Tiny Habits Brought to Life!

Dr. Cooper

Welcome to the latest episode of the Catalyst Health, Wellness, and Performance Coaching podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Bradford Cooper of the Catalyst Coaching Institute. And we’ve been working on getting this interview scheduled for almost two years. It is with Dr. BJ Fogg world-renowned behavior scientist at Stanford University, and the author of the intriguing new book Tiny Habits. It’s based on 20 years of research on something he’s termed behavior design that cracks the code of habit formation, Dr. Fogg and I meet at a conference where we were both speaking and I knew that day he would be an incredible source of evidence-based, practical strategies for our catalyst community. Two things to keep on your radar. First, the next NBHWC approved coach certification training kicks off March 13th and 14th. It’s virtual, and you can start the preliminary work as soon as you register if you’re one of those folks who likes to do things in advance, you don’t have to. Details are available at Catalystcoachinginstitute.com or we’re always happy to discuss it with you. Just shoot us an email Results@catalystcoachinginstitute.com. And we can set up a call. Secondly, if you’re looking for some cool shirts or hoodies to show the world that you are ready to be a catalyst, check out the link in the description. 100% of the profits in the coming months will go to charity and you’ll look awesome. Now let’s listen into a fascinating discussion about how we can use tiny habits to move toward better than yesterday on the latest episode of the Catalyst Health, Wellness, and Performance Coaching podcast. Dr. Fogg, it is a, it’s a huge pleasure to have you. We’ve been working on this a long time. I am so thrilled at the chance to chat with you here. Let’s just out of the gate. Let’s look back before we go forward. How did you come about studying habit formation in the first place? Was it something you’d grown up curious about? Was there a turning point in your career that kind of pointed you in that direction? Walk us through that path a little bit.

Dr. BJ Fogg

Well, it’s hard to pinpoint exactly, but I certainly grew up in a family that valued, uh, being productive, uh, creating good habits, continual improvement. I grew up in a Mormon home in California. And so think Steve Covey, think Marriott’s, think Mitt Romney, think clay Christianson all Mormons of and there’s probably not an accident. You know, that Stephen Covey and Clay Christianson were Mormons. And then I, with that background, I’m not practicing now, but certainly grew up in that culture. And so there certainly were things around goal-setting and, and of course the religion has these behavioral restrictions, but also these behaviors that you do, you fast once a month, uh, teenagers go to early morning church every morning and so on. And so I think I was just tapped into that. Um, but fast forward to college, I got very interested in language and the power of language to influence and persuade. I started a newspaper along with my friends as an undergraduate, grew the circulation of 25,000 people, just a newspaper where nobody got paid, except for the ad reps, saw the power and the importance of being able to talk about issues. And we weren’t really an activist publication, but sorta, and then got interested in rhetoric, Aristotle, and so on. And then I put kind of two and two together. It’s like, Oh my gosh, this kind of thing is going to come to computers someday. And that’s what I did my doctorate. And I was exploring how computers might someday be used to influence attitudes and behaviors. Fast forward started a research lab at Stanford on that then shifted gears in about 2009 or 10 away from looking at technology and persuasion just toward human behavior and especially health behavior and health habits. So that’s, I guess in some ways that would be the trajectory with really the background and I’ll, I guess I’ll emphasize the Mormon upbringing. There really is a very strong sense in that culture that you’re here on this planet to serve others and help others. And also where much is given much is expected. And I don’t think that’s unique to Mormonism, but certainly I grew up with that sense of service service projects. It’s the most important thing you can do is serve others. And then you are expected to share and give the things that were given you, whether it’s through education or opportunities or just natural gifts.

Dr. Cooper

Love that. Love that. Um, okay. So you note in your book, tiny habits, great book that change, and this is going to surprise people change doesn’t have to be, shouldn’t be hard. I mean, I, I read that and I went, Oh, now wait a minute, doc, that, that seems to run contrary to everything we hear everything we, we, you know, new year’s resolutions coming up, et cetera. Tell us more. What do you mean? It doesn’t have to be hard. It shouldn’t be hard.

Dr. BJ Fogg

Yeah. You know, and, and what I want to do very early in the book and early here talking to you is establish the fact that there are ways to change that can be easy. They can be fun. It can be delightful. It doesn’t have to be hard. It doesn’t have to be drudgery. You don’t even have to tap into willpower in order to change. And that flies in the face of so much, your eyes in the face of there is an academic paper and I won’t name names, but you could, people could probably find that the first sentence is behavior change is hard, period. That’s sometimes true, but not entirely true. We change our behavior all the time in that’s not hard. So certain types of behavior change are hard. Yes. But there are types of change and ways to change that are not hard. And that’s part of what I want to establish early in the book. And it’s like, welcome, you’ve found what I think is the best method for creating habits. And it’s not about willpower. It’s not about, uh, unpleasant things. It’s about doing, helping yourself do what you want to do and wiring in the habits by feeling successful. In other words, positive emotion, rather than guilt or shame or feelings of being, you know, not, not, uh, achieving effectively.

Dr. Cooper

Now you started off talking about your upbringing and some of the things with that, maybe not in your household or your church specifically, but oftentimes there is guilt. There is shame tied to those expectations. Do you want to walk us down that path at all? Or chase that rabbit trail?

Dr. BJ Fogg

Um, well let me just share one example. I was probably about 11 or 12 and I remember my dad coming in and saying, okay, well, what are your goals for this year? And what are your, what’s your five-year plan?

Dr. Cooper

Wait my son is laughing now because I probably did that with him, if not our daughters.

Dr. BJ Fogg

And, and, and, you know, this would be kind of normal in our home or, you know, and my dad’s awesome. I talked to him this morning. He’s a huge fan of my work, but, you know, we had like regular meetings, individual meetings with my dad and you’d set goals, I guess I just had it up to here with that kind of stuff. And I said, dad, this year I have one goal, just one goal. And it’s not to have any goals.

Dr. Cooper

I’m hearing my three kids all saying that right now. So you’re 11 at the time. That’s so funny.

Dr. BJ Fogg

And I wasn’t like a cranky teenager or whatever. I was just like, exhausted with this continual self-improvement thing, I guess. And, and really there was this, and I think it hurt me later. I mean, there’s so many things that helped me in that regard, but it hurt me later to always feel like I had to be constantly improving and in Mormonism there is a concept of perfection that you’re working toward becoming perfect. That really caught up to me, I think, as an undergraduate and realizing I would never achieve that ideal. And I think I ended up in therapy because of that in part, because of that. Now I’m over that very much. And I embrace imperfections and I think that’s how you really learn and grow. And in the tiny habits method, you don’t have to be perfect. That’s part of it. It’s, you’re discovering what works for you. And if it works, you keep going, if it doesn’t, you redesign it. And if you find you actually don’t want the habit, you just set it aside. None of those things were things that were taught to me. I mean, I, I was taught in the traditional medical practice daily, never fail, you know, and then raise the bar. Right? I do not advocate any of those things today. I do not advocate goal setting. I do not advocate perfection. I do not advocate tracking. If it helps you, do it. But those things are optional. They’re not required to change your behavior, change your life. They’re optional.

Dr. Cooper

Very interesting. Okay, I’m going to skip one of the questions I had planned because I’m going to dive into this further. You, you talk about the importance of picking a goal that’s important to you personally, versus as we just talked about something you feel obligated to do that really resonates with the coaches listening to this. Why is that so important?

Dr. BJ Fogg

You know, it’s one of the key ideas for my book. And if people don’t read my book, remember this sentence, coaches, what you want to do is help people do what they already want to do. And I call that Maxim number one, there are two maxims I talk about in the book. So you’re really helping people create habits they already want and reach aspirations that they want. Not that you want for them. Not that their spouse wants or their parents want, when you help people do what they already want to do. Then the challenge of keeping people motivated is diminished. You know if they already want it. Yeah. I mean, there’s, there’s times when our motivation still waivers, but what you’re doing is you’re tapping into what they’re already motivated to do. And that’s why when I read a sentence, like behavior change is hard. It’s like, well, yeah, if you’re trying to get people to do stuff they don’t want to do. When does that ever become a habit? When does it ever become a habit when, you know, getting people to, if they don’t want to do, I mean, they might do compliance and do it regularly because they’re complying, but compliance is different than automaticity and habit.

Dr. Cooper

Right. Right. Good. Excellent. All right. So prompts, the idea of prompts plays a huge role in the approach that you talk about with habit formation. What are, what are some common prompts you might suggest, or you’ve seen utilized across a range of habit changes?

Dr. BJ Fogg

Well, I’ll start with what you don’t use. In the tiny habits method you don’t use post-its you don’t use alarms. See, I’m using little visuals here. You don’t use notifications on the phone. That’s the old fashioned way. And yes, you can. I call those context prompts. There’s things in your environment that prompt you to do stuff. And there are times you use those, but not for habits. You do use those for tasks at one time behaviors where for habits and the tiny habits method, the prompt is a behavior. You already do an existing routine that reminds you to do the new habit. So many, many people start the coffee maker in the morning. Okay? You already have that routine. You can use that to remind you to do a new habit. So in the tiny habits, approach the recipe and we call this a recipe. It goes like this after I, I will. So after I start the coffee maker, I will do three pushups against the kitchen counter, for example, or it could be after I start the coffee maker, I will open up my journal. So you’re, you’re finding where this new habit, whether it’s pushups or writing your journal, what does it come after in your life. And so you don’t have the annoyance of post-it notes or alarms or whatever, as, because you’re designing it into your existing routine. You’re finding what it comes after. And I called that an action prompt as opposed to a context prompt, which is like alarms and post-its and things like that. And those kinds of prompts are not annoying. Those kinds of prompts don’t overwhelm us. It turns out that if you can find where a new habit like journaling or pushups fits naturally in your existing routine, that habit can form really quickly. And then it feels seamless. It feels like, Oh my gosh, that’s what I always do. I will start the coffee maker and do like three counter pushups. I always then sit down and open my journal.

Dr. Cooper

And for the person who’s hearing that and saying, Oh, I really liked that. But I, when I start the coffee maker, I suddenly get into my race through the day. Are there ways then to say, well, then we need to find a different place for that habit or?

Dr. BJ Fogg

Exactly. Thank you. Thank you for guidance on this. Yeah. So you designed the tiny habit recipe after I started the coffee maker, but it doesn’t fit there. Look for another place where journaling might fit. It might be after you sit down with your coffee at the kitchen table, so then you just revise it. And in the tiny habits method, there’s no shame in revising. I mean, I started teaching the method actually ended up being thousands of people a year. It was hundreds of people a week, week after, week on email personally. And one of the things I started saying in 2011 is when I started teaching this and the five day course that still exists and it’s still free. And it will always be free is practice and revise, practice and revise notice there’s not a lot of planning notice you’re not reading academic papers or thinking about it. It’s like practice, dive in and then revise. So revision is an important part of the method. So if doing pushups doesn’t fit after starting the coffee maker, look for another place where it does fit naturally. So you’re looking for the natural fit and there are criteria. And for the coaches we train and certify in tiny habits, we go deep into this. How do you help people? Cause you’re pairing the new habit with something you already want to do in the recipe. And there are criteria that make that successful. I’ll just share one of them. If the new habit is something you have to do in the garage, don’t pair it with the behavior you do in the bathroom. Cause what I’ve learned over the years of coaching this, that does not work. If it’s after I brushed my teeth, I will tidy one thing in the garage. It’s not going to become a habit. It’s not in the same location. But part of the skill of this is like, here’s the new habit I want. One skill is how do I make it super tiny? And we’ll talk about that probably later, why that matters. And then where does this fit in my routine? And the more you practice, the better you are just like any kind of design, the more you practice, the better you are and you won’t always be perfect. And then when it doesn’t work well, you just revise. You look for another place.

Dr. Cooper

So let’s start an example and I’ll use myself in this, but it probably is something that a lot of our listeners are saying, yeah, me too, Brad journaling. I am a huge believer in journaling. I think it’s a great idea. It’s done, it’s been a positive thing when I’ve done it, but I don’t do it the morning because that’s my workout time and I pop into work and I’m, you know, going all in and then I’ve talked about, well, I’ll do it at the end of my day. Well, I’m so engrossed in what I’m doing that the end of my day runs out. And so what approach might you suggest in that type of situation?

Dr. BJ Fogg

So where I would start with that, and this is a familiar one is think about rather than where it fits first. Think about the habit itself, journaling. So that’s an abstraction, there was at least a dozen ways that we could journal. And so pick a really pick a form that you want to do. Uh, if you don’t want to hand write, then maybe it’s typing. If you don’t want to do either, there’s maybe it’s talking. Okay. So again, it goes back to help yourself do what you already want to do or coaches help other people do what they want to do and then make it really, really simple and easy. So it could be in the case of journaling rather than actually writing anything. It’s maybe just opening the journal is the habit. So the habit is just open the journal. Now you have to find some, even though you make the habit super tiny, it’s gotta be meaningful. And for some people opening a journal may not be meaningful. So maybe it’s just open the journal and write one word and put a period after it. And then if you want to do more terrific, do more, but you don’t have to. So all you do is you open it, you write one word like exhausted period or baffled period or energized period or confused or whatever it is. Right. And if that’s all you do, that’s you celebrate that and move on. So, so, so first it’s you take the habit, pick the form of it. You want to make it super tiny, then it’s like, well, where does this fit in? Where can I actually do this very reliably? And then it’s a design process. Like we talked about and try some spot. And if it works, keep going. And if it doesn’t try it differently.

Dr. Cooper

Practice and revise. Very good. And so that reminds me of a technique with exercise. I’ve heard many people use of just put your shoes on and walk to the bottom of the driveway. If that’s, if that’s all you do that day that’s okay.

Dr. BJ Fogg

You know. And I know to people for people who haven’t done that, it’s going to sound crazy, but the tiny habits approach for walking, where people just put on their walking shoes. So that’s a habit and you can stop. You don’t have to walk, right. You’re not committing to a mile. So many people think, well, that’s not helpful, but guess what? People who’ve done it, you know, many people report to me, it’s like, Oh my gosh, it totally worked. Because once I had my shoes on, right, of course I’m going walking, you know? So, but if they thought I walked for 30 minutes or an hour, they’d say can’t do it today. Right. You know? So it’s almost like either you’re tricking yourself into the bigger behavior or you’re baby-stepping yourself. It’s probably both.

Dr. Cooper

Some combination. Yeah, absolutely. All right. So let’s go to the other end. Now the old saying go big, or go home. Or the big, hairy, audacious goal that it kind of flies in the face of what you’re talking about. Do you get pushback about, well, you know, I need it to be a big goal or I’m just not motivated to do this thing.

Dr. BJ Fogg

Yes and no. I get pushback from people that are inexperienced in changing behavior. I get like warm embraces through email these days from people who are experienced either in changing their own behavior, others people in some ways, I guess, cause yours is, you know, behavior, scientists from Stanford saying that go big or go home thing is unreliable. Don’t try it. Somehow, I think it, they go, phew, somebody finally said it. Now, there are times when you go big, there are times when you stretch yourself, but those are special times and for special things, but as a regular practice to make progress on bringing habits into your life, tiny’s the way to go. Tiny’s how you succeed in the tiniest, how you, um, achieve big things. So I don’t want to be dismissive of the people that are inexperienced in creating habits. Cause that’s most people in the world. And over the years I’ve gotten emails from people that said, yeah, BJ, you know, or Dr. Fogg. I mean, people can call me BJ, I’m very casual. Um, I need big changes in my life. So despite all this about tiny habits and all the successes, I need big change. And so I have a standard email. Oops, I shouldn’t have noted that. I have a reply basically says, look, the way that you get to big changes is through these tiny changes. That’s how you get to the big. And some people I think, believe me and some people don’t, I mean, I don’t have like a statistical way to measure response to that email, but it’s a little bit, I was, shall I say sad for me that, that at least some of those people I’m trying to help are just locked into this idea that in order to make a big transformation, I have to focus on big habits. That makes me sad because they’ve been misled or they just, just haven’t really opened their minds to the importance of how tiny can be transformative. That’s really what my book’s about right there. Showing people how that works and how to do it.

Dr. Cooper

Is there some combination there, I’m almost hearing you saying yet the big vision is a separate thing? That’s not the habit, the big vision, the, you know, the going to Stanford, the qualifying for the Hawaii Ironman, the writing a book, whatever that vision can have value, but the habits that get you to achieve that are the tiny habits, would that be accurate or am I missing it?

Dr. BJ Fogg

That is well said. Yes. Yes. And so there is a method in behavior design in the book here where you, and I’m doing this, if you can’t see, I’m drawing a cloud with my fingers, that’s where you put your aspiration. Like I want to be an expert surfer or I want to be good enough at playing this musical instrument that I can play, you know, on the street corner, make enough money to buy lunch, or I want to lose 30 pounds or whatever. Right. So that’s the aspiration or outcome. And that’s not the behavior of the habit. It’s habits that get you there. Right. So get clear on what you want. And definitely think back if you want to be an expert. So if you’re in Maui, awesome. You can do that and work toward that, but figure out what are the behaviors or in other words, the habits habits are a subset of behavior. Often it’s habits that get you to the big thing. So figuring out what are those habits and then follow the process that we’ve talked about. So you can make reliable and consistent progress toward that big vision that you have for yourself. For sure.

Dr. Cooper

All right. Very good. Um, you point to the emotion we attach to a pursuit as being even more important than the repetition built into a pursuit. That’s pretty interesting. Can you expand on that a little bit for us?

Dr. BJ Fogg

Yes. I don’t know how far you want to go with this.

Dr. Cooper

I’ve got all the time in the world, my friend.

Dr. BJ Fogg

I’ll be brief and you can, um, so most people have heard the idea that repetition creates habits 21 days, 30 days, 30 days, 66 days, all of that is not true, right? So everybody try to throw it out to scrub it out of your memory banks. Um, but it’s all around you. Um, and the research, most people are citing these days. You can look it up. It’s lally, 2009 L A L L Y 2009. Go search it, and even reading the abstract of that paper, you will see that research does not support the idea that repetition creates habits, but that’s, what’s widely cited. That’s where the 66 day thing came from. And so on that study shows that repetition correlates with habit strength, but it doesn’t show that it causes the habit to form. There’s a big difference between correlation and causation and the study wasn’t even designed to show causality, but the headlines written from it and the blog posts and some books have doubled and tripled down on the idea that you just have to keep repeating it, to create the habit. That’s not the case. That would be like, let me give you an analogy. I could do research to understand how do people get fit? And let’s say that I do this study and I find, Wow, the more time you spend in the gym, the more fit people are. Okay. I could show there’s a correlation between time at the gym and fitness. Now the headlines might be, Oh my gosh. People, if you want to be fit, just go hang out, spend time at the gym and you see how that’s not working. You could be hanging out, read a magazine. It’s great. Exactly. But that’s, what’s, that’s a direct analogy to this study. So it’s really misleading and really unfortunate, I think, and harmful to perpetuate the idea that repetition creates habits, just like it would be harmful to perpetuate the idea that spending time at the gym leads to fitness. It’s what you do at the gym. It’s what happens when you do the habit and the happening part that creates the habit is the emotion that you feel. So the emotion that you feel when you do the habit and in tiny habits, we focus on the feeling of success. That’s what causes the behavior to become more automatic. So I have a chapter where I explain this in more depth than the headline. The chapter title is emotions create habits. And I did that to be very, very clear and deliberate that it’s not anything else. It’s not magic. It’s not fairy dust. It’s not repetition. It’s emotions that create the habits, good habits and bad habits, all form in the same way. It’s emotion and habits can form very, very quickly. If you do a behavior and have a strong, positive emotion associated with that behavior, it’s not 66 days and it’s not even in tiny habits in the five day program. Most people report that the end of five days, one of the three habits they practiced became automatic or automatic within five days. And that’s not just unusual people that’s week after week after week since 2011. I’ve seen that in my data. So what we’re trying to help people get good at, and you as coaches, uh, and advisors and so on what you’re really doing when you’re helping people create habits, if you want them to wire in the habit, help them feel successful. That’s maxim number two. So maxim number one was help people do what they already want to do. Maxim number two is help people feel successful because it helps wiring the habit and it also increases their motivation. But we’ll set that aside for now, the, the role of emotions in this context of behavior change is to help wire the habit. And so you do it more automatically. And if you’re really good at feeling a positive emotion and there’s ways to hack that. So part of the book is teaching people, how do you hack that emotion? So you can become like, uh, so you can have superpowers in creating habits. So if you’re good at that, you can wire in habits very quickly.

Dr. Cooper

Could you give us a simple example of that?

Dr. BJ Fogg

Well, I’ll, I’ll give an example that happened quite naturally. Um, here on our Lanai, I’m in Maui. So the surfing example, surfing example, wasn’t random, I’m here not becoming an expert surfer, but just enjoying surfing. Um, we first bought these chairs from the hardware store from Lanai and they were okay. But then one day I got this chair that sort of rocks. And I like rocking. I like movement. I guess I like the feeling of being on the ocean or something. And I sat, I put the chair on the Lanai. I sat down. I was like, Oh my God, it was it. It was delivering what I wanted so much better than the chair from the hardware store and that emotion so sitting in the chair and feeling like, Oh my gosh, this is comfortable. It’s got this nice movement that was clear to me that I was being more successful achieving what I wanted in that chair. Guess how many times I sat in the, um, the home Depot chair from then forward? Zero, right? Yeah. Except for when guests came over, when guests came over, I said, Hey, sit in that chair. That’s really nice. I’m going to sit over here. So notice that was a one and done, I do a behavior, I get this emotional response to it. And then I never make a decision again between the home Depot chair and this other chair that had some movement to it.

Dr. Cooper

Okay. That makes sense. And then the final piece, and this has got to affect the emotion is the celebration, any tips on types of celebrations, ways to integrate those celebrations, creative ones that you’ve seen or you’ve used over the years that maybe people haven’t ever thought about?

Dr. BJ Fogg

Well, celebration is the term in, tiny habits that I selected to point to something that you do that causes you to feel successful. So celebration is a technique for feeling for, for causing this emotion to happen. Some, sometimes the celebration is built in to the product like the chair or this pen. So I really, I use this pen for the first time and I love it. It’s like, Oh my gosh. So I don’t have to do anything external or extrinsic. The use of the pen, I love this. I’m not using any of the other pens anymore. I’m just going to use this one. It’s a true story. So some times, and this is often how bad habits form you do something and you get an emotional response to it. Now you didn’t celebrate, but the emotion happened. And so that habit that you eventually would call it bad habit, wires in quite automatically good habits and bad habits form in the same way. So in tiny habits, you don’t leave the emotions to chance you hack them through celebration. And I’m going to give you two ends of the continuum. Okay? Some people are natural celebrators. Watch, if we were having the Olympics this year, imagine what would happen when somebody wins, you know, the a hundred meter dash, what would happen? Oh, Caleb Dressel just set the world’s record today for the hundred IM, that’s not the Olympics. And I didn’t watch the end of the race. I watched the beginning, but I guarantee you, when he finished, there was a type of celebration. He probably hit the water, raised his hands over the head and so on. So watch athletes, they’re natural celebrators. What I’m hypothesizing that they’ve done that naturally since they were kids. And because they were able to celebrate or feel successful with that three point shot that putt, that drive, that swim, whatever it was that they were able to signal to their brain. Oh my gosh, let’s make that more automatic. So when I’m in the clutch, I don’t have to think about the three pointer. It’s just automatic. So that’s on one end of the spectrum is people that are natural celebrators I haven’t determined what percent of the population are. I know there are some, because some people hearing this or some people are probably going, Oh my gosh, I do that. I do that naturally on the other end of the spectrum are people that are very skeptical of that. They’re like, Oh, no way. That just sounds like, woo.

Dr. BJ Fogg

That’s why I share in the book, how to help people like that, you know, get over that and find a celebration that works for you. So if you’re a natural celebrator or more along those lines, you could do something like a smile in the mirror, a fist pump, I’ll say to myself, way to go BJ. When I catch a particularly hard wave in a way, like, there’s a way that the waves coming and I turned very quickly and get on it at the last minute, I’ll go woohoo. Right. Which is what works for me. Right, right, right. Absolutely. Because then that behavior becomes more automatic and then that kind of thing, no longer is the challenge. And then I step up and do harder things. Now, if that kind of thing doesn’t work for, you try the celebration of thinking about your purpose. So, so just actively, so as you pour a glass of water, say you want to hydrate more. And the tiny version of that is just pour a glass of water. As you’re filling the glass of water. Think how is hydration helping you achieve a super important purpose in your life? Like your life’s purpose? Uh, I think my life’s purpose is to discover how behavior works and teach people that so they can be happier and healthier. So if I had that in mind, as I was pouring a glass of water, I would connect, wow. This hydration is going to give me energy and it’s going to give me stamina and it’s going to keep me healthier so I can be more effective at discovering how behavior works in teaching it. So connecting the behavior with my higher purpose notice, that’s also a form of feeling successful, right? By doing this I’m succeeding in my higher purpose. So that’s on, you know, for people that are skeptical about going woo or whatever, try connecting your purpose with the habit and actively think of it. Now, once the habit wires in once pouring the water or doing the counter pushups or opening the journal wires in you no longer have to celebrate it. The emotion is to lock that. I mean, it’s, I think of it as I used to work in fiberglass and there’s kind of a fixer, you pouring the fixer in it solidifies. That’s what you’re doing with this. That’s what you’re doing with emotions is you’re wiring in the habit. And once it’s wired in, it doesn’t hurt you to celebrate, but it’s no longer, I mean the habits right now, automatic. So you don’t want to do it anymore.

Dr. Cooper

Yeah. Okay. Okay, good. That’s helpful. Um, all right. If you were to add a new chapter of the book, what would you cover now, knowing what, you know, what you’ve learned since it went to publication?

Dr. BJ Fogg

Tiny habits for kids.

Dr. Cooper

Ooh, Ooh.

Dr. BJ Fogg

And you know, they’re well, and then I’m split. Like I’m split in two ways. I have to admit tiny habits for kids, but also the book, even though it’s been recognized as like best business book of the year and a few ways, it wasn’t written to be a business book, but yes, thank you, editors and people who select because it’s very, very helpful in business, but there would probably be, and there is a chapter you can get on, there’s a special business chapter it’s you can find how to get it in the book. But I think I’m torn between the business and the kids. I would actually choose kids cause we’ve started doing a special community called tiny habits for kids. It’s really for parents and teachers and coaches who want to help kids create habits. And we’re building that community and that’s just going really well. And the stories, Oh wow. I was reading one last night and she was talking about her daughter that had some physical disabilities and they were doing the stuff in the tiny habits book and they’re reading it together. And they had a transformative experience and understanding she had an understanding her child better and how to help her better and how to help her move forward, uh, despite her challenges. So I just think there’s just so much need out there. So if I have to trade off a business for kids, I think my heart would probably go on tiny habits for kids. So we are investing that way. And that would be the chapter that I would add. But maybe coming soon to a bookstore near you or an online retailer is a book along those lines.

Dr. Cooper

Beautiful, well, we can look forward to that. So I love that because you think of the cumulative effect, the compounding effect, if you will, of someone, our daughter’s a fifth grade teacher. So the impact that she has on these kids at age, you know, 10, 11, nine, somewhere in there it’s, it’s life change like she is impacting their lives because she’s catching so early. And you’re saying the same thing as you help them make those changes at age 10 at age 12 at 15, the cumulative effect is so huge.

Dr. BJ Fogg

Yes, exactly. And so within this community, and it’s not Facebook, we put it on a private platform. It’s not Facebook people because I don’t love Facebook. I’m sorry, Facebook people. So we have a section in there called moonshots, which is like, where do we go with this? Right. Uh, one of the moonshots I posted was I would love to see kids fourth or fifth grade learn how to use celebration in their life. And they don’t even have to learn how to create the recipes. Just teach them to self reinforce in a positive way and have them apply it. Cause like you, you, you were saying you’re exactly right. Think how, think of the multiplier of that. Think how powerful that is, where they could do it as fifth grade, sixth grade through the very difficult junior high years through high school and so on. So the moonshot I wanted to share with my coaches and the parents and teachers on the platform is, wow. I, I don’t see me doing this, but maybe by me articulating it someone might go, huh. I know how to bring it into my school or my district, or what have you. I think of the tiny habits method. That’s probably the most important thing for kids to learn. And another story from this community is for parents and kids, to understand and help each other, celebrate the other person, huge. Yeah. Right there in writing the book, you know, all the stories in the book are true. They have to be true because I’m a scientist. And I guess a lot of people do composite stories, but I was like, no every story has to be a hundred percent true. There were a lot of stories about moms whose like two and three year olds would celebrate the mom doing squats or wiping the kitchen counter. I never expected that and really know that in the early years of teaching this, but the kids kind of tune in and they celebrate their mom. And the moms are like, Oh my gosh, this is like a, this helped the habit wiring amazingly. And my kid is seeing, Oh, how would they say it? Like, they’re seeing the example of me changing. And I’m hoping that helps my kids see that they can do this too kind of thing. Like they’re, they’re being the role model. Yeah. I guess.

Dr. Cooper

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I will tell you as the dad of three adult kids now, there’s almost, besides my wife. There’s no one, I would rather have say, dad, that was cool or that was good or I’m proud of you or whatever. No one in the entire world than those three kids. So that even as adult kids, it’s super powerful, but it was true as they were growing up, it was just it’s, it’s who you want to be. They want, you want to be a better person as they encourage you to take those steps. So yeah, absolutely.

Dr. BJ Fogg

And it definitely goes the other way. Yeah, for sure. Everybody’s been there when the baby’s taking the first steps, guess what the parents are doing. Right. I don’t think that’s an accident. Right. I think we are hardwired as human beings to reinforce our kids by helping them feel a positive emotion. So the act of taking steps, wires in, and when they tumble, they’re motivated to get back up. And there’s other stories I could go into along those lines. I’m sure everybody listening to this can think of times in their life where somebody celebrated them and it may have helped them go, Oh my gosh, Oh my gosh, I’m going to do this again. Right. So I think, you know, there’s two functions. One is to help, you know, it’s, it’s the brain chemicals, it’s the dopamine release, which then changes the structure of the brain and makes the behavior more automatic. But the other purpose, I don’t talk about a lot because I don’t want to get people distracted off the most important point that emotions create habits is the motivational impact of that good feeling. You want to have that again? And that want is a type of motivation. So you’ll seek to do that behavior again and again, this happens with bad habits, and so think of bad habits like weeds, weeds, and plants grow from the same thing. Some would call plants, some would call weeds. So, um, recognize that the habits you have in your life that you consider bad habits, they started small, they found a good spot, and then they were reinforced through an emotion that you had when you did the habit the first time, the second time and so on. Right.

All right. All right. I’ve just got one more question for you, but let’s find out how people can follow you and keep up with what you’re doing. Best website, Twitter, any of those kinds of things that you you’d to have him go to?

Dr. BJ Fogg

Yeah two things. Well, I’m BJ Fogg on all platforms on Twitter, YouTube, BJ Fogg on LinkedIn, things like that. And then websites, BJfogg.com and tinyhabits.com.

Dr. Cooper

Perfect. And the last question, uh, do you have an area of your own life where you’re applying the tiny habit strategies right now where you wouldn’t mind pulling the curtain back for us a little bit and saying, okay.

Dr. BJ Fogg

You know, I always goof around with my behavior. And so I’m always creating habits and just toying around, but one we’re speaking now during the pandemic and you know, one of my concerns is about my parents and how they’re doing and they’re quite isolated. Um, so what I started doing was, you know, created the tiny habit recipe after I, so this is after I surf in the mornings, I pull onto the road coming back home. So after I get on the road, I will call my parents. And at the beginning of that, I thought, well, you know, I’ve called my parents maybe a couple of times a week, but now it’s every day. And I didn’t, and it totally worked. And now it’s kind of built into their schedules as well. And the overall impact of that is much bigger than I expected in terms of me feeling like I’m helping them during this important time or difficult time, in terms of me understanding what their issues are, me being able to follow up, like, how’d this go? How’d that go? You know, this, you know, my mom had eye surgery, things like that. And then there, you know, the surprise is how much, how welcome my phone calls were as I didn’t realize it would be. And then also how much they’re actually really interested in the nitty gritty and even boring, boring things of my life. And that’s just terrific. So just, you know, rather than just thinking, Oh, I should call my parents more or it’d be nice to be, understand how my parents are doing, just turn it into a habit and do it. And I’ll give another simple example. Um, this whiteboard I have behind me. It’s a, it’s actually a screen and it’s the backside of the screen and I’d write on this. And when the ink dries, it’s very hard to get off. So it was just last week and I’d have to go to my partner who’s really good at cleaning and I said can you make my black board whit again? Which is lame, right? Cause I didn’t want to be dependent on him. And you know, so what I realized is if I erase it right away, I think this is wet enough that I can do it myself. So now the habit is as soon as I’m done teaching and I teach this in my zoom room, I have all the rooms set up for them. As soon as I turn off the camera and turn off the light. After I turn off the light, I erase the board. Now I know that sounds kind of small and obvious, but I had not wired in as a habit right over the months and months. Now that it’s a habit. I feel like I’m more in control of the space where I used to teach and share. And it’s simple, but it ends up being not life-changing, but it just, it just helps me not get frustrated. Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Cooper

That’s beautiful. Great stuff. Thanks for pulling the curtain back for us, Dr. Fogg. This was awesome. Thank you for doing this. We’ve been talking about this for again almost two years now. Really appreciate you making this happen with your schedule and very valuable.

Dr. BJ Fogg

Well, thank you. Terrific questions. And Hey everybody, we can help people be happier and healthier and let’s do it in the best way and the most life affirming positive way. And we help people change by feeling good. So let’s, let’s do it. I’m here to help you help others. So everybody feel free to call on me, dive into tiny habits and behavior design and let’s help people, you know, stop the culture of shame and trash talk and get out and move to one of shine and happiness. And then that radiates to other people. That’s what my research shows. When people feel successful in creating these habits, then there’s ripple effects out. And I think we can do that. And that’s kind of what we’re all here for. So let’s go off and do awesome things.

Dr. Cooper

I love it. Thank you so much. The one and only Dr. BJ Fogg, everyone. What a privilege again, his book is titled tiny habits. The small changes that change everything. Thanks for tuning into the number one podcast for health and wellness coaching. Next week’s is one of our hidden gem episodes. I’m not going to give it away, but if you’ve always wondered how much your genes impact your health, your weight, your risk factors, and other related elements. You’re not going to want to miss this one. As always feel free to reach out to us with any questions about your current or future coaching career Results@catalystcoachinginstitute.com or you can tap into additional health, wellness, and performance resources at Catalystcoachinginstitute.com. Now it’s our chance to go be a catalyst, making a positive impact in the lives of our clients, our community, and our world without burning ourselves out in the process. This is Dr. Bradford Cooper of the Catalyst Coaching Institute. I’ll speak with you soon on another episode of the Catalyst Health, Wellness, and Performance Coaching podcast, or maybe over on the YouTube coaching channel.