The Power of Keystone Habits for Your Goals

Summary

In this episode, Laurie Groh discusses the topic of habits and their impact on our lives. She approaches the conversation as a workshop, encouraging listeners to reflect on their own habits and identify the cues, cravings, responses, and rewards associated with them. Laurie introduces the concept of keystone habits, which have a disproportionate impact on overall behavior. She highlights the importance of making beds and shares a study that suggests people who make their beds are more likely to become millionaires. Laurie also emphasizes the significance of sleep as a keystone habit and its effects on mood, cravings, and overall well-being. She concludes by encouraging listeners to identify beneficial keystone habits in their own lives, using yoga as an example.

Takeaways

• Reflect on your own habits and identify the cues, cravings, responses, and rewards associated with them.
• Consider incorporating keystone habits into your routine, as they disproportionately impact overall behavior.
• Making your bed can positively impact your life and may even increase your chances of becoming a millionaire.
• Prioritize sleep as a keystone habit, as it affects various aspects of your life, including mood, cravings, and cognitive function.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Workshop Format

01:30 Keystone Habits

03:26 Sleep as a Keystone Habit

06:17 Identifying Beneficial Keystone Habits

06:48 Yoga as a Keystone Habit

Shoreside Therapies: 

Book a free 15-minute consultation online and get into therapy within a week!

MICHAEL PHELPS cold tub:

Chilly GOAT Cold Tub 

Laurie's Top 5 Recommended Books on Habits:

1. ⁠The Power of Habit⁠
2. ⁠Atomic Habits⁠
3. The One Thing ($1.79 for a limited time)
4. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
5. Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything (Free with Kindle Unlimited)

Transcript:

Laurie Groh (00:01.851)

Hi, my name's Laurie Groh

Laurie Groh (00:07.57)

I am the co-owner of Shoreside Therapies and the owner of Vital Minds. And I'm gonna talk to you today about habits. So this is part two of the habits. I would say it's like a workshop. I wanna use it as a workshop. Let's use it as a, let's do that. Let's use it as a workshop because I love podcasts and I'm...

I'm really into it, like making it, like listening to it. I just want you to be able to use this as a way to get yourself moving. So I am going to talk today about habits again. And this time we're going to be talking about some of those habits that you wrote down, some of those things that you already do. What are some of those habits, good or bad, that you already have in place? And then I want you to figure out what is the cue.

What is the craving? What is the response? And then what's the reward? I want you to see if you can grab something like that out. If you if not, if you didn't do that, you can go back and listen to it. But ultimately, if you have one in mind, you should be good to go. All right, so...

We're going to talk about keystone habits right now. We're going to move into that because I think this is an important piece of the puzzle that we are going to want to make note of. The keystone habits are habits that we do that are, that have a disproportionate impact on overall behavior. So making your bed is one that I find to be very interesting.

one, because I don't think I've ever made my bed until three years ago. And now I do it every single day, pretty much. And I will do it sort of again later on, because my kids are all in there, and then we're like getting ready for bed, and my bed's all disheveled. I don't know why I just feel so nice to have it made. So at any rate...

Laurie Groh (02:29.662)

Turns out, because I'm making my bed, I'm going to be a millionaire, because studies show that people who make their beds in the morning are 206.8% more likely to become millionaires. So if you caught that, what that means is not that I'm going to actually be a millionaire, because that is correlation, not necessarily causation. However...

I'm going to pretend that that's going to occur. And maybe it'll, maybe it just will, because I'm putting it out in the universe. But this is real. This is a real research study by Randall Bell, and he talks about making your bed, having a really huge impact on the rest of your life. So they call it a keystone habit because of that. Because it tends to get

other things moving. Meditation is like that as well because if we are doing meditation, we are more likely to be clear headed, we're more likely to be calm, thereby creating other calm, focused energy throughout the day. We might do that even more. And there it builds in itself. Sleeping is another keystone habit.

that I feel is extremely important. One of the things when I'm working with clients, if they're having some depression or if it's a significant depression, I ask them about sleep because it is a pretty clear indicator that depression is occurring. It can also be anxiety

Laurie Groh (04:25.606)

If somebody is not sleeping enough, they don't necessarily realize that affects every single thing else in their life. If you ever change any one thing, change your sleep to get more sleep. Because it does affect our mood, it affects how much we crave sugar, it affects our driving, it affects how...

likely we are to be in a car accident or to have another accident. It affects our memory. It affects, I could, I mean I could go on and on and on, but it affects our mood and we don't even know we're sleep deprived. That's what's the most mind-blowing part of sleep deprivation is we do not even know we are actually sleep deprived. That is

sort of like, you know, when people talk about drunk driving, right? Like that's a, obviously that's a really, really significant, significantly poor choice, right? We know that, we understand that. We also know that a lot of times people that have a few cocktails don't necessarily know that they're over the influence. So that's why a lot of times you'll see those signs that say buzz drinking is drunk driving.

because people don't realize really how impaired they are. Same is true for sleep. There are studies now indicating that sleeping is just as dangerous, I'm sorry, lack of sleep is just as dangerous as driving under the influence. And it doesn't take that much of a lack of sleep. So.

I'm going to get off that tangent, but going back to the Keystone Habits, I want you to really think about if you are going to make some tiny habits, what are some in the area of Keystone Habits that could be beneficial? What are some habits that you could do that actually make other things a little easier or make other things better? I do yoga for instance. And I...

Laurie Groh (06:48.69)

where that it impacts a lot of different things in my day. I am so much more relaxed at bed and I get to just pay attention to my body. My daughter's doing it with me. Sometimes a couple of my sons will be in there. So it's connective and we have like some really special moments together. Best of all, the rule is no talking. So it is peaceful.

It's peaceful and it's with my daughter. I mean, having that combined is a pretty good positive reward, right? So we both feel like that. And then we have like little snuggles and stuff after. It's pretty great. Anyways, we're gonna go into the principles from Atomic Habits. Now, anyone that has not read this book needs to read this book. It's a great book. It really lays out a lot of important

a lot of important information on how habits are formed and what we can do to increase our likelihood that we will create and maintain habits. There's a few other books I'm just going to point out that I would recommend as well. The Power of Habit gives a lot of information on this same sort of area of how to create habits and what that can actually do for us.

There's also the one thing which is somewhat where we are talking about the keystone habits, kind of similar concept to that of focusing in on one thing that makes other things a lot easier. All right principles from atomic habits that you need to know by focusing on small manageable actions we can build on our habits.

Laurie Groh (08:46.766)

case studies highlighting the transformative... case studies highlighting the transform... oh my goodness! I am even... I'm just not even gonna say that one. You don't... you don't need to know it that bad. So if you're... basically what we're doing here is talking about focusing in on what are some small things you can do to build on our current habits. What are some things you can do that...

small and manageable that can make a big impact over a period a longer period of time. So instead of thinking I want to lose 10 pounds in three months you could switch it to I want to lose 15 pounds in the year and if you happen to be someone that partakes in drinking full sugar soda if you give up one soda

single day for the year, there's your 15 pounds. So it's shifting how we are thinking about habits and thinking about goals and being healthy. You can do some small things that make a tremendous impact, right? I mean that's a huge impact, right? Another example that they talk about, I believe in

atomic habits, it would be a plane being off by a degree. Typically, if a plane is driving, if a plane is flying, yeah, they fly. And if they're off by one degree, let's say the pilot excellently nudges it, nudges whatever button that would be or knob that would be after one mile.

they would be off course by 60 nautical miles. So an example would be flying from San Diego to Hawaii. You'd miss the whole island by 42 miles if you were off course by one degree. Really take that in for what types of things you could really do that would not be painful.

Laurie Groh (11:11.106)

but would help you long-term, right? That's one of the main principles. My takeaway from that book would be that.

So I get this question a lot. In fact, I just got this question today. How long does it take to solidify habit? The verdict is out from my perspective on this. I have read many research articles, many books, and it doesn't quite give me an answer really anywhere. What you might hear is that it could take

A lot of people say it's about 30 days. And I think that that's a pretty solid rule of thumb to say, okay, let's do this habit for 30 days and see where we're at. Meaning, you give up at 30 days, but 30 days, let's see if it feels a bit more automatic. Do you have to ask yourself?

do the thing? Do you go back and forth about the thing? If you're going back and forth about the thing, it's not automatic. You know, brushing your teeth, for instance, you're usually not saying, should I today? Should I not today? You usually are not thinking at all. If you're, you know, in a state of depression, of course, that does become part of it.

right? But I'm just I'm talking about a typical day to day. You're not going to be in that space of asking that back and forth question. So it could be 30 days, but it could also be up to a full year. And it really varies on the type of habit you're talking about. And it depends also on how frequent you are doing the habit. So I would also just point out I would

Laurie Groh (13:17.482)

a habit every day if you're starting it and wanna really have it ingrained in your life. Now, I talked about yoga a bit before. Every day won't really work for me. I do it during the week when my kids are at school, at bedtime. That works for me if it's on the weekend. I'm probably not doing it because my...

my built-in system isn't the same on the weekends. Right, like my kids might have sleepovers and there might be other things going on. So, but all in all, do it for, or do it every day if you want it to be a habit. The reason being is you aren't gonna have to ask those questions of, is today my day that I'm doing it? Or I'm gonna do it next week instead. I'm gonna start.

Or I'm going to go on walks every day, or not every day. I'm going to go on walks three times a week. Oh, today's raining, so maybe tomorrow. And then tomorrow's kind of cold. And then maybe the next day. Just eliminate all of that. Because if you're thinking too much, it's going to create friction. You're not going to want to do it. It becomes more. So eliminate as much of that as possible.

I don't want you thinking at all when you're trying to create a habit. No thinking allowed. Alright, so another thing that I feel is important is talking about some of the challenges that we have when we're making a habit.

often that we'll deal with resistance and procrastination. Procrastination is going to be another fun topic that I'll talk about on a different day, but I just want to put it out there as that can sometimes be why, right? Like I just said it before, if I am gonna go for a walk maybe I start my big walking habit tomorrow. I want to talk about the resistance and some things that we can

Laurie Groh (15:37.531)

or reduce friction with some of the habits.

What are some of the common obstacles, right? That is one of the things I want you to pay attention to when you are writing some of this down, right? When you're looking at a habit that you wanna do, so think about that habit. What are some of those obstacles?

Laurie Groh (16:00.006)

One thing that comes up when I'm working with individuals is language. So you change should to want. We will tend to rebel very strongly with the word should. Like I should do my laundry.

Laurie Groh (16:24.134)

No. I don't want to. Absolutely no. No. No thank you. We should clean the toilet. No. I don't need to do anything. I don't need to do anything. We will legit say that to ourselves. So really great to change that word. It just eliminates that natural tendency

It is innate, by the way, the rebellious piece of us. We will rebel when we are told we should do something. It is something. When I say innate, it is about that decision-making piece. So when I'm saying innate, it means that we want to be able to make a decision for ourselves.

So if we're telling ourselves we should be doing something, it's almost like some other something is telling us to, and we're not gonna do that. But if we say I want to do my laundry today so that I can wear this new outfit or my favorite socks, right, we're gonna do that. Or we have a better chance of doing it. And that's what I really want to see here for you. Is it just like a...

better chance that you're going to do that laundry. Another part that I find to be really useful, they talk about it in Atomic Habits, but they also...there's a lot of books where they talk about this idea, but just in a slightly different way. And it's the idea of putting something pleasurable with something that you don't like to do. And by doing that, we start to create

a positive feedback loop that habit starts to form because we're getting a reward with something that we didn't use to get a reward with. So I'm going to use laundry again because that's where I noticed this for myself as one of the miracles of creating tiny better habits for my life.

Laurie Groh (18:54.758)

an audiobook when I'm doing laundry. So I can actually, I can enjoy it. It's quiet. My kids are running around somewhere else and I'm just listening to some, probably kind of a trashy novel. I don't know. It doesn't even matter. I'm just, I'm just enjoying it, right? So pair it with something, right?

it was something you like and you will want to do it again. I would do this with working out where I was always loving Game of Thrones so I would not allow myself to watch it unless I was working out and that creates the feeling of wanting to work out. I don't want to work out necessarily but I want to see what's gonna happen.

the next episode. If I could give you any sort of anything, any sort of advice regarding habit-forming techniques, that would be my number one go-to is make it, make it good. Okay.

Motivation. I want to talk about this as well because we are often told that motivation is what we need to do something. Oh why aren't why aren't you eating healthy today? I'm just not motivated to do that. Why don't you go on a run today? I'm just not motivated to do that. Why don't you clean out the garage today? Um because I don't want to do that at all and

No clue where anything is anyways. I don't even know how to lift things and put them away in that massive dungeon of a garage. Luckily my husband does. But the motivation piece is random. Typically, we can't just harness motivation. To some degree, we can kind of find some things that kind of go into the motivation. Like when people say, well, why do you want to work out?

Laurie Groh (21:17.982)

You can say many reasons I want to look good, I want to be healthy, I want to be strong. There's many reasons, but that doesn't always motivate us. It can motivate us to start, but it does not typically make us continue on. So we got to think about what other things can help us continue those habits. It's not going to be motivation alone. But I will also point out that

motivation does tend to increase if we are getting that reward. So if, you know, going back to the pairing of two things, that's an example of getting dopamine with working out because we're working out. So there's it's that. But I'm also watching Game of Thrones, a double dose of dopamine. And so that's going to motivate.

You know, that's truly what would be motivating about that situation. It's, it's not that I want to be healthy or strong. Those are there, but that's not going to get, get me there today. It's, um, you know, watching what Jon Snow is going to do. That's what's going to get me to work out today. All right. Next up, willpower.

And so this is the last area we're going to talk about today and that's exploring the science of willpower and its connection to habit formation. Basically in a nutshell people have different views on willpower. Look it up nobody knows nobody knows but what we can say with willpower is that it's probably

not a thing or some other people say it is a thing but it's not going to get you to do habits or other people say it's a muscle and so you need to make it stronger. Bottom line is we're not going to use willpower to get us to our habits. We're that's not going to that's not going to work for most people to say like I'm

Laurie Groh (23:42.486)

doing this, so then I'm doing it. There's actually a very small amount of people that would probably be in that category. But that's not always gonna be the most beneficial way for most people to do a new habit, is to just do it by willpower. The reality is when they do studies on willpower, they'll say like...

somebody's dieting then they might overspend and you know there's just so much stuff on willpower and the bottom line is that it doesn't really have much of a place in farming habits the way I'm describing it which is to basically do some tricks. Trick yourself. You're human. Use the tricks we know about being human and

Don't feel bad about it. Feel excited and proud of yourself that you are starting a habit. It's not it's not really easy if it was easy then everybody would have all the healthiest habits, right? So That brings me to my last thing I'm gonna just say today and that's to be really gentle and compassionate about your habit journey Because we don't need to be

negative to ourselves. We hear enough negativity out there. So just say good job. Just say good job to yourself because you need it. We all need it. We can't forget about ourselves in this. We are there doing a new healthy habit and pay attention. Say thank you. I started making my coffee and bringing it back to my coffee.

I started making my coffee the night before, and that was a new habit. One of my best friends makes it every night, and I was like, how do you remember to do that? I will never remember, right? Negative thoughts, right? But I could not fathom how she's remembering to do it, and then she said, well, I just do it when I'm cleaning up after dinner. I'm like, oh, that's why. It's because my husband gets that job.

Laurie Groh (26:08.03)

Um, but I thought, okay, well, actually, maybe I can link it to, um, the dinner time thing. So I get my coffee now ready. Usually I'm at an 80%. Usually I can get my coffee ready while I'm getting dinner ready. And I also think myself, yeah, I'm a total weirdo. That's for sure.

but I do thank myself and it feels really good. And I make a little song and I sing it to myself and I say, thank you Laurie. Duh duh duh. Thank you, thank you, thank you. And it's weird, but I definitely feel happy and I smile and I'm like rolling my eyes at myself, but I'm making my coffee. And it was something I legit did not think I was gonna be able to do.

which I don't know, maybe that seems weird, but I thought, how am I gonna remember this? And so I gave it some extra oomph, and it felt good, and I do it. And that's sometimes all you need. Just tell yourself you're doing a good job. If you want me to sing a song to you, I'm happy to sing a song to you, but most people would prefer I didn't. All right, have a great day.

Thank you.

We'll talk to you soon.