Emily McDonald

I was like, okay, like I need to become the version of me who has it.

And that version of me doesn't do this.

After that, I did a number of different things, just understanding how the brain works.

I mean, so identifying like that identity shifting really was that core thing that really drove me.

But then it got to exactly what you were saying, like replacement.

And actually something specific that I did early on was...

A sort of form of aversive therapy, which they do in studies and things like that with animals, like pairing a shock with a behavior to get them to not do it.

So I kind of unknowingly was doing this sort of intuitively, but I was training my brain to find vaping absolutely disgusting.

Yeah.

And so every time, well, I would create space, right?

So when we have a habit, like any habit, not just vaping, but any sort of habit that we have, it's a habit is a stimulus response relationship.

So what that means is the stimulus could be a cue.

It's a cue in our environment, maybe something that we see,

something that we feel within us, maybe it's stress or, you know, we're around certain people in a certain environment.

There can be all sorts of different cues, but like a habit, habitual behavior is driven by first a cue, right?

And then your brain learns to tie that cue with a response.

And then over time, the response becomes very automatic to that cue.

And so for me, it was, you know, stress or even like doing work and focusing, like studying, locking in, caffeine,

and different things like that.

And so the first thing that you really have to do is create space between, you know, the cue or the stimulus and the response.