Podcast #1,050: How to Hack the Habit Loop to Build a Better Life

Podcast Archives | The Art of Manliness

Think about your habits, the things you do automatically without much thought — from brushing your teeth in the morning to scrolling social media before bed.

There’s a lot going on with these behaviors.

On one level, they’re just routines and actions wired into our brains through repetition. But there’s also more to it than that. Our habits shape who we are, influence our health and happiness, and determine much of our success in life. There’s a reason changing habits is one of the most powerful ways to transform ourselves.

Today on the show, Dr. Gina Cleo will help us understand the science of habit formation and how we can harness it to build better behaviors. Gina is a researcher with a PhD in habit change and the author of The Habit Revolution: Simple Steps to Rewire Your Brain for Powerful Habit Change. Gina and I discuss the three elements of the habit loop and how to hack them to develop good habits and break bad ones. Along the way, we talk about why micro-habits are so effective for creating lasting change, the differences between men and women when it comes to forming habits, how long it really takes for a habit to stick, and much more.

Resources Related to the Podcast

• AoM Article: Unlocking the Science of Habits — How to Hack the Habit Loop
• AoM Podcast #470: A Proven System for Building and Breaking Habits
• AoM Podcast #581: The Tiny Habits That Change Everything
• AoM Article: Disenchant Your Bad Habits
• Self-Compassion by Kristin Neff

Connect With Gina Cleo

• Gina’s website

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Listen to the episode on a separate page.

Download this episode.

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Read the Transcript

Brett McKay: Hey, this is Brett. Before we get to today’s show, I have an announcement. When the Art of Manliness podcast started in 2009, we offered listeners one episode per week. Later, we expanded to two episodes weekly. Starting this year in 2025, we’ll be returning to publishing just one episode a week. There are two big reasons we decided to do this. First, we want to continue to be highly selective in choosing guest. We’ve always been highly selective in choosing guests to have on the show, looking for people with interesting, unique, edifying and useful ideas who are able to express those ideas articulately. The interviews almost always center on author and their book and while there are endless so-so books and guest out there, we’re not looking for so-so, we’re looking for great. Now, with over a thousand books read and a thousand episodes recorded, we’ve hosted some of the best thinkers multiple times, covered hundreds of subjects multiple times, and already highlighted many, many of the best books out there.

Subsequently, it’s become harder and harder to maintain our standard of guest selection, to find topics we haven’t already done and done well, and to book folks who have something fresh and worthwhile to say. We’ve never wanted to find ourselves in a position where we have to book someone we only think is so-so simply to fulfill a contractually obligated slot on the calendar. Moving to one episode a week ensures that we can continue to maintain our standards of selection and only offer our listeners episodes that are truly valuable. Each week, there’ll be an episode that is definitely worth listening to. The trend these days, of course, is for podcasts to add more and more episodes and even spinoff shows in order to maximize downloads and thus revenue. But quality has always mattered more to us than earnings. The second reason we’re moving to one episode a week is that allows to spend more time on our first love, writing.

This shift isn’t just about doing less, it’s about making room for something that both Kate and I have had the itch to do more of in the past few years. Deep, thoughtful writing. Before the AOM podcast was a twice a week show, we were able to write longer form articles, which we really enjoyed. We haven’t had much time for that since, and we miss it. We’ll be using the time that opens up for moving to one podcast episode a week to write articles for a new substack we’re starting, Dying Breed. To learn more about why we’re starting a new newsletter and what we’re hoping to do with Dying Breed, visit aom.is/dyingbreed or you can subscribe to the newsletter directly by going to dyingbreed.net. So again, we’re moving to one episode of the podcast each week. It’s gonna be the same format, same quality guest you’ve come to expect from the Art of Manliness podcast. Look for new episodes to drop on Tuesdays and go check out dyingbreed.net to see what we’re doing over there. Thank you for your continued support all these years. We’re looking forward to many more episodes of the podcast in the coming years. Now on to today’s show.

Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of The Art of Manliness podcast. Think about your habits, the things you do automatically without much thought, from brushing your teeth in the morning to scrolling social media before bed. There’s a lot going on with these behaviors. On one level, they’re just routines and actions wired into our brains through repetition. There’s also more to it than that. Our habits shape who we are, influence our health and happiness and determine much of our success in life. There’s a reason changing habits is one of the most powerful ways to transform ourselves. Today on the show, Dr. Gina Cleo will help us understand the science of habit formation and how we can harness it to build better behaviors. Gina’s a researcher with a PhD in habit change and the author of ‘The Habit Revolution: Simple Steps to Rewire Your Brain For Powerful Habit Change.’ Gina and I discussed the three elements of the habit loop, how to hack them to develop good habits and break bad ones. Along the way, we talk about why micro habits are so effective for creating lasting change, the differences between men and women when it comes to forming habits, how long it really takes for habit to stick and much more. After the show is over, check out our show notes at aom.is/habit.

All right, Dr. Gina Cleo, welcome to the show.

Dr. Gina Cleo: Thank you so much for having me, Brett.

Brett McKay: You have a PhD in habit change and you got a book out called ‘The Habit Revolution: Simple Steps to Rewire Your Brain for Powerful Habit Change.’ It’s a new year, so I imagine a lot of people are thinking about good habits they want to start, maybe some bad habits they want to break. Let’s start off with your background a bit. You know the old saying, research is me search. So was there something that led you to dedicate your academic career to researching habits?

Dr. Gina Cleo: Yes, of course there was. My journey into habit research was deeply personal. I started my career as a dietitian, and I was really interested in health and wellness my whole life. But I really struggled to maintain my own healthy habits, whether it was exercising consistently or even eating well. I would finish a day in my clinic and I’d be eating a packet of biscuits on my way home and really trying not to do that, but struggling so much with my own, I guess, healthy behaviors and consistency. So I became really fascinated with the brain and neuroscience and why we do the things we do and what motivates us as human beings and how to actually create consistency in our behavior. And initially, I just thought I was a terrible dietitian, but when I looked at the research I found that actually 95% of people who set out to achieve a goal don’t achieve it. So that’s where this idea of learning about habits, which is the only proven method to achieving long-term success came about.

Brett McKay: So I think a lot of us, I think most people have a lay understanding of what a habit is, but how do researchers like you define a habit? Like how is it different from any other behavior?

Dr. Gina Cleo: Yeah, so a habit is a behavior that’s repeated regularly in the same context and it’s become automatic. Habits are generally triggered rather than being consciously intentional. So behaviors, unlike habits, they happen consciously, intentionally. But with habits, once habits are established, they don’t require much mental effort. They happen automatically subconsciously. You don’t have to deliberate over your habits, it’s just something that happens without much mental effort. Habits are the things that we do automatically. Behaviors are other things we do consciously or deliberately.

Brett McKay: Okay. So just to recap there, the characteristics of a habit, there’s repetition, there’s a high degree of automaticity, you don’t have to think about it and then there’s a trigger of some sort that will kick it. Kickstart the habit.

Dr. Gina Cleo: That’s right.

Brett McKay: Okay. What’s the dividing line between a habit and say an addiction?

Dr. Gina Cleo: Yeah, The line between habits and addictions can blur, but a crucial difference is how much control we have over them and their impact on our life. Habits can be neutral, they can be negative or they can be positive. And although it’s not always easy, we can absolutely change any habit that we have in our life. Addictions on the other hand are usually negative and harmful to our life and they’re compulsive, they’re driven by neurological dependence. Addictions essentially hijack our brain’s reward system, and it makes us feel like we can’t live a happy life without having that substance or the behavior that we’re addicted to.

Brett McKay: Okay. So you know, you have an addiction if it disrupts your life. Like if you can’t work, you can’t do daily functions, you have an addiction. I think it’s important to differentiate or really be specific about what an addiction is. I think we throw that word around a little bit too easy, like, oh, I’m addicted to cookies. Well maybe, but probably not. You just have the habit of like you eating cookies on the way home from work.

Dr. Gina Cleo: Yeah, that’s right. And it’s not sort of disrupting your life to a significant amount. You can control it with enough intention and effort and consistency. You absolutely can. And that’s what separates the habit from the addiction.

Brett McKay: So you walk through the research or the science of how we form habits and you talk about there’s three stages of habit formation. So what are those three stages of forming a habit?

Dr. Gina Cleo: Yeah, so the habit formation framework essentially outlines the three stages are initiation, training, and maintenance. So we initiate a new behavior, we train ourselves in that behavior through repeating it, and then we maintain that new behavior through consistency. So essentially this is how we achieve goals. We decide on a goal that we want to achieve, we take action towards that goal. So we do the things that we need to do to achieve it, and then we continue to do that. So we maintain those behaviors so that we can achieve that outcome theoretically, of course.

Brett McKay: And I think you make an important point in the book is that you remind people that all habits at some point began as an intentional act. And you said it’s an important thing to understand in forming and breaking habits. Why is that?

Dr. Gina Cleo: Yeah, you know our habits tell a story about our life. I’m a really big believer of that because once upon a time our habits were intentional actions. They are the things that we once chose to do and it could be in an attempt to maybe achieve a goal or suppress an uncomfortable emotion or reach some kind of desired outcome, whether it’s convenience or productivity or wellbeing. And I think it’s really important to know that because it helps us to identify, I guess, the chapters of our choices and our priorities, like why we are doing the things that we are doing. And I think once we understand our intentions for starting that behavior, we can then reshape it. We can fulfill those desires in potentially a healthier way if that’s something that we want to do.

Brett McKay: Yeah, it’s a great reminder. You have some control over this. Like you’re not a slave to your habits. You can manipulate them if you want.

Dr. Gina Cleo: Yeah, that’s right. And I think there’s also a bit of self-compassion that can come into play. Say that you’re doing something, let’s say you’re coming home and you’re having a drink of alcohol every night and that’s not something that you want to keep doing. But if you were to look back and think, okay, when did this start? What was going on in my life? What was my intentional reason for starting this? You might see that it became a habit because you were trying to reduce stress or you were conforming to social norms or there’s all these reasons why we do things. And I think once we understand that we can have that self-compassion go, okay, I was just really stressed at that time, that’s why I was doing this. It was an act of self-soothing, potentially not the best way to self-soothe and reduce my stress, but that’s where it came from. And I can now reduce stress in a healthier and a healthier way.

Brett McKay: You also talk about the habit loop. I’m sure a lot of our listeners are familiar with this idea, but for those who aren’t, what is the habit loop?

Dr. Gina Cleo: Yeah, so the habit loop is essentially the three ingredients that are found in every habit, both good habits and otherwise. And they are a cue, a routine, and a reward. So the cue, that’s that trigger that we talked about, it’s the reason why we do the habit. And that cue could be the time of day, it could be the location that you’re in. It could be what you’ve just done beforehand. It could be how you’re feeling emotionally or the people that you are around. So all of our habits are cued by one of these five things. And then there’s the routine, that’s the second ingredient. And the routine is the habit itself. And then there’s the reward. And the reward is the reason why you keep doing this habit. If the reward wasn’t positive, it wouldn’t create this positive feedback loop for you to keep repeating the habit.

So as an example, let’s say that you come home and the first thing you do when you get home is you eat a cookie. And the very first time you do that, a mental link is created between getting home and eating a cookie. So there’s an actual physical neural pathway that’s created in the brain. So getting home is the trigger and eating a cookie becomes the routine and the reward that you get is probably the taste of the cookies. It’s the little energy hit that you get or the dopamine. Now, the more you repeat that, getting home, eating a cookie, getting home, eating a cookie, the stronger this link becomes in your brain until eventually just the thought of getting home prompts you to want to eat a cookie and trying to do anything else becomes really hard because your brain’s like, well, when I get home, I eat a cookie and this is what I do. And that’s how our habits are formed. And that’s essentially the habit loop.

Brett McKay: Let’s talk about cues and you also called them triggers because this is a really important idea and you devote a lot of time to this. You mentioned that there are five types of triggers. Can you summarize those again for us?

Dr. Gina Cleo: Yeah, so experiments have shown that almost all our habits fit into one of five categories, and it could be more than one at a time. So the first one is time, for example, like waking up or midday. The second one is location. So it could be like the kitchen or the bedroom. The third one is preceding event or action. So what you’ve just done beforehand could be something like brushing your teeth or getting home from work. Number four is emotional state. This could be like stress, loneliness, happiness. And then finally your social situation, like meeting friends, the people that you’re around or your colleagues. So our habits are going to be triggered by one or more of these five triggers.

Brett McKay: All right, so common triggers, time, location. We got preceding event, action, emotional state, and social situation. Another one I’ve heard of that’s rare, I’ve heard this with some people who are recovering from drug addiction, we’re going from habit to addiction, but they’re kind of similar smell, like, I guess, there’s certain drugs that you make that use bleach, I believe. And some people when they smell bleach, they get a sudden urge for a fix.

Dr. Gina Cleo: Yeah, that makes so much sense because smell is like the quickest way into our memories and like just a whiff of a familiar smell can trigger a memory from childhood. And I think that probably falls into that emotional state. It creates an emotion within us that makes us crave that thing, like the drug or whatever it is that we are craving. That’s really interesting though.

Brett McKay: Okay, so we’ve covered the three basic parts of the habit loop. There’s cue, routine, and reward. And these components are part of both bad habits and good habits. And we can tinker with them in different ways to either form a good habit or break a bad habit. And let’s talk about forming good habits first. First off, what types of behaviors are we more likely to find success with as far as turning them into habits?

Dr. Gina Cleo: The complexity of the behavior is going to play a really big role in whether something becomes a habit or not. So more complex behaviors take a lot longer to develop compared with simple behaviors. So one of the latest studies showed that they had two groups of people. One group, they asked to wash their hands every day. And the other group, they asked to go to the gym every day. And the hand washers took only two weeks to develop that habit, whereas the gym goers took seven months to develop the habit. And that’s because going to the gym is a lot more of a complex behavior compared with washing your hands. Washing your hands is something that you can do at any time. There’s mostly a sink around. It doesn’t take a whole lot of motivation. It takes two minutes to do compared with going to the gym, that requires motivation, getting changed, getting in your car. And so simple behaviors are much more likely to become habitual.

Now, you as a person, you need to want to do the habit. It’s really hard to develop a habit from something that you don’t care much about. You don’t value a lot, you don’t see as going to benefit your life or other people’s lives. It’s really hard to develop that into a habit because there’s no intrinsic motivation. There’s no reason for you to want to keep pushing and making it automatic.

Brett McKay: You have a chapter going to this idea of keeping it simple, of using micro habits to build larger, maybe more complex habits. Walk us through that idea of micro habits.

Dr. Gina Cleo: Yeah, so micro habits is a term that I’ve created, which essentially they’re just tiny, manageable behaviors that serve as the building blocks for larger habits. And they’re really powerful because they’re achievable and they minimize resistance. So for example, doing one pushup a day or drinking a glass of water after waking up can be the start of a larger habit. Their simplicity builds consistency, which is a key to long-term success. So a couple of examples I give in the book is, if your goal is healthy eating, it’s much easier to have a goal of eating a piece of fruit every day compared with trying to overhaul your entire diet. Or if your goal is to do more exercise, it’s much easier to have a goal of walking for 15 minutes a day than to try to run a marathon, meditating, start with just two minutes. A lot of times the very first step is the hardest to everything. The first gym session, the first healthy meal, like the first everything is the hardest. And I’m a big believer that if we can reduce the barriers to entry, if we can make that first step easy and enticing and rewarding, that we’re much more likely to do it. And then we can build on that.

Brett McKay: Okay, so when you’re trading your habits, start off simple, keep it small. I know BJ Fogg with his tiny habits, one thing he talks about if like flossing your teeth is a habit you want to start, he says, just start off flossing just one tooth. Like you don’t have to floss all your teeth, just do one tooth. And then gradually over time add more teeth. But you don’t have to do it all at once because you’re probably not gonna be successful with that.

Dr. Gina Cleo: Yeah. And what you might find is when you floss one tooth, you’re like, oh, I may as well do the rest. Like, I’ve already pulled the floss out and I’m here doing it. I always say to people, create the habit of getting to the gym rather than creating the habit of exercising. If you create the habit of getting to the gym, the rest is going to happen. You’re not gonna get to the gym and be like, okay, I’m done. I’m gonna go home now. You are very likely to go in and do a workout, even if it’s a small workout. But it’s better than nothing at all.

Brett McKay: Yeah, you talk about in the book that you’ve had days where you didn’t feel like working, actually you were tired, but you still got up and you went to the gym, and then you drove home.

Dr. Gina Cleo: Oh yeah, I have done that. That’s right, that’s why at this time, I was really sick actually, and I was just starting at a new gym, it was a power lifting gym, I don’t power lift anymore, just like you Brett, we are both recovering power lifters, and I wanted to continue the momentum of getting up and going to the gym at the specific time because I had a coach and it was sort of a schedule with it, and this one morning I was really sick and I was like, no, I’m still gonna get up, I’m gonna get dressed, drive to the gym and I’m gonna come straight home. And the really cool thing is, once I got better after a week or two, I didn’t have to restart my habit of getting to the gym ’cause I was already in it.

Brett McKay: Yeah. I’ve done that throughout my lifting career, call it that. I’ll have days where I still do this just to maintain the habit of exercise, that’s the most important habit to me, it’s not… My PRs aren’t that important to me, but just maintaining that habit of regular exercise, so I’ll have days where I don’t have time to do a full workout that I have planned, so I’ll just get what I can get done in 15 minutes. That might mean I just do a single set of every exercise and that’s it, or if I’m just feeling beat up and tired and I’m like, I really don’t wanna lift today, I’ll go for a walk instead at my regular workout time, I’m just trying to remind my mind and my body is like at this time you’re gonna move your body in an intentional way, and so once I feel better, I have more time, it’s not a problem to keep doing the regular programming.

Dr. Gina Cleo: Yeah, it’s so powerful to do that because that’s exactly what your doing, you’re reinforcing those neural pathways that at this time I move my body, so yeah, that’s awesome. And that will really solidify the habit moving forward even more.

Brett McKay: So with behavior of the routine, keep it simple, that’s gonna be your best bet in creating a habit, let’s talk about triggers, you talk about different ways we can super charge our triggers, so make them more powerful. So if we’re wanting to design a positive habit, what are some things we can do with those common triggers to make them even more powerful, so what are those ways where you can super charge a trigger?

Dr. Gina Cleo: So you want triggers to be really specific, so instead of, for example, saying after dinner, you might say, when I’m finished eating, because after dinner can be any time from the time you finish dinner until the next day, whereas after finishing eating is much more specific, so the other one is being salient, so making your triggers really obvious, so you could say something like, when I make a coffee, for example, in the morning and having that really clearly that’s obviously what you’re doing. Another one with triggers is something that you wanted to be consistent, something that you encounter regularly, consistently, inevitably would be really good. So that you know is going to happen. Like the time of day that’s going to really super charge your triggers compared to saying like at Christmas, I’m gonna do this because that doesn’t happen a lot. It only happens once a year.

Brett McKay: Okay, then you also recommend finding triggers that are automatic. What does that look like?

Dr. Gina Cleo: Yeah, so something automatic could be like, when I’m finished my breakfast or when my alarm goes off in the morning, I’m going to do this, so they’re automatic, they don’t require you to put in a whole lot of effort. It’s just something that you know is going to happen.

Brett McKay: Okay, let’s talk about rewards a bit. Is there anything we can do with the reward aspect of the habit loop to help form good habits?

Dr. Gina Cleo: Yeah, one of the best rewards is our emotional rewards, it’s just the feeling of satisfaction, of accomplishment, of being proud of yourself, a lot of times people will say things like, if you’ve done a workout, then go buy yourself a new outfit, and that, she doesn’t work because we need the reward instantly, we need to feel that satisfaction, this sense of accomplishment straight away for the habit loop to become reinforced. And so let’s say you’ve done a workout when you really didn’t feel like doing it or you’re creating a new habit of working out, once you get to the gym, take a moment to celebrate your decision to do that, celebrate the fact that you’re there, and it’s just a silent moment to yourself, when you’re just like, I’m proud of you, well done for being here, and that’s going to be such a powerful reward.

The other thing that you can do, which I highly recommend, is using a habit tracker, so every time you perform the habit that you had intended to do, you just give yourself a little tick for doing that habit, and like with children, we give them a gold star for doing their chores, and they feel really good for doing that and they’re motivated to wanna do it again. We don’t grow out of that reward learning as adults, so when we give ourselves a tick on a habit tracker, it sends dopamine through our brain and that feels good and rewarding and pleasurable, and that tells our brain, it’s like, hey, that felt really good. We should totally do this again, and it reinforces the habit.

Brett McKay: I think it’s a good point. I’ve tried rewarding myself with physical things like, oh, if I do this thing, but yeah, it doesn’t work, because you can only reward yourself once with, say you wanna buy yourself a new pair of shoes, like lifting shoes, but what’s your reward gonna be all the other times you’d complete at the habit loop, each time you do your workout because there’s just too much of a delay between the behavior and the reward?

Dr. Gina Cleo: Yeah, exactly, right. And just except that the reward might be endorphins from working out, it could be dopamine, and it could be a hit of serotonin, but just sit and notice those moments. I actually think buying the lifting shoes, getting the new outfit for working out should be done before you work out because that’s gonna motivate you to go rather than trying to do it afterwards.

Brett McKay: So let’s put all we’ve talked about together and how we can form an action plan for creating new positive habits. We’ve been talking about working out, let’s talk about something else. I know a lot of people maybe they wanna read more instead of scrolling more on social media at night time, so walk us through an example of say someone wants to read more, what can they do using this idea, things we’ve talked about of the habit loop, the habit formation process to become a regular nightly reader?

Dr. Gina Cleo: Yes, so start really small, find the book that you wanna read and maybe set out just to read one page, if you’re new to reading, I would also say if your phone is around, it’s really hard to put that battle, the head-to-head battle between the phone and the book, because most likely your phone will win, it gives you way more dopamine, there is a lot more stimulation in a phone compared with a black and white book, so I would put your phone somewhere where you can’t reach it from bed, I charge my phone in my en suite or in the lounge room even, and then have your book there and ready.

So start small, set that micro-goal, like reading one page and set the trigger, so you might say, when I get in bed in the evenings, I’m going to read one page, and then once you’ve done that, check it off on your habit tracker, and that’s… You’ve created the habit loop, so that’s gonna be you celebrating your win, which is the reward, and it’s just in all about consistency, so focus on consistency over intensity, and then gradually build. So once one page becomes natural and easy and something you don’t have to remind yourself to do, then you can start with two pages and then gradually building from there.

Brett McKay: Okay. Simple enough. So it’s simple, it might not be easy to put in place, I think the hard part is just that training part of doing it over and over and over again, night after night without fail, ’cause that’s what you got to do if you wanna create that habit.

Dr. Gina Cleo: Yeah, that’s right. But I think when you have in the front of your mind why you’re doing this, why it’s valuable to you, why it’s important to you, then the motivation to keep going, it becomes easier to access.

Brett McKay: We’re gonna take a quick break for words from our sponsors.

And now back to the show. Do we know how long it takes to form a new habit, like how long do we have to do this training process of reading a page every night before it just becomes a habit.

Dr. Gina Cleo: Yeah, there’s a really wide range. Which I hate saying, I hate saying it depends, but it does depend. Most people have heard that it takes 21 days to 28 days to create a new habit. And that is absolutely false. There’s no evidence to prove that at all. The research shows that can take anywhere from two weeks to up to a year to create a new habit with an average time, very rough average being about 66 days or 10 weeks, but again, those simple habits are going to develop much quicker, the stronger your intention, the quicker the habit will develop as well.

Brett McKay: Yeah, that 21 day thing, I’m sure people have heard that one, the funny thing about that, that came from a book written by a plastic surgeon, I think like in the 1960s called Psycho-Cybernetics, it was kind of like a self-improvement book, but I think you mentioned the 21-day habit thing in that book.

Dr. Gina Cleo: Yeah, so he was a facial reconstruction surgeon, and he found that when his patients would look in the mirror after they’ve had facial reconstruction, it took three to four weeks for them not to get a shock when they looked at their face, their new face. So he was like, okay, it must take 21 days for neuroplasticity, which is changes in the brain. That means it takes 21 days to change a habit. But really, it is such a loose connection and it’s been debunked by science ever since then.

Brett McKay: So you mentioned some factors that can influence how long it takes for a habit to form, one of them is the intention you’re putting in to the habit formation. Any other factors that might contribute to how long or how short a habit takes to form?

Dr. Gina Cleo: Yeah, so another factor and a really common one is stress, so the more stressed we are, the less we are likely to create a new habit, prefrontal cortex or our logical brain isn’t as active, we’re more likely to fall into unwanted habits because it’s really hard to find the motivation and I guess the oomph to want to create new healthy habits. So stress is going to be a factor, how habitual you are as a person, also plays a role. I’m not naturally a very habitual person, which is quite ironic for a habit researcher. I prefer spontaneity, flexibility, no two days are the same in my life, and so it takes me a little bit longer potentially to create new habits, but I can break old habits quite easily, compared with my husband who is very habitual, like the man can easily eat the same thing every single day and doesn’t bother him at all. He can create new habits a lot quicker, but struggles to break old habits as quickly as I do.

The other thing is consistency. How consistent are you with performing your new habit, the more you do it, the more habitual that’s gonna be come and the quicker it’s going to develop into a habit. So making sure that your environment is conducive and supportive to your new habit that you’re encountering the trigger as often as possible, and that you’re doing the habit every time you encounter the trigger.

Brett McKay: Yeah, that idea of some people are just more habitual than others, I’ve seen that in my own life, I’m a very habitual person, I eat the same thing pretty much breakfast, lunch, and then dinner’s whatever we have as a family, but I’ve been eating the same thing for the past seven years, and it’s funny, my dad is like that too, he’s been eating Special K and drinking Folgers coffee probably for 40 years and…

Dr. Gina Cleo: Wow.

Brett McKay: And I picked that up from him. You highlight some research, this is speculative, it’s burgeoning, that men and women might differ in their habit formation. How do they differ?

Dr. Gina Cleo: Yeah, men and women are motivated and triggered by different things. For example, men are more triggered by external or environmental cues like images or matching other people’s behavior, whereas women tend to be more triggered by internal or emotional cues, like how stressed they are, how much responsibility they have in their families and how much capacity they have to create new habits, so it is speculative, research is still emerging, but we are definitely seeing that there is a difference. In my own practice, anecdotally, I found that men develop habits a lot quicker than women, and I think because there is less of those emotional fluctuations that trigger behavior compared with women, men can be a lot more militant, I think, if I was to be over-generalizing in my comment, compared with women who are a little bit more fluid generally from their day-to-day life.

Brett McKay: We talked about how do you form a good habit. You also talked about sometimes even good habits can be detrimental, how so?

Dr. Gina Cleo: Yeah, there’s a theory called habituation, where we’re too habitual, your good habits can become rigid, making us sort less adaptable in new situations, for example, a really strict workout routine might cause anxiety if it’s disrupted, whereas balance comes from allowing flexibility and thinking of habits as tools rather than rules, and then may be periodically re-assessing whether a habit is actually serving your current goals and then adapting it accordingly. I just came back from holiday, and while we were away, we were in the Philippines for a couple of weeks, and then I went to Thailand, and our time in the Philippines, there was a power outage in the entire island. We had no power, so there was no running water, no electricity, no fans, no air con, nothing.

And for the 10 days that we were there, it was really challenging to wanna work out because it was so hot and super humid, and the gym that we’d signed up to had also closed because it was just like there’s no lights, there was nothing. And so we had to just adapt, we went surfing and walking, went on little hikes and yeah, it wasn’t what we planned and scheduled, but we did what we can with the resources that we had, and I think if we’re too rigid, then our good habits can become detrimental, ’cause that creates anxiety, so that flexibility point is really important for our well being.

Brett McKay: Yeah, you see that with exercise, you kinda talked about that. Both you and I, we had moments in our programming or training where we couldn’t do the full workout that we had program. If you’re really rigid with that and you’re like, well, if I can’t do the full workout, then I just shouldn’t do anything at all, but if you have a little bit of flexibility with that, it’s, okay, what’s the bigger goal I’m trying to accomplish here? Okay, exercise. Well, I can do something else besides three sets of five on deadlift, squat, and bench, and I’ll be okay.

Dr. Gina Cleo: Yeah, absolutely, and I see this all or nothing mentality so much, especially with our diet, if I can’t eat perfectly, then I’m just gonna blow out and I’ll eat all the cake and all the ice cream, and all the things, and it’s actually so much better to be flexible in your approach and enjoy everything in moderation and then just keep living your life that way instead of having this all or nothing mentality, which just doesn’t work long term.

Brett McKay: Let’s talk about breaking bad habits, so how can we use these knowledge of habits to break bad habits we don’t want?

Dr. Gina Cleo: When you think of the habit loop as key routine reward, every single habit is triggered by something, so if we can disrupt that key routine reward loop, then we can break a habit, so there’s two ways that we can do that, we can either replace the old habit with a new habit that we wanna do, or if it’s possible, we can try to avoid that trigger all together. So often, the one thing that we get wrong when we’re trying to change our behaviors, we focus so much on trying to break the habit, we will say, okay, I’m gonna stop drinking or I’m gonna stop eating cookies, like those things are dead to me, and then we get home, and the first thing that we do is we go and eat a cookie, grab a bottle of alcohol. And the reason is that as soon as our brain encounters the trigger for the habit that we have, it’s already started firing the necessary neural pathways to take the next action, that key routine reward, that habit loop happens in the split second.

And we’re not even aware that it’s happening, and so it’s really hard for us to encounter a trigger and then try to stop doing the habit, it’s so much easier to understand what the trigger is, pre-empt the trigger. So you might say, when I get home today, I’m really gonna feel like having some alcohol, but this is what I’m gonna do instead, and you can preempt the craving and try to interject with a new behavior or change your environment or create barriers to make those unwanted habits harder to do. And it is so much more empowering and much easier to break habits that way than trying to do it the other way.

It’s much easier to reverse engineer the process. So if, for example, driving past a fast food chain triggers you to go in there and order a Big Mac combo, then if it’s possible to drive a different way, do that, and that’s going to break that habit of eating fast food, if you can’t change the trigger, if driving a different way isn’t a possibility, then it’s important to pre-empt it. You would say, okay, when I drive past this fast food chain, I’m gonna be tempted to go inside, but this is what I’m gonna do instead, and you might pack something, you might order something smaller or whatever it is, and it’s really just about creating barriers for the habits that you wanna break and having really strong intentions, the stronger our intention, the weaker habits become.

Brett McKay: You also talk about, we can do things with the reward aspect to break bad habits. What are some things we can do to manipulate the reward to break a bad habit?

Dr. Gina Cleo: Yeah, I remember a story I wrote in the book about, I guess, our perception of certain rewards, let’s say you smoke, for example, and you really love how the cigarette makes you feel, you love the nicotine hit that you get, the dopamine hit and it feels awesome. And so your mind is telling you, I really love this habit, so you’ve got this big reward value from it. What they did in a study recently actually, is they got smokers to mindfully smoke, so they got them to have a cigarette and then describe exactly what it tasted like, what it felt like afterwards, and the descriptions that they gave were things like, oh, this tastes like ash, like tar, you’re on a tarmac at an airport and it just tastes disgusting.

And once their reward value, like the perception of the reward of that cigarette reduced, every single one of the study [0:37:35.7] ____ stopped smoking, and it’s because they no longer felt like it was a rewarding experience. The reward they thought they got from it wasn’t actually there once they bought mindfulness into it. And it’s a really interesting diet. I think it’s called the Yuck Diet, it’s not a technical term, certainly not a scientific term, but some guy invented it where essentially, he started thinking of things like spaghetti is like worms, and chocolate is like mud, and cheese is like mucus, and once he started to think of food like that, and not that I’m condoning that because I think all food is acceptable, but for him, he had a real, I guess, he was sort of out of control with some of these foods, but once he started to see those foods as less valuable, less rewarding, less enticing, he no longer craved them and was able to eat them with a lot more control, and he lost a bunch of weight, and it was a really cool story, but the reward that you place on something is going to impact directly how much you crave that thing, so just we can change our perspective on things. I think it can be one of the most empowering things we can do with breaking our unwanted habits.

Brett McKay: Yeah. Judson Brewer, we’ve had him on the podcast. He talks about this, he calls it disenchanting bad habits. So, yeah, whenever you experience that reward from, it could be food or I think, he does like smoking cessation, you work to disenchant the reward. And I’ve actually used this idea to quit looking at Instagram ’cause you’re bored and so you’re pulled into just opening up the app and just scrolling through. But every time you do like, you’re like, man, there’s nothing here. Like, why am I wasting my time with this? And you almost feel a little bit of disgust.

And so to disenchant the habit, you really have to lean into that feeling and really focus and think about the fact that there’s nothing interesting here and you wouldn’t have missed anything if you hadn’t checked it. So let’s use kind of a practical example to walk people through how to break a bad habit, what we’ve been talking about. I know a lot of people in January, they take part in something that’s called dry January, which is you don’t drink alcohol during January. So how could we use these things we’ve talked about in breaking bad habits to be successful at dry January?

Dr. Gina Cleo: Yeah, again, looking at the habit loop, it’s like what are the triggers? And try to change your environment as much as possible. So first thing, don’t have alcohol in your house. Maybe stock your house filled with non-alcoholic alternatives instead. I worked with someone who would come home and the first thing that she did was she’d pour a glass of wine. And that was like her habit. Not coming home isn’t an option. She’s got to go home every day. And so what we did is we moved all the wine bottles into a really hard to reach shelf in the garage where she needed to get a stepladder to access it. We moved all her wine glasses to a different cupboard and then we put all her tea mugs where the wine glasses were. So the first couple of days she came home, she opened the cupboard where the wine glasses used to be only to find all these tea mugs.

And that’s what was triggering her memory, that she’s actually here to change this wine drinking habit. And so then she’d make herself a tea and she felt the reward and the satisfaction of doing something that was healthier for her body. So think of ways that you can create barriers for drinking. Definitely tell your friends so that you’ve got that accountability and that they’re not tempting you where you’re in social events that require alcohol and keep that habit tracker. So every day you successfully go without drinking alcohol. Make sure you give yourself a tick. Be proud of yourself for another day down.

Brett McKay: I love it. You devote a lot of time in the book to motivation. How do psychologists define motivation?

Dr. Gina Cleo: Psychologists define motivation as the reason that we initiate, choose, or persist in specific actions in specific circumstances. So simply put, motivation is the reason that we act in a particular way.

Brett McKay: What’s the interplay between motivation and habit formation? Like why did you spend so much time talking about motivation in a book about habits?

Dr. Gina Cleo: I think from whenever we are looking at changing our behavior, I think one of the biggest things that people say is, I just don’t have motivation. I don’t have it in me. It’s almost like we are waiting for motivation to come, but it’s such a myth because action is a prerequisite to motivation. Motivation comes as a result of action. Like how often do you absolutely not feel like doing something and you take the first step anyway, and then you are in it, like you are motivated to do it, and you complete the task and you actually feel quite good about it. I definitely have that with things like decluttering something or I’m unpacking my suitcase right now. I’m like, oh, I just don’t feel like doing it. But as soon as I get started, the rest flows and it becomes so much easier.

Motivation kickstarts habit formation. We have to feel motivated the very beginning of creating a new habit. But once that habit has a bit of momentum and automaticity, then consistency is what sustains it. We no longer need motivation for our habits. It’s like no matter how tired, stressed, fatigued you are, you’ll always put your seatbelt on in the car because it’s something that you do habitually. You don’t need to be motivated to do it. And that’s a real power of habits. But we do need motivation just at the very start when we’re creating a new habit.

Brett McKay: So you mentioned, okay, just do the thing and the motivation will follow. Any other things we can do to take control of our motivation so we’re more likely to achieve our habit goals, especially for those habits that seem harder to make or break?

Dr. Gina Cleo: Yeah, break those ones down. Definitely make it a lot more enticing for yourself. Like find ways for you to want to do it. Say like you get to listen to your favorite music as you are doing the task, or you get to do it with a friend or… The other thing to do is really see progress. Like make sure that you are measuring progress if you can, even if your progress is just seeing how often you are doing the thing, because motivation grows as you see progress. So build that momentum nice and early, but just focus on yeah, starting small and know that the motivation will come, like trust that it’ll come.

Brett McKay: Something’s gonna happen. And in this habit formation journey is you’re gonna have setbacks, you’re doing great, then you have a day where you don’t do the thing and then a day turns into two and then you’re just like, ah, I failed again at starting a habit or you’re trying to break a habit and you have a setback. What do you recommend people do to deal with setbacks and their habit goals?

Dr. Gina Cleo: I think the first thing to know is that setbacks are a part of the process. It’s not if you have a setback, it’s when you have a setback, no matter how disciplined or motivated you are, it’s part of the process. And the most successful people in the world also have setbacks. And what differentiates them from the people that go and fall off the wagon entirely is the successful people will get up and they’ll do so quickly after a setback. And rather than seeing those setbacks as failures, they view them as data. It’s like, what triggered this lapse? How can I adjust moving forward? Do I need to change my cue or my trigger? Do I need to change the intensity of this habit? Really focus on your next action rather than dwelling on the setback. And the most important thing is going to be self-compassion. People who are kind to themselves after a setback are so much more likely to bounce back quickly and like to allow themselves to make errors and make mistakes and just jump back on the horse and keep going.

Brett McKay: Yeah. That self-compassion component, I found that it’s really important in any behavior change or goal pursuit that you have. I think we, a lot of us have this idea that, well, you got to really beat yourself up and you got to be a drill sergeant. And so if you fail, you got to just really flagellate in order to get back on the horse. And the research actually says that actually doesn’t work. It’s better just to be a little kinder to yourself.

Dr. Gina Cleo: Yeah. And I know, and it sounds counterproductive and counterintuitive, but you’re right, that is exactly what the research shows over and over again. We’re so much more, are going to be much more successful if we can practice self-compassion than self-criticism.

Brett McKay: And I think the problem is people have this, I think especially men have the wrong idea of what self-compassion looks like. They kind of think it looks soft and weak. But it’s not the way I think of self-compassion, you’ve had a coach, I have a barbell coach, like they show compassion to me. It’s not like they’re like, oh Brett, it’s okay. You’re gonna be fine. He’ll be really upfront with me saying, Hey, yeah, that was tough. You didn’t make it. That’s okay though. Get back to your workout the next time and it’ll be fine. It’s not like you’re not treating yourself like a little kid who needs their booboo kissed. You’re just not beating yourself up.

Dr. Gina Cleo: Exactly. Right. Yeah. And it is and it’s so powerful. And there’s a really awesome book by Dr. Kristen Neff called ‘Self-Compassion.’ And I recommend everyone read it. It’s a real game changer in… For any person who struggles in this space ’cause I don’t think it comes naturally for us to practice self-compassion. I think there are a lot of misconceptions around it, especially with men like you mentioned, Brett. So I think it’s something that we can all practice and do a little bit better in that space. It really is a powerful tool.

Brett McKay: Well, Gina, is there anything else we haven’t talked about on habits that you think are, it’d be really useful for people to hear about in order to be more successful with their habit goals this year?

Dr. Gina Cleo: I think we’ve covered so much, but one thing I’d add is that you are not stuck with your brain. No matter how old you are, no matter how long you’ve been doing the habit, no matter how stuck you feel, all of our brains by virtue of neuroplasticity are able to be rewired. You can rewire your brain. All you need is consistency, determination, persistence, and the right tools. So just know that you absolutely can change any habit that you have.

Brett McKay: Well, Gina, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about the book and your work?

Dr. Gina Cleo: Thanks Brett. I’ve loved chatting to you. Well, you can find my book and my work on my website along with free resources, like I’ve got a free Habit Change Masterclass, there’s free Habit Tracker’s on there. You can also access my online courses and follow on social media for tips on rewiring your brain and all the links are at drginacleo.com.

Brett McKay: Fantastic. Well, Gina Cleo, thanks for your time. It’s been a pleasure.

Dr. Gina Cleo: Thanks Brett. Love chatting with you.

Brett McKay: My guest today was Gina Cleo. She’s the author of the book, ‘The Habit Revolution.’ It’s available on amazon.com. You can find more information about our work at our website, drginacleo.com. Also, check out our show notes at aom.is/habit where you find links to resources, We delve deeper into this topic.

Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Make sure to check out our website at artofmanliness.com where you find our podcast archives as well as thousands of articles that we’ve written over the years about pretty much anything you think of. And if you haven’t done so already, I’d appreciate it if you take one minute to give a read up a podcast or Spotify. It helps out a lot. And if you’ve done that already, thank you. Please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member who think will get something out of it. As always, thank you for the continued support. Until next time, it’s Brett McKay reminding to not only Listen to AOM podcast, but put what you’ve heard into action.

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.