614. The Truth About Why Your Habits Don’t Stick

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19:07

In this second episode of the Habits Series, Lesley breaks down how to actually make a habit stick without rigid streaks or all-or-nothing thinking. She explains why random reminders usually fail and why pairing tiny actions with routines you already do is far more effective. You’ll hear how she shrinks a new habit to its smallest doable version and uses in-the-moment celebration to reinforce it.


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In this episode you will learn about:

  • Understanding why prompts and timers often fail in real-life routines.
  • Mapping your existing routines to identify reliable habit anchors.
  • The importance of making a habit small it's nearly impossible to skip.
  • How to choose one tiny habit and tying it to something you already do.
  • Building emotional safety around the habit before growing it.


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Episode Transcript:

Lesley Logan 0:00  

Why do we need to do this? Because celebration creates a dopamine high in your brain. Your brain feeds off of that, and so it starts to remember. 


Lesley Logan 0:09  

Welcome to the Be It Till You See It podcast where we talk about taking messy action, knowing that perfect is boring. I'm Lesley Logan, Pilates instructor and fitness business coach. I've trained thousands of people around the world and the number one thing I see stopping people from achieving anything is self-doubt. My friends, action brings clarity and it's the antidote to fear. Each week, my guest will bring bold, executable, intrinsic and targeted steps that you can use to put yourself first and Be It Till You See It. It's a practice, not a perfect. Let's get started.



Lesley Logan 0:52  

Hi, Be It babe. How are you? Welcome back to our sexy Habits Series. We're bringing sexy back. You know what? We're bringing it back in the habits way, because truly, everything that we want in our life and being it till we see it is just a series of habits that we intentionally put into our lives. And if we don't intentionally do it, then we end up with a bunch of other people's habits or demands and needs or things we think should be doing, and we wonder why our life is miserable or it's not what we want, or we're exhausted or burnt out. And so this is the second episode on series, and we're going to dig into what we talked about in the last one. So I will say, normally, I joke around saying, if you haven't listened to the first one, you can listen to this and then go back. No, go, listen to the first one. It's right below. Sometimes this, in your feed, sometimes it can be really hard. If you're on the OPC app, or Profitable Pilates app, it's easier to find. On Apple, you have to, like, go to the show and then find it. But anyways, you want to do this whole series, has one thing, okay, starting from the beginning, I know we like to skip ahead, but you know. 


Lesley Logan 1:52  

So, I'm gonna do a little review of what we talked about in the last episode. Was just that, like, there is no such thing as a bad habit. There are habits that maybe no longer serve us, which we we talk a little bit like what serves you in the Anthony Benenati episode, so feel free to check that out. But all, everything that we have as habits is telling our brain something that feels good, because our brain is actually running away from shame and guilt and stress into things that actually make us feel good. So even if you don't like something you think it stresses you out. There's something that it's giving you that is why you keep going after it. Okay? 


Lesley Logan 2:25  

So, the other thing we did was we actually talked about how you need, like, something you need to do before you can actually add a habit to your life, which is, get really clear on what you want. So for the example we used, I said I wanted to read more. Then we put up a bunch of ideas on how I could read more. And then we did a little procedure we figured out on a scale of want to do, don't want to do, hard to do, easy to do. And we came up with a few ideas, right? So get your sheet out, because that's what we're going to use for this next episode. And we're going to we're going to do one habit at a time. So we're also going to talk about how to add a habit into your life. And we're also going to go about why prompts don't work. And I talked about something a little bit in the first episode, and I'm going to reiterate why it's important to do it in here. So, before we can go back to our piece of paper, of the quadrants, I think it's best to talk about right now, like where habits can go in your life. So I mentioned that there's things that we do automatically every day, how we wake up in the morning. That's a habit. What we do after we take our first step, second step, like, in what order do you go the bathroom, brush your teeth, wash your face, whatever those things are that you do, right, when you get your coffee. There are things that we do naturally. Why is that important? Because in the in the studies of behaviors and habits, BJ Fogg found, and this is proven by a lot of companies, prompts like dings, don't help, because we actually tend to ignore it. So your phone going take your medicine, right? If your medicine is right there, it's easy for you to do the prompt, but if your medicine is not there, you ignore it. And once you ignore it one time, it's actually really easy to ignore the second time, and all of a sudden you've just been ignoring it for weeks. I have reminders on my phone from a year ago that I just ignore, like I don't even know, I don't delete it, but like, it's now a habit to just ignore it. So prompts only work if you're actually in the place to do the thing that you said you would do. Now, look, I understand people like, oh, I do the Pomodoro method, Lesley, when the bell goes off, I easily switch. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about like you are, you have a timer going off to go for a run, but you're stuck in a meeting, right? We want to make sure that whatever prompts you have, like, we don't want to set you up for a failure, where you have prompts to do something and then you could possibly not be able to do the thing, to ignore the prompt. We don't want that. So in the last episode, I talked about like, scheduling in time to read. That's an easy habit. I want to do it. Why won't that work?


Lesley Logan 5:05  

Well, one, my schedule changes every single week, so I'm gonna have to do this regularly. It's gonna happen. I'm actually gonna have to make it a habit to go to my schedule and add this in. But, two, if the prompt goes off that it's time for me to read and I don't have my book with me, it's so easy for me to ignore that prompt that it becomes a thing in my schedule I don't even look at, right? So we don't that's not a perfect habit for me to have. There was another one that set a timer to read for 20 minutes. That can work as long as the habit of grabbing the book is already in place, having it go for 20 minutes might help me, my brain not go, Oh, my God, I have to be somewhere like it might having a timer might actually calm my brain to actually do the reading. But that would be another habit I have to create is to set the timer on top of the book. So it's not gonna be the easiest thing for a habit person to do, right? To make a habit around. So, so prompts are anything that you put that's gonna be a prompt to do the thing you want to do. I'm going to encourage you to think not about that and not use that, because I I don't want it to be your phone prompting you. What if your phone's not around when that prompt goes off? So there's, see how it's easy for this to fail. So going back to we already naturally do things. So this is how we're going to create habits. This is the key to the kingdom. This, if you get nothing else from this habit series, this is the thing. There are things we naturally do, typically around morning, afternoon and evening, typically around meals, where we wake up, we go to bed. So I mentioned I wanted you to observe what you do every day during the day, so in the morning, what are the things you naturally do? Remember in the first episode, I said, oh, I want to add a cold plunge when I'm going to do it my day. So I went through my day and I sort of go, okay, the cold plunge, first of all, it's important to know where the cold plunge is. It is in the back of my house, right? So it's near my bedroom. It's not in my bedroom, it's near my bedroom. It's in the same room that I do my makeup. It's the same room that my hats are, my accessories, all that stuff is there. Okay? It's this extra bathroom. So I in the morning, I get up before the cold plunge would happen, I would get up, go to the bathroom, put on some sunscreen and grab my allergy medicine, drink some water, take the dog for a walk, right? After the dog walk, I come back, I would make my coffee, make his breakfast. I used to have a little extra, like nutritious drink in there. Do that. Then I would do my Pilates. Then after my Pilates, I would make some breakfast, and then I would go into the shower, then I get ready for the day, then I do my makeup, then I sit down on my desk, right? So that's my morning. So you can hear there's like, some things that I do, like naturally we, those of us who drink coffee, we drink we don't even go there's no time or going up time to make my coffee. And back to my prompts example, like you don't have that you just naturally do it, right? There's no time you're going up when it's time to floss your teeth. You just do it after you brush your teeth. So same thing around lunchtime. What do I do around the middle of the day? Well, after I finish my last thing before my lunch break, I get up, I go in the kitchen, I make my lunch, I sit down at the table. After I'm done with my lunch. Then I typically go back to work, right? And then after work, I do blah, blah, blah, blah. And then before bed, it looks like walking the dog, taking a shower and putting my phone on the charger, going to sleep. Okay, so that might be what you write down. So I want you to take a piece of paper and just like start to write down all the things you just down all the things you just do automatically, okay, and the morning, afternoon, evening. Once you know this, then it makes it easier for us to go, okay, well, when are we going to add something in? So to add the cold plunge, and I can look, well, where can the cold plunge be? It definitely doesn't fit once I've gotten ready for the day, and I don't want to cold plunge before bed, so it has to happen before I get ready, before I get ready for the day. Okay, so then I can actually start to play with, okay, so is it after I go to the bathroom I can go for the cold plunge? Is it after the dog walk that I go for the cold plunge? That's where I can play with it, right? Something I got it when I got a shake plate, I had to do this, like, when am I gonna do this shake plate thing? It's like, okay, should I do it after I go to the gym? Should I do it after a dog walk? So you kind of want to put it somewhere where you already are doing something that you already easily do. No problems. You never miss. Okay? After, here, after, I'm gonna say, after a lot, okay, so once you have figured out a places where the new habit can go. So for my example, I want to read more. And I said it might be easy, and I want to do is to read a book at breakfast. So basically, I have to think about like, where do I have my breakfast? I have my breakfast at the kitchen table. So after I sit down at the kitchen table, I will pick up my book. Notice how I didn't say I'd read my book. We'll talk about that in a little bit, but I'll pick up my book. So that can be that's where I can have the habit, because I'm trying that one out. Another one I said I would try out is I'd read when I play a video game, which means I have to think about when I'm playing my video game, all right. And to be honest, I could absolutely replace reading with playing my video game when I'm on, when I'm just, when I'm not, like, in a car, I can go, oh, when I'm in a car, like my video game, but when I'm at home, right? This one's a little harder, because I don't actually have a set time that I do it. It's just something that I do. So that's going to be a bit more advanced, and I'm just going to put that one, I'm going to table that one for right now. And then I said I would set a timer for 20 minutes. That's more of a remember, I have to have a habit to do the habit. So what I can do for right now is just put, let's just focus on reading at the breakfast reading while I have breakfast, okay. 


Lesley Logan 11:08  

So now that I have my idea of what the habit is, I'm going to try to create, which is I'm settled on, pretty sure it's going to be reading at breakfast. Now I have to make the habit really small. So you heard me specifically say, Okay, I'm going to after I sit down to have breakfast, I will pick up my book, because right now I don't have the habit of reading at breakfast, so I cannot go after I sit down, I'm going to read my book for 20 minutes. That is a lot. I'm not used to doing that. I might not even be aware of all the different things I kind of do during breakfast. Like, if I think about it, sometimes I'm having breakfast and I'm talking to a girlfriend. Sometimes I'm having breakfast. I'm also like, getting by on a snack. Like, and like, because I think I sit down and I just like, hang out at breakfast. I think this is a good time, but I have to test it. I have to experiment with it. So I have to make it very small. I pick up my book this way I can actually have an achievable goal. One of the reasons why so many people struggle with building habits is they make it too big. So a lot of you are like, oh, I want to have better sleep, so I'm not going to use I'm not going to look at my screen two hours before bed, right? But two hours before bed, what if you usually are checking the email and setting alarms and sending texts to friends, and there's a lot of different things, and you don't have anything else that you're doing. So what if that tonight you actually, an hour before bed, then don't check your phone, you feel like a failure because you said you wouldn't do it for two hours, and you only did it for an hour. In that case, I would say, I, you know, after I brush my teeth, to go to bed, I put my phone away, right, so that, like, there's a set prompt that's physical, that's already a habit, you have to put your phone away. And then as I get stronger, maybe it's after I have dinner, I put my phone away, or after I start making dinner, I put my phone away. Do you see how we can like, we can have a better prompt, but we want to make it as small as possible so it could be achievable and we can celebrate ourselves. Okay? So that's the habit I'm going to work on this week is after I sit down for breakfast, I'm going to pick up my book. Okay? 


Lesley Logan 13:20  

I want this week to be your practice. So between now and our next episode on habits, we'll have an FYF, and then we'll have an episode about habit stacking, because I know a lot of you want to work on more than one habit at a time. We'll talk about that next week. But between now and then, while you're experimenting, here's the other thing you have to do. So one, you make it really small, tiny, tiny, tiny. Two, you have to celebrate. You have to celebrate that you did it. So after I sit down to have breakfast, I pick up my book, and then I'm going to say I'm amazing, or I'm going to high five myself, or I'm going to jump up and down, or I'm going to play my favorite song, or I'm going to tell, tell, text my friend. Oh, my God, you won't believe this, I picked up my book I said I was going to read, right? I have to celebrate. If I sit down, start eating my breakfast, almost finish and go, oh, oh, my God, I forgot. I'm supposed to grab my book. I'm going to celebrate that I remembered it. And if I can do it, I will grab my book. Why do we need to do this? Because celebration creates a dopamine high in your brain. Your brain feeds off of that, and so it starts to remember. Every time I pick up a book, I feel good about myself. So I am going to remember to pick up this book because after I picked up this book, I felt really good about myself. After I remembered this book, I felt really good about myself. So when you celebrate, thinking about doing the habit, or actually doing the habit, and you celebrate, you are well on your way to creating a habit. They do not take 21 days. They take a dopamine high. They take an emotional good feeling. That's what they take, okay, so already, like, I'm like, so excited. go pick up a book I get, my brain is like, where is this book? What's so, what's so cool about this is when you do it like this, when it's not from a timer and it's not out of all or nothing, oh my God, I picked up my book, but I couldn't read for 20 minutes like I said, I would I only read for 10, I'm such a loser, that actually stresses the brain out, makes the brain go I don't even want to look at the book. You won't even see the book at the table, because your brain is like, I don't want to see that, because it makes me feel bad about myself, and I don't want to feel bad at myself. But when you actually celebrate it, your brain starts to see all the different times you can read a book. So here's what happens, right? What will happen is, I won't just be reading the book at breakfast. I'm going to start reading books twice, two different times during the day, because my brain is going to be seeking out opportunities for me to read my book, to pick up my book, but notice how I said I'm going to practice this week, just picking up my book and celebrating that. So if you want to make coffee for two, maybe the habit is just putting two cups on the counter, right? If you want to move your body more. Maybe the habit is putting on the running shoes or setting out the clothes to go to the gym or picking the workout you would have done. You know, we tell OPC members like if you're not used to being consistent with a Pilates practice, maybe the habit is just logging in and pressing play. Anything you do after that habit is extra credit. Okay? So, extra credit. If all I do this whole week at breakfast is pick up the book, I have done my job, I get to celebrate. Okay? So I think that that is a good spot for us to leave today. So think about the different ways you like to celebrate if you're struggling with the celebration part, my perfectionist, because it's something so small and who cares? BJ Fogg does have like, 100 different ways you can celebrate, and he has a really cool thing in his book on how to figure out which ways you would like to celebrate you've got kids. It's so easy because you can just go high five, I picked up a book, and it's like I picked up a book, like, we can all create a habit picking a book, right? So you you can do it with them. But some of us need like it to be verb, like auditory. We hear it. Some of us need to like move our body in celebration. Some of us need to play a song. Do not go if I do this all week long, then I have a reward. That's not how habits are created. Doesn't work that way. Has to be in the moment. Has to be something great, okay, something that makes you feel really, really good. So want you to practice that this week. We'll come back next week and we'll dive into how to stack another habit on top of this, and how to expand the habits that you are basically growing here, right? Like, what comes next? How do I know that we can, you know, go from just picking up the book to opening up the page. When does that happen? So we'll go into that more in the next episode. Until next time, Be It Till You See It. Oh, but also, I want to know what habit you're working on. What are you practicing on? DM me, a DM to Be It Pod or tag me so I can celebrate you, right? Like it's really helpful when other people are cheering you on as well, to cheer yourself on. Thank you so much. Have an amazing day. 


Lesley Logan 18:03  

That's all I got for this episode of the Be It Till You See It Podcast. One thing that would help both myself and future listeners is for you to rate the show and leave a review and follow or subscribe for free wherever you listen to your podcast. Also, make sure to introduce yourself over at the Be It Pod on Instagram. I would love to know more about you. Share this episode with whoever you think needs to hear it. Help us and others Be It Till You See It. Have an awesome day. Be It Till You See It is a production of The Bloom Podcast Network. If you want to leave us a message or a question that we might read on another episode, you can text us at +1-310-905-5534 or send a DM on Instagram @BeItPod.



Brad Crowell 18:45  

It's written, filmed, and recorded by your host, Lesley Logan, and me, Brad Crowell.


Lesley Logan 18:51  

It is transcribed, produced and edited by the epic team at Disenyo.co.


Brad Crowell 18:55  

Our theme music is by Ali at Apex Production Music and our branding by designer and artist, Gianfranco Cioffi.


Lesley Logan 19:02  

Special thanks to Melissa Solomon for creating our visuals.


Brad Crowell 19:05  

Also to Angelina Herico for adding all of our content to our website. And finally to Meridith Root for keeping us all on point and on time.



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