Emily McDonald

There are many ways I had to break down the habit of writing and, you know, overcoming effort, discounting and dope me and all the different things.

But really what helped me get started was sort of just deciding I'm an author.

What does an author do?

How does the author version of me move?

And when I realized that, I'm like, OK, well, I'm going to go to a coffee shop with the specific goal of this and I'm going to specifically just do this and nothing else.

And when I started doing that, making a habit of it through repetition, it became easy.

Right.

And just strengthening those neural pathways in my brain.

And then, you know, before I knew it.

I was done writing after a long journey of writing.

Not to say it was easy, but it was a huge kind of helping hand.

And it's helped me.

And I will say just clients that I've worked with, I mean, students that I've coached, I've had people come to me with lifelong bad habits and things that they really struggle.

I had one person that I coached that he...

He really struggled with always reverting back to old junk food eating habits.

And he came to me and he had to learn about, you know, neuroscience, like in my course includes the neuroscience of habit formation, how to make and break habits, because I studied drug addiction when I was in my PhD.

So I know a lot about habit formation.

And he's like, I know how it works and all that, but I just, he's like, I got stressed and I always, whenever I'm stressed, I always revert back to that.

And I was like, well, there you go.

That's the story that you're telling about yourself.