Christa 0:00
Let's talk about habits. I think that a lot of people know what to do, including ourselves personally, right? Like, I know what to do. We know what we should be drinking or not drinking, what we should be eating what we shouldn't be eating, that we should move our body, that we should sleep more, but it's so hard to stick to what we know. And I think, you know, it's great to share information of how we can improve ourselves and other people. But how do we actually stick to that? So let's talk about habits. And I, you know, I'm going to share kind of what's worked for me, and I want you to share what's worked for you too. But yeah, what'd you think about that? habits?
Sheree 0:38
I love it. I love it habits a huge man, I think I'm such a routine person. And I know that I have what some would probably call OCD tendencies. So I have my morning routine, and my evening routine, I'm really not a super happy person. But this constantly changes and constantly evolves. And I think sometimes it's giving us time to break old habits, create new habits. I love what you mentioned before. It's like, why do we do what we do? And we know what we know. And sometimes that initial thought of creating that new habit can feel really overwhelming, or try to undo a habit that we've had ingrained for decades, potentially, as well. So I'm super excited topic. Yeah, the
Christa 1:19
fact of the matter is, we have habits, like we have habits, it's not that we can't make them. We stick to habits, because there's something that keeps bringing us back. There's something that lures us in. And I think you know, people who have done research on it, people have tapped in, you know, who've written books on it, they've tapped into that fact that we all have habits. It's just a matter of why like, why do we have the habits and why do we stick to certain things? And why is it so hard to change? So one book that I recommend for everybody to read all of my clients to read, and I need to read it again, it's one that you should just read over and over again, atomic habits by James clear, I think most people have heard of it. Yeah. Have you read that one? Yeah, probably been two years. So I should get back to just rereading it and reminding myself of some of these things. But I think one of the biggest Well, there's two that really stuck out to me, it's the habit stacking, and it's making a new habit fun, somehow, some way, and the way that I have created new habits. And this is like an example I share all the time. So in the mornings, I love to have coffee, but I also knew that I was really bad at drinking enough water. And so I made the habit of drinking 30 ounces of water before I was able to make coffee. So you know the trigger was oh, it's time to make coffee. So that was the reminder like, oh, no, I'm creating a new habit. Remember, you drink water before coffee. So it's like habit stacking. You know, some people say like, when you're cooking, do five squats. You know, that doesn't remind you and that's a habit stack? Have you tried that one?
Sheree 2:47
Yeah, I've actually recently because I've been wanting to do some oil pulling. And I know that that can be a really hard one. Because especially because you got to do a flip 10 to 15 minutes, right. So for those who don't know, Oil pulling is really great if you've got like a SIBO or a C fall and overgrowth in the gut really helps regulate your oral microbiome. And I knew that with having COVID, I wanted to really do everything I could to get crap out of my out of my body. And so I've been doing that. And an easy way for me to do it is I take my supplements in the morning, then I pop that in my mouth, you have to do it before you brush your teeth and stuff. And then I get in the shower. So it's like while I'm showering, I'm not actually thinking about swishing the oil around my mouth. But I'm in it for long enough that it kind of takes up its time I get out of the shower, go spit it out. And then I can brush my teeth. So I find that I can sometimes I turn the shower on and realize I haven't had the oil like coconut oil in my mouth and be like, okay, tennis shot rock go back out of the coconut oil. And so that habit of habit stacking is really, really helpful. Right, they start to fire together. They're like, Oh, this is what we do when we do.
Christa 3:52
I've never done any oil pulling. I need to learn about that. And maybe eight integrate that. But yeah, that's a great example. Like, oh, wait, this is my trigger, I need to stack that new habit onto something that already exists. The other thing is making it fun. So I use it a lot with workouts, I'm pretty consistent about working out. So it's not really that I'm trying to create a new habit with that. But one thing that makes it fun, so you can definitely use this if working out going on a run going on a walk lifting weights, whatever. I also really love music so something that makes that habit of working out even more fun is that I get to listen to fun music so making whatever your new habit is more enjoyable. So if it's a podcast if it's music, I use that to with like listening to books, like I don't I'm not a reader, for some reason, like sitting down, it just drives me nuts like, oh, I should be doing something else. But for me, I'm like let's make it more fun. Let's make it easier. And so I just committed to downloading audiobooks. And so now I drive kids around all the time. You know, I'm in my car enough and so I found Wow, I've really gone through way more books because I've made it easier for myself and made it fun. There's not so much resistance to The habit of the goal that I want, which is to, you know, consume more books. So yeah, I think making it fun. We use that at all.
Sheree 5:06
Yeah, I think making it fun is one that we can kind of overwhelm ourselves with, right? Like, when I think about, I'm huge into meditation and making sure we're doing things for our mind just as much as our body, right? Because it all works together. And a lot of the time clients are said to me, oh, sure you like just sitting there and I thinking about my to do list and thinking about this and thinking about them, I can't get into that state of being present. And just be like, All right, like, we talk ourselves out of it. And so quite often, I'll say, don't meditate, then what is something that you really enjoy, that can bring you into the present moment, you know, for me, for quite a while, I would meditate for a little bit just because I wanted to focus on my breathing. But then I'd have a dance party, you can feel super present, you can like you say you love music, I love music as well, I love to dance, just moving your body, putting on a little bit of music and seeing what where it takes you, all of a sudden you've taken an activity, because the goal is to be more present and more mindful, right. And if dancing gets you there, amazing. If sitting and meditating, get to there, amazing breath work gets you there. Amazing, like, don't feel like you, I think a lot of us get caught up and I was exactly the same in this, I have to do this specific habit, because it's gonna make me healthy, or it's gonna make me do this. But if it's not actually supporting you towards your goals, you know, if you want to live a fun, happy, joyful life, but you're sitting down every day going, this sucks, yes, there's been a bit of pushing through and outside of your comfort zone, don't get me wrong. But if you're not really enjoying it, and you're dreading doing it, you're doing it because you feel like you have to, you're not actually getting the benefit from it anyway. So how can you make it fun? It's the same sort of thing with, you know, meal prep, and that if some people love the enjoyment of cooking something new and exciting each night, why would you force someone into the box of creating a habit of meal prepping? Yes, it might save time, but maybe they could pre cut a whole lot of vegetables and keep those in the fridge and then cook something fresh and exciting each night. Versus Oh, jury said that I should meal prep. So I'm going to make a whole lot of meals and stick them in the freezer. But I hate it when I like read meals. So it's looking at how you can take a habit that you might want to create and how can you adjust it. So that really sits in your life a lot easier?
Christa 7:19
Yeah, that's true. I think being authentically yourself, honestly, like you could hear what other people do. But it's really getting curious about well, what's the end goal that I want? And then how can I create a habit that gets me to that goal? Even if it's not the way you know, the next person? Does it? If Sally does it a certain way? If Bob does it a certain way? Well, can I get there a different way and being creative with that, integrating fun, but I also think choosing your heart, I read something yesterday that stood out to me, and I've heard this before, but for whatever reason, it really stuck with me. And when you said meal prep, it reminded me of choosing your heart. So let's say you know, we have health goals. And we know that we need to or you know, eat a certain number of carbs and proteins and fats every day. Yes, the easier thing to do is than to have it all mapped out and, and meal prep. But that's hard. It's hard to meal prep, it's hard to stick to how you know you're supposed to eat. It's hard to create this habit. But then on the other side, what's hard about where you're at right now, it's hard to not feel great, and you're close, it's hard to not have the energy that you really want. It's hard to not have the self esteem that you know, you'd have if your physique looked the way that that you want it to. And so that's hard. And it's choosing the heart like either way, life isn't always easy, breezy, but what habits are you committed to create, even though at the beginning, it might be kind of hard. But I think ways to make it stick mate ways to make it easier is definitely to do things like habit stacking, and making it fun, and then having a goal at the end. So if that's accountability, if that's, you know, hey, if I slip up and I do XYZ, I have to pay, you know, my charity $100 Have somebody keep you accountable to that. I mean, there's also ways like that, like, if it works for you, everybody's personality is a little bit different. Some people are motivated by that, though, like, Nope, I'm gonna stick to it. Because if I don't then, you know, they get not so easy at Vietnam. You know, it's there's some there's some kind of consequence that you don't that you want to avoid. So another way,
Sheree 9:19
yeah, and I think, you know, if we take a lot of the research points to the fact that, you know, it takes about 21 days to even establish a habit. So having that accountability, there's so pertinent. And then it takes it for 90 days for us to actually really ingrain it and make it our way of life. And I know personally, you can do all of that. You can be 90 days you can be 120 days, you can be a full year into something. And then you can all it takes is a couple of days or a week, and suddenly you can start to undo that habit just as easily as it was potentially created. And I love what you mentioned about choosing your heart. It's like short term sacrifice for long term gain. I want to start off feel that the benefits of choosing that habit, you start to really see those chips, then it makes you more motivated or not. For me personally, it makes me motivated as well. And I know that we've kind of talked a little bit about this, but have you noticed that in the past with yourself like, Okay, I've committed to something I've done really well. I mean, what common terminology, right? We like fall off the wagon, and it becomes much harder to get back on, like, what would you suggest to someone who's struggling?
Christa 10:25
Yeah, I definitely have done that. Like, I'll go through periods of time where I'm really spot on with eating the foods that I know helped me feel better. And then the holidays hit or vacation, completely derails everything. And I think it's making a decision, it's deciding for one thing, and really thinking of it, because we don't stick to anything, whether it's a business goal, or a body goal, or relationship goals, unless we really assess what we want, like be very clear what you want, envision what you want. And then really, why why do I want this? What is it? What is the end goal? Like, what is that feeling I want, and when we can really tap into the why. And embody that feeling of what it feels like on the other side of whatever blocks coming up there, then we're more likely to stick to it because we can remember like, No, I'm going towards this feeling in my body towards this goal in my business. So I'm going to stick I'm going to go through this. But for me getting back on the wagon, it's making a decision. Yeah, it's like, this sucks. I don't want to feel this way. Now going back to setting smaller goals, that's what works for me, like an all or nothing approach doesn't really work for me back in 2019, I believe it was August I dedicated because I used to drink soda all the time. Like every day, I would have soda, whether it was diet, whether it was regular, didn't matter, I knew really wasn't in my best interest. But I just thought, like, I can't even imagine like, why do people make that goal, so it was fine. But I was like, You know what the hell, I'm going to spend 30 days, I'm just going to commit 30 days to not drinking any soda whatsoever. And then the end of 30 days and go back to back to whatever. And what I learned in that period of time was, I was fine. Without it, it just I had to set a small goal, though, to be able to even get into the habit of doing it. So I think that's the other thing you have to kind of play with the way your mind works. If you have to set a small goal and get curious about, you know, what only do this for six weeks, 90 days, whatever the number is that you feel like you can actually accomplish, you'll learn a lot, I did the same thing with alcohol, just no alcohol for 90 days. After that, get curious about going back, you know, but it changed my relationship with alcohol, I did go back, but I've changed my relationship with alcohol so that I'm not drinking near as much because I know how good I feel without it. But for me to have woken up one day and said you're never drinking another, you know, ounce of alcohol or never a soda again, or never a piece of chocolate, whatever. To me, it doesn't work that way. I know touching on alcohol, you know, taps into a whole addiction thing. And that's a whole different story. But for people who are just wanting to change a relationship with whatever, maybe setting small goals, you can learn a lot. And then from that space, you can stick to it easier.
Sheree 13:02
Yeah, I love that you mentioned that all or nothing. And I think sometimes we can go oh, well, if I just take it out for 30 days, that's almost an all or nothing approach. But you need to take it out to actually see how much better you feel. I find this a lot of people are struggling with food intolerances or sensitivities or, you know, things are causing inflammation in the body. It's like, oh, but I want to have a healthy relationship with food. And I want to feel restricted. And it's the same thing like choose your heart, you just take it out for the next four weeks, allow your body a chance to settle down. And then you can reintroduce it see how you feel nine times out of 10 people reintroduce it and they go, Oh, I feel like crap. When I have this, I might stick to very small amounts, and you create that balance right? As human beings we change from either a place of pain or pleasure. So often the thing that motivates us to change the habit is we're sick of feeling the way that we're feeling, whether that be about our bodies relationship, or whatever it is. Or we get to a point where we've taken something out or we've made a change and we feel so good. We don't want to lose that feeling. So we keep moving forward. So I think that mindset of like, it doesn't have to be this big leap. And this big bounce. I love what you said like breaking it into smaller chunks. Smaller, realistic goals, actually really helps us move the needle right far more than being like, well, I'm going to give up alcohol or give up sugar for the rest of my life. It's all of those fad diets. That's a lot of reasons why things fad diets don't work either because it has to become a lifestyle. But people do it for a short period of time, like keto and they got caught. I'm gonna go back to eating all the carbs, your body's going What the heck, like to make sure that you're creating it as a way of life and bringing those habits through with you so that you see the long term results right?
Christa 14:46
Yeah, I have to play games with my mind. So it's, you know, it's telling myself like this is an experiment. This is just an experiment. How good do we feel when we you know, set up, you know, take action on a business venture, but how does it feel All too let's experiment. Let's say for the next month, I'm going to do reach out to different people are going to do free talks or, or whatever it is in my business like, I don't know, maybe it'll work, maybe it won't. Maybe I'll really love how I feel, maybe I won't see a difference. And so it's experimenting, like telling my brain this is just the experiment. This is for XYZ amount of time. And let's see how we do. And more times than not, I have made permanent change, because I made the decision to just start out small. Yeah, what's been really helpful for me
Sheree 15:30
was that so like, be a scientist in your own body, right? Like, we're not going to know what works until we give it a try. And you might go use the meditation example before you may try it and hate it and do it, let's find an alternative. But our body has all this constant feedback coming to us. So use it, use it for our learning, we use it to be a scientist use it to experiment, like you said, so we can really start to understand what works, what doesn't, what habits are aligned. And if you try a habit that someone else is suggesting, find it's not for you, but you want a similar outcome, chances are, they're at a bajillion other ways to get there. And there'll be other people who have taken very different paths. So you can start to get creative and looking for those as well.
Christa 16:10
Yeah. And it does come back to the nothing changes unless something changes. So if you're looking at any aspect of your life, and you want it to change, you want to go to the next level in any area, then what get curious about what can I change, something's got to change, like, if you want something to change, something has to change. And it doesn't have to be daunting, it can be an experiment, it can be a small period of time. So I think that those are really helpful, it's been really helpful for me to make shifts and some habits stick and some habits don't I liked that you brought up the amount of time that it takes to actually stick to something to even have a chance of making it like a true habit, which is about 21 days. So I would say that's the kind of the minimum experimental time to try something like, Hey, for the next three weeks, I'm going to wake up every morning and do this or I'm going to experiment with this in my business that can be really helpful to to kind of break it down, make it less overwhelming,
Sheree 17:05
yeah, and small tasks regularly. And pick one like you don't have to take on the world all at once. I think that's what we do is, you know, a new year might roll around a new month, and you venture and we go, okay, so this month, I'm going to do X Y Zed, I'm going to stack this on and do that. And it's like, we said that we actually set ourselves up to fail. Because then when we don't achieve all of those things, we then feel worse about ourselves. Like I can't do it, it's confirmation in our mind that we're not good enough, or whatever the story is, we're telling ourselves, we fall off the wagon, right? When really, there's no wagon to fall off just a little speed bump in the road, is it can you just pick one thing, you know, move the needle for that. And then you can again, stack another habit on top of it right and slowly progress.
Christa 17:48
So that's a really good point, I think sticking to small habits creates in our brain trust in ourselves that we do what we say we're going to do. So even if it is a teeny tiny thing. It's literally like sticking to something and it tells our subconscious mind that we trust ourselves that we believe ourselves, that we can do more. It's our unconscious subconscious mind, whichever you want to say is really tricky like that, like we have to be able to trust ourselves on the big things, but it can start with the small things and and improving our self confidence that how Yeah, we can we can go to the next level, yes, we can we can expand our reach to people, we can expand our business, we can expand our level of fitness, we can find the partner that we want, like we start to trust in the fact that what we do is effective, because we stick to the small things. And you know, as a high achiever, I think we tend to say, Oh, let me get from point A to point B, like right away. And it's all the little increments in between that gets you there. I tend to be impatient with like big goals. But it is learning that the small goals create that self trust, to get me to the other side to feel confident enough to hit the bigger goals. And yeah, hit him with more confidence. So I love this talk. I think that everybody you know, there's not a human on the planet that doesn't want to change something about themselves. There's not a human on the planet that doesn't feel frustrated, saying I'm going to you know, hit this goal, and then we don't hit it. I think one last point that I want to make is that we also set goals when we're feeling highly motivated when we're feeling that particular pain point. Or like To hell with this, we're going to do this right. But what we forget is that there's you know, three weeks, six weeks, 90 days in between the day that we felt motivated and actually reaching that goal. And so sometimes it's not a timeline goal. Sometimes it's Hey, I'm just going to show up towards this end result, whatever it is, and some days I'm going to feel great some days I'm not but I'm going to tap into my why. I'm going to tap into what really why did I make that decision in the first place, you know, mindset over the mood of that particular day. So sometimes it's not about a timeframe. Sometimes it's just about the goal and reminding yourself You're going to do on the days that you just don't feel motivated, because we're not always going to feel motivated, certainly not as motivated as the day that we made that particular goal, right. So that's the other thing to keep in mind, expect that you are going to not feel the same. But then going back to those valuable things of like, what were your you know why you made that goal in the first place?
Sheree 20:18
Yeah. And I think you touched on something so beautiful there with, you know, that bigger goal in mind and keeping these smaller goals there, because so often we get caught up in, what's the one thing you know, what's the one, the amount of times that clients will come to us? What's the one thing that's going to heal our gut? What's the one thing that's going to help me lose weight? What's the one thing that's going to get my energy back? And we know, inherently, that there isn't this magical quick fix or pill, we're looking for it? But there is an answer. Don't underestimate those small things that you're doing daily, because those are the habits that actually help you to get to that big goal. And this just takes time, it takes you showing up each day, putting in the work for the habit, and things start to click, weight starts to shift, mood starts to shift, energy starts to move. But if you're just expecting to wake up one day, take a cold shower, and eat some leafy greens, you're going to feel a lot better, you're not you're trying to undo potentially years of damage or things that are you know, put a lot of stress and strain on your body. Whereas when you slowly shift, you change up a few little things. That's what's going to move the needle that not only does the mind start to trust, but then the body starts to trust too, right? This is the habit. She's nourishing me daily, like I'm actually putting nutrients and we're getting enough sleep. Wow, I can let go of the inflammation, which is then causing fluid retention, which is causing me to hold on to weight like and the spiral effect starts to happen. So I think a lot of the times it's very easy to look on the outside people's success and go, What was the magical thing that you did? And it's actually the power of habits. It's totally
Christa 21:51
the power of habits, it's consistency. And it's it's doing some of the things that we've talked about stacking the getting back to your WHY THE making it fun to creating realistic small, incremental goals and trusting yourself. So yeah, I hope you all found this conversation helpful. I know it's a good reminder for me personally, as well to have these kinds of conversations because there's always something that I want to better myself and right so yeah, it's been great,
Sheree 22:17
beautiful, and pick a habit. Just pick one over the next 30 days that maybe you want to commit to and just start to notice the changes amazing
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