BITESIZE | How to Build Healthy Habits That Last a Lifetime | BJ Fogg #146

The start of a new year is the time many of us look to make changes in our lives, incorporating healthy habits and removing unhelpful ones. Feel Better Live More Bitesize is my new weekly podcast for your mind, body and heart. Each week I’ll be featuring inspirational stories and practical tips from some of my former guests. This week’s guest is Professor BJ Fogg, a leading expert in behaviour change Methods for building habits have often focussed on repetition, willpower and motivation. BJ believes there’s a simpler approach. Habit formation is linked to our emotions and by creating a feeling of success we can wire in a habit. We discuss my own experience with patients as well as the results he has seen with his own program. Finally, BJ reveals how easy it is to form new habits by using his 3-step method. When you do something and feel successful, that behaviour becomes more automatic. Feeling good can be the key to forming new healthy habits that last a lifetime. Show notes and the full podcast are available at drchatterjee.com/108 Follow me on instagram.com/drchatterjee/ Follow me on facebook.com/DrChatterjee/ Follow me on twitter.com/drchatterjeeuk

Actionable Insights

1. Harness Emotion for Habits

To form new habits, focus on generating a feeling of success immediately after performing a desired behavior, as emotions, not just repetition, are what truly wire habits into the brain.

2. Three Steps for New Habits

To create a new habit, first scale the desired behavior down to be super tiny, then find a natural trigger in your existing routine, and finally, celebrate immediately after performing the tiny behavior to wire in the positive emotion.

3. Start with Super Easy Habits

When attempting to form a new habit, set the bar incredibly low by choosing a behavior that is so simple and easy it requires minimal time, money, or physical effort, ensuring you can do it even when motivation is low.

4. Design for Feeling Successful

When trying to create new habits for yourself or others, intentionally design the process to help individuals feel successful, even with small actions, to foster habit formation and motivation.

5. Build Confidence Through Success

Engage in behaviors that allow you to feel successful, as this builds confidence (self-efficacy) and creates ‘success momentum,’ enabling you to overcome future roadblocks more effectively.

6. Shift Identity Through Success

By consistently performing small, successful behaviors, you begin to shift your self-identity to align with the person who performs those actions, fostering further positive change and a belief in your ability to change.

7. Tiny Habits, Big Ripple Effects

Understand that successfully implementing even very small habits and feeling good about them can create a ‘ripple effect,’ naturally leading to other positive, unplanned changes in your life and identity.

8. Success Boosts Motivation

Cultivate feelings of success after completing a behavior, as this positive emotion will motivate you to repeat the action in the future.

9. Daily AG1 for Gut Health

Consider consuming AG1 daily as a health drink to support digestion and enrich the gut microbiome with beneficial bacteria, as it contains five strains of gut bacteria and plant-based compounds.

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