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Summary 

In this episode, Jennifer Green talks about the power of simplicity in forming habits, James Clear's explanation of the four stages of habit and how to break your routine, what doesn't work to motivate ourselves to change, and shares a quick exercise to help you take responsibility and action toward change with self-compassion instead of shame. 

Links

Radio Taiso Workout: The Fitness Secret of Japan with April and Aiko from yes2next (a fabulous fitness channel for midlife ladies and older!)

How to build a habit and how to break one with James Clear

Transcript

(00:01)
I'm Jennifer Green and this is the Quit For Good podcast. I'm here to help you quit smoking for good.

If knowing better was enough, you wouldn't still be smoking. As someone who wasted decades believing that I just was not capable of quitting, I'm on a mission to help women like me stop using smoking to cope with stress or experience pleasure and relaxation. So becoming a nonsmoker feels natural, stable, and permanent.

Because every woman deserves to give herself a better future by prioritizing her health today.

No matter where you are in your quitting journey, you can always begin again. So let's get started.

(00:45)
Friends, I wish I had a New Zealand accent. But you're gonna have to settle for Midwestern. New Zealand is better than Australian. There, I said it. But they're both more exciting than British, which, as we all know, is better than American.

Don't kill the messenger. I don't make the hierarchy of accents.

Today, I wanna talk about lightening your load, making things easier. When things feel heavy, we resist them.

If you're having trouble getting yourself to work out in the morning, you should lay out your workout clothes the night before. When you get out of bed, you put on the clothes and shoes first thing. If you don't want to do anything else, that's fine. You're building a habit by making it easy. But once you're already dressed, it's much easier to do a quick three minute workout in your living room.

That's what I do on most days I don't feel like doing anything because come on, who can't spare three minutes? And it does feel great. The Japanese have a traditional form of calisthenics called Radio Taiso that they do every morning as a nation. Japan is one of the blue zones, places that are known for their longevity. Maybe getting moving every morning is part of the reason why they're living longer. In any case, it cannot hurt.

I'll put a link to my favorite Radio Taiso video in the comments.

So, you've got your clothes on, and you just did a three-minute warmup. Now there's even less friction to popping outside for a quick walk or doing your 15-minute strength training in your living room. Can you tell this is how I work out?

But when you're tired and short on time, you're way better off just doing the three minute thing than if you hadn't gotten your body and circulation moving at all. The first time I did Radio Taiso, I thought, Wow, I could do this instead of coffee. It's pretty effective for waking up. But then I came to my senses, because why would I give up coffee? I love it. So what does all of this morning routine stuff have to do with quitting smoking? I'll tell you what.

Whether you're going to start a good habit or try to break a bad one, you're gonna be more successful the easier that you make it for yourself. Our brains love doing things they don't have to think about and don't need any motivation for. That's basically what a habit is. It's a routine that you perform on autopilot, like brushing your teeth or falling onto the couch and grabbing the remote after dinner.

So anytime you're trying to make a new habit, until it's on automatic, it takes your brain a bunch of extra steps to get it going. And it usually requires some willpower.

So the simpler you make the new thing, like all you have to do is put on the comfy pants and shoes that you laid out the night before, the more likely it is that you can start repeating it enough to make it habitual.

And to break an old routine like smoking, we can take the advice of James Clear in his Atomic Habits book, which is to de-automate the four stages of your habit. And those are the cue, the craving, the response, and the reward. A cue might be seeing your cigarettes on the nightstand. Instead, take away the cue by hiding them somewhere that you're not going to see them. Or better yet, leave them at the store.

Your craving is telling you how great it's going to be to have that smoke. instead, you might change your mind's prediction by focusing on all the unpleasant aspects—like the hot smoke that will burn your throat or the awful smell of the ashtray.

You can easily grab a cigarette from the pack and light it without even thinking. So you want to make that response to the craving more difficult by only buying one pack at a time, or better yet, don't keep cigarettes in the house at all.

You can make smoking more unsatisfying by only smoking outside while standing up, or only while walking briskly, so it's less relaxing and pleasant. I'll share a link to James Clear's YouTube video, “How to Build a Habit and How to Break One,” with his explanation of these four stages of habit in the show notes.

What doesn't seem to work? Using force, fear, or even facts. We hate being told what to do, so force is out. The fears we have about smoking are all way off in the future. Getting cancer, or COPD and having to use oxygen, dying prematurely... these are things that might happen sometime in the future. But the relief from nicotine withdrawal that a cigarette gives you happens in the present.

Your greedy little brain is all about immediate gratification. And who can blame it?

And we only need to take a quick peek at any political conversation on social media, though I highly recommend against doing that, to see that people are arguing with their feelings. They're not exchanging facts and respecting one another's perspectives of opinion in a give and take civil discourse, because we don't do that anymore. But here's my advice. Stop hating on yourself for not changing yet.

Besides lowering the bar to build new habits and editing your environment to make it less mindless to smoke, you can employ a big dose of self-compassion while you accept the reality of your situation and take responsibility for it.

I've said many times, responsibility is not the same as blame. You are not less than anyone else because you smoke or because you haven't quit yet. But you owe it to yourself to acknowledge the truth and take action, however small, to change.

Try a little exercise with me. Get out a piece of paper and write down how many cigarettes you're smoking each day and how much money you spend on cigarettes each week or each month. And last, write down any health consequences that you're experiencing as a result of your smoking.

This can bring up some feelings and that's perfectly normal.

Go ahead and read your answers again. Then I want you to put your hand over your chest, over your heart. Take a deep inhale through your nose and a long, slow exhale out your mouth like a sigh. Before and after you say each of the following to yourself out loud.

“I am worthy of love, happiness, and good health.”

“I can't change the past, but I can change today.”

“I don't have to be perfect to change my relationship to cigarettes. I can make small changes to set myself on the path to freedom from my addiction.”

Then I want you to write down one thing you're going to do today to set your change in motion.

I want you to love and accept yourself while you're being honest about what needs to change, because self-love is way more motivating than shame.

And I can't wait for you to quit smoking for good and experience the freedom. You deserve it.

Take care.