Sept. 13, 2023

Habit Hacking for Women with Emily Nichols [Ep. 60]

Habits are something we all are trying to improve right? But how exactly is that done? And how is it different for women?

Emily Nichols is the expert on habits and she joined me today for an overview of her 5 Step Habit Change Method.

I show you how to connect this habit work with the model and then dive into how we can habit stack, the cue, routine, reward cycle and time it takes to acquire a new habit.

If this episode, or any past episodes have helped you in any way, please consider sharing the show! Send it to one friend or tell the world on social media! Tag me and I’ll give you a shout out as well! Thanks!

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Transcript

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This is the Eat Well, Think Well Live Well podcast.

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I'm Lisa Salsbury, and this is episode 60 habit hacking for women with Emily Nichols.

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This guest episode with Emily, who is the host of the podcast Habit Hack Your Health.

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Is full of actionable content for you.

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We talk about her habit system that she has especially designed around women's ways of thinking.

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And as I was editing this episode, I noticed I absolutely peppered her with questions.

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Tell us about this.

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And now I'm going to play devil's advocate.

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And what about this habit thing I've heard and explain this one more.

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So I hope I asked all the things that you were thinking.

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I really try to get into your head as the listener and wonder what you are thinking and wondering about as I am interviewing people.

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So.

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So enjoy this episode with Emily and let me know what you think about it.

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Welcome to Eat Well, Think Well, Live Well; the podcast for women who want to lose weight, but are tired of counting and calculating all the food.

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I'm your host, Lisa Salsbury.

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I'm a certified health and weight loss coach and life coach, and most importantly a recovered chronic dieter.

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I'll teach you to figure out why you are eating when you aren't hungry, instead of worrying so much about what you are eating Welcome back to the Eat Well Think Well Live Well podcast.

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My guest today is Emily Nichols.

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I am really excited.

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I told her before we started recording that I've been actually thinking about this interview and I am really excited to have this topic on the podcast.

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So she is a habit expert.

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I didn't actually ask you for your exact title.

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So Emily, why don't you introduce yourself, tell people, um, you know, How you came to this work, what you do, and just all of that information.

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Lisa, thank you so much for having me on the show.

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And yes, that is right.

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I'm a habit expert.

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I'm a habit and fitness coach, um, by trade.

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I am in Indiana.

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I'm a mom of two boys.

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They're 15 and 11.

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I've been married to my husband since I.

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We were high school sweethearts.

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We've been together like our whole lives.

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But like I said, I'm a habit and fitness coach.

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I actually started out as a fitness coach and as I was working with folks, I noticed there was a really big gap as far as.

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As women we're like, okay, I know I need to move my body.

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I know I need to eat well, I know I need to talk nicer to myself, but how the heck do I do that when my life is so busy and logistically just how do I do that?

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And a lot of times when we think of health, it comes through a lens of diet culture.

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So it's been really confusing for us as women as far as like, okay, what path should I go as far as my own healthy habit journey and how can I do this?

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So we really helped bridge that gap.

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With our show Habit Hack Your Health.

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Um, it used to be called Self Transform.

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We just kind of went through like a little mini rebrand and really helping busy working moms in particular have it hack their health, but do it in not a lot of time and doing it.

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Skill free in order to really transform your life and have a habit hacking system in place that you can pivot through all seasons of your life.

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Because that's kind of another layer, you know, once we get moving and groove with our healthy habits, oh, we get a new job, or, oh, it's a new season of life and we have to start over again.

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So I help women kind of get to a point where our habit hacking system kind of becomes like an unconscious habit for them then where they can reset.

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Pivot and still keep moving forward, taking care of themselves versus doing nothing at all.

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And this really just stems from my own journey.

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You know, I started out just as a busy working mom in corporate America, just trying to climb the ladder and being like the Pinterest perfect mom.

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And spoiler, I wasn't, nobody is

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Nobody.

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Yeah.

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And.

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Really back in 2015, my husband and I were like, man, we are just exhausted.

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We had really unhealthy habits when it comes to stress and anxiety and the pressure.

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I was just personally putting on myself in all honesty, and we really just started with one little habit at a time, changing the way we ate.

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We were eating, we changed the way we were moving our bodies.

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Like we actually started moving our bodies a little bit more.

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Then I dug super deep into personal development and, you know, started teaching, um, becoming a trainer from there and becoming, becoming a behavior change specialist as well.

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'cause like I said, I really dug deep into habit strategy throughout my own journey because I was like, I am figuring out a way to make this work.

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There's gotta be a system that's geared towards.

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Other busy, crazy working moms like me to make this work in our life without it feeling just like so overwhelming.

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And like I said, just coming an unconscious habit in itself.

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So that's what I do now.

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I love what I do.

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I get the best of both worlds by having the podcast and courses and programs and our shop to give a lot of different habit hacking tools, but also being able to coach people in person with my love of fitness.

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It's the best of both worlds for me.

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Sounds super fun.

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So for those that have been listening to my podcast for a while, you may kind of wonder how this fits in with like the model that I teach.

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So I teach a thought model, which is.

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Stance, thought, feeling, action result.

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And so doing some of these habits really land firmly in the action line.

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This is like the actions we're going to take.

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And typically if you hear life coach school, certified coaches, we will coach more on the thought feeling line.

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That's kind of our specialty, and so I love that.

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I'm having Emily on really getting into that action line because it is equally as important because we can have all the great thoughts and feelings.

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If, but if we're not like, okay, but then what?

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We we're stuck in confusion there.

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We need to have somewhat of a plan for that action line.

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Also too, I like to go reverse up the model when we're creating an intentional model.

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Start with the results that we want.

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What action would we have to take in order to get those results, which that's what we're gonna talk about, these actions.

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so that's like Emily's specialty and then, I can help you like, okay, what do we need to feel and think in order to actually do that?

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And I know that's part of what you do too, but I just wanna kind of to like bridge that gap a little bit for my listeners for like, okay, how does this fit with, you know, other type episodes?

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Right.

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So the first thing that Emily really talks about is how women are different in this whole thing.

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So you may recognize some of her concepts if you've read the book Atomic Habits, I.

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Have heard some of the terms that she uses.

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I was like, oh, I think that's in that, that book.

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But that was written by a male.

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And so I love how she's like, okay, here is how we can take those ideas, but apply'em for women.

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So what is different about women?

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Yeah, I mean, So much, so much.

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Where do we start?

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Where do we

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do I start?

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We're just gonna talk about healthy habits though, so we're, we'll stay, we'll stay, I'll stay in my lane.

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you know where, where this, where this really stemmed from, from for me, um, Lisa was, when I started going through my own transformation, my husband was going through his own transformation at the same time

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I noticed you said that you were both like, okay, we're gonna do this together, and so I'm interested Yeah.

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How, how it kind of turned different for each of

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Yeah.

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Well, and I feel like that can be great or not so great for some couples.

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Like, can you be, because there's that accountability piece, but also it's like your spouse too, and it's like, ah, high tensions when you're going through something like that.

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Um, but we, like I said, we were kind of at a breaking point.

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My husband had been working like all these different shift works, like night, second shift weekend, and his sleep really suffered because of it.

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And you know, when you don't get a lot of good.

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Sleep.

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Like your health, just mental, physical, everything suffers.

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So it was like, we gotta do this.

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And it was like, okay, I'll, I'll do it with you babe.

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Um, but I noticed as we were doing this, I was like, this seems to come a lot easier to him than it does for me.

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Like, he would be like, well, you know, I was meal prepping all the meals, I was kind of planning out everything and that's just me being nurturing.

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I wanted to take care of my husband and my kids and everything.

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And you know, he would be like, oh, I'm gonna work out every day at at the gym or go for a run after work.

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And I'm like, okay.

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And I was like, well, I can't really do that'cause I, I need to be home'cause I gotta get the kids from daycare and I gotta do this.

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And it was like, oh well, you know, he wasn't really doing any personal development, but I was listening'cause I was like, I don't have time to like read or pick up a book.

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I was listening to books and podcasts, and I was like, why, why is this so different for him than what it is for me?

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And that's because women have to do habits.

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Differently, especially when it comes to our health, and that's for a couple of different reasons, kind of what I was alluding to, just thinking and reflecting back on my own start of the journey.

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Is I got a lot of tabs open in my head and they're not all my tabs, they're my kids.

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I have a running like to-do list in the back of my head at all times.

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I'm like, oh, did I call that doctor's office?

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And oh, there's a pile of dishes and the sink I still gotta get to.

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And oh, I gotta do this.

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No, I gotta do that.

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And it's not to say that men don't have that either.

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It is just kind of in our human nature as females.

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To have all of this extra internal, but also external distractions.

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You know, you have your best of intentions to, you know, bust out a big to-do list or do a workout, and then you can get a call from school and your kiddo is sick and you're the only one available to go get them.

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And then, The best laid plans just don't happen that day.

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And then I think what happens is that starts to snowball.

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It happens day after day after day.

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All those internal and external distractions are throwing us off.

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And women tend to have an all or nothing mentality.

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So when that happens, it's like, well, I can't do anything, so I'm gonna do nothing.

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'cause it's just frustrating.

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You're frustrated at that point.

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Right.

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But also'cause I'm coming from, um, down the lane of health.

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There's been a lot of confusion as far as what healthy means as a woman.

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There's such a diet culture lens out there where we need to, you know, work out to be, to punish our bodies.

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We need, it needs to be hard.

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It needs to be, you know, in order to burn off what we ate and

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I was just gonna say like, we have to earn our food with exercise.

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like food is good or bad.

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I'm good or bad depending on what I eat.

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And we find ourselves dieting and going off diets and dieting and going off diets where that's just another vicious cycle as well.

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So when we're trying to, we're trying so hard, we have the best of intentions on a Monday to start like this workout plan.

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Like we have it all laid out.

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We have like this meal prep containers, we're ready to go and we find ourselves.

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Super overwhelmed.

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We're trying all the things at once and nothing's sticking because again, we have all those tabs open in our head.

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We have all those external distractions and we have, that all or nothing mentality on top of the confusion with diet culture.

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So what we really try to do is take a step back and be like, okay.

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It doesn't have to be the all or nothing mentality.

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Let's start with something.

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'cause something's better than nothing, and thinking about what your capacity is and what your capacity is for the season of life that you're in.

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We don't give ourselves a lot of grace.

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As women, we're watching other people on social media and their highlight reels and should ourselves, I should be doing this and I should be doing that.

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Whereas my husband was like, well, I'm just gonna work out after work.

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I'm just gonna, you know, eat the meals you made me.

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And it's not to say that he doesn't help and, you know, contribute significantly to our family.

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It's just different as women, it's just different.

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And I can imagine women are listening, going, yeah.

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Yeah, it is a tricky part too because you might be, especially if maybe you're not in the season where you maybe don't have kids, I have several clients that are like, single, don't, don't have children, and they're like, well, Then just make him do it.

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Like that's your problem.

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You know?

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And I can hear like the devil's advocate being like, well, that's an issue with not dividing work appropriately.

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That's an issue with, you know, you're taking on too much.

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Like you don't have to be the one I like, I can just like hear all of the arguments.

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And that's true.

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Like that is true.

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We could say the, the division of work at home is not equally yoked between the two parents that both live there.

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That's a whole other problem that we're not going to address here.

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So if you're going to leave the division of labor the way that it is, then we have to really address that with the way we create habits, I think is where you're getting to.

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But you could change the division of labor.

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Would you, do you ever like work with that as far as habit change?

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Yeah, I mean, when we're really thinking about mindset, it's a lot about like communicating with your, your spouse or even your kids if they're old enough to be like, Hey, I really need help in this area, and here is why.

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I think there's a lot of guilt sometimes associated with us as women, regardless if we have kids or not.

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I remember, you know, before I got married, I would feel guilty about leaving a dish, a sink full of dishes overnight.

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Like, you know what I mean?

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It's just like stuff like that piling in our head and invisible load that we carry all the time.

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But I think a lot of it, like sometimes stems from guilt.

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Like, well, I'm gonna feel bad if I do this for myself instead of.

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Asking for help.

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And a lot of times it's just a matter of a story we're telling ourselves and we need to, you know, learn to make it a habit, to be like, I'm feeling overwhelmed.

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Hey babe, can you help me, you know, make dinner tonight so I can go for like a little walk.

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I need some time to myself.

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And more than likely your spouse is gonna be like, I.

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Go for it.

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Like I'm at the point now where my kids are like, have you worked out today?

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Like, do you need to go for a walk, mom?

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I'm like, bye.

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Um, so, and, and that has to become a habit in itself as well.

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So Yeah, it's, it's, it's a whole mindset habit.

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You have to, you have to work just like any other muscle.

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Yeah, so, so is there anything in particular you felt like you did differently than your husband?

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I mean as far as like working out went, I had to be super intentional because I had to think of what was gonna work best for my time and the time.

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I needed to dedicate to work and family.

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So I was getting up at 5:00 AM and I was doing at-home workouts.

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'cause that was conveniently what worked best for me.

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And it, it was great.

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I loved it.

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I loved it so much.

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Whereas my husband was like, I, I don't like working out early in the morning.

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It does work out for me.

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In the evenings.

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'cause I had more flex to work out'cause I had more flexibility to pick up the kids.

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Right.

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But it, over time it was kind of like, okay, well if this is feeling too overwhelming, how can I pivot these habits and change it?

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So I think it ha had to, I had to think about it a lot more strategically where I don't think he had to.

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Mm-hmm.

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Yeah.

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So you have a five step habit change method that.

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You teach, um, to create new, healthy habits, can you teach us that?

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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So this is inside of my Healthy Habit Reset Masterclass.

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It's a free masterclass you can get at any time.

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And if you're just wanting to learn about basic habit strategy 1 0 1, this is where we're gonna start.

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But I'm gonna give you an overview.

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So when we're thinking about our health, We first just need to focus on step number one, which is our fundamental needs.

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So we think of a hierarchy of needs.

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That little triangle, that pyramid at the, like we going back to like psychology 1 0 1, like Maslow's hierarchy of needs at the bottom of the pyramid.

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It's just your basic fundamental needs as you move on up, there's, um, relationship.

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There's, um, All the way at the top, like self-actualization, like you're just living your best life.

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We're trying to get to the top of the pyramid, but we have no base of support at all.

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It is crumbling because we're not taking care of our basic fundamental needs.

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And for those that aren't familiar with the Maslow hierarchy, can you say what is on that base level?

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it's just ba the base is just basic, fundamental needs like taking care of yourself by feeding yourself.

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Sleep hydrating, just your basic, fundamental needs.

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And like ladies, we're not taking care of our basic fundamental needs.

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Like a lot of times we're not fueling our bodies like we're drinking coffee all day or energy drinks, or we're not sleeping well because of like the overstimulation a lot of times.

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And like I said, it's all just crumbling underneath us.

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So when I.

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it gets confusing too on those needs.

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Because you're like, well, I've been with the kids all day.

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I need some time at night to like decompress.

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But then you're sacrificing sleep.

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And this is, I think, really common is you think like, oh, what I need is some alone time, but what you really need is sleep.

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And so if you really think of that, Like basic needs.

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Sleep is so important There.

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Way more important than that.

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Like quote unquote alone time that you think you might be getting by staying up until midnight when you've got like all the little kids, you'll, you'll function so much better if you get sleep.

00:17:17.234 --> 00:17:19.599
So just thinking about those, does that make sense?

00:17:19.914 --> 00:17:21.025
Yeah, totally.

00:17:21.025 --> 00:17:21.474
Totally.

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I mean, I know there's so many of my girlfriends, my clients I've worked with, they're like, well, I stay up real late'cause that's the only time I have to myself.

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I maybe got four hours of sleep, but.

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I got to, you know, Netflix by myself.

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Yeah.

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But when I think of fundamental needs, I only focus on three main areas, and there's a lot of different habits that can fall under that umbrella, and that's just mindset movement.

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In your own version of food freedom.

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So food freedom, meaning like I'm eating foods that fuel my body, but also fuel my soul, right?

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Not, not restricting yourself all the time.

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Movement being not, not necessarily big time exercise or fitness, but.

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As far as like moving your body to produce all those happy hormones in your body and get yourself moving to feel good, like actually mentally feel good after a workout.

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And the physical is just an added benefit.

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And just the mindset work, you know, like I said, that's the one I personally struggle with the most.

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Like I struggle a lot with guilt and self-confidence a lot of times, and I have to kind of think of different habits under there.

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So what we do from there though, is step number two is thinking about, okay, well, thinking about.

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These fundamental needs, who do I wanna be right now?

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So creating like a habit identity.

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So maybe you're in a season of life right now where you know, like school maybe is getting ready to start back up and you're like, I really need to get back to, you know, prepping, doing little mini meal preps throughout the week.

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Because my habit identity, I have more time for my family.

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I'm more patient, I eat more healthfully when I do mini meal preps and it supports me.

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Those habits support me in being.

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That type of person.

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Then next is time'cause we never have enough and we have to think about what season of life we're in.

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And just going back to that one habit, like food freedom again.

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Thinking about, okay, well when I do that, this is gonna save me time.

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Whereas I'm, you know, I'm busy running the kids around or it's fall and it's a busy time at work.

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Maybe have a big project coming up that you has a big deadline and doing a little mini meal prep will save you time.

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But also sitting down and.

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Doing something called a have a habit inventory where you're just inventorying where all your time is going because I guarantee you will find time when you write down everything that you do in a day and how much time it takes.

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'cause more than likely you're gonna find a lot of time scrolling on social media and that can be appointed to other things that help you with your healthy habits.

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And then next is like juicy habit strategy is to create like an actual habit loop.

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So a cue routine reward.

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So like James Clear talks about this in Atomic Habits.

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It's a long time, um, habit strategy, and.

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We have habit loops already throughout our day, right?

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You get you, we get ready in a certain order in the morning, right?

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There's some type of cue that starts that whole routine with those habits in there.

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So actually being intentional and creating some actual habit loops around that one fundamental need.

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So if it's meal prep, it's like, okay.

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When I make dinner, that is your cue.

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Then I will throw in extra protein in the oven.

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The reward is, wow, I made extra chicken thighs tonight.

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Now I have something for lunch and a little something extra for dinner tomorrow.

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Thank you.

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Me from the past.

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'cause I'm saving my butt like tomorrow.

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Right?

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And then step number five is kind of upleveled from there is in tracking and then stacking more habits.

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'cause like I said, a lot of times we'll start out trying to do all of them at once.

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I'm just talking about one habit, one of those fundamental needs.

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Focusing on one habit around that, tracking it, using a habit tracker.

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And then over about 21 day-ish period, once it's not feeling so hard anymore.

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'cause starting a new habit is hard.

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It takes conscious effort.

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If you're like, this feels really good.

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It's working really well with my schedule.

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I feel really good about what I'm doing.

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It's helping me.

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It's helping my family.

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Everyone's winning.

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Now I'm gonna start stacking more.

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So maybe I wanna stack movement on there now, and you go through the process again.

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I.

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awesome.

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Talk a little bit more, if you would, about that habit loop.

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'cause that's, I think, really key in starting a new habit to notice how you're currently doing it.

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So go over.

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It was q I forgot already.

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Yeah, so there's a cue, the actual routine, and a reward.

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So think of it as like a circle.

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Okay?

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At the top, there's some type of trigger for you to start a habit, okay?

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at that moment?

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In that moment?

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Or is there a cue like, oh, I had bad blood work and so now I wanna start the habit of war movement?

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Or is it more like in that moment there's a cue?

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It's usually more in that

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Okay.

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right?

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So when we think of, um, even bad habits, a lot of times, like we were talking about, like, you know, staying up late, you maybe you already have a habit loop where you're like, I.

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I put my kids to bed, that is my cue.

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The routine is I'm gonna go have some me time for a few hours and stay up late in the reward.

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On the other side, you're like, okay, I got to have time to myself, but actually I don't feel that great on the other side.

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Right?

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And sometimes it takes some time to reflect that and create a new cue, routine reward.

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So maybe in this circumstance, for example, you put your kids to bed.

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And you think, okay, that's my cue.

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Still the new routine is I'm gonna go read a book in bed Instead.

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The reward is I go to sleep a lot earlier.

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I still have time to myself.

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Right?

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So we already have some cue routine rewards throughout our day.

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A lot of times, maybe sometimes that's associated with eating, a lot of times emotional eating.

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Maybe you have like a zoom call every Wednesday at noon with your boss and you find yourself going and standing at your pantry afterwards just.

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Looking for anything to eat when you're maybe not necessarily hungry, you're just stressed out and you start, you're, you've started a new habit loop there as well.

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So there's a lot of different habit loops throughout our day.

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It's about being intentional and creating your own, placing ones that you have in place that aren't serving you.

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also the reward piece is a little bit confusing because I think especially through our childhood, it's like, Like, great job on your report card.

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What do we get A donut for?

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Every a oh.

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Such a good game, such a good recital.

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Let's go to ice cream.

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The reward of doing good often.

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Is a treat, which is also fascinating because, oh, you had a bad day.

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Let's talk about that over a bag of chips.

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But so it's confusing where it's also the reward for like having a bad day.

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But if we're thinking about it as a reward for something good, uh, I think that we get confused about what a reward.

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Because we don't want to use food as a reward.

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So tell me what other rewards we might be noticing in these Habit Loops.

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Yeah, the reward part is probably the most challenging when I work with clients because they're like, uh, we're not used to celebrating ourselves.

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We celebrate everyone else.

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Which is probably one of the reasons why women have to do habits differently too.

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You got it.

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You got it.

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Exactly, exactly.

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So I can't tell you how many times, like I've had clients, they're like, I'm sitting here making my habit loop and I'm stuck on reward.

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I just don't know what to do.

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And you can think of a reward cycle if you want to like say a 21 day cycle and It doesn't have to be superficial, like getting yourself, like buying yourself like a new like yoga mat or something, unless that really like floats your boat or whatever.

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But it also can be as simple as leaning into the feeling you have when you do that habit.

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So for example, anytime I meal prep and I don't do big meal preps, I do mini meal preps throughout the week.

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'cause I don't have time to do like a big meal prep Sunday thing.

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I thank myself.

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I literally say out loud, thank you, Emily, from the past.

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I always say thank you, Emily, from the past.

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Like, oh my gosh, this was so easy.

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I made, I had a great meal.

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Thank you, me from the past when I had the time to make this, and it feels good.

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And that builds motivation and confidence in myself to keep doing that habit.

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So it doesn't necessarily have to be that, and you don't want it to be a reward that is counterintuitive to the habit.

00:25:38.086 --> 00:25:41.866
So maybe it's like, you know, going back to the food example, you know, like.

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I'm wanting to eat more vegetables.

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I wanna eat more colorful foods.

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Okay, sure.

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Great.

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Okay.

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I'm gonna do it for 21 days.

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Okay?

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At the end, my reward is I'm gonna like binge out on some cookies and ice cream as my reward.

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Now that's counterintuitive and that doesn't support the habit, right?

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And I think there's a time and place for everything.

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I don't think we should restrict ourselves totally, but.

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There's a time and place, so think about how you can just l lean into the feeling of how that habit feels when you complete it, and if you want to find some type of reward system for you.

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Everyone's motivated different ways.

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Make sure it is not counterintuitive to the habit, but supports the habit.

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I love that.

00:26:23.946 --> 00:26:25.386
The feeling can be the reward.

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Like creating amazing feelings in our body is like, it does feel amazing.

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Like really think about how you feel when you're feeling confident or committed or motivated.

00:26:38.082 --> 00:26:47.136
All these kind of feelings that we would like to generate these habit loops are one of the ways that we can generate those feelings in our like result line.

00:26:48.136 --> 00:26:48.676
Totally.

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Good.

00:26:49.612 --> 00:26:50.001
Okay.

00:26:50.001 --> 00:26:57.412
And then a little bit more on habit stacking, because this is a, a concept I actually teach in my program as well.

00:26:57.412 --> 00:27:02.721
Just one that I've definitely kept from reading Atomic Habits and I love it.

00:27:02.721 --> 00:27:06.561
So teach a little about habit stacking, how that works.

00:27:07.676 --> 00:27:11.836
Yeah, and a lot of folks confuse habit stacking with multitasking.

00:27:13.652 --> 00:27:15.051
'cause we're women again.

00:27:15.826 --> 00:27:16.176
again,

00:27:16.386 --> 00:27:17.317
it comes again.

00:27:17.467 --> 00:27:17.886
Yeah.

00:27:17.987 --> 00:27:22.067
Again, multitasking is like doing 20 things at once.

00:27:22.067 --> 00:27:24.886

Emily Nichols

Emily Nichols is the host of Habit Hack Your Health—a top 1.5% podcast that helps working moms and entrepreneurs habit hack their health in less time, guilt free.

Emily is also a wife, #boymom to 2 boys, Certified Personal Trainer, Orangetheory Coach, Behavior Change Specialist, & Taco Tuesday Enthusiast.