Wondery plus subscribers can listen to 10% happier early and ad free right now. Join Wondery plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. It's the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris.
Hey, Dan here coming at you with a brief solo pod. No guest. It's just me. It's a new year and many of you are contemplating resolutions. And yet, by the end of the month, statistically, most of you will have bailed on these resolutions. It's an annual boom and bust cycle that can be terrible for your motivation and for your self-esteem.
Over the last eight years, as the host of this show, I've interviewed many of the world's leading experts on habit formation. In this episode, I'm going to give you my top 10 takeaways, all based in the science of behavior change. The goal is to put you in the best position to succeed at keeping your resolutions or making change at any time of year.
Let me start with the bad news. Making and breaking habits can be diabolically difficult. Evolution designed our brains to excel at short-term survival tasks like spotting threats, finding food, and finding mates. That wiring leaves us ill-equipped for the slow, steady work required to reach long-term goals, which often do not provide any immediate rewards. That may sound discouraging, but in a perverse way, it's actually good news.
A lot of us try to make or break habits. We fail and then we tell ourselves a whole story about how we are uniquely deficient in this regard. But there's nothing wrong with you. You don't have to blame yourself. You can blame evolution.
And there's more good news, even though our brains are designed to solve immediate problems, that doesn't mean you can't meet long-term goals. It just means that you have to come up with some strategies to hack your brain to make it so that you're not relying on the supremely unreliable fuel of willpower. By understanding the psychology of habit formation and then designing around it, you can actually make massive change in your life.
Bottom line, this is doable. It may be messy, but it's doable. Okay, before we dive in three quick notes. First, I mentioned that I'll be giving you my top 10 takeaways. But remember, this is a menu, not a to-do list. Just pick a few things that you think will work for you and then run some experiments.
Second, I want to tell you that this mini episode kicks off a big January here on the show. We're launching a big series that we're calling Do Life Better. We have identified the top resolutions that people tend to make at this time of year, fitness, meaning diet, exercise and so forth, personal finances, career success and work life balance and reducing your addictions to things like your phone and alcohol.
We'll do a week on each of these subjects with our typical blend of modern science and ancient wisdom. Very excited about this series and it starts on Monday. The third thing to say is that alongside all of the programming we're doing here on the podcast, we will also be running a free meditation challenge over on DanHarris.com.
As you will hear me explain below, in many ways, meditation is the foundational habit. Mindfulness or self-awareness can fuel the whole process of behavior change. The challenge runs for seven days. It starts on Monday, January 6th. Every day, you will get a guided meditation in your inbox from some of your favorite meditation teachers, including Sharon Salzburg, Sabine Selassie, and Jeff Warren.
And then on several evenings over the course of the week, I will do some live check-ins where you can ask me anything. Like I said, the whole thing is free. All you have to do is subscribe over at DanHarris.com. And if you're already a subscriber, you don't have to do anything else. The emails will arrive automatically. Again, it starts this coming Monday, January 6th. So sign up now. OK, let's do this. My top 10 takeaways for habit change.
Number one is to pick the right goals. According to the behavior change researchers with whom I have spoken in the compilation of this episode, this really is the key first step. Everything flows from this. You want to choose the kinds of resolutions that are most likely to work.
There are three aspects to this. You want your goals to be specific and achievable, for example, instead of resolving to get fit, maybe resolve to exercise three times a week, or instead of resolving to be more of a reader, you can resolve to read one book a month. Second aspect is that your goal should be positive and approach oriented, not negative and avoidance oriented. For example, instead of resolving to stop eating crap, you might want to resolve to eat more vegetables.
Finally, you want to limit the number of resolutions you're making. Don't try to boil the ocean and change everything at once. Okay, so that's the first takeaway. Pick the right resolutions. The second takeaway is to make it easy. Once you've chosen your goals or resolutions, you want to make the process as easy as possible. There are lots of ways to do this. Here are five ways to make it easy. Way number one, start small.
Let's go back to evolution for a second. Given that our brains are wired for short-term goals and quick rewards, you want to break your long-term goals into manageable bite-sized chunks. I do not love cliches, as many of you know, but here's one that seemed to apropos and helpful.
Inch by inch, life is a cinch, yard by yard, it's very hard. Okay, so how to do this practically? One little slogan that I use when people ask me how to boot up a meditation habit is, one minute counts. Start with one minute, get some wins on the board and let that approach build momentum for you.
Similarly, James Clear, who's the author of a huge bestseller on this subject called Atomic Habits and also a past guest on this show, he talks about something called the two-minute rule. So he sets the bar a little higher than I do instead of one minute. It's two minutes, but the idea is the same to make beginning the habit so easy that there's no resistance to getting started. For example, instead of going for a run every morning, the two-minute version might be put your running shoes on and go outside.
Or if your goal is to read more, you can start by reading one page a night.
This approach of starting small both lowers the threshold to start and it also does something very useful for your identity because you can start telling yourself a story of I'm the kind of person who exercises or I'm a regular reader. And this identity reinforcement helps you make the habits stick in the longer term. The second way to make habit formation easier is something the researchers call habit stacking or piggybacking.
Basically, it involves identifying one of your existing habits, something you never miss, and then tacking the new habit onto it. For example, after I pour my morning coffee, I'll meditate for two minutes.
A third way to make things easier for yourself is to optimize your environment, to minimize the obstacles or temptations that could hinder your new habit. For example, if you're trying to exercise, keep your workout clothes or your equipment easily accessible. Or if you're trying to eat healthier, keep nutritious snacks at eye level in the kitchen while placing the treats out of sight. You can also optimize your digital environment by blocking websites that distract you during work hours or using apps that limit your screen time.
The fourth hack involves automation. For example, when it comes to your personal finances, you can use automated savings plans that deduct a portion of your income each month and then transfer it into a savings account. Because it's automatic, you avoid the temptation to spend the money. There are studies showing that this can be a quite effective way to make people save more.
One final thought when it comes to making habits as easy as possible is something called the Fresh Start Effect. This is a psychological phenomenon where people feel more motivated to pursue their goals after a temporal landmark such as the start of a new year, a birthday, or even the beginning of a new week. Research from the Wharton School's Katie Milkman, also a past guest on this show, found that people are more likely to take action towards self-improvement after these landmarks because they feel like new beginnings.
Okay, so those are five ways to make habit formation easier. And again, just to reset, make it easy was the second big takeaway here. So those five tips were kind of a list within a list. Let's move on now to takeaway number three, which is be flexible. If you've got some give or some elasticity in the system, the research shows you are much more likely to reach your goals.
Because if you're too rigid about habit formation when you inevitably miss a day or falter in some way, the voice in your head is likely to swoop in and tell you that you're a failure and then boom, you're done. So here's another list within a list. There are three ways to incorporate some flexibility into your habit formation game. The first idea takes us back to the fresh start effect.
Not only does the fresh start effect make things easier because you can draft off of the feeling of having a clean slate, but you can also use the fresh start effect to help you get back on the wagon even when you fall off. Every Monday can be a fresh start. Every new day can be a fresh start. Second tip here is a concept called daily-ish. This is one of my favorite slogans. I got it from a woman who showed up at one of my public talks many years ago, and this woman said she got it from her yoga teacher.
Again, the slogan is daily-ish. You don't have to try to do it every day. Daily-ish. I love this. And finally, the never miss twice rule. This also comes from James Clear, who I talked about earlier. The idea is that while missing a habit once is inevitable, missing it twice can create a bit of a negative pattern, hence the rule never miss twice. I also love this. It's the perfect mix of flexibility and structure.
Moving on now to takeaway number four, make it meaningful. You want to choose goals that are aligned with your values so that you are intrinsically motivated. In other words, you're motivated to do it because you want to do it. It's often much more powerful than when you're extrinsically motivated, meaning you're doing something because somebody else or the larger culture is telling you to do it.
I remember once interviewing the psychologist Kelly McGonagall about habit formation. And she talked about how for her, she likes to pay attention to that feeling of a hook in her chest, pulling her forward towards something. And I like that. So pick a resolution that aligns with your values or yoke whatever resolution you've chosen to your values. For example, I exercise because I want to be healthy for my son who's nine years old. I meditate because I want to be less cranky with my wife, et cetera.
One way to supercharge this sense of intrinsic motivation is through creating rituals, which research suggests can transform habits into something much deeper and more meaningful. For example, I have this little thing where right before I meditate or right before I work out, I say to myself, I'm doing this to make myself stronger and happier so that I can make other people stronger and happier. It's a little off brand and it's earnestness, but it really does remind me of my real purpose and imbues the thing with so much more meaning.
Another way to imbue the process of habit formation with meaning is to get in touch with your future self. This is super interesting to me. The idea is to see if you can use your imagination to create a relationship with the version of yourself 20 or 30 years down the road. This notion comes from a guy named Hal Hirschfield, who's also been on this show and whose research has borne this idea out. He recommends writing a letter from your 80 year old self to your current self.
I want to say that if you're not going to write a letter, which I get, I'm not going to write a letter either, you can just do an imaginary dialogue. For me, viewing my current life through the lens of my future self makes things like exercise and meditation and healthy eating so much more obvious. I really do want to be as healthy as possible at age 80 for myself, of course, but also for my son and for the world. Takeaway number four, make it meaningful. Time now for takeaway number five, which is make it fun.
To state the blazingly obvious, we are much more likely to do something if we actually enjoy doing it. To that end, two ideas. First is something called temptation bundling. Only allow yourself to enjoy a guilty pleasure, like watching a favorite TV show, while doing a healthy habit you want to build, like exercising.
This links the reward with the desired behavior. And as the aforementioned Katie Milkman told me here on the show, people who try to make it fun to pursue their goals get farther because they persist.
The second idea specifically pertains to exercise, which is the number one resolution people make at this time of year. And this idea comes from the aforementioned Kelly McGonagall, who wrote a whole book about the joy of exercise. She argues that emphasizing the joy of movement, rather than shame or self-criticism or keeping up with your neighborhood as great abs, can make you much more likely to establish an abiding habit.
The idea of making a fun leads me to take away number six, which is make it a team sport. There's a ton of evidence that having what psychologists call social support can be an incredibly powerful way to establish a habit. This is why, as you may have heard me say before, the Sangha or community is such a key part of Buddhist practice. And this is why I'm so excited to create a sense of community around the New Year's meditation challenge over on DanHarris.com.
From what I can tell there appear to be at least four reasons why social support is so crucial. First, doing stuff with a group can make it more fun. As we've already established, that's important. Second, other people can provide much needed motivation and encouragement, which can get you through the fallow periods when you might otherwise give up.
Third, being part of a group where others are practicing the habit that you're trying to build, like having a gym buddy or joining a book club, it can really reinforce the behavior through social norms. When the people around us are modeling the habits we want to form, we are more likely to adopt those habits ourselves.
And fourth, social support provides a sense of accountability that makes it harder to bail. By publicly committing yourself to a goal, you introduce accountability and create external pressures to avoid letting other people down, which leads me to takeaway number seven, which is making yourself accountable.
Aside from making commitments to other people, there are many other ways to make yourself accountable. One of them that I'm going to talk about now is kind of the opposite of temptation bundling, which I mentioned earlier, instead of rewarding yourself for doing your resolution, you punish yourself for not doing it. There are apps
like stick, which is spelled with 2Ks, or B-Minder, B-E-E-Minder, which allow you to set a goal and put money on the line, which you lose if you don't meet your commitments. This financial punishment increases the stakes, and it makes you more likely to follow through. To be clear, this is not for everybody, but it's just something to consider, and there's some evidence behind it. Okay, takeaway number eight, which is to track yourself.
Research suggests that tracking your attempts to boot up a new habit, either through a simple journal or through a habit tracking app, can be super helpful. First, because it reinforces consistency and accountability, which we discussed earlier. Seeing your progress or your lack of progress can motivate you and keep you on the path.
Second, because tracking boosts your self-awareness. For example, if you're trying to boot up an exercise habit, tracking can reveal what days or what times of day you're most likely to follow through. This can help you adjust your approach to be more effective.
And third, because tracking provides positive reinforcement. It gives you a chance to celebrate the little wins, which builds momentum. And just to say, celebrating wins, according to the experts, is not a small matter. It's not just about feeling good. It's about building confidence and maintaining motivation.
which is important because, as we've discussed, what we're trying to do here is, in many ways, counter-evolutionary. People often take screenshots of their meditation streaks on their meditation app and then send the pictures to me on Twitter or via text. And I love that. First, because seeing your streak can be a powerful motivator. And second, because doing a little healthy bragging about it is also motivational, and it also taps back into the importance of social support, which we talked about earlier.
Just to say on this topic, as some of you've heard me discuss before, I've spent the past six years working with these excellent communications coaches, Mudita Nisker and Dan Klerman, who've taught me all sorts of healthy habits for interpersonal hygiene. And often, they'll have me recount successful conversations to them because they believe that savoring the winds really pounds the learnings into your molecules. And I have found that to be true.
Okay, so back to habit tracking here. How do you actually do this? As I mentioned before, there are habit tracking apps such as Streaks or Habit Bull, or you can just do it in a plain old journal. A little bit more blatant self-promotion here. My wife and I just designed and released a journal called Dump It Here, and you can buy it on the Shop tab at DanHarris.com. One last thing to say before we move into the final two takeaways, and this is a point that James Clear makes a lot.
When it comes to booting up a habit, you may be best served by focusing less on the big goals and more on the day to day systems that will help you reach that goal.
So much of what we've discussed thus far in this little episode after my first takeaway, which was about choosing the right goals. After that, it's all been about setting up the right systems in your life, making it easy, making it fun, tracking, social support, et cetera. The goals are helpful north stars, but the systems are what will really get you there. As James says, you don't rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.
All right, two more takeaways here. Takeaway number nine, harness the power of mindfulness. I know this is a rather predictable thing for me to say, given that I missed your meditation or whatever, but still there is a lot of evidence to suggest that mindfulness can be incredibly helpful when it comes to habit formation. It's not a silver bullet, there are no silver bullets, but studies show that mindfulness, which is a kind of healthy self-awareness,
can help you resist automatic or reactive behaviors. In other words, it can help you resist your cravings. It can also jar you out of autopilot mode in which you're more likely to fall back into your old habit.
Further mindfulness can lower your overall stress level and stress is often what gets us to veer off the path. So here's a three step process for my friend, Dr. Judson Brewer, who's been on the show many times and we'll be back on the show in a few weeks. So ambient mindfulness can be helpful in habit formation, but you can also specifically apply mindfulness to the process of habit formation in a way that has also been shown.
to be very helpful. I'm going to give you a three step process that you can run in your own life. And this comes from my friend, Dr. Judson Brewer, who's been on the show many times and will, in fact, be back on the show in a few weeks. Step number one, per Judd, is to recognize the habits that make you addicted and to then map out what Judd calls your habit loops.
So, a habit loop consists of three parts. The cue, the routine, and the reward stay with me. So, for example, I get home from work, I pour myself a drink, and I feel relaxed. So, that's the cue getting home from work, the routine pour myself a drink, and then the reward is that I feel relaxed. Or I get bored, I grab my phone, and my mind is occupied.
So that's the habit loop, step one. Step two is to look at the results of your actions, to ask yourself, what am I really getting from this habit? Does that drink make me more relaxed, or does it mess up my sleep and leave me with a hangover? Does grabbing my phone make me feel better, or does it fill me with FOMO?
If you use your mindfulness to examine what you're actually getting out of your addictive habits, it can create a positive sense of dis-enchantment, which makes you less likely to do the thing. And finally, Judd says you should find what he calls the BBO, or the bigger, better offer. The brain is a pleasure-seeking machine, so if you can give it a bigger, better offer, it can be really helpful. So once you realize that your old habits are ultimately unsatisfying, what can you do instead?
Often, mindfulness itself is the BBO. Our brains like to be aware. Again, Judd will be on the show in a few weeks to talk about this in more detail. As I mentioned, he had been on the show discussing this before, and I'll drop some links in the show notes.
Time now for the final takeaway takeaway number 10. And for me, this is really the most important one. And it is self-compassion. I think of this as the Uber habit, the ER habit, the upstream habit, the one that makes everything else possible.
Many of you know what self-compassion is, but just to repeat it, it is the ability to talk to yourself the way you would talk to a good friend. So instead of motivating yourself with self-hatred and self-flagellation, you can motivate yourself the way a good coach motivates his or her players.
A good coach doesn't let their players off the hook. They point out mistakes. They hold people accountable. They're just not dicks about it. We all have the capacity to be good friends and mentors to other people. And we can channel that capacity and direct it toward ourselves. This really is not gooey nonsense. There is hard science showing that self-compassionate people are more likely to reach their goals. It makes you more resilient and less likely to succumb to what's been called, and I love this phrase, the subtle aggression of self-improvement.
Here's a quick practice that you can do in moments when you're beating yourself up for being insufficiently dogged or whatever when it comes to your resolutions. First step is to use your mindfulness to notice that you're in a difficult moment right now. You can even say to yourself, this sucks. Second step is to bring to mind that millions of other people are dealing with this exact same set of feelings and thoughts at this exact moment. It may feel like your problems are bespoke and unique, but you are not alone.
And third step, and this one is the key for me. Talk to yourself the way you would talk to a good friend. Here's a little tip here. It can be helpful to use your own name, which can create some psychological distance. There's some research behind this. So for me, I might say, dude, I know you missed three days of meditation and you feel like a massive hypocrite, but nothing's been lost. You can always start again. You're good.
Self-compassion, I want to say, is not an overnight solution. In my experience, it takes a little while to develop. I'm still working on it. I still screw up all the time. In fact, I like to think about the fact that it takes self-compassion on the road to booting up the habit of self-compassion, but it has made a huge difference in my own life.
All right, so those are my top 10 tips for actually keeping your resolutions. I want to say a few things in closing here. First, we've made a playlist of all of the episodes we've done on habit formation. I'll put a link to that in the show notes. It includes James Clear and Judd Brewer and Katie Milkman and many other people I've referenced during this podcast. It also includes a couple of episodes with my old friend Gretchen Rubin, whose work I did not discuss here, but is really helpful. She's written about something called the four tendencies, which are a fascinating way to understand
how your personality type intersects with your efforts to change your behavior. Second thing to say in closing here is that if you're a subscriber to DanHarris.com, you will get a cheat sheet of this episode, which includes a summary of all of the points I made plus a full transcript. I know I've thrown a lot of stuff at you, so these cheat sheets can be really helpful. Subscribers get cheat sheets for all of our episodes. You should sign up.
And finally, speaking of DanHarris.com, don't forget to subscribe so you can be part of our free meditation challenge, which starts in a couple of days. The challenge runs for seven days. It starts on Monday, January 6th. Every day you'll get a guided meditation in your inbox. And then on several evenings during the week, as I mentioned earlier, I'll do some live check-ins where you can ask me anything.
Like I said, it's free. All you have to do is subscribe over at denharris.com. And if you're already a subscriber, nothing else you need to do, the emails will start arriving automatically on Monday. Oh, actually, there is one more thing I want to say as we wind down here. We have much, much more New Year's programming coming up here on the pod. On Monday, we launch a week on the science and the Dharma of physical fitness. The next week, it's our finances and our relationship to money.
Then we do a week on work-life balance and professional success, and then its addictions.
And truly, what I'm about to say is the final thing I'm going to say, which is that I want to thank everybody who worked so hard on this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson, who's the producer on this episode. Thank you, Tara. Caroline Keenan and Eleanor Vasili are recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our production manager. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer and DJ Cashmere is our executive producer and Nick Thorburn of one of my favorite bands, Islands, Road Art Theme. Happy new year, everybody. We'll see you on Monday.
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