EP 03: 10 LIFE-CHANGING Habit Hacks You Need to Know in 2024

Summary

In this episode of the Wisconsin Wellness Podcast, host Laurie Groh shares 10 habit hacks to help listeners create and maintain healthy habits. The hacks include:

• Starting tiny and staying consistent.
• Using cues to trigger habits.
• Rewiring with rewards.
• Turning habits into rituals.
• Finding a buddy for accountability.
• Tracking progress.
• Leveraging the domino effect.
• Optimizing the environment.
• Using time blocking.
• Celebrating failure as a learning opportunity.

Takeaways

• Start with small, consistent habits to build momentum.
• Use cues and associations to trigger habits.
• Reward yourself for completing habits.
• Turn habits into daily rituals for consistency.
• Find an accountability partner or join a group.
• Track your progress to stay motivated.
• Leverage the domino effect to build a chain of habits.
• Optimize your environment to support your habits.
• Use time blocking to prioritize and schedule habits.
• Celebrate failure as a learning opportunity.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction

01:40 Hack 1: Start Tiny and Stay Consistent

04:22 Hack 2: Cue the Habit Symphony

06:11 Hack 3: Rewire with Rewards

07:26 Hack 4: The Power of Rituals

08:15 Hack 5: Buddy System

09:07 Hack 6: Track and Attack

10:29 Hack 7: The Domino Effect

11:38 Hack 8: Hack Your Environment

13:37 Hack 9: Napoleon's Time-Blocking Tactic

14:41 Hack 10: Celebrate Failure

17:35 Conclusion

Transcript

Hello, fellow Wisconsinite. Welcome to the Wisconsin Wellness Podcast. I'm your host, Laurie Groh. Today, we are talking about habits and

Today, we will talk about habits, and I will give you 10 habit hacks.

Laurie Groh (00:29.676)

Today, I'm going to be giving you 10 habit hacks. So you're going to want to stay, and hopefully, a few of these hacks will help you when you're creating your habits.

The first.

All right, let's start the show.

Laurie Groh (00:55.98)

Before we start the show, let's hear a word from our sponsor. Before we go into the habits, let's hear a...

Before we go into the habits, let's hear a little something from our sponsor.

Laurie Groh (01:19.946)

All right, thank you for coming today. Hey, thank you for showing up today. It really does mean a lot to me. I want to talk today about 10 habit hacks. These might be the ones that you've heard before.

But if you're anything like me, you like to have reminders, and I want you to be able to save, download, and come back to this if need be. The first hack is to start tiny and stay consistent. This isn't rocket science, for sure. However,

It is one of the things I see happening most often when I'm working with clients. And I also tend to want to do that. If I'm going to be focusing on the goal of being healthier, let's do all of the things. And that's a big mistake. So, like a master chef perfecting a dish, you start with bite-size habits.

Consistency is the secret sauce.

Laurie Groh (02:40.012)

If you are wanting to read more,

Don't make a goal of reading 100 books in a year. Be realistic and work up to it. In fact, even reading, making a goal of reading, and saying I'm going to do this for 15 minutes might be too much. This has nothing to do with you. It has everything to do with momentum.

If you want to start something, please make it small. There's a reason why we buy so much stuff from Amazon. Okay, why do I buy so much stuff from Amazon? It's because it's easy. We are hardwired to do easy things. We cannot make a habit or start a habit unless it is easy.

Read two pages, not an entire book, not a whole chapter.

When you are done, tell yourself you're awesome. Close up the book and do the same thing again tomorrow. It's the consistency that needs to come first. If you are focusing on big changes right away, it will almost always fail.

Laurie Groh (04:22.188)

Cue the habit symphony. This is our second hack. Habits need cues like movies need soundtracks. Like I need knitting. Hmm, I could go on, I guess, with that. But going back to that statement of...

Movies need soundtracks. The reason why is because it invokes an association and a feeling. I could play the soprano soundtrack, and you'll instantly be reconnected. That's why there's jingles in commercials.

We need a cue, and we need to associate our habit with a specific trigger. A cue in this instance is morning coffee, then morning stretches, morning brushing your teeth, then morning flossing, morning...

Coffee. I like coffee. You're gonna know that soon enough. Morning coffee, morning walk.

Laurie Groh (05:57.164)

Your habits will start to get into the rhythm of the routine. Think of it as something we want to have a mind of its own. Third hack.

The third hack rewires with rewards. Treat yourself like royalty. This is my favorite. Treat yo self. When you conquer a habit, reward yourself. It doesn't have to be this huge or even an actual item. Like it doesn't have to be, I'm going to buy myself this. It doesn't have to be...

I'm going to give myself a piece of candy. It doesn't even have to be any of those things. It just has to be some sort of signal. A little spike of dopamine.

Mel Robbins talks about that high-five habit, right, of high-fiving herself. The reason why that can work really well is because you are you're giving yourself that dopamine. I talk about this in another podcast in more detail. But remember that you always need a reward.

Laurie Groh (07:26.204)

Next hack, the power of rituals. So make your habit a daily ritual. Turn the mundane task into a ritual.

So focusing in on.

Laurie Groh (07:48.748)

Going back to the consistency piece, our goal with a habit is again not to think about it, that it just happens automatically. And one way to have that happen is when I do this, then I do that. When I do this, then I do that. You don't have to think.

The buddy system is our next hack. This isn't, again, not rocket science. I understand that. You've probably heard this before. But if you are, especially if you are struggling to make a habit or continue with a habit, find a friend. Pair up. Make sure you're pairing up with somebody who's also very determined.

Or pair up with somebody even better. Even better, pair up with somebody who already has the habit.

Laurie Groh (08:50.348)

You will not be in a situation where you both bail. So, if you know of a friend who works out when they go to the gym three times a week, let them know you're coming and doing that.

You might want to skip, but you are going to be a lot less likely to do that if you know a friend is waiting. Plus, it's more fun. Next, hack track and attack. So, the more you track your progress,

the better you're going to feel. Again, increases dopamine; it makes a game out of it, and it makes it fun. There are a lot of internal rewards going off when you see that I've done it a week in a row. I use an insight timer for my yoga music and meditation, and I love seeing even two of those bubbles.

Turn blue.

Laurie Groh (10:06.442)

It helps. Some people need this a little bit more than others. So recognize that. Again, we're going into the dopamine. And we also, as humans, are drawn to things that are fun. And this makes it a little bit more fun.

Next hack, the domino effect. Line up your habits like dominoes. Start with one, and then watch the chain reaction. Once the first one falls, the rest will follow suit. You leverage those wins for a big habit. Triumph. What this means is if you are starting with a habit,

and you're doing really well on it; bump it up a bit.

Add something if needed, or do it afterward. My example would be I walk every day, and it helped me to add in something right after that, which was doing yoga. Put the kids to bed and then do yoga.

So, it made it so that it felt like a whole situation of self-care.

Laurie Groh (11:38.732)

The next habit of hacking is to hack your environment. Crucial. Create a habitat for your habits. Do you want to read more? Put more books where you can get them.

Seeking a workout routine, lay out your gym clothes. Your environment should be the stage where habits take the spotlight. Again.

We are not going to constantly want to be motivated, or we're not constantly going to feel motivated. We talk about that in a different podcast, but our environment should make it easier. Whatever you can do to set yourself up will be really helpful. So, an example that I use would be I have my

iPad that I write on my to-do list, and I keep it by my massage chair. Yes, I own a massage chair. Best purchase ever. But I put it there, and I do my to-do list every day. I might miss one here and there, but because it's right where it needs to be, and I don't...

Have to do anything to get there, and I get a nice reward by being in the massage chair. It's a win -win -win -win.

Laurie Groh (13:17.964)

The other thing that it's doing is that pairing technique where, you know, with the massage chair and doing a to-do list, it brings in the good with something that might not be so fun.

Laurie Groh (13:37.58)

The next hack is Napoleon's time-blocking tactic. I want you to divide and conquer your day like a military strategy.

I want you to divide and conquer your day like a military strategist.

Laurie Groh (14:05.11)

Next hack, time blocking tactic. I want you to divide and conquer your day. Use time blocks for specific habits. This helps because, number one, if it's not in your calendar, you're not going to do it. It's unlikely. It's a good reminder. If you need to do a bigger task, block that off and let people know about it.

It allows for that ability to happen.

Laurie Groh (14:40.97)

Alright, last but not least, celebrate failure.

Huh?

I don't know if I've ever done that: celebrate failure. No, I have. The reason is this comes up with anyone that's, you know, anyone that's been struggling with stopping a habit, a bad habit. This one is particularly important because if, for instance, you quit coffee,

and you are thinking, yeah, I just need a little break, need a little reset, and I'm gonna stop. And on one of the days you didn't sleep well, kiddos were in bed with you, you know, maybe somebody's sick, whatever, and then you had coffee the next day.

I want you to celebrate that failure because it's telling you some information. So you learn from it, adapt, and then move forward. So you can't stop.

Laurie Groh (16:03.462)

a Scenario where people are sick and waking you up. But you can say, all right, that that was rough. So, is there something I can replace that with if I'm struggling? So maybe it's like a green green tea that you have for those days. You know, it's not totally getting rid of the caffeine, but less than and

Research shows it's healthier, right? But think about it that way. One of my favorite things is to remember that most people have to fail a lot to figure out what works. And even Thomas Edison had to flick the switch 1000 times before the light turned on. So I want you to think about that.

We look so much at failure as such a negative thing, but we tend to learn much quicker, and it sticks with us a lot easier if we fail.

All right, thank you so much for listening to those hacks. Pick one to start with. That's your action item. Pick one that you could do that could be really helpful.

Laurie Groh (17:35.468)

Thanks for joining me.