Get Back on Track: 3 Small Habits That Change Your Body, Energy, and Life

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And you want to hear something really exciting? Based on the research, there are just three simple habits. Just three. Now, these three habits, the research shows, they up-level everything. Your focus, your energy, your confidence. Heck, you're going to even learn that they make you spend less money. What? And here's the best part. These three habits, they don't require willpower.

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And if I can do them, you can do them. After today's conversation, you will be doing them too because you have the world's best instructor here today to help walk you through step-by-step this extraordinary and exciting research. And you're going to know exactly what to do. Our expert today is the GOAT of habit research.

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He is also the author of the seminal book on habits, The Power of Habit. Now, this book was published in 2012, and it has sold millions of copies and has been translated into 40 languages. It has transformed how millions of people think about motivation, focus, follow-through, habits.

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His work has been cited in more best-selling books on behavior change than I can list, but there are two I know for sure, and those two happen to be the ones that I wrote, The Five Second Rule and The High Five Habit. Charles is lasering in on three particular habits that research say are the king and queen of all habits. And Charles will tell you that these are called keystone habits.

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Based on the research, if you just focus on these three, They will create positive ripples through your entire life. So, are you ready to meet the new you? I'm sure you are. Please help me welcome Charles Dewey to the Mel Robbins Podcast. This is such an honor for me. I really appreciate it. Well, you know, your book, The Power of Habits, changed my life.

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It is the best, and it is the seminal, and it is the original, incredible book about habits. The research is unreal. I cannot wait for you to unpack all that today. And I'd love to start by having you speak directly to the person who's listening. They do not have a lot of time, but they have found the time to spend it with you and me.

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And they cannot wait to learn about your research with habits, how to create a positive ripple effect in their life. Can you tell this person what might change about their life if they take everything that you're about to share today and they apply it? Absolutely. Absolutely. So here's the thing I would say. Every habit can be changed. You can create as many habits as you want.

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to listen to this conversation today as an invitation to change the type of person you think you are. And if you've been telling yourself that you just don't have the talent or you don't have willpower or you're not athletic or any of these other things, the research says otherwise. Tell us what that means. That's absolutely right. And we've known this since Aristotle.

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Aristotle once said, we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act, it's a habit. And so is slacking off. So is slacking off. So is exercising every day. So is procrastination. They're all habits and they all operate the same way in our brain. Okay. And the key to changing them is just to understand what's going on. Okay. And is habits... just a fancy researchery word for patterns?

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Like these are patterns in your life or what is that? So there's a part of our brain known as the basal ganglia that creates habits. And every animal on earth has a basal ganglia. Without it, we would not have evolved to become humans or anything else. And it exists not just to create patterns, but to create a specific kind of pattern. And to explain, let me tell you how a habit works. Okay.

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We think of a habit as one thing, but actually there are three parts to every habit. There's a cue, which is like a trigger for an automatic behavior to start. Then there's the routine, the habit itself, what we think of as the habit, the behavior. And then finally, every habit in our life has a reward. It delivers a reward to us, whether we're aware of it or not. Huh.

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Now, about 40 to 45% of what we do every day is a habit. 45%? Yeah. We think of it as a choice, but actually when you're backing your car out of the driveway, you're operating on habit. When you walk into the cafeteria and you get that unhealthy lunch instead of the salad you said you were going to have this morning, that's a habit.

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It changes how you think about yourself. Now, I want to make sure that as you're listening to Charles, because this is such an important idea, because I think a lot of us think we should exercise because we know it's good for us and we think that it's something that we should do. What you're saying is something different.

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Just stop and think for a second as you're listening to Charles and think about the kind of person that goes to the gym five days a week. And now, even if you're not that kind of person, you probably can imagine that there are certain things about that person that you know to be true because they seem to have the discipline, or in your words, the habit, of moving their body that regularly.

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that maybe they don't procrastinate. Maybe they get out of bed when the alarm rings. Maybe they have more energy during the day. Maybe they are healthier either. Maybe they don't bury themselves in a bottle of wine every night. I don't know, but you have assumptions about who that person is when you see somebody doing something.

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And you're saying that the same thing happens to yourself, that when you become the kind of person who doesn't drink or the kind of person who saves money regularly or the kind of person who exercises regularly, it changes your identity. That's super cool. It's absolutely amazing. And you're exactly right.

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There's a part of our brain that pays attention not to what we think we should do, but how we actually behave. Right. And in psychology, this is known as stated versus actual preferences. Stated versus actual preferences. So my stated preference might be that I work out. You know how I say that? Stop talking and do it. Yeah, exactly. You want to be that person, prove it.

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Because Jim's going to be pissed if I don't show up after we plan to run together. Yep. So now I've set some cues for my exercise routines. And the cue, the important thing about the cue is it is there to kind of go ding, ding, ding, Charles. That's exactly right. This is the time to do this thing you said you were going to do.

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Over time, just seeing that cue will make you automatically start exercising. Okay, got it. So we want them to be somewhat stable and we're just going to choose them. And we're just, it can be anything. We can experiment with them. Then I'm going to go and I'm going to do my exercise. I'm going to run for three blocks. Okay. Right? And afterwards, as soon as I can,

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So we've done the cue, the routine. The third part is the reward. Afterwards, I'm going to give myself a reward as quickly as I can. And give me an example of a reward. A reward, let's say you go on a run. A reward could be you have a smoothie when you come home, right? A reward could be you'd let yourself take a nice long shower.

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A reward could even be that you have a little calendar and you make a check every day you go for an exercise and you look at it and you think, oh my gosh, I have 13 checks this month. I'm amazing, right? anything can be made into a reward. We just have to give ourselves that reward. Now compare that to how most people try to start exercising, right? Here's what they do instead.

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They say, I'm going to go exercising tomorrow. And then they wake up at seven and they're like tired. And they're like, where are my shoes? Where's my running stuff? Then they go and they run three or four blocks and they come home and now they're running behind, right? And the kids need breakfast. And like, so they jump in the shower. They take the fastest shower that they can. They

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It's your buddy Mel Robbins. Today, we are talking all things habits. In particular, three keystone habits that create positive change for your life and what the research says about what you can do to make forming new habits easier. What does the research say about the difference between a person that has a habit of

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having a morning routine that creates anticipation, relaxation, meaning we're slowing down, we're not running through the morning like a freaking tornado, and connection to something like yourself or other people or something important to you. What's the difference between that person, even if it's just making your bed, and somebody who doesn't have a morning routine? What's the research say?

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Well, what the research says is that when you have that morning routine, you tend to make much better decisions. And in particular, you tend to make better decisions on what to focus on, right? So if you think about the challenges that we all face every day in life, a lot of them are, there's some things that I want to be able to focus on, but I get distracted.

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Well, and the best thing is it's super easy to drink more water, right? Like literally you just pick up the cup and you put it your lips. You can accomplish that goal in seconds. But why is learning to track things? Like what does the research say about, let's say,

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I don't know, tracking what you eat, tracking the number of steps that you have, tracking the spending that you're, I don't want to track this stuff, Charles. I mean, that's, it's actually hard to track what you're doing. It can be hard and you have to choose the right thing, right? Okay. So what does the research say?

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Like, so what the research says is think about how much of your day you spend on autopilot, right? The great thing about a habit is that it feels like it's autopilot. You don't have to think about the thing you're doing. What's the drawback to that? The drawback to that is that you stop making choices, right? You start reacting instead of proacting.

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But equally, there's nothing there to remind you of your purpose. There's nothing to remind you of why this activity has meaning. If I'm on autopilot, I'm just doing things without even thinking about it. Tracking something is like a small interruption that causes us to remember the why in our life.

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You know, one of the things that you write about, one of my favorite stories in your book, it's on page 120. is about how the research says that when someone is trying to lose weight, that the biggest change came from simply writing down what they ate. Can you unpack that research for us? Absolutely.

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Because you understand, you've diagnosed the cue and the reward that's driving your behaviors, and now you're in control of them. Now you're deciding what behaviors you want and which behaviors you don't want. I love this. I'm about to go on a hunt for the cue. I'm going to do the cold prediction and planning. If this happens, then I'm going to do that. And then I'm going to savor the reward.

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I love this. Well, and the best part is we can teach our kids to do this. I do this all the time with my kids. When my kids say, hey, dad, I want to go ride my bike tomorrow to school. Is that okay? We sit down and we say, okay, what's the cue? What's the cue for waking up and remembering to ride your bike? Okay, you're going to have to leave a little bit early, right?

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Because it takes longer to ride your bike. So let's set the alarm clock 10 minutes early. And put the helmet right next to it. Yeah, and put the helmet right next to it so that you remember your helmet. You don't have to look for it. And then the routine is riding your bike. And what's the reward?

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I ask my kids and they say, oh, well, you know, after school, I'm going to get to go hang out with my friends because now we can ride our bike all over town. So now he's reminding himself of the reward. He's giving himself the reward. He's savoring the reward. When we teach our kids to do this, we are giving them one of the strongest tools they can have to be successful in life.

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Well, and I also love the visual of take out a piece of paper, draw three columns. What's the cue? What are all the different cues I could use? What is the cold pattern I'm going to do? And what is the reward? And make sure to savor it. Charles, you're a genius. This is the best... book on habits.