616. Break Free From the All-Or-Nothing Trap in Your Habits

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In this third Habits Series episode, Lesley gets honest about the messy middle of change and why breaking out of the all-or-nothing trap starts with tiny, testable habits. She explains how experimenting with prompts reveals what actually works, why celebration matters, and how your feelings toward a habit determine whether it sticks. Lesley also shares why you must expand a habit before stacking a new one on top. Listen in and choose one small habit to shrink, test, and celebrate this week.


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In this episode you will learn about:

  • Why all-or-nothing mindsets make habits harder to keep consistently.
  • How experimenting reveals when habits genuinely work best in your life.
  • How tiny habits help you test motivation, timing, and personal preference.
  • The importance of celebrating attempts because how you feel truly matters.
  • Why expanding a habit fully prepares you for stacking without overwhelm.


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Episode Transcript:

Lesley Logan 0:00  

Once you have this ability to make habits at the drop of a hat, because that's what's going to happen, right? When you celebrate, when you make it small, it starts to become a habit. It's really easy to add more in, but before you do that, we have to make sure we've expanded out what we've done. 


Lesley Logan 0:14  

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 0:53  

All right, Be It babe. Welcome back to the Be It Pod Habits Series. This is a series we wanted you to have, because every time you pick up habits, if you don't know how to make a habit stick, then it's gonna be really frustrating to keep hearing about, like advice, about like, different things you could be doing, or maybe you're hearing it, be it action item. You're like, oh, I want to add that in. And you're like, and then you try, and it sucks and you don't get to do it, and then you feel like a failure, and that's not gonna help you be it till you till you see it. So if this is the first time you're listening to the Be It Pod, hi, I'm Lesley Logan. I am a habits mindset Pilates instructor and business coach, and I want you to listen to the first episode in the Habits Series. So go back to last week's episode. This is episode three, so make sure you go to the first one, all right. If you've been listening to it, then you have been practicing. So like me, you've been practicing your tiny version of the habit you're trying out. We're in experimentation mode, okay. All or nothing mindsets do not work. They don't work. Being a perfectionist doesn't work. You've got to try this in an experimentation mode. In your experimentation mode, maybe you've discovered, like, I was trying to read my book after I sat down for breakfast, I'm gonna pick up my book, right? But maybe you discovered that, like, where you put something, it didn't work. You got to try it for a different time slot. I'll give you an example of a habit I was trying to do. So we have these white counters. They're super beautiful. Like, they look really good, and mag like photos, it's like, so clean. Anytime you do anything in the kitchen, the countertops somehow already look dirty, like they just look like you're like, what the heck? I just walked in here, and now there's dirt. So of course, you make coffee every morning, and of course, once you make coffee, like, even as careful as you are, there's like, somehow grounds everywhere, and it would drive me crazy, because I wanted to have clean countertops. I'm not a, I'm not a, I'm not a, I'm a messy person, not a dirty person. So I don't like the way the coffee grounds were on the counter, but I was struggling to figure out, how do I just wipe down the countertops throughout the day so that they're clean, right? And so I thought, when I was practicing this that, oh, the best habit is, like, after I make my coffee, I'll wipe down the counters. We talked about how specific like prompts don't work. It has to be after something you already do. I always make my coffee. I never miss making my coffee. So after I make my coffee, I'm gonna wipe down the counters. Make the coffee. Put it down. Wipe it down. I visualize this. I thought it had all mapped out. I mean, how hard is it? Oh my gosh, you guys, I struggled so hard two two days in a row of trying this experiment out, that didn't work. So then I tried to make it smaller, okay, well, after I make my coffee, I'll grab the towel. I'm just gonna grab it, I'm just gonna put my hand on it. And that didn't work. And I was like, oh, what is going on? And then I was like, you know, thinking about it, and I was like, well, the motivation at the moment might be in conflict. After I make the coffee, I want the coffee so I don't necessarily want to sit down and clean something. So I changed the experiment to after I put my coffee mug in the sink, I'll wipe down the counter, right? Because now I'm putting the coffee down, I'm in a cleaning mode. I could just, like, wipe down the counter. I'm in the same place that the habit needs to be. And that's another thing. When you're doing the experiment, if you said you wanted to go for a run, but where I before, like, after you do your last email before lunch, you're gonna go for a run, but where you work isn't a place you like to run, or it's not safe to run, or it's you actually need to take the shower, or whatever, like, if there's something in conflict, we have to change the time of when we're trying to do something. And so in your experimentation, you're not just experimenting with the habits that you're testing out. You're experimenting with the size, and you're experimenting with where it goes. So to recap, remember, we talked about like, maybe the habit is to read every day for 20 minutes, but I have to first start with picking the book up. Maybe your habit is running, but you have to first start by putting the shoes on. Right? If you're not used to putting the shoes on, then now, if you're already walking every day, okay, maybe you are going to run block, and if that's too much, you're going to run to the next house, right? How can we make it as small as possible, as tiny as possible, for this to be helpful for you, for this to actually be successful for you, for you also to discover if you like it, right? Like, do you even like this habit? Like, I say I want to read a physical book, but maybe after all, experimenting that I do, I'm like, I actually just like to listen to them, You know what? Right now in my life, I like to listen to them. That's fine, right? So I want you to be thinking, okay, how small can I make it? Am I doing it the right time? Is it after the right thing? So for example, another one would be like, o h, after I get home from work, I'm going to do my Pilates. But after you get home from work might not be specific enough, because maybe you have to put your bag down, then you have to go change your clothes, then you have to, like, let the dog out. So maybe you actually said it would be after work, but it wasn't specific enough. And we actually need to get more specific with when something is happening, and the more specific you can be, right after I sit down at my desk, I will make those sales calls, after I sit down at my desk, I will meditate for five minutes, after I sit down, after I park my car, I will meditate for five minutes, after I brush my teeth, I'll put my phone away. You see how it's like, how specific can we get so that it's not vague after I get home from work, because there's a lot that can go on, and then there's different motivations that happen. We also talked about celebration, right? If you are not celebrating doing the thing you said you're going to do or thinking about doing it, it makes it very difficult for these habits to stick, because then you're having to operate off of the idea that you need 21 days or 70 days. So an example of why we have to celebrate. We all remember, during the pandemic, depending where you lived, we all had to wear masks to go to the grocery store, right? And then there was that day when we all got the permission we don't need to wear the mask. Hallelujah, right? Don't use the mask. Then, oh crap, you got to wear a mask again. How many times you remember the mask? But you wore it every day for three weeks, for a month, if to me, where you lived, we were in California. We wore those masks for months, right? Soon as you had one day, you have to wear it. What happened a week later when you had to, forgot it? Why? Because your brain hated it. You hated wearing the masks, so your brain despised it. So as soon as you didn't have to remember anymore, you didn't remember it anymore. That's why how you feel about something matters. If you don't like something that you're doing, let's not make a habit around it, right? This is your life. You get to live one of them that we know of, so we may as well enjoy it. We want our life to be a series of habits that we enjoy doing that serve us, right? So that is how, that's experimentation. 


Lesley Logan 7:53  

Now let's say you slayed this. It's going really, really well, and you're like Lesley, I have three other habits I wanted to work on, I want to add into I want to do. So that's where the idea of habit stacking comes from with James Clear. BJ doesn't call it that, but yes, every habit is just a prompt to the next habit, okay. So if you are ready to add another one in, you go back to the beginning. What are all the things that you could do? How easy or hard is it to do? How can I make it as tiny as possible? And then where? What is it coming after? How am I doing this my life? And then we experiment with it. So I would not. I don't recommend practicing one more than one new habit at time when you're new at this. Once you're new, you could practice like, two, maybe three different things, doing physical habits, like, habits that are not, how to explain this, emotional habits you don't like about yourself are really hard. Okay, so that's more advanced. So I wouldn't try adding those in or practicing those until we get really good at like, the more tangible habits, like the workouts you want to do, or the acts or services that you want, the space you need in your calendar, that kind of stuff is a little easier. Things that have to do with emotions, for example, I want to stop talking negatively about myself. Well, that's going to require us to be aware first of when we are starting to talk negatively about ourselves. So I would recommend saving those for when you get a little more advanced. But when you want to add a new habit in, you add one at a time, and you make it as small as possible, okay? And if you thought you made it smaller and you didn't, that didn't work, make it even smaller. Okay? If you really want to do it, make it even smaller. I think it's easy for us overachievers and perfectionists, when we start to hear how easy it is to make a habit, we start to go gung ho on all the different habits we want. I promised you that we would do an episode on how to unravel a habit, and I'll make sure that we actually do get into that in the next episode. So if that's what you want, right into the next episode. 


Lesley Logan 9:58  

But I do want to say, this might be the time as you're trying to create space and prompts for the habits you want, you might be noticing the habits that you don't like. And so all I should do right now is just notice them, take note, because in the next episode, we'll dive into that. But when you are I can't, I find myself, like, wanting to come into your home right now and like, whole like, see what you're doing as far as habits you want to add. Because what I don't want is you try to add a bunch of new things at the same time. So for example, if I actually were to tell you all the little habits that I have that I've created for myself, it might overwhelm you. But some people, it actually makes them go after all that. So I do shake plate, I do run, I do do Pilates. I do have red light masks my face and my neck. I do have a pimp mat. I do have a sauna blanket. These are all like, crazy. I'm gonna sound like I have, like, too many things, and I'm like, but these are all things that make me feel good, right? I bought one at a time, and I made sure I had a habit around it before I bought it. So have you ever, like, bought, like, oh, I bought a gua sha, right, two years ago, gua sha, but I didn't actually plan it accordingly to add it into my busy life. So I've actually struggled tremendously on like, when am I going to gua sha? What is the prompt? What is the thing that I do so that I can gua sha. I have moved the gua sha from the bathroom to the extra bathroom, from the extra bathroom to the shower, from the shower to like, let's move different places. I moved it to my bed. I put the oil in my bed. Like, I've tried all these different things. And I really asked myself, like, do I want this habit? Is this making sense? So before you buy any of the things about a habit you want to have, it's really important for you to explore like, where do I think this could be, and what part of this habit can I practice? How small can I make it before I make this purchase? So I don't buy things that I'm not going to use, so I don't put pressure on myself, because what happens is we have the sunk cost fallacy. We're like, oh my gosh, I spent all this money on this thing. I've got to do it. And then we have stress and shame around that thing. And so then, what does our brain do? Not do it. It doesn't do it right, because it's not even thinking about it. So I would really try to find, like, the things that you're wanting to add into your life, if you are wanting to add in more Pilates, like, how can we make rolling out the Pilates mat or putting out the Pilates clothes? How can we make a habit around something tiny before you invest in the Reformer or the studio membership, things like that? So, I, my team and I talk about, like, stack it like you mean it. It's once you have this ability to make habits at the drop of a hat, because that's what's going to happen, right? When you celebrate, when you make it small, it starts to become a habit, like a dropof a hat. It's really easy to add more in, but before you do that, we have to make sure we've expanded out what we've done. So remember, with my example from the last couple episodes, I want to read more. So after I sit down at breakfast, I pick up the book. So far I've picking up the book. I haven't read the book. I haven't fulfilled the eventual habit, which is, like, I'm going to read this book. This book is going to be coming. I actually read so before I stack another habit, like after I pick up the book, I go, I go to, you know? I go, do I shake plate. I have to, actually, once it gets easier for me to just grab that book without thinking about, with having to remember it, then I can read the book, right? I can read a page. And so maybe the next habit is like, okay, after I sit down for breakfast, I read one page of my book, and when that becomes easier, and I start to realize, oh, I average at five pages, then it could be like, okay, I read for all the entire time having breakfast. Once that becomes easier, then I can stack something else after that book, but I cannot stack anything on top of the book until that habit is set and it's only going to get and it and it's at the place that I want it. So I have to, like, expand it as much as I wanted, because once I stack them on top of it, I have hamstrung the book reading. Right? I can only read the book as long as nothing is coming after it. That could shorten how long I read the book. That makes sense? If you were wanting to run a mile every day, and you're like, okay, after I take off my running shoes, I then stretch for 10 minutes, but you have a time concern when you have to actually get done with your stretching, if you haven't really expanded the running to what you want it to be, putting that next habit on top of it, one, it could it could fail the moment you skip a run. Two, you might not get to a full mile by the time you have to start stretching, and then that's going to affect your ability to feel good about what you're doing. We'll have stress and shame around it. We'll have guilt, we'll have judgment. We won't do it, right? So emotions really do matter. So I want you to understand, like, how do I expand? When am I ready to expand the habit, should feel really natural. And then once that happens, then I can stack on top of it. Until then, I can only stack on things that are already secure and already doing well. And if I stack on them, I have to, one, make sure that I've experimented on the size of the habit that I'm stacking the emotional celebration afterwards that I'm doing before I add another one. So no one is adding, no one is adding more than a couple habits at a time, experimentations at a time. Ideally, you start with one at a time, until you get good at it, then you can do two. I think the max, I would say it would be like three in a week. 


Lesley Logan 15:39  

Your homework is to review that. Notice the habits you're wanting to unravel, because that's gonna be the next episode. And I guess I want to just say, like, notice if there's habits that you're like but Lesley, I really want to change these things about myself. They're a little bit more esoteric, a little bit more in the brain, like we're talking about, like, negative self-talk. Also, just write those down, because we'll talk about those kinds of things in the next episode as well. But they are just a bit more advanced, because you have to actually be able to catch yourself like, oh, there was a negative, negative self-talk moment, and then we can have a habit that we do instead. So those are just some things we'll talk more about that soon. It's going to fit better with the unraveling of a habit, because, again, things that no longer serve us are just habits that we used to think did, and they're doing something in our brain that makes us keep it around, and we have to figure out what's prompting that, what's starting that. How is that? How can we, what control do we have around that? There's so many different things we can talk about. So anyways, this is about, hopefully, that gave you some ideas on how to habit stack, how to make something tiny be more closer to the habit that you want. And most importantly, it takes time becoming like, being it until you see it just takes time. Having habits that you actually want to have in a life you want to have. It's not a light switch, it's it's more like this really fun little heartbeat graph as we practice, and we figure it out, and, oh, we it's the wrong place in the day practice and then it becomes something that actually is sustainable and feels good, and you don't even have to think about it. And all of a sudden, you're like, oh, I read every morning. And people like, when do you do this? How do you do this? And you're like, I just do it right? That's what we want. That's how good a good habit can become. It's something you don't even have to think about. You don't have to think about. You don't have to celebrate anymore, because you just do it. And that is a question I get a lot like, when do I get to stop celebrating when your habit is at the length of time or the intention that you want, and you don't have to you don't have to remind yourself you just picked up the book, you got lost reading. You just put your phone away and you went and you had two hours before bed, three hours before bed without screen time, like when it just becomes so natural, that's when you get to stop celebrating, because it's now a habit and you can add something on top of it. So not stacking habits until you have habits in place, is one of the best ways to having a schedule that really doesn't feel overwhelming, to having a life, to having a life that actually does lead you to where you want to grow. Thank you so much. You guys are so so amazing. How are these working for you? How is the series working for you? I want to know. What habits are you working on? What habit, what wins are you having, I want to celebrate that on our on our FYF episode. And until next time, Be It Till You See It. 


Lesley Logan 18:18  

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 19:00  

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


Lesley Logan 19:05  

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


Brad Crowell 19:10  

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


Lesley Logan 19:17  

Special thanks to Melissa Solomon for creating our visuals.


Brad Crowell 19:20  

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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