The Chief Psychology Officer

Ep6 Healthy Habits

May 15, 2022 Dr Amanda Potter CPsychol Season 1 Episode 6
The Chief Psychology Officer
Ep6 Healthy Habits
Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

In this episode, Dr Amanda Potter will share some insights into the Psychology and Neuroscience of habits and will look at simple 5 step approach for identifying and embedding healthy habits. Amanda will also look at the importance of healthy habits for managing stress and the role of Physical Intelligence in helping to make the habits unconditional or context independent. 

In this episode, Amanda is being interviewed by Tim Hepworth.

The Chief Psychology Officer website is now available https://www.thecpo.co.uk/

To contact Amanda via LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/amandapotterzircon

To contact Amanda via email: TheCPO@zircon-mc.co.uk

 Timestamps

Healthy Habits

·       00:00 – Introduction to Healthy Habits

·       00:26 – This is personal

·       01:28 – What is a habit?

·       02:07 – It just, sort of happens…

·       02:41 – Background & Foreground

·       03:40 – All it takes is 5 simple steps

·       04:34 – Neuroscience!

·       05:00 – Limbic Friction

Point A to Point B

·       06:18 – The Cognitive Dissonance within us and reprogramming the brain

·       08:05 – Gotta love that Dopamine

·       08:33 – I identify with my goals…

·       10:19 – The Lynchpin

·       10:58 – The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

·       12:12 – Burnout revisited

·       13:35 – One person’s habit, is another’s odd decisions

The building blocks

·       14:34 – Care to tip me?

·       15:13 – I can see…

·       16:36 – Life-size habits, in bite-sized chunks

·       18:35 – Oh, what a beautiful mornin’

·       19:59 – The science of sleep

·       20:47 – 21 days

·       22:23 – Aim low, you’ll succeed better

This Podcast is starting to sound a bit habitual…

·       23:28 – When works best for you?

·       24:17 – Celebrate good times!

·       25:21 – Complete the circle.

·       26:26 – From my personal review…

·       27:09 – Ask yourself 3 questions:

·       28:06 – The end.

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Speaker 1:

Hello and welcome to episode 6 of the Chief Psychology Officer, dr Amanda Potter. This week's topic is healthy habits, and I'm sure I've got plenty of bad habits, but hopefully some good ones. We shall find out whether I'm fooling myself or not over the course of the next 30 minutes or so, but I think what I need to understand is why we're actually going to be talking about habits, amanda.

Speaker 2:

Thanks, tim. I would like to start with a personal insight. The Healthy Habits podcast is one that is particularly important to me. Over the last 40 years of my life, since I was a teenager, I've struggled with my weight, my self-confidence and my body image. I've lost eight stone three times in my life and most recently I've managed to keep the most of that weight off, and that's through Healthy Habits, and over the last five years in particular, I have managed to identify and embed some fantastically positive and healthy habits that have meant that I am more confident, I am happier albeit I'm not perfect, but some of the things we're going to talk about today are the tips and steps that I have put into place that have meant that I have much greater balance and I do exercise and I get outside every day, and I'm much proud of the way I live my life and, as a result, I am much happier.

Speaker 1:

So I've got in my mind what I think I understand by habits. But how do you know if it is a habit or not?

Speaker 2:

So a habit is an unconscious routine or behaviour. They are completely a part of who we are and how we interact every day. Most of our waking behaviour, therefore, is habitual Opening the fridge, cooking dinner, walking to the station. All of those things are habits, because we follow a similar or the same routine every day.

Speaker 1:

So we're not just talking about things like smoking and overeating, things like that. It's much more fundamental than that. It's actually just things that happen in our daily lives.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely so. When something is a habit, it happens more than 85% of the time and it doesn't take any mental effort to complete the task, for example, brushing your teeth. That's a great example of a habit that most of us have truly embedded into our daily routine. We don't have to think oh my goodness, I've got to brush my teeth. Can I do that? Do I have time? We don't even have to think about it. It is independent of how busy we are or how tired we are or how anxious we are. We just do it. We just brush our teeth.

Speaker 1:

So if you don't have to, think about it, then, how do these habits come about in the first place? I mean, obviously, something like brushing your teeth. It's a daily necessity for those of us lucky enough to have our teeth, of course. But if you don't think about it, how do you go about creating a habit in the first place?

Speaker 2:

Well, to your first point. Many habits are unconsciously created. We're not aware of them and we're not aware that we are every day creating and building habits. But very often those habits are being formed and built through unhealthy behaviours that we are unconsciously forming and building because we're not motivated necessarily to drive behaviours that are healthy. When a behaviour or an action is context independent in other words, you would always do it, no matter how stressed or anxious or tired or busy you are that means it's a habit because you didn't have to think about it, you just got on with it. It's automatic.

Speaker 1:

So habits then? Are they hard to create? Do you have to be doing something for years before it comes a habit? Or can you actually turn something into a habit yourself? It sounds like, because you're not thinking about it, almost you don't even know you're doing it and therefore, how can you actually turn that on its head and actually say no, I actually want to create a habit. Is that hard, is that easy?

Speaker 2:

It could be hard. We have to make sure that it's something that's intentional. So if we want to create a new habit, we have to actively attend to it, we have to make the choice, we have to be motivated and we have to be driven to achieve that new habit. What I would like to cover in this podcast are the five simple steps to embed a new habit. It doesn't actually need to be that difficult, but if we look at the neuroscience and the psychology research, there's some very simple things that you can do that will help you.

Speaker 1:

Simple things. I like the sound of that. So you started touching on neuroscience there.

Speaker 2:

Habits are when the nervous system learns something, albeit not always consciously, and we create neural circuits or neuroplasticity and new connections. So habits are basically learning and it's when the nervous system learns something new.

Speaker 1:

So I want to get my nervous system learning new things. That sounds like something worthwhile. Is there something I can do to get myself into the right frame of mind, or is it all too easy to put barriers in the way of creating habits?

Speaker 2:

I really like the language of Andrew Huberman, the ophthalmologist and neuroscientist. He has coined a term called limbic friction. Limbic friction is when we are at odds with ourselves and there's internal conflict. This is when we are basically fighting with ourselves about whether we should or should not do something and we feel quite uncomfortable at this point and we feel frustrated and annoyed and we want to move away from that discomfort. So this limbic friction happens when we're creating habits and it particularly happens when we are either tired or too calm or too exhausted, or when we're anxious or too alert, which is all about the autonomic nervous system. If the autonomic nervous system isn't in the right state for learning, if we're not feeling ready, then we are not putting in ourselves in the best place to practice something new and try something new.

Speaker 1:

So when you say internal conflict, are you talking about things like here's this chocolate biscuit. I know I shouldn't be eating the fourth one, but I'm going to eat it anyway. Is it that sort of thing?

Speaker 2:

It is exactly that. So the internal conversation you have with yourself about whether you should or should not is exactly that. It's about the dialogue you have when you're at odds with yourself, that you know you need to do it, but you're saying to yourself can I really be bothered? Is it really important enough? What will happen if I do eat it?

Speaker 1:

Suppose it's an internal fight, isn't it? What does that actually look like from a neuroscience perspective?

Speaker 2:

When we learn something new, what we're doing is we are forming neural circuits that helps us to program ourselves for a new routine, but we need to practice that routine a few times in order for those new connections to be created. And that plasticity or circuitry helps us to create and form habits. And because 70% of our waking behaviour is habitual, that's all being driven by our nervous system, because that helps us to get through the day with limited energy and limited focus, but maximum performance. So what we need to do is we need to practice something sufficiently that it gets embedded in our neural circuitry, that it becomes a habit. One final thing to say is the most important thing once again the same as previous podcasts is dopamine. Dopamine is the reward neurotransmitter. When we get the influx of dopamine once we start doing something right, we realise we're onto a good thing and we're more likely to stick to that habit and for it to become embedded.

Speaker 1:

So dopamine sounds like great stuff. Can we buy that over the counter anywhere?

Speaker 2:

Not quite, but you could buy food that is rich with the amino acid tyrosine. Tyrosine is great to enhance mood and to help with the neurotransmitter dopamine, and it's particularly present in soy, poultry, eggs and dairy seeds and beans. Luckily, all of those things are caught in my diet.

Speaker 1:

So mainly when I'm thinking about habits, I'm sort of thinking about them in terms of, like, personal context really. But we're all about the world of work here. Why would we want to create new habits in that space?

Speaker 2:

Talking to clients as a coach when we go through the objective setting process. Part of the objective setting is about creating new habits at work that can be implemented and embedded and can help to improve their working life and their performance, their efficiency and their success. Now those habits could either be to achieve a goal, something that they want to succeed in, or it could be to change their identity of themselves or how they're seen by their colleagues. So there are two types of habit. The first is a goal-based habit. For example, I might decide that every day I need to do some exercise of some kind, whether it's rowing, walking or my favorite kettlebells. The other thing might be that I want to see myself and I want to become a fitter, stronger, healthier, more resilient person and I'd like to add, happier in there as well and therefore exercising every day and walking every day will help me to become that fitter, stronger, healthier and happier person. So that would be an identity-based habit.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I mean I guess I walk my dog every day, which I know is good for me. That's a definite habit with a view to being a doneness like I don't seem to be able to put the rest of the good habits together, that will actually make me achieve that entire goal. But walking the dog is a good start.

Speaker 2:

It's a great start actually, and what you've just described is something called a linchpin habit. So a linchpin habit is something that you enjoy, you find easy and can positively influence other habits. As a result of that linchpin habit, you're more likely to adopt the other habits because they are easier to execute. So in theory, tim, now that you walk Alfie every morning and you're getting outside and you're doing exercise, you may find that some other habits around being healthy and being sporty should be easy to adopt.

Speaker 1:

So I'm happy with my dog walking. Falling into the good habit category, you mentioned before that habits aren't always good. Have you got any good examples of good versus bad habits?

Speaker 2:

I think that very often habits come from a good place, but they don't necessarily have a positive impact, for example, walking through the door at the end of the day. Very often we can get into a habit of moaning about the day the journey. I live within the M25, so I do remember often coming in after sitting on the M25 for an hour and being frustrated about my journey home. Rather than walking in the door and practicing gratitude and appreciation and talking about the things that went well, I used to automatically talk about the things that were frustrating me or were not going well. So that might be an example of a bad habit. It comes from a good place, which is to relieve frustration, but the impact is that my partner doesn't necessarily want to see me every day walking in moaning. He would much prefer to have a conversation with me about the things that are going well and the things that I've enjoyed and that make me shine, rather than the things that drain me.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think that's very easy to do, that, isn't it? You're sort of like you walk in, you complain and you think it's getting it out of my system now. So that's got to be a good thing, when what you're saying is, no, that's a bad habit. That just appears to be good. I guess there's other ones like that too.

Speaker 2:

There are. There's so many. I think many of them relate to the Burnout podcast of a couple of weeks ago. An example would be working long hours. We have a great intention from working long hours, which is to deliver results, to achieve success, not to let people down, to deliver customer requirements and so on, whatever the motivation, but actually it's not helping us. We think we're doing something good, but actually it might be causing physical, physiological, emotional stress for ourselves. Another one might be skipping meals or working through lunch, not taking a break, skipping exercise. All of these things come from a positive motivation of delivering high quality work, wanting to be respected and regarded as a reliable, consistent colleague, but actually what we're doing is we're increasing our risk of burnout. So healthy habits are about balance and actively identifying the things that you could put into place on a daily basis, whether you work from home or whether you work in an office, that will help you to look after yourself and reduce your risk of burnout.

Speaker 1:

Sometimes I have things that I would not really consider our habits to myself, but to other people that may definitely look like habits. How can you assess how much of a habit it is? I don't know. I might call it the strength of a habit. How do you know if it indeed is a habit or just no? I'm just having a bad day.

Speaker 2:

So it goes back to the 85%. Something is a habit if we do it 85% of the time, but actually we can think about it another way, which is is it context independent? Would you do it no matter of where you are or when it is or the situation you're in or how you're feeling, whether you are alert and anxious or incredibly tired? And I'll go back to that initial example of cleaning your teeth. You would do that no matter how tired you are or how anxious you are, or whether you were travelling or on holiday. So if you need to focus on it and you need to make a conscious effort to do it, it is not a habit.

Speaker 1:

So I've got all my bad habits. I want to create some new ones. That sounds like a really good idea. How do I go about doing it? Have you got? I love a good tip, so have you got a list of tips for us to know how we can create these habits?

Speaker 2:

So I've been working with my team to look at the researchers from psychology and from neuroscience to create a series of steps or tips that coaches can work with their coaches to help them embed some really healthy habits. These steps would be fantastic through a coaching journey or for objective setting Excellent.

Speaker 1:

Now I have to confess here you've given me a bit of a preview here and I've got a list of these tips. If I can ask you about each one, amanda, then you can tell us all about it. The first one I've got here on my list is visualisation.

Speaker 2:

In order to overcome the limbic friction that we talked about earlier, what we need to do is create procedural memory. This means we need to think through the steps and visualise the actions that we want to take. By doing so, we shift the brain towards the neural circuits that you need to connect and make, and this reduces the limbic friction that Andrew Huberman has coined. At a simple level, if you want to do some exercise tomorrow morning, what you do is you imagine yourself getting up, putting on your sports clothes and heading to the gym and you imagine yourself in the gym. For me, it would be imagining myself doing my kettlebells class If I was to think through each of those steps one by one and to actually visualise myself doing it. I'm starting to create those neural circuits. I need to create that plasticity and that learning and I am starting to create the pathway that will embed the habit so that when I get up tomorrow morning I'm ready for it and I'm more likely to be in the right state to follow through that new habit.

Speaker 1:

So you're planting the seeds of your habit by visualising it Exactly so.

Speaker 2:

visualise it and think it through step by step.

Speaker 1:

That's good Number two. We've got on my list here micro habits.

Speaker 2:

If, for example, you have an identity based habit of being healthier, you could break that down into five or six mini habits that would contribute to that overall habit. For example, I've recently worked with a coaching client who has made the decision that he would like to have greater work-life balance. That's his identity based habit that he wants to be healthier and happier at work and achieve more balance. To do that, we identified five or six mini habits that would help to contribute to that overall habit. The five or six mini habits were number one he would go for a walk before work at least twice a week. Number two he would also go to the gym during the week after work in addition to the weekend.

Speaker 2:

Number three he would turn off his telephone and his emails while he was in meetings so that he focused on the meeting at hand and didn't feel anxious and distracted by additional conversations or people pressuring him for his time or attention. Number four he made the decision that he was going to get up from his desk and walk around the site because he works in a manufacturing site and he would go and talk to people and engage in conversation and get their feedback. And finally, the last one was he would work from home at least one day a week so that he could spend time with a close family member who actually needs his help and support. Now he has found over the last month that he has managed to embed three of those five habits and he doesn't have to think about them, but two he still has to think about them actively in order to embed them.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so we've got visualization, we've got micro habits. Next one I've got here starting your day.

Speaker 2:

In the first eight hours after waking, we have elevated norepinephrine, epinephrine, dopamine and cortisol. What that means is we are alert and focused. This is perfect for overcoming that friction. We want to create habits that are context independent and therefore are robust and habitual. In order to achieve that, we need to be alert, but not anxious or tired. So if we try to create habits at the start of the day, we are in the right emotional state. If we also get up and go for a walk and get out in the sunlight, we are also helping to create a sense of alertness and readiness for learning.

Speaker 1:

Going back to what we said earlier about our neurotransmitters, I was listening and you were telling me about all those good foods that will help the release of these neurotransmitters. A lot of those were quite good for breakfast the eggs and dairy and seeds, etc. A good bowl of granola or something like that seems to be well on the way to giving you a good kick start.

Speaker 2:

It really does. It's amazing how all these small things can add up to putting you in the best position to create some really fantastic healthy habits that will support you.

Speaker 1:

Moving on with tip four, the importance of sleep, a subject dear to my heart.

Speaker 2:

Sleep is so critical for habit forming. We need deep sleep for neuroplasticity, because neuroplasticity is the rewiring of the neural circuits and this happens when we sleep. So we need to make sure that we fully rest and that we sleep in an environment where the temperature is low and the room is dark, so the rest is uninterrupted as much as possible. If we do this, what we're doing is we are putting our brain and body in the right state for the first eight hours of the day when we're awake at the start of the day, so that we can create new habits.

Speaker 1:

I'm loving these tips so far, but here is the last one that is intriguingly titled 21 Days. What's that all about?

Speaker 2:

So I mentioned the 21 Days research in the Resilience podcast at the start of our podcast suite. It typically takes 21 days to embed a habit and after this time, for many people the habit is embedded without much effort. So if we select six micro habits and practice them for 21 days, at the start of the day, having had a good, healthy sleep, and having visualized those habits and taken ourselves through each of the steps that they would take one by one, we are likely to embed at least four of those habits successfully.

Speaker 1:

So every day for 21 days, and we've created a habit.

Speaker 2:

Yes, with visualization, good sleep, breaking it down into micro habits and doing it at the start of the day. Because what happens is we start to get something called an attitude shift or a paradigm shift where we see ourselves in a different way. And if we manage to get a linchpin habit in there so something we love doing, we enjoy doing, is a strength, so we're energized by it it's more likely to positively influence our behavior and it changes our assumptions and the way we see ourselves and our attitude to that behavior and to the thing we want to change about ourselves or how we see ourselves.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I'm loving these. Actually, I mean 21 days, I mean those tips that you've just gone through. Then I can truly seeing me actually putting that into practice, not particularly in a work situation, but more in a personal situation. I'm going to give it a go and I'll report back.

Speaker 2:

There's a lovely piece of research by an author, BJ Fogg. He has podcasts and has written books. His concept is tiny habits, which is one of the tips that I've offered. He breaks that down a little bit further than what we've talked about and I'd love just to tell you about some of the things that his research has also suggested. He suggests you should start by picking the habits that you want, not the habits that you should have, and that very much fits in with the linchpin habit idea. Start with the things that you would enjoy and you're most likely to embed. He then says break them down into the micro habits or tiny habits. But interestingly he says lower the bar so that you get that feeling of success, so you get the dopamine hit that's so important for embedding habits.

Speaker 1:

So you're going for the low hanging fruit?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and trying not to be too much for perfectionist or trying to achieve too much or bite too much off too soon. He also says slightly different from our research and the neuroscience research that we should work out when we want to practice the new behaviors. When would it be the most easy? Lunchtime, end of day morning which is slightly different from the neuroscience research which suggests for neuroplasticity. We should do it at the start of the day. Dj Fogg talks about doing it at the most appropriate time of the day so that you don't have to push yourself or focus too hard on it, so you don't have that limbic friction as Huberman talks about. So you work out when to do it. That would be the easiest for you.

Speaker 1:

You're creating these habits, you're putting them into practice. Do you like give yourself a reward? Do you sort of like, if you're on a diet, do you have that little? Well, I'll have a small square of chocolate, something like that, to reward my being good for the rest of the time.

Speaker 2:

Celebrating is the best way to positively wire the habit. So, yes, that reward piece, the dopamine release, is so important. What's really fundamental is that once those new behaviors start to get embedded, people start to see themselves in a slightly different way. Talking back about that paradigm shift or attitude shift, when you connect the behavior to the purpose or the meaning or why you wanted to do it, then it becomes more sustainable.

Speaker 1:

So you're beginning to see the green shoots of success, I guess.

Speaker 2:

Once we've started to change our behaviour, the importance then is to reflect on it, understand it and learn from it.

Speaker 2:

Looking at the research that we've conducted, as well as the research conducted by BJ Fogg, for me, the most important part of all of this is finishing the circle, in other words, going back to the original purpose or reason for trying to change behaviour and trying to understand how I see myself. What is my identity now that I have embedded a few new habits and I have changed the way in which I go through my day? So, for example, I'm somebody who is very motivated to be green and to look after the earth on which we live, so I try to live as sustainably as I possibly can, and every day I have a number of micro habits that I put into place that help to contribute to that. All of those things help me to create an identity and a belief and a perception of myself that I'm someone who contributes to sustainability and I live in as a green way as possible. This helps to reinforce those habits and helps to reinforce the behaviours that I want to embed and achievable for the long term.

Speaker 1:

So when you say you're closing the circle, then what you're almost doing is you're reviewing where you're up to and saying, yeah, I'm actually feeling better in your case, living sustainably. I can see that what I'm doing is actually having an effect and that almost feeds on itself and makes you do it even more.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely. So you are confirming to yourself that you're succeeding, you're rewarding yourself, so you're getting the dopamine hit, but you're also changing your beliefs and your attitude about whether this is possible, and so then you are starting to see yourself through a very different light.

Speaker 1:

What we've talked about so far is definitely like I say. It's got me motivated, I think, to start doing some things a bit differently. We're probably coming up to the end of our time now, so have you got any nuggets to leave us with?

Speaker 2:

My leaving tip comes from BJ Fogg. In his book he articulates that if we want to create a sustainable embedded habit, we need to ask ourselves three questions Do I want to do it, can I do it, and what action will have the greatest impact? When you identify a behavior that is something you want to do, you can do and it will have a significant impact, and so becomes a linchpin for other behaviors and influences other behaviors in a positive way. These become the golden behaviors, or the golden habits that we start with and that start to really influence the way we behave and influences our actions.

Speaker 1:

That's a nice way to end. I think aiming for golden habits is something that we should all be doing, I guess. Thank you very much Once again, amanda. Next podcast what's that one about?

Speaker 2:

So on our next podcast we have a fantastic guest. Her name is Kate Oliver. She has just written the most wonderful book called Rise and Shine with her brother Toby, and it is all about starting the day in a positive way and creating an energetic and positive attitude throughout the day. So I'm very excited about introducing Kate and her new book.

Speaker 1:

That sounds good. It carries on nicely from what we've been talking about today. Thanks once again for listening and look forward to you joining us in a couple of weeks for the next podcast. As ever, if you'd like to get in touch with Amanda, then all you've got to do is search for Dr Amanda Potter on LinkedIn and you'll find all the contact details there. Thanks again and see you next time.

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