John Assaraf

Place them where you normally get dressed and put those on first and do one minute of

or even 30 seconds of a new behavior right next to an old behavior that already has the habitual pattern.

And all of a sudden, you start to develop this habit of, let's say, putting on your shoes, getting dressed, and maybe doing 15, 20, 30 seconds of stretching.

It doesn't matter how small the behavior is.

Once we add a new behavior in front of an old behavior, we can replace the old behavior with the new one.

So that's, you know, if we want to add something.

What if you want to stop, you know, let's say drinking alcohol.

You want to stop eating sugar.

You want to stop a behavior or a habit.

Well, the way I stopped sugar, for example, is I knew I had a sweet tooth and I knew that my brain was craving it.

I knew I had a habit for it.

And so I said, okay, what can I replace my sweet tooth with?

What can I replace it with?

So I said, well, I could get some protein and I could put some fiber with it, which would obviously expand.

And so if my protein had stevia in it,

which doesn't spike the insulin in my brain and in my liver, I can replace real, you know, maybe sugary cakes, cookies, ice creams, or yogurts, frozen yogurts, or vegan frozen yogurts that I like with something healthier.

And so now I'm using a replacement strategy and then all of a sudden I'm not having sweets anymore.

I've replaced it with a better habit and then I can wean myself off of that as well.

So when we're using willpower, it's one of the weakest neuromuscles that we can use, especially after three or four o'clock every day.

Why is that?