly remind yourself.
Eventually, every time you encounter that cue, that habit will play out automatically. That's one of the biggest things that we don't do well is associate triggers with those behaviors that we want to adopt. Finally, we don't necessarily have great accountability. Accountability is so important. We know that it doubles our chances of success. Whether that's through a habit diary, a habit tracker, or an app, or even a colleague or a friend, it's important to have that accountability with somebody.
I was just going to ask you about that and you've mentioned accountability. In terms of the trigger and the cue, if anything, where does motivation come into this? If somebody wants to change habits. For instance, I stopped drinking a few years ago. I'll still have a glass of wine maybe once or twice a year but I was finding myself that I was being super healthy by not having wine Monday to Thursday. What would happen is that I'd get a bottle on Friday and get a bottle on Saturday. I was like, “This doesn't add anything to my life.”
My husband also decided to give up at the same time and that was great. We also gave up coffee that year but there was a huge motivation, which was trying to have a second child. Does motivation play a role or does it not? I know I've read things on both sides about if you want to change a habit, what's your motivator? What's the thing that you're looking forward to if you change it, but does motivation always have to be there?
Motivation certainly helps to change a habit in the early days and then once that habit is developed, you don't need motivation anymore. For me, for example, no matter how tired I am, no matter how stressed I am, or time-poor I am, I will always brush my teeth in the morning and before I go to bed. I don't need motivation to do that.
I can't say the same for some other things in my life that I do need to be motivated to continue doing. Once you've developed a habit, you don't need motivation but it certainly does help when you're changing a habit, whether it's forming a new one or breaking an old one. It's great to have that bigger goal in mind.
For you, it was to have a second child and that was so important for you and it's more important for you than drinking and that kept you motivated. Probably without that, you may have had more relapses. You would be like, “It doesn't matter too much. There's a good occasion or it’s a Saturday night. We've had a big week. It's fine.” Because you had that big goal, that was your eyes on the prize.
Mentioning relapse, I put out a podcast ages ago on how I've set limits to all my social media. It’s fifteen minutes on Facebook, half an hour on Instagram, and then everything turns off. I can't do anything else after that. I've had so many clients who were like, “I looked at my usage, I'm spending 3 to 4 hours on Instagram a day. I'm trying to cut it down to half an hour.” You said it takes 66 days. If you relapse, or if you stop doing the habit for 2 or 3 days during that, do the 66 days start again from day one?
The research shows that if you have a couple of days in a row where you've stopped doing the habit, you can pick yourself back up and the days aren't restarting. That's a good thing. When you think of neural pathways in your brain, they are the things that tell your brain what to do, essentially, the more you do something, the more your neural pathways will grow and they'll develop and they'll get stronger. The less you do something, the smaller and weaker those neural pathways become in your brain.
It's not starting again because your brain is already helping you towards that goal. Say it's reducing your social media usage. Your brain is starting to not push you towards that usage because you're not doing it as much and so you're not going straight back to where you started. Even though it might feel like that, it's certainly not. You're already well on your way to achieving that goal. The whole goal is to pick yourself up and to keep going straight away. Don't wait for Monday. Don't wait for the new year. Pick yourself up straight away and keep going.
That's such good advice. I'm glad it was clocked back to like, “Day 66, it’s starting again.”
We would never get there because success is so not linear. We know that you have forming habits or changing habits. It's such a journey of two steps forward and one step back. That's how it's meant to be because our habits are mindless. Often we're halfway through a habit and we're like, “I said I wouldn't do that. I forgot.” You might have even had that before when you drive somewhere and you think, “I don't even remember driving here. How did I get here?” That's because our habitual behavior is automatic. It's natural for you to have relapses, especially at the beginning. Pick yourself up and keep going as quickly as possible again.
How did you get interested in habits? Have you always been interested in this? Did you grow up in a family that had good habits and talked about habits? What was your upbringing kike? Where did your interesting habits come into play?
It’s certainly not my family. I've always been science-minded. I've always been a bit of a geek like that. I trained as a dietician. I was a dietician for about twelve years. I loved my career. I found that I could help somebody on a short-term basis. The same clients would come back and we would be working on the same goals that we already worked so hard to achieve.
I wanted to learn more about sustainable change. That's when I started doing my PhD. I had no idea what I was looking for. I was searching literature about sustainable behavior change. I was trying to understand more about the brain. The more reading I did, the more I realized this whole fascinating world in habit change. That's what it was all about. That's how I became interested.
As soon as the penny dropped for me with habit change and I ran a few studies and they were super successful, that's when I decided that my whole world needed to be dedicated to this amazing topic. It's sad to say, Fiona, but I'm the girl on the beach who's got a habit-textbook that I’m reading on my weekends when other people are reading love novels. It's something I’m super fascinated with.
Can I also ask, what are your habits? You don't have to tell us all your personal habits but have there been habits that you have had to cultivate even though you're an expert in this field?
I've got good habits and I've still got habits that I'm not happy with but I haven't focused enough on trying to break them, to be honest. Certainly, the pandemic has affected my habits a lot. I work in hybrid ways. I'm part-time at home and part-time in the office and that changes what I do from day to day in how I eat and how I interact with people. How I run my workday changes depending on where I am.
I'm good with exercise. I love training in the morning. I walk my dog every day. There are some habits I have. Some terrible habit I have is probably being on social media late at night. It's not something I enjoyed doing. Obviously, I'm getting rewarded for that. I do that too much. Too much screen time. I'm aware of my habits because I'm conscious of patterns in my life and the things that serve me and the things that aren't serving me.
It's a perfect lead-up to what I wanted to ask as well. When you said, “I know I need to not be on social media so much at night,” for example, how can people recognize if a habit is a habit and it's not good or bad, it's just something you do or it's something that is negatively impacting your life in some way? I'm using the social media thing. Sometimes clients are like, “I'm in social media.” Often, it might lead to a comparison between another business owner, somebody else in a similar industry, a competitor, or whatever and then they can get down on themselves and it can go into this whole spiral.
They then might work on it for a bit and then they'll be like, “It doesn't matter. Everyone's on social media.” How do you know if it's something that you do? My husband always leaves a cup on one side of the sink and it irritates me. We've been together for over fifteen years. I don't think he's ever going to change that. We have laughed, like, “I'll be in my 80s asking you to put the cap on the other side after you've washed it.” It doesn't impact anyone, except it annoys me. There might be something else that he does or that I do that's negative.
The cup would drive me insane as well.
Thank you. You're my supporter.
The question is asking yourself, “How do I feel after doing this habit? What are some of the pros and cons? Firstly, why am I doing it? What is it fulfilling? What question is it answering? What mood is it coming out? Am I always checking social media when I'm lonely? Am I feeling a true connection when I'm checking social media?” It's having those hard, honest conversations with ourselves sometimes.
Sometimes habits are completely neutral. They're not beneficial or unbeneficial, they just are. They just preserve energy in our brain and that's completely fine. Most of the time, they will either serve you or not in one way or another. The idea is to be super-mindful about why we're doing the habit, first of all, and when we're doing it, and trying to recognize those patterns.
That’s such good advice. I'm going to ask my husband if he's reserving brainpower and why he can't put the cup on the other side.
It’s complete laziness.
Can people book in to talk to you about their habits?
I don't see people one on one. I have trained some incredible coaches and you can find them on my website. I've got a whole list of advanced habit practitioners that I've personally trained. People can certainly access me by jumping onto one of my courses. I teach all my courses personally and we're on Zoom and it's super interactive. I can answer people's questions that way.
Outside of going in and working with you through the courses or working through one of the coaches that have been trained by you, are there other habit tools, habit books, or habit apps that you would recommend to people?
I would recommend something called a habit tracker. If you google image habit tracker, you'll see a whole bunch of trackers that come up. They're also available in an app form. There are about 50 apps that are habit trackers, some are free and some are not. I don't have any personal favorites but there are plenty out there.
Habit trackers are important because research shows that we are likely to double our chance of success if we track our habits. Habit tracking allows you to write down the habit that you want to create or break and then you tick off every time you've done it. It sounds super simple and they are super simple. It's like positive reinforcement. You probably might do this with your kids, I know some people do. You give your kids a gold star every time they do something positive and that makes them feel good. It makes them want to do it again. I'd like to say we grow out of that but you don't.
That positive reinforcement when you give yourself a tick or you cross something off your to-do list helps your brain to go, “That felt good. I'm going to do that again.” It also gives you a beautiful visual representation of how well you're doing with the habits that you're wanting to change. That support is something called self-efficacy or self-belief. When you've got self-belief, you feel like you can do anything.
It's like the rings on the Apple Watch. If you walk, it'll be like, “You've completed your ring today.” You get this little firework explosion.
A confetti party.
You've mentioned one before when you said there's this myth out there that habits only take 21 days to break and you've said that they don’t. They take 66 at least. Are there any other kinds of myths that you want to myth bust? Is there anything else that you think is a myth out there around habits?
Another one is you can't teach an old dog new tricks. You certainly can. Our brains are constantly changing. Every single day, our brains are rewiring. Old cells die away and new cells are formed. It’s the same with neural pathways. Whatever habit you have, however long you've had it and however strong it feels, you can change your habits. It doesn't matter how old you are or any of that. Our brains are a lot more malleable when we're younger but that doesn't mean that we can't change our habits as we get older. If we've had them for a long time, they can still be changed.
I'm putting you on the spot here. You may be like, “That's not my area of expertise.” Is there a difference between a habit and a fear? I'm less petrified now but I've grown up petrified of spiders my whole life. I live in a bushy area so it's not good to have this fear. With my habit, the trigger would be the spider. I'd run away and I’d either kill it or I've left the house and gone to sleep somewhere else if there's a spider in the house, even if it's completely a daddy longlegs or something.
My husband has a spider jar and he's teaching the kids to capture the spider and put it outside. I've seen him do it enough that I'm trying to do that and I've done it a couple of times. Is there a difference? Obviously, there are more severe fears than being worried about spiders. What would you say is something that's fear versus habit?
Well done with the jar, by the way. That's a great step forward. There’s definitely a difference. Your fears create a primal response, which is that fight or flight mode that you get into. What you do once you encounter something that you're scared of can be habitual. For you, it's leaving the house. You might do that out of habit every time. Somebody else might have a different response to the same kind of fear that you have. The actual fear is not habitual at all. The actual fear is very much your brain telling you that you're in danger and that's not something that is within your immediate control. What you do after you encounter that fear is something that you can change.
Thank you for answering that. You have helped many people in this business but also in your previous business. I'm wondering, have you had mentors? Is there a particular mantra or a particular book that has helped you with your business?
I've had many mentors over the years. When I did my PhD, I had some incredible supervisors and mentors along the way and people that I couldn't have been where I am without them. I have an amazing agent who helps me with all of my contracting work and consulting work. She's my rock. It’s been little nuggets that I've accumulated over the years. I can't pinpoint one thing that I've gone, “Yes, that's what's helped me build my business.” It's been consistency and small little things along the way.
Anyone can be a mentor to you as you go through life and business. With all of the different things that you do now like speaking, consulting, and all these different things, are there any apps or platforms that you couldn't run your business without?
I don't think so. I keep things simple. I'm the last person that gets on board with certain tech things. I do my little thing and I keep things simple. I do run my courses on Kajabi and that's been helpful. Where would we be without Zoom? There’s nothing profound or unique.
Sometimes it's a good thing to be the last one to jump up these things. Sometimes we don't need so much technology in our life. What are you most proud of about your journey in this business?
I am one of the only people in the world that teaches evidence-based habits and I am proud of that. I'm certainly the youngest person and the only Australian that gets the honor of doing this. It is such a big leap because I'm in this space where it's new and innovative but it's important. I'm proud of making sure that everything I've ever put out has been science-based and evidence-backed. That's something that I'm proud of. I didn't piggyback on anything. I created something that had never been created before. That's something I'm proud of.
I've got a huge smile on my face listening to that. It’s amazing. You should feel proud of yourself. Not only are you super young and Australian but you're a woman in the science field as well. You're ticking so many boxes, it's incredible. You should feel so proud. I'm sure there are many people that will be reading this or other people that work with you that are inspired by you being this pioneer in this field.
Thanks, Fiona. That's lovely. Thank you.
You're welcome. What is next for you? To quote the journalist that got you on here, “Maybe this could be a business.” Where can people connect with you? You've mentioned your courses. Is it best to find you on social media? Is it best to find you on your website? Where will people find you?
You can connect with me through my Instagram, which is @DrGinaCleo, or my Facebook, which is the same, or through my website, which is also DrGinaCleo.com. I've also got another website, which is HabitChangeInstitute.com and that's that anyone interested in learning about how to help their clients. Whether you're a coach, for example, that might be something that interests you on there.
What's next for me? I have been asked to write a book several times. That might be one of the things that I do. After writing a 100,000-word thesis and three courses, I was like, “Writing a book is the last thing I feel like doing.” I do think that writing a book would allow the message about habits to be in the community freely and make it more available. That might be what's next for me.
I was thinking the whole way through when you're talking. I was like, “I wish she had a book.” You should. There are so many books on habits. That's why it's fascinating to me, like, “There are only five people doing this with evidence-based. That's such an important thing. Often, you can read these books and then feel like a failure that you're not sticking to the habits or whatever. If they're not taught with that evidence-based, perhaps they're not being taught in a certain way that is useful for people.
If something's not practical, it doesn't make sense. It leaves you feeling like you can't achieve it and it is frustrating. One of the popular books talks about being 1% better. That is not a measurable outcome. It doesn't make tangible sense. It's not evidence-based. Although it's popular and it's out there. If it helps people, that's awesome. I love being able to put things out that I'm 100% sure will work for the majority of people because that's what science shows us will happen. That’ll be the journey.
This has been fascinating. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing your wisdom. As soon as you get that book out, let us know so we can post it around for our audiences. Thank you so much for coming in. This has been fascinating.
Thanks, Fiona. It's been lovely to chat with you. Thanks for reading everyone.
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What an interesting conversation. I want to say thank you again to Dr. Gina Cleo for coming on and talking about habits, the science behind it, and the way that our brain works. Often, we can think, “This is my fault. I can't get off Instagram. Why can't I batch create my content? Why can't I do X, Y, Zed in my business that I know would help me?” I love that she talked about many different ways to help yourself create and cultivate those habits. I also love that Dr. Gina was like, “I don't have perfect habits myself. I've got things that I need to work on.”
I loved chatting with her. I would love to know what you most took away from this episode with Dr. Gina Clio. There are many things. I was taking a lot of notes. One of the things that stood out for me was the idea of 66 days. A habit does not just change in three weeks. We have heard that so many times, “If I could just stick to it for three weeks.” I also loved that she talked about the longer you're not doing that, the easier it is to not do it. It's like a catch-22. The more often you're doing it, the more that part of your brain is getting fired up and being like, “This is what we do when X, Y, Zed happens.”
If I go into Instagram and I see my competitor doing this, the brain is like, “This is what we normally do. We go down this path.” As opposed to looking at the trigger and the cues and looking at how you can amend or change those. Over time, you are less likely to go down a shame spiral or some of the way that you might go. That was the first thing. I love that she blew that myth out of the water that you can change your habits quickly. It does take work. It's like anything else in life that it does take a bit of effort as well. I love that point.
The other point that I loved that Dr. Gina talked about was the idea of motivation and that you need it at the start, for sure. Once you have developed a habit, you don't need the motivation as much. That can be something that people sit and wait for this motivation to strike, like, “If I could get myself motivated, I could do it.” From my own experience, sometimes I need to take action and then the motivation comes. I go for morning walks quite often.
If you follow me on Instagram, @MyDailyBusinessCoach, you may have well seen the walks that I go on, I'm often taking photos and sharing them. It's a part of my life. I love where I live. We chose intentionally to live where we do. We're lucky to live where we do. The nature that surrounds me is a huge part of my life. I try and get into that as much as possible.
There are mornings when my youngest has been up during the night or I'm stressed or there are some things in my mind and I can't be bothered to get out of bed and go for that walk. I know that when I push myself to do it, I’m always surprised at how much my mood changes. I go out and I might be like, “I'm tired. I've got so much on. The kids didn't sleep.” I get up and I'm surrounded by this nature.
There are these two wonderful older gentlemen that I often see on one particular walk that I do. I love having a chat with them. I love seeing that they're up and about. I know exactly where I'm at because one of them always walks on the dot of a certain hour. I know that I'm late or I'm early depending on where he is with his dogs. It gives me a much better mood in the morning and I love it. I love the attitude that you have when you come back from a walk.
That's not to say that I have the motivation all the time. I started doing this much more regularly because of the pandemic and this whole health journey. I can say that now, I don't need as much motivation because it's a habit. I know the days that I go and other times that I go. I also have two dogs that need to be walked. It's followed that pattern that Dr. Cleo talked about, which is you need motivation at the start.
During the pandemic, my motivation was like, “I need to get out of the house. I need to get away from everyone. I want to have a nice walk.” I started doing that. Now, the motivation does not necessarily have to be there because I'm going to do it. I know that even if I wake up and I'm not in the mood, I'm still going to get up and do it. I know that I feel good afterward and it's a habit that I love now. Hopefully, it's a habit that I'm going to keep up forever. What a good habit to have, getting up early in the morning and going out for a beautiful walk especially being surrounded where I am.
I would love to know what you learned from Dr. Gina Cleo that is going to stick with you. Please, don't be a stranger. you can let me know through DM, @MyDailyBusinessCoach, on Instagram. You can send an email, Hello@MyDailyBusinessCoach.com. If you'd like to connect with Gina Cleo, you can find her over at DrGinaCleo.com. If you are on social media and you'd like to connect with Dr. Gina Cleo and maybe let her know what you found useful from this, you can find her, @DrGinaCleo, on Instagram. Thank you so much for reading. I'll see you next time.
