The Three Essentials for Transforming Your Habits

Dr. Christine Li [00:00:00]:
Welcome back to the Make Time for Success podcast. This is episode 235 why is it so darn difficult to get our habits to change sometimes, even when we really, really want them to be gone and changed? In this episode, I'm going to share my deep thoughts on the topic. I've been thinking about this topic a lot lately and I'm also going to share three essential habit change truths that you need to know in order to be successful with any habit change endeavor that you decide to take on. I think when we decide to convert our habits into better ones, we end up preserving our energy, finding good new energy and momentum, and feeling great about ourselves. So let's go dig into this topic together right now. You.

Dr. Christine Li [00:00:57]:
Hi, I'm Dr. Christine Li and I'm a psychologist and a procrastination coach. I've helped thousands of people move past procrastination and overwhelm so they could begin working to their potential. In this podcast, you're going to learn powerful strategies for getting your mind, body and energy to work together so that you can focus on what's really important and accomplish the goals you want to achieve. When you start living within your full power, you're going to see how being productive can be easy and how you can create success on demand. Welcome to the Make Time for Success podcast.

Dr. Christine Li [00:01:41]:
Hi there. Welcome to this episode. This episode is inspired by the fact that I have just completed another round of hosting the Re Energize youe Home five Day Challenge. If you don't know what this challenge is, it is a decluttering challenge. And whenever I host this challenge, I find myself very intensively thinking about the concept of habits and how it is so difficult sometimes for us to convert our habits when we've been stuck in an old pattern, when we have things like physical clutter in our way, and when we just don't know how to convert the old habits into new ones. So because this has been on my mind for a good solid two weeks, I thought let me create a quick episode to really get you through your own habit journey and to help you see how easy it can be during the challenge. The beautiful thing about hosting it is I get to meet hundreds of women, and some men who sometimes don't know me sometimes do. But I get to see them in just a short amount of time, sometimes even just one day.

Dr. Christine Li [00:02:55]:
They're able to touch their clutter and get it out of their homes. And you would think, oh well, it would take a whole lot of time to make a noticeable difference. But what we learned in the challenge is that over the course of the week, you could turn one room in your home from cluttered and disorganized to. To magazine worthy. And I am not exaggerating that people have really dramatic transformations in their home once they know how to change their habits of leaving the clutter where it is. And it's such a delight to host. I think people have a lot of fun in the challenge. And if you're interested in joining the next one, just keep listening to the podcast and you'll be hearing news of the next one.

Dr. Christine Li [00:03:40]:
Probably the next one will be around September of this year, which is 2025. And you're all welcome into the next challenge. And what I've been thinking in this round of the challenge is that it can be so tricky to really have all the essentials of habit change together when you feel like you want to change the habit. And I'm going to describe the three essentials that I think you absolutely need to know. But before I tell you the three essentials, I want to say something that I think is also super important, and that is we are vulnerable to the forces of habit. Habits are really strong because our brains really value and crave predictability. And once we decide we're going to stick with a particular habit, once a habit is formed, it creates a powerful loop. We all know what I'm talking about.

Dr. Christine Li [00:04:42]:
You have a trigger like, oh, I came into the home. I'm going to drop my keys right there instead of hanging them up on the hook. That's a trigger. The routine that happens after the trigger is, oh, I just leave it there. And then it becomes clutter. And then the consequence or the reward, if it's a good habit, is that all of a sudden you have more clutter than you started with. So each habit loop consists of a trigger, the routine that you do after the trigger, and then the reward or consequence. And that powerful habit system is designed by your brain to keep repeating itself so that you conserve your energy.

Dr. Christine Li [00:05:24]:
That is the nature of a habit. That is what habits do. And once you understand that, I think you've got a leg up on your habits. Because, you know, there are three different areas of this habit pattern that I can examine, and I can decide which one I need to change so that the entire habit loop dissolves and I can create a new one. All right. The thing with clutter is that it is so powerfully negative oftentimes in our homes, in our energy spaces, that we decide, you know what, my habit is going to Be I'm going to walk right by it, not pay any attention to it, and pretend it's not there. And I'm going to pretend it's not affecting me and then it stays there. So we have a habit of ignoring the challenge that is actually right in our past.

Dr. Christine Li [00:06:17]:
And I think that is not a great habit to keep. Which is one of the reasons why I really dig the re energize your home five day challenge because it gets people to see I don't need to ignore big things in my life. I don't need to have roadblocks in my way all the time. It's not a healthy thing to keep in my life. And I want to say one more thing before I go into three essentials of habits. We really want to skip one thing and that is assigning negative meaning to our difficulties with our habits. Right. Once you start talking like this, oh, I'm so lazy.

Dr. Christine Li [00:06:58]:
Oh, why can't I do this? Oh, I must be so undisciplined. Oh my God, this is impossible. Whenever your ego gets involved, whenever you think it's your personality that is the cause of the habit problem, that's when the entire process gets really wonky, it gets really heavy, it feels unmanageable, unfriendly, unkind, and like it's impossible. And I want to just remove all that type of heaviness from your thinking and therefore from your life. It's easy to do when we just say, it's not about me, it's about, can I get a reasonable system to change what I'm doing and implement that as soon as I can without hurting myself or my ego. Your ego should be something that is not vulnerable to things like habits that change all the time or get stuck sometimes. Our ego needs to be in a place where we feel good about ourselves no matter what, no matter how much clutter we have, no matter how slow we are at changing our habits, we want to say, I'm a good person, I've got skills, I've got people who love me, I've got support. I've got so much inspiration for newness in my life.

Dr. Christine Li [00:08:20]:
That's how you want to be talking to yourself. The habits will change that much more successfully. When it's not going to be about whether you're a good person or not, whether you're valuable in the world or not. Let's get away from that kind of limiting and oppressive thinking. You are awesome. Remember Dr. Lee said, you are awesome. So this way, when you have your ego set, when it's not vulnerable to any habit situation or your fleeting thoughts, then the next time you go to try to improve your habits, you won't be half distracted by the thought of, oh, is this really going to work because I'm so lazy, right? You basically set yourself up for success, which is what this entire podcast is about, helping you set yourself up and have time for more success.

Dr. Christine Li [00:09:12]:
All right, I've promised you the three habit change essentials that you really should know. And here we go. The first one is you need to believe that every habit is changeable. I just a couple minutes ago explained to you the three components of every habit. The trigger, the routine, and the reward or consequence. And when you understand, oh, if I'm calling something a habit, that means I know in my heart of hearts because of this episode that it is changeable. And when you believe that it's possible to move what feels like something that's really stuck, you all of a sudden get more motivation. You all of a sudden feel more like you could be inspired by the new habit that is coming your way.

Dr. Christine Li [00:10:02]:
You get to think, I have power to rewire these intense habit loops and I'm going to change what I'm doing so that I can see change right away. You end up believing in yourself when you understand that habits are changeable. So that's the first essential. Super important. I want to add that if they weren't changeable, we wouldn't be calling them habits. So really, just mull on that for a little bit, right? Anything we call a habit is something that is shiftable. It's inherently shiftable. So go ahead and shift away.

Dr. Christine Li [00:10:39]:
All right, the second essential habit change thing that you need to know is that you need to commit. You need to go all in on your wish, on your decision to change, on this idea of yours, of, wow, I'm wondering if I can make this go more smoothly, more quickly, more easily, more delightfully, more in a glittery kind of way. Whatever you need. Commit to the decision based on what you want. It is really okay for you to design your habits and therefore to design the way your life goes the way you want it to go. There's no one else that is a better advisor to your brain and body than you. So use that privilege, use that gift, use that miracle of being the boss of your own life when it comes to making a commitment to going all in in your habit change decision. All right.

Dr. Christine Li [00:11:42]:
Habit change is not a, well, maybe I'll change this, right? No, no, no. Maybe really doesn't cut it when it comes to habit change, you have to put all the weight of your intention, your mind and your body, your energy into the new direction. Because like I explained a couple minutes ago, that old habit loop is so powerful, is so strong, it is just waiting to come back and save your energy again. So if you are deciding to go in a different direction, you have to decide, I'm all in. Right. No more half foot there, half foot there, one foot there, one foot there. I should say we're going to say, I'm walking forward. I'm walking away from this old way of being.

Dr. Christine Li [00:12:30]:
I thank the old way of being. I'm not going to yell at myself or be frustrated by that old way of being. I'm just going to say I'm turning my intentions and my attention to another direction. When you go all in, things should work out just beautifully. You've made the decision to change and now you are backing yourself up fully. Okay? The third and final essential habit change thing that you should know is that you need to continue. Right. This is all about consistency.

Dr. Christine Li [00:13:06]:
This is all about using your momentum. You've made the initial change to the new habit and now it's your, I will say, responsibility and it is your going to be your new habit to stay consistent with the new path that you choose. Right? Right. Each day you're going to have to recommit to doing what you decided. I think things like tracking sheets or having an accountability partner or having a coach or a therapist or friend who's doing a habit change similar to you on board with you can be really helpful. Because our energy thinks, oh, wasn't that old habit so pleasant and nice and easy? Because we're human, we will remember our old habits and our old ways of doing things. But when you continue, when you commit day after day after day to getting rid of the old habit, never returning to it and repeating the new habit, you will not fall off that habit. You will not think of yourself as someone who slips up all the time.

Dr. Christine Li [00:14:14]:
You will feel more and more pride in your heart and in your accomplishments and therefore in your life. And pride is a pretty powerful habit reinforcer. And when I say a habit reinforcer, I mean you're going to feel good when you've successfully transferred into your new habit. And when you feel good, you feel good. That's a high value unto itself. Right. All we're doing generally throughout the day is we're trying to get to happy, we're trying to get to feeling good about ourselves. We're trying to get to, to our better habits.

Dr. Christine Li [00:14:51]:
We are trying to get to a full and fulfilling life. That is what I was able to help people with throughout the five day challenge and I hope I've helped you in this quick episode to understand your habits, to understand how powerful you really are and how much opportunity you have every single day of your life. So to recap, believe that every habit you want to change is changeable. Commit and go all in in what you want to see in your life and then continue forward. Don't think you have to slip backwards because that does not have to be part of your story anymore. You now know the three habit change essentials that you need to know. If you are wanting the free downloadable worksheet that comes with this habit change episode, you can go to maketimeforsuccesspodcast.com/ commitment again, it is maketimeforsuccesspodcast.Com/ commitment and if you would like to chat about starting a challenge with me or having some group coaching with me, or even private coaching, I would be happy to get into a conversation with you. Just send me a message through the show notes for this episode and I will get in touch with you soon after that.

Dr. Christine Li [00:16:18]:
Until next time, I want you to keep going with your habits, with your big dreams, with whatever you want to see happen in this world and in your lifetime. You've got this. I'm right there supporting you and I will see you next Thursday to remind you of similar things when the next episode of the Make Time for Success Podcast drops. See you then. Bye.

Dr. Christine Li [00:16:42]:
Thank you for listening to this episode of the Make Time for Success Podcast. If you enjoyed what you've heard, you can subscribe to make sure you get notified of upcoming episodes. You can also Visit our website maketimeforsuccesspodcast.com for past episodes, show notes, and all the resources we mention on the show. Feel free to connect with me over on Instagram too. You can find me there under the name Procrastination Coach. Send me a DM and let me know what your thoughts are about the episodes you've been listening to. And let me know any topics that you might like me to talk about on the show. I'd love to hear all about how you're making Time for Success.

Dr. Christine Li [00:17:23]:
Talk to you soon.