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Hey everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. I wanna talk today about a few things that can really make acquiring new habits a lot easier. We've talked from the beginning of this podcast about how if you have anxiety a lot of the time, it's because your brain has a habit of seeing your resources as not enough for the demands that you face in your life. That's just kind of the default way that your brain sees things. If you want to get out of habitual anxiety, then you need to try and teach your brain to have some new habits. And we've talked on this podcast about so many different strategies that you can, if you can make them habits that they can help change long term the default way that your brain sees your demands and your resources. Change the balance there and make it so that your default is to face stress with a challenge response rather than a, than a threat response. So that you have this feeling that you are ready to meet the stressor rather than always feeling anxious about stressors in your life. But really the clincher here is being able to make new habits, make new mental habits that can switch the way that your brain sees your demands and resources. But that's the hard part, right? Habits are, can be difficult, new habits can be difficult to adopt, to really make stick in your life. So I wanna talk to you today about four different ideas that can really, really help make acquiring new habits a lot easier.
We've talked about so many different strategies on this podcast. It can feel overwhelming the number of strategies. Maybe even sometimes feels like, oh my goodness, I don't know if I wanna listen to another week, because that's just another strategy and I'm already carrying so many ideas in my arms and I can't fit another one. But anyway, I wanna just talk to you about how just four key ideas can really help you to take the overwhelm out of adopting new strategies and making them habitual. Okay?
So the first idea is that just the act of listening to this podcast, even if you do nothing else, that in itself will already help you to make new habits. When people are starting to learn a new language, one of the things that really helps is to listen to that language a whole lot. That's what little kids are doing, right? They're listening to their parents, to their family, to their siblings, to their friends for years, and then they start to be able to produce their own language after they've already absorbed enough, listened enough, it's entered into their subconscious and they start to be able to produce it on their own. Learning to play an instrument is similar. There's a whole method of learning to play the piano and violin and other instruments called the Suzuki Method, where one of the big pillars is just to make sure that you're listening a whole lot to these different pieces that you're trying to learn. And the listening all by itself kind of trains your unconscious brain in a way that makes the whole process so much more natural and so much easier. I still use this concept of listening whenever I'm going to learn some new repertoire on the piano. I do a lot of listening to different recordings, and I find that this just shortcuts the whole process. It makes it so much easier because I start to get a really good concept of the piece and there, there seem to be different parts of the technical ex execution that get just a whole lot easier just from having listened to it. So in the same way listening to the podcast can help change your unconscious view of the way things are just through that repetition, through listening to stories about people whose perspective was changed. It was one way first, they did the strategy, it changed their perspective in a very specific way, and also just having the ideas wash over you about how it can happen. it is kind of the shortcut way toward being able to make change is just to listen, let it wash over you. Hearing these stories is a mini practice and how to see things differently. So, so that's the first concept. Just listen to the podcast, let it wash over you. And that in itself is doing something, even if it doesn't feel like it.
The second thing is to pick really small goals and be consistent. So practice small and consistent. Commit to the smallest possible change and just build from there. There's a quote that I like from Dr. Jen Gunter and she was talking about trying to develop the habit of exercise, and she said that "exercise is like free money, even a little bit is good." I really like this concept. The same thing applies to anxiety management strategies. It's like free money. Even just a tiny little bit of practice is good. And if it's small, if you're making a small goal, you're a lot more likely to be able to do it consistently because our, our brains are kind of lazy. When we have to choose between two competing options, we usually choose the one that takes the least effort. So it's really important to choose a really small goal. So here's a little example. I was at one point trying to overcome my fear of getting in the ocean. I live near the beach here in Brazil, and so I frequently walk on the beach, but I wasn't ever getting in because the ocean has always really terrified me. But I wanted to overcome this anxiety and fear because I saw other people having so much fun in the ocean, and I really wanted to be one of those people they could just jump in the ocean and have fun. But I found that if my goal was to get in the ocean every time I go walk on the beach, it was way too much for me, and I just wouldn't do it. It was too overwhelming, too scary. So I started with a really tiny goal. My goal was that every time I was gonna go walk on the beach, I, my goal was to put my swimwear on so that if I decided I wanted to get in the water, at least I would have my swimwear on so I could get wet. So I wouldn't have that excuse that, oh, I can't get in 'cause I'm in my regular clothes. So that was my goal when I started. I would just always wear my swimsuit underneath whatever else I was wearing whenever I would go walk on the beach. And I found that since I had my swimsuit on, there were a few occasions when it was really hot and I could see other people having a really good time when I felt that desire to get in and I was able to get, get in a little bit. So the next goal that I made was that I didn't require myself to get all wet. I decided that it was gonna be okay for me just to wear my swim clothes and just get my feet or legs wet. That, that was enough. And so that, that was the next goal that I had, and I found that I could do that one. That one wasn't overwhelming. And then the next goal that I had was that I was, was going to get all wet, completely wet, including my head, but that I wasn't gonna make myself go out far into the ocean. I decided it was okay for me to stay right on the edge of the waves, just find a place where I could kind of sit down or lie down and, and uh, actually get all wet when a wave would wash over me. So it didn't activate my anxiety of getting out in the middle of these waves, but I was at least getting wet. So I did these small, little, tiny goals one at a time, and that made it so that I was able to step by step, erode away at my anxiety of getting into the ocean. So that's just an example of practicing small and consistently.
The third concept is, you don't have to do every strategy. We've talked about so many strategies. You can just browse the strategies. You need to just pick the, the strategies that attract you, right? You're gonna pick the ones that sound like the best fit for you because they sound like you might enjoy doing them, or it might be kind of natural for you to do them, or because you're convinced of how valuable they would be for you. But you just need to feel attracted to the strategy and start it. Do it small. Not every strategy is a good fit for everybody because everybody has different goals and values and needs, and so you need to find the strategies that fit best for you because if you are picking the strategy that is the best fit for you, that is the most attractive to you, then you are a lot more likely to do it consistently. And studies have shown that this, that if you pick strategies that fit your goals and values and needs really well, that you're a more, you're a lot more likely to be able to keep doing them long term and consistently and actually create the habit. If you wanna be really systematic about how you pick which strategies are you, you wanna start with, there's this, um book called The How of Happiness. And there's a, there's a worksheet in that book that helps you to pick strategies, and I can link that worksheet in the show notes. So this book was by a researcher named Sonja Lyubomirsky. She, but she has this really systematic way to pick your best strategies. And so it, it involves rating each one according to how enjoyable it is, how natural it is, how much you would value it, whether or not you would feel guilty or anxious if you didn't do it, whether or not you would feel forced or obligated to do it. So you have this whole point system where you rate each one and then you take the average of certain ones and the average of certain other ones, add and subtract. Anyway, it's really complicated. But if you like really systematic ways to determine what the very best fit is for you, you can look at this worksheet and then apply it to the, the strategies that we've talked about in our podcast. Some of the strategies on her worksheet have overlap with ones that we've talked about, but of course we've talked about a whole lot more strategies in all the episodes that we've had of this, this podcast. So you just apply her principles the way that you do it, to the strategies that you have come across in this podcast. But in any case, the point is that you need to pick the strategies that attract you. You don't have to do every strategy. You can just browse, pick one that sounds interesting to you, that sounds like you might enjoy it, or like it would be really valuable to you and go for a really small goal. Okay, so that's the third thing. Pick, pick strategies that attract you.
The fourth thing is that it's really good to vary things, to create variety in your, in your routine. If you are someone that loves routine, you might want to do things the very same time in the very same way every day. I know that there are people like that, but for most people, uh, research has shown that it helps if we vary things, if we give some variety. So, for example, let's say you're trying to start the habit of gratitude. Research has shown that it gives more emotional bang for your buck if you don't do it the same way every day, that it actually is more impactful if you just pick one day a week to do your gratitude practice. Write your paragraph about what you're grateful for that week. Or write a thank you letter to somebody on that one day. So have a a one day a week. That's your gratitude practice. So that's more impactful emotionally than if you do it every day. So anyway, you could do something like, okay, on Monday I'm gonna practice gratitude, and on Tuesday I am gonna practice kindness, and on Wednesday I'm gonna practice savoring, or something like that. There's lots of different ways that you could vary it, but just keep in mind that if you're doing it exactly the same way every day, it's gonna be harder to keep it up and do it consistently, 'cause it'll get tedious. So keep it interesting. Vary it up. So, for example, when I was trying to start the habit of exercise, it helped me to not do the same exact kind of ex exercise every day. to vary it vary the places that I would walk. Or maybe one day I would go on a hike instead of a regular walk. Or maybe one day I would do a little bike ride, or maybe one day I would go canoeing. So it'll be more interesting and attractive if you can vary it.
So those are the four little ideas, four little concepts that can make developing new habits a lot easier. We've talked about so many strategies, it can be overwhelming, but if you just remember that first of all, listening to the podcast is a practice in and of itself, and it does have influence on your subconscious. So let it just wash over you and listen to the podcast. That's already a way to practice. Second is practice really small and consistently. Take the tiniest goal, the smallest possible change, and then just build from there. And the third is that you don't have to do every strategy. You can just browse. Just pick one that attracts you and start there. Pick one that's a good fit for your goals and values and needs. And the fourth thing is to vary it. Make sure that you do it different ways from day to day. Maybe just do it once a week and on that day, you really focus on that strategy or maybe have a different strategy each day, or maybe you practice it in a different way each day. Be creative with the way that you vary things, but that can really help you to be consistent to the point where it becomes easier to make this habit.
So that's my idea for you today. Thanks for listening, and join me next time.