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Habit Stacking | How to Easily Create New, Healthy Habits

HABIT STACKING
How to Easily Create NEW Healthy Habits




Your habits will make or break your success . . . 
"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act, but a habit" a quote attributed to Aristotle.  And he's absolutely right.  Change, success, reaching your goals, etc. is not some grand gesture, it's the accumulation of all the small things you did a long the way.  Things so small you probably think won't make a bit of difference, but when added together, compounded over time, add up to the success you're after.  Habits have a way of compounding over time.  One small habit will lead to other actions and habits that all add up to your ultimate success or failure.  

Wouldn't health, weight loss, and wellness be a whole lot easier if you didn't have to rely on willpower, discipline, or motivation to achieve them? Wouldn't it be so much easier if you started consciously developing habits that kept you moving on the right trajectory automatically?  Establishing healthy habits will start to put your health journey on autopilot.  To get healthy and stay that way, you MUST address and adjust the habits you've established both good and bad.  If you don't like the results you have right now, peel back a layer and uncover the habits that have gotten you there.  

In today's episode I'm going to walk you through how to use "habit stacking" to start developing new healthy habits.  It's not a complicated process, but there's definitely a right way to add new habits so that you'll actually do them and continue to do them consistently over time.  If you decide to employ these strategies, and I hope you do, I'd love to hear about it! Send me a DM on Instagram or post in your stories and tag me!

 Need more help with some of these concepts and want to actually KNOW how to put them in place in your life? Then make sure you're on the mailing list for the next launch of the Health Mind, Healthy Body Program!   

 
XOXO
Tara





Full transcription available at the bottom of this post


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Show Notes: 

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If you struggle with yo-yo dieting then you know how hard it is to make any real lasting change.  Unfortunately most women get stuck in the belief that being on a diet is the only way to lose weight and get healthy, and when they inevitably fail they’ve destroyed their self esteem, destroyed their relationship with food, and get stuck in a guilt/shame spiral that starts the whole process over again.  
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Full Transcript: 
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act but a habit, not a direct quote from Aristotle, but an accurate sentiment of what he stood for. And I think he's right, excellent success. meeting your goals are all a result of habit, the things that you repeatedly do consistently over time. We never succeed because of one grand gesture, we succeed because it's an accumulation of all the little things that we do over and over again. Today, we're talking about habits, habits that will make you or break you, and how to create more healthy habits in your life. Let's go. 
 Before we get going I want to give a big thank you to fig and farm who left a review on iTunes so she says this big wins are the result of all the small changes terrorist speaks truth brings encouragement and breeds a fresh air into the vast topic we know as wellness. from Episode One, Tara brings the fire giving tangible, practical and relatable action steps to take on a road toward wellness. I love that her focus was on the whole body from mind to movement. Thank you fig & farm so much for leaving that review on the podcast. I just recently was looking at where of this podcast broadcasts to and there are people all over the world who are listening to this and that is just absolutely amazing to me. I'm ranked in Malaysia for goodness sakes. I don't even know how that happens. But thank you for everyone who is listening around the world that is just such an honor to be able to provide this for you and I hope that you are getting tons of value from it. If you are getting value from it, please take just a second hop over to iTunes, subscribe to the podcast and leave a review. That's how more people find out about this show. How I get to reach more people with this message of health and wellness and self love and hope and how we really get to start making that movement of healthy mind healthy body a huge one that truly can spread across the world. Amazing. Thank you for all for listening, and for leaving those reviews and subscribing. 

Okay, today, we are talking about habits. Truly your habits will make or break your success in anything. Last week's episode Episode 21, we talked about the three basics of health and weight loss, and how it really doesn't matter what diet you try what program or strategy you're using. If you don't get the basics down. If you're not doing the basics consistently, habitually, if you will, then nothing's really going to work long term, you're not going to find that long term success that you're after habits are the same. If you're forcing yourself to perform on a diet or whatever else it is, but you haven't consciously changed your bad habits or created the new healthy habits that will get you to where you want to go. Your results just won't last you inevitably will fall back into those bad habits unless you created new ones. So addressing habits, the importance of habits, those things that drive us throughout the day that we're not even always aware that we're doing is super important to our ultimate success in really whatever it is that we're trying to do. habits are those small, seemingly insignificant decisions that you make every single day on autopilot. They truly determine your path. In life, and they're determining that path without even you realizing it, most of the time, in order to change that path, you have to change the small habits every day. And you have to change them and then perform them consistently over time, you literally are the sum total of your habits. 
I love the analogy that James clear uses in his book, Atomic Habits, great book if you haven't read it. But he describes this, if you walk into a cold room, let's say it's 25 degrees, and there's a giant block of ice in the room, nothing's happening, right, the room is freezing cold, it's 25 degrees, there's a giant block of ice in there. And if you raise the degree, the temperature of that room one degree, nothing happens, the ice is still there, if you raise it to 27 degrees, nothing happens, the ice is still there, you keep raising that temperature, one degree, one degree, one degree and it still looks like nothing is happening, then all of a sudden, you raise from 32 to 33 degrees and something starts happening, little trickles of melt, start running down the sides 33 to 34, melting a little faster 3536 37 every degree that you then start raising that ice is melting faster, and faster and faster, until it's just cascading of water. And that's how he describes habits. And I love that analogy. Because at first, it seems like nothing's happening. It seems like this tiny little thing, this one tiny degree isn't making a bit of difference to anything. And then all of a sudden, it's just a cascade of change. It all starts tumbling. 
Now, I also like to think of it like a Jenga tower, right? You've got you've played the game Jenga. So you take out the one Jenga piece, nothing happens, take out one more, nothing happens. Take out one more, nothing happens until you get to the point that you take the one last piece out and the whole thing falls down habits are the same. It seems at first, like this little thing you're doing repeatedly, repeatedly, consistently isn't making very much change until all of a sudden, the change has been made. And you didn't even realize it. That's how habits work. That's the importance of habits. Given enough time, your habits could result in 100 pound weight loss or saving enough money for a house or finishing medical school. Right. Most of us don't give this habit process enough time. We work out regularly for a week. And then we eat a salad instead of a burger. And we're mad because we're not a fitness model. Like I'm guilty of this too. I want to work out for a week and all sudden have no fat left and just be muscle. That's not how this works. Change takes consistency over time. But we have to give it enough time. That's why you constantly hear me talking about long term health and long term weight loss on the show. quick fixes don't last long term change takes a long time. Let's give you a real life example. Let's say that you decide that the new habit you're going to create is to pack a lunch every single day for work instead of going out to fast food. So you pack a lunch every single day. Now, on your lunch break at work, you have more time because you're not driving around trying to find food. So you start a habit of walking every day during your lunch break. Well, now you're eating healthier, and you're walking every day. And now you feel more energetic, so you start waking up a little bit earlier. And when you start waking up a little bit earlier, you start putting in a little bit of workout in the morning. And now more working out leads to drinking more water. And along those steps, you have been getting healthier and healthier and losing weight if that's what you need to do. So that one little habit of packing a lunch for work cascaded into all of these other habits that just kept propelling you towards your goal. Do you see how powerful that can be? one little thing can turn into so many other things along the way. 
However, this also works in the wrong direction. So let's say for example, you start sleeping in, well, now you slept in so you have less time in the morning to pack yourself a lunch. So now you're running around at lunch at work trying to find some fast food. Now you ate the fast food. So you're feeling more tired when you get home. So now when you get home, you have a new habit of hitting the couch instead of taking a walk. And this habit makes you less likely to make dinner because now I'm tired and I'm sitting on the couch and I'm less likely to get up and cook and then that will start maybe leading to the habit of ordering dinner instead of cooking dinner. And all of these habits are cascading and adding together to equal less health and more weight gain. You see all that one little thing getting up later in the morning cascaded into all these other habits that lead you further in the direction away from your goals. This works both ways. So I want to talk about the idea of habit stacking. This is such a useful way to add healthier habits to your life. This is Not my idea I didn't come up with this. This has been well written about in many books. Brendon Burchard, James clear, lots of authors have written about the idea of habit stacking. And so I want to kind of bring it all together and give you kind of some useful tools so that you could try this too. So what you're doing essentially, is adding a habit that you would like to start doing on to habits that you are already doing habitually. 
So every day, you already have all of these things that you're already doing, your your alarm goes off, and you get up, you brush your teeth in the morning, you take a shower at night, you get coffee in the morning, right? There's all these things that you're already doing habitually, that you might not even be aware of. So step one is just to start becoming aware of all of those habits that you already have, what are the things that you do every single day. So the idea of habit stacking is to take that new thing you want to add and attach it to something that you already do. So here's an example of something that I've already done recently. I brush my teeth every morning, right? You probably do that, too. It's just a habit we already have we brush our teeth every morning. Well, I was getting really bad at taking my supplements, I was forgetting them all the time. So I put my supplements next to my toothbrush. And so I stacked the habit of taking supplements, with the habit I already had established of brushing my teeth. And so now every morning before I brush my teeth, I take my supplements, and then I brush my teeth, I have combined those two habits. So now I do both of them together every single day. Here's another habit that a client of mine has been working on. So every morning, she pours herself a cup of coffee. That's what she does every single day. So she decided that that's an easy thing to stack a habit onto. She wants to start exercising more. And that's a goal that she has. So every morning before she pours herself a cup of coffee, she does 10 push ups on the countertop, she is adding exercise to a habit that she already has of getting coffee, that habit of 10 push ups on the countertop established with getting coffee now will result in her and already has resulted in her doing those 10 countertop push ups more than just when she's getting coffee. She doesn't then, but it spurred something else in her and now she's adding them to other things. And now she's doing a few squats here and there, right and it'll keep cascading, adding more exercise here. And there are two other habits and other parts of her day. And she'll keep progressing toward that ultimate goal of being an exerciser, you get the idea. 
This is such a useful way to add in the things that you know you want to be doing to move you towards your goal. So let me give you some tips for habit stacking so that you'll be more successful as you start to try this. Tip number one is to choose the habit that you already are performing. And make sure it's a positive habit, right like brushing my teeth is a positive habit getting out of bed is a positive habit. Try to stack on top of things that you already really know you're going to do consistently. If it's a here or there thing, or something that you don't always do, it's not going to be a good habit to stack on top of that makes sense. So make sure the habit you're choosing to stack is a good one one that you already really do all the time. 
Tip number two, then is this habit that you want to add. Make sure it's one that is meaningful to you that's getting you closer to your goals. So for example, for my habit of taking my supplements when I brush my teeth, that's getting me closer to my goal of dealing with my autoimmune disorder, because that's what the supplements are for 10 pushups when you're getting your coffee. That's, that's helping her head to her goal of being an exerciser and getting more movement into her day. So make sure the habit that you want to stack is one that's moving you in the direction that you want to be going. One that's moving you toward the goals that you want to accomplish. 
The third tip is that habit that you want to stack, you got to make it really small. There's something that is called the two minute rule, you should be able to perform that new habit in two minutes or less. So if you want to add the habit of reading more in the morning, on to turning your alarm off. So turning your alarm off is the habit that you do every single day. And what you want to add to it is reading the habit you're going to add is not I want to read a chapter every morning, that's going to take too long, it's too big, you're not going to do it. So start small, you're going to stack the habit of I want to read one page. So I'm gonna turn my alarm off and read one page. That's a doable habit. I can do it in less than two minutes. For me taking the supplements less than two minutes. I can do that really fast before I brush my teeth 10 push ups when getting coffee, you can do that really fast less than two minutes. So make sure the habit that you're trying to stack is small, tiny little bite sized chunks. Remember the small things add up. But we got to start small or we won't do them. One of the biggest mistakes that we make is that we bite off more than we can chew. Right? That's the same for a reason. Because we do it and it doesn't work. When we try to tackle these two big chunks, we don't stick to it. So we want to keep it real small bite sized pieces. one page is your goal is your habit, not an entire book. So for example, you want to add the habit of meditating. Okay, so you're going to get real specific, I will add the habit of meditating for 60 seconds, right before I take my shower every single day. Okay, get real specific and keep it real small. 
And the fourth tip is this. It's about your environment. So your environment that you've created about yourself is really powerful. In the Healthy Mind, healthy body program, we talk a lot about being disciplined. And the truth is that people who you see are as disciplined are any different than you, it's just that they've created an environment around them that lends to their discipline, right? They've made the things that they want to do the healthy choices they want to make, they've made them clear, and they've made them easy to do. So let's go back to my example, the supplements, if I want to take my supplements, right, before I brush my teeth, I'm going to put the supplements next to my toothbrush, if I have to walk all the way down to the kitchen, and grab them and take them and then find a glass of water, and then block, right it's a whole thing, I'm not going to do it. But if they're sitting right there, then I will do it. So when you are designing your environment, make it obvious and make it easy to perform your new habit. Right, I can do 10 countertop push ups because the countertop is right there, it's what the coffeepot sitting on, I can do 60 seconds of meditation because I can sit right there in front of my shower and do it if that's what I want to do. If I want to read one page right after I turn off my alarm, I'm going to put the book right next to my alarm clock, right, I'm going to make it real easy, real obvious, I want those visual cues to prompt me to perform the new habit that I want to perform. Does that make sense? 
When trying to add new habits, you really want to make it easy, you want to make it obvious, and you want to some immediate gratification. That's kind of where that two minute rule comes in. If I can perform that in less than two minutes, and I can say Good job me, I did that. That's great. I want to be able to have kind of immediate gratification for myself saying, Look at me go, I'm making new habits, I'm doing good things, I'm taking small steps in the right direction, make it easy, make it obvious, make it gratifying, once you're ultimately doing here is mastering the habit of showing up for yourself, you decided you wanted to do this thing. And then you are making it easy for yourself to do it. And then you're doing it every single day, you're training your brain that when I decide to do something, I actually do it, I follow through with it. And look, it's making change, right? Me taking my supplements every day is going to help my autoimmune disorder, doing 10 push ups a day might not seem like a lot, but it adds up fast. And it also adds up and the other behaviors you're now likely to do because of it. 60 seconds of meditation might not seem like much to you. But if you train your brain that this is a commitment worth keeping, while maybe you start extending the time, or maybe you start learning how to be a better meditator, or maybe you start adding other things that are helping you move along the path that you want to move along. All of these little things really start to add up. 
That's the power of habits. And what's cool about habits is that you don't have to have a lot of discipline, you don't have to have motivation, right? Because you start habitually doing these things, wouldn't it be so much easier to get healthy? If we could just start habitually eating healthy food or habitually making a lunch for ourselves? Or just doing all of these healthy things for ourselves without even thinking about them? Right? Wouldn't that be the ultimate goal? That I just choose all these healthy things all the time, without even thinking about it, I just automatically choose the good thing. That's really where you're going with this. But it has to start small, you have to start somewhere and you have to start, you have to start you have to pick the thing started. And then you can start picking more picking more habits, picking more habits to stack them on. And then consistently performing these new things are pushing you in the right direction. So start thinking about what are the habits that you want to add that will move you in the direction you want to go. And what are the habits that you already have that you could stack those habits on to and start watching over time. The cascade that will happen, but just remember, you have to give it enough time you have to keep going. You can't go to the gym. for one week and be mad because you don't look like a supermodel, you can't eat salad for one week and be mad because you didn't lose 20 pounds. You have to keep doing the healthy things that the habitual things over and over and over consistently for a very long time. And then eventually you'll turn around and you'll be like, amazed at how far you've come. And you didn't even realize that you were doing it most of the time. I hope this was so helpful for you guys. And I would love to hear. If you have tried any of this, then you DM me on Instagram. Just send me a message and let me know that you've listened to this. You can post this on your stories and tell me how it went and what habit maybe you're trying to do. I would love to hear some feedback, especially if you're trying it. Or if you have questions just reach out, reach out to me. So my links are everywhere. Just Tara Faulmann find me on Instagram, send me a DM post in your stories and tag me. I would love to know how this works for you. Alright, until we talk again, my friends, be well. 


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