Harnessing the power of habits

Celeste: Welcome to the first week of the Nursing and Midwifery Health Program Victoria's podcast series Wellness Reimagined: How to thrive in stressful times. I'm Celeste Pinney, a Registered Midwife and Senior Clinician at the Nursing and Midwifery Health Program Victoria and host of the podcast. And I'm joined by wellness speaker Mark Bunn. Welcome Mark.

Mark: Celeste, great to be with you.

Celeste: Thanks so much for being here, really excited to get stuck into today's topic, which is all about habits, harnessing the power of habits.

Mark: Yeah, it's a fascinating topic, isn't it? So yeah, excited myself to dive in.

Celeste: Great. So we know habits are an important part of what shapes our health and wellbeing and overcoming negative habits or patterns can be quite hard for people, like our habits are really automated. We all have habits that we've fallen into that we may not like or know is not good for us, but we struggle to break free of them. From your perspective or from what you know, could you talk to us a little bit about habits and why they're important?

Mark: Yeah, well, they're really important because either in a positive way or a negative way, they're subconscious behaviours to a large degree. So if we have a positive habit established, then it frees up our energy and our time to do other things. An example people all can relate to, probably, is driving a car. You know, when we first go to drive a Pagecar, we need all our energy, to have focus on, you know, where we're going and whether we're in the right gear and how to brake and indicators, and the whole thing's quite overwhelming, and it's quite a difficult task, but you know, 6-12, months later, when everything's automatic, it's become a habit. Driving is a habit. And I'm sure all of your listeners who drive a car now don't think about driving. You know, they just get in the car and it's just, it's all automatic, which means that frees them up to then be able to talk to a passenger, or, you know, one of their kids, or play some music, or to create a new recipe for dinner that night, or whatever it might be. So that's the beauty of establishing habits. So when we relate those to our health and wellbeing, if we can create really good firm habits in terms of exercise or eating well or meditating, whatever it might be, then it just creates this really great foundation that mind and body can really sink into it and get really good results, without us having to churn through the discipline and the willpower that we often need to have initially. And then the converse, of course, is a negative habit. If we don't sort of do something to break those habits, then again, they're just subconscious and without us even thinking, you know, we're halfway through the cigarette or the block of chocolate or whatever it is, and so habits are really, really important, both in a positive or a negative way.

Celeste: Mmm, yeah, that's great. Thank you. Do you have any suggestions for how we can make positive changes that stick in regards to habits?

Mark: Ah yeah, I think as we go through we'll dive deeper into a little four step process about how to do that, but just some more generic understandings is just, motivation. Sometimes we would like to start something, but we're not really truly motivated, we don't really have that strength of mind or that deep desire to do it, and in my belief, it's better off we don't even worry about those things, because this is where if we don't have that impetus of a really strong motivation to change, then it's very hard to establish that habit long term. And the other one, which I think we'll cycle back to, is just making the habit really easy to begin with, and once the habits created, then we can take it further. PageSay, in exercise, for example, you know, people want to be really fit and healthy or to lose a lot of weight. Well, if we want to lose ten kilograms, then losing one kilogram is a great start to do that, and it's the same habit to lose one or two kilograms as it is to lose five or ten. Or it's the same habit to walk around the block once, as it is to walk around the block five times, or to walk five kilometres, or get your 10,000 steps a day. So making sure you're really motivated, there's a real strong desire for the habit to be formed, and then just being really easy on yourself, creating a really easy, practical, achievable first step or two to help develop the habit in the first place, and we can dive bit deeper into that in a moment.

Celeste: Mmm, great. So what you're saying is we really need to start off simple and small and build our way up from there.

Mark: Yes. Celeste: Great. Okay, well, we'll get more into that in a minute. But I'm just curious to know, for a lot of nurses and midwives who have very busy, hectic lives, is there a way that you know of, a way that people can stick with goals or habits when life gets a bit crazy?

Mark: Yeah, I have a, probably a counter intuitive answer to that question, and that is, and it comes back to just this idea of kindness. And nurses, by nature, are carers. You know, nurses, midwives, everything about care for the patient. And so what the challenge for them is, is that self care that, you know, where's the boundary between looking after everybody else? And then often they'll come home and it's their own family and kids and partners and, and so life does get crazy. My thought is, we establish the habits for 80% of our life, but there's 20% of life, approximately, where life just gets out of hand, and there's emergencies, and, you know, kids get sick, or something goes really AWOL and it's in this 20% that I think we don't worry about the habits, we don't beat ourselves up that we're not sticking to the diet perfectly, or doing the perfect exercise, or I've put on a couple of kilograms since, whenever it was so in that, I would isolate that to, yeah, 20% of life is just crazy. You know, things happen we can't control, it's just modern life. Just be easy on ourselves as nurses and midwives. And then when things settle down, you know that the next week or the next month where life comes somewhat back into normalcy, then we come back to the habits, and then it's sort of a more practical, achievable, real life way to do it. So that's my pitch on it. But yeah, very happy to dive into how we sort of create those habits in a bit more detail, from here if you like.

Celeste: Yeah, absolutely go for it. Love to hear more about that the four step process you mentioned.

Mark: Yeah, beautiful. Well, I want to be completely upfront and honest. I've taken this from James Clear’s Atomic Habits. So I've looked into habits for many, many years. But I think James, and this is a book that he wrote probably only a couple of years ago, but a massive New York Times best seller, one of the highest selling books ever, is my understanding. It just really resonated because he gives the practical steps of how to build both positive habits, so we want to do something that's a positive in our life, get more exercise, start a meditation program, whatever is, but also we need to remove or lose some of the not so positive habits. We need to break those, and it's the same four step process, but obviously in reverse for when we're trying to break the habit. So I always like to have a practical example. So let's choose one that people might want to do, people listening, maybe it's to start a new exercise program, or to have a meditation practice, you know, at the end of their shift, or first thing in the morning, and then to break a habit it might be technology, you know, one of the big bug bears today.

You know, people are on their phones too much, and they're scrolling and doom scrolling, and half an hour later, they realize they've just depressed themselves, and so how do we break that habit and free up some of the time to have a more positive habit? So the four steps are basically, in a positive sense, we want to make it obvious. If we want a new habit, we've got to make it really obvious and stand out that that's what we're trying to establish. So for example, exercise, it might be having your workout clothes right at your bedroom door, or the first place you get up in the morning. If you want to have it as an early morning exercise routine, you have your gear ready right in front of you. PageIf it's meditation, you would create a space in your home that's a designated place for meditation. Might have a chair, or it might be a sofa with some cushions or but it's, you know, it's obvious that that's what that activity relates to. Second step is to make it attractive. It's human nature that we like more beautiful or visually attractive things. So if you have some exercise clothing that you feel really good in, and you really like it, and just getting into those runners or whatever makes you feel good, and there may be bright colors on there, investing that extra $50 or $60 in some nice clothing will really help establish that habit. The meditation space, you might buy some nice cushions or have some incense, or just make the whole space really attractive so that you actually want to be in it, rather than a really messy, dirty corner of your house that you don't really want to be in.

And the third one is one we touched on earlier, is to just make it easy to begin with. And so creating a habit is actually different from the actual end goal of the practice. So the example of exercise might be, if you're not in an exercise habit, trying to start with going to the gym for an hour four times a week, or to have 10,000 steps, or to run half a marathon, is going to set yourself up for likely not doing it very well. But if the goal is just to walk around the block to begin with, that's much, much easier. And we all know once we've started, once you've got the clothes on, you're out the door and you've walked around the block, which might only take five or ten minutes, what do most of us do? Oh, I'm already out here, let's walk around again. So one block becomes two blocks. So start small, make it easy, and then once the habits established, it's very easy to then just build on the time or the duration.

Meditation the same. If meditation is not a natural practice for someone, then trying to do 30 minutes twice a day is again going to set ourselves up for probably not achieving that very consistently. But if all we need to do is two minutes or five minutes once a day, then much more achievable. And then step four is to make it satisfying, which, in another language, is just to reward ourselves, basically, so give yourself some reward, or make it satisfying that once you've achieved that habit, you've got out the door, you've got the, you know, they've got the change to the clothes you've done the block, or the two blocks, then that might be some little reward that you have the sit down and have the coffee before you head off to shift.

Or, if it's a meditation, you might then do something that is really, really fun and enjoyable. And then, of course, it's the reverse for breaking the habit. So if the habit is not to eat so much chocolate at night time or to spend less time on your phone and doom scrolling, you would make it the opposite of obvious, and James calls it invisible.

So you might ask one of your family members to take your phone when you get home from the shift, if they're at home with you on your weekends off, or you might, some people actually lock their phone, in a little draw. So it's not that they can't get it, but it just makes it that little bit harder. You don't have the fridge full of Tim Tams and chocolate biscuits if you're trying to break that habit, if you have some at home, you might have them in the far reaches of the cupboard, or as much as you can, you have to force yourself to get in the car and drive up the shop to get the biscuits if you really, really have a big craving. So as much as possible, make it invisible, make them unattractive. So don't buy the new phone with the beautiful gold plated casing and the sparkles and the beautiful stickers and people, even in the last week, I've heard research of people now buying dumb phones. So people trying to break this habit, instead of getting the latest shiniest iPhone, they just buy one of the old non smartphones. You can still make phone calls, you can still keep in touch with your kids if they need to contact you, but it just breaks that immediacy of being able to jump on and just start scrolling and emails and social media, etc.

Number three is, rather than make it easy, make it difficult. So, like we touched on with the chocolate, rather than having them right in the front of the fridge the first place you look, you might have to get in the car and go up the shop if you really have that deep chocolate craving. And then step four is to make it as unsatisfying as possible. So this is often where you might bring in a friend you know, who you do something together. Creating habits or breaking habits are great done with a buddy, having someone to keep you accountable, but also to support you for the positive ones, but also to sort of tap you on the shoulder and sort of make you even feel a little bit not so good about yourself if you're straying from the habit. So it might even be, I'm making something up on the spot, but you know, as a parent, you've told your family you want to get off your phone at night so you can be more connected with them. If they see you going for your phone, they can, Pageyou know, throw rolled up paper at you and give you some sort of little feedback that you know, this is not what you're committed to. And just have some sense that it's, it's not as satisfying as creating a good habit. So they're the four steps, either as a positive or a negative. And I think they're really good little pillars to come back to and base our habits around.

Celeste: Wow, I love that. So many gems there. I think it's good that people have that, you know, a bit of a system breaking it down into the steps that I wasn't aware of, that regarding habits. So I think that will be really, really useful for people. And I really like the component of giving ourselves a bit of leeway, the 20%, 80/20 rule, not being too hard on ourselves, because we, you know, none of us can strive for perfection all the time. And look, we know nurses and midwives do have perfectionistic tendencies, or can have that, and that, I suppose that gets in the way we want to be able to cut ourselves some slack and be kind to ourselves. But it sounds like if we establish a kind of a fundamental baseline, you know, for the most part, we can stick to that.

Mark: Beautiful, yeah, and just on that just, we often think of habits as daily. And I, I myself often when I speak, often have this expression of, you know, daily habits or daily practices, whereas maybe even losing the word daily is a really, real help for nurses and midwives that you know, if it's the meditation or the exercise or the more healthy eating, can we start with, you know, three days a week or four days a week, or, you know, often we'll talk about, in other episodes, about trying to maybe lighten up the meal before the sleep component when we're on shift work, you know, can that start just as, you know, one or two days a week, rather than thinking we have to do it every single day, and it gets too hard, and we actually create more stress, and we're obviously trying to avoid that. So we want to sort of get away from that, which is very much a western habit of, you know, we get so sort of guilty about what we can't do or we don't do well, we create more stress than, than what we're trying to actually avoid in the first place. So yeah, maybe one or two days to start with, and then, you know, much easier to move from two days to three days and three days to four rather than trying to start at seven and it becomes impractical, and three months later, we're back on the couch and eating the pizza.

Celeste: That's not what we want. And just one more question, out of curiosity, if someone you know, really has, and say, a number of different habits that they have that they have, you know, that are not healthy for them, or they want to give up, or they want to start, if they've got a few different goals, like, would it be better just to start off with one at a time? Say, look, on this week, I'm going to, like, increase my vegetable intake, but I'm not going to change anything else. Or what, what do you suggest people would, might do?

Mark: Yeah, definitely start with one, because that comes to make it easier. You know, much easier to do one thing well than three things all at once. And the other part would be, I mean, we touched on 80%/ 20% earlier. But a slightly different aspect of this is actually what they call the 80/20 principle, and it came about many decades ago by an Italian economist called Pareto. And he was actually a mathematician, but he was looking at how 20% of whatever we do in any area of our life it’s been found, produces 80% of our results and 80% of what we do produces only 20% of our results. And I ask everyone listening today to go home to your wardrobe tonight, and I guarantee them about 20% of the clothes in their wardrobe they'll wear 80% of the time, and 80% of the clothes they'll wear 20% of the time. In terms of finances, generally, 20% of what we invest in produces 80% of profits, and vice versa.

And so it's been established that it's almost like a universal law of nature. And I think we're going to come back to this principle in a few of the episodes, but it really relates nicely to habits and your question that in deciding which habit to begin with, if we have a number of them, just have a think first about which one, even if I didn't do it perfectly, you know, I did it just reasonably well, which one would actually deliver me the greatest outcome from that time and effort? And specifically, which habit could I do reasonably well? Doesn't have to be perfect, which is like the 20% habit that's going to give me 80% of my results. Is it changing the exercise, that I'm getting out and I'm getting more exercise because that's going to give me more energy, and then I'm going to think better, and therefore I'm going to be able to maybe eat better anyway, or is it changing the diet, or is it giving up the cigarettes?

Or is it meditating, if we start to tune into just that, what I call it the inner wisdom. You know, our intuition, and nurses and midwives have it. They have this intuition so much more. I find that many others, I think we all have it, but nurses have a really deep connection to that, so they'll know exactly what the maybe the first habit is to start with. But as you say, do one to begin with. Once it's a habit, as we discussed at the start, it becomes automatic. We don't have to think about it anymore. We just naturally get up and walk around the block three times while we're making a couple of phone calls and we don't think about it anymore. So once it's at that stage that it's habitual, then we can go to the second habit from there.

Celeste: Fantastic. That's great. Well, thanks so much for your time today, Mark. We really appreciate you coming on and sharing with us everything you've learned and everything that you know, and we'll be seeing you next week for our next podcast on The

Art of Rest, Mastering the Pause.

Mark: Looking forward to it Celeste, thank you.

Celeste: Thank you. For any nurse or midwife in need of support you can call 9415 7551 to make an appointment with one of our nurse midwife counsellors. Thanks for joining us today and we'll see you next week.