Episode 3 – How Tiny Changes Spark Life-Altering Habits

Todd Bertsch: 0:03

Welcome to the Bolt Podcast. I’m Todd B, your guide on this exciting journey of personal growth. Together, we’ll explore real-life examples of how small shifts can create massive results, through growth tips, life hacks and strategies to supercharge your mind, body and soul. So if you’re ready to unleash the inner bolt within you and become the best version of yourself, then let’s ignite your growth today. I am so excited about today’s topic. We’re about to embark on a journey that’s bound to be a game changer. We’re diving headfirst into the realm of habits, where small changes have the power to ignite a storm of transformation in your life. So let’s get this party started.

Todd Bertsch: 0:55

You know I love lightning bolt analogies, so bear with me and picture this. Your life is like a thundercloud, crackling with potential, and habits are the lightning bolts that illuminate the sky with dazzling displays of power. Each habit is a spark waiting to ignite, ready to send shockwaves through your routine and shake things up like a bolt from the blue. Now I know what you’re thinking, but lightning strikes are unpredictable, right? How can I harness that kind of power in my own life? Well, my friends, I’m here to tell you that lightning might be wild and untamed, but habits, they’re the lightning rods that channel that energy and direct it towards real change and real transformation. Handle that energy and direct it towards real change and real transformation. It all starts with a single spark, a tiny change that sends ripples through the fabric of your existence. Maybe it’s as simple as swapping out that sugary snack for a piece of fruit, or taking the stairs instead of the elevator. These seemingly insignificant changes might not seem like much at first, but trust me, they are the catalyst to real change and just like that you summon the lightning. With each small change, you’re rewiring your brain and forging new pathways that lead straight to a better you. But here’s where it gets exciting. Once you’ve harnessed that power of one habit, you’ve opened the floodgates of possibility.

Todd Bertsch: 2:31

My friends, over the past several years there have been a lot of great studies and research devoted to the topic of habits, and there have been several great books written about habits as well. And there have been several great books written about habits as well. My favorite book on habits, and perhaps my favorite book of all time, is Atomic Habits by James Clear. James takes a deep dive into the research and breaks it down into simple, relatable examples that are clear, pun intended, with actionable steps. So this next portion I’m going to discuss is really straight from Atomic Habits. I’d highly recommend you buying the book, reading the book. He also has some great downloads for free on his website, and all of this you can grab on our website for the show notes.

Todd Bertsch: 3:24

So what is a habit? Well, a habit is a usual way of behaving, something that a person does, often in a regular and repeated way. I think we’re all accustomed to this. Our lives are fueled by patterns and habits. Everything we do, from the day we’re born, we’re living on these created habits. From eating three meals a day to brushing our teeth. We are creatures of habit. This has good and bad benefits. Sometimes we create bad habits and these can be really tough to break. The good news is that, with all this great research, we can learn more about the science behind this and why we do what we do and how we can leverage this information to our advantage. So let’s dig into atomic habits and the science a bit.

Todd Bertsch: 4:20

In Atomic Habits, james explains a four-step loop that underlies all human behavior Number one cue. Two, craving. Three, response. And four, reward. When repeated, this neurological feedback loop leads to the formation of new habits, what James calls the habit loop to the formation of new habits, what James calls the habit loop. This framework is called the four laws of behavioral change and it provides a simple set of rules for creating good habits and breaking bad ones.

Todd Bertsch: 4:56

So let’s start off by talking about how to create a good habit, and I’ll provide some real-life examples after I go through these laws. So the first law Q-C-U-E is all about making it obvious, so you can use habit stacking, say, after this habit, I’ll do this new habit. It’s also about kind of designing your environment. Make the cues of good habits obvious and visible your environment. Make the cues of good habits obvious and visible. The second law craving is about making it attractive. Use temptation bundling. Pair an action you want to do with an action you need to do. Create a motivation ritual. Do something you enjoy immediately before a difficult habit.

Todd Bertsch: 5:45

The third law is response. It’s about making it easy. So reduce the friction, decrease the number of steps between you and your good habits Again, prime that environment. Prepare your environment to make the future actions easier and use the two-minute rule. Make the future actions easier and use the two-minute rule. Downscale your habits until they can be done in two minutes or less. And the fourth law is reward Make it satisfying. Use reinforcement. Give yourself an immediate reward when you complete your habit. Make doing nothing enjoyable when avoiding a bad habit. Design a way to see the benefits and use a habit tracker. Keep track of your habit and don’t break the chain. I’ll get more into that in a bit. All right, so we just broke down these laws for creating a good habit.

Todd Bertsch: 6:42

Let’s just briefly go over how to break a bad habit using a similar set of laws, but really just inversing them. So the first one would be Q make it invisible instead of visible. The second would be craving make it unattractive instead of attractive. The third response make it difficult instead of making it easy. And then the fourth is reward make it unsatisfying instead of satisfying. So pretty simple, but definitely not easy breaking a bad habit. All right, here’s where it gets exciting, at least for me. It’s great to hear about the science, but to see it put into a relatable example is really what at least helps me. So I’m going to share a couple personal examples with you, and hopefully that helps you as well.

Todd Bertsch: 7:39

So I wanted myself and my family to eat healthier and to replace that junk food snacking with eating more fresh fruit. So step one was I needed to commit to doing this and I did. So I went to the grocery store and I bought fresh fruit. Simple, easy. I did step one. Then I put it in the refrigerator. Okay, great. Moving on.

Todd Bertsch: 8:09

So we get to the first law, the cue, make it obvious. Well, the fruit was oftentimes placed in the bottom bin on the fridge, out of sight, so it wasn’t very obvious. So I started placing it higher on the. So we get to the second law craving, make it attractive. So what I realized is that the fruit was dirty, especially the grapes. I mean, we all know fruit needs cleaned off. But just putting it in the fridge and making it visible wasn’t enough. So I started washing everything and putting them in visible, clear glass containers, all cleaned up, on a higher shelf. Now this started to help and it ties into the third law response make it easy. So by cleaning and prepping it, I then made it easy and all they had to do was eat it. So I put it on a higher shelf, I cleaned it for them, I made it visible, I made it attractive, it was all right there. So the fourth law reward may get satisfying. They already love fruit, so the act alone is satisfying. I just needed to follow the first three laws and now my family eats a whole lot more fruit than they ever did before.

Todd Bertsch: 9:35

Though this is a simple example, you can see how it applies to all four laws. James Clear has a very simple example in Atomic Habits, where he talks about apples. So does this work? Yeah, you bet it does. I’ve seen it firsthand.

Todd Bertsch: 9:51

The people who know me well have said that I’m a bit of a nerd when it comes to habits. I’ve taken habits to the extreme level. For example, three years ago, I created my own custom habit tracker system. I now track about 20 habits each day, from my fitness routines to my sleep quality, my protein shake intake. I have a custom journal that I created that I print out and I add data to it each day. Then, every Sunday, I enter this data into a spreadsheet with goals for each habit. I then get to compare this data week over week and month over month. Okay, yeah, I’m a bit extreme, but I’m a huge believer that patterns and habits are the key to a happy, successful and fulfilling life. So I want to share another personal example with you of how I went through this process of these four laws and creating a new habit.

For the past three years, I’ve been on a journey to crack the code for adding flossing as a habit. Yes, folks, that’s right, flossing. It may sound silly, but this is something I’ve tried so many different times. I’ve made it visible, I’ve made it obvious, I’ve tried to make it easy. I don’t know if you can make it attractive or make it satisfying who the hell loves to floss their teeth on a daily basis? But we all know how important it is and it’s something that was important to me and something that I wanted to build a habit for. So I failed miserably.

Todd Bertsch: 11:31

For several years, trying different things, I use a floss pick. That’s one of the older school ones that looks like a toothpick. It just has the floss piece at the end. In fact, you can’t even buy them anymore. So I tried batching this with brushing my teeth. So before I would brush, or after I would brush, in the morning or the evening, I tried to batch this and, okay, I’ll just add flossing to it. It didn’t work. I was too tired in the evening. I didn’t want to add 10 more extra minutes in the morning, so I tried other things. Make it obvious, make it visible. I laid on the sink in my bathroom where I get ready each day. I’d set up a routine visit to my dentist to incentivize me. That helped in terms of keeping me going and kind of having an accountability partner. But yet I still couldn’t get it. I still couldn’t crack making this a habit. So this was before I read the book Atomic Habits and after I read the book. James provides several tips on how to create a new habit, and one is habit batching.

Todd Bertsch: 12:43

And while I did try some variations of habit batching, it really wasn’t working for me. So I wanted to try something else. I’m thinking about okay, what can I, what am I already doing? That’s a habit where I can add this to it, kind of like piggybacking onto it. So I decided well, I shower just about every day. Why don’t I try that? And I know you’re. You might be looking at me thinking that’s kind of weird, gross. I get that from a lot of people, but there are a few people that do this too. I found out recently. But hey, it works for me, right? So I started doing this. I put the floss pick just outside of my shower. It’s visible, I can reach it and when I’m done, going through the routine of showering, I’m still in the shower. It’s visible, I can reach it. And when I’m done you know, going through the routine of showering I’m still in the shower. I grab my floss pick, do my thing, rinse out my mouth, because the water’s already there and I’m done. So I started doing this at the beginning of the year and we’re now into May 2024.

Todd Bertsch: 13:50

And like any habit, it took a little time to take shape. Now I’m tracking all this, as I mentioned, into my spreadsheet Next week, a couple times a week. So I’m building some momentum here, which is really important when building a new habit. And then I have a week where I fall off the wagon. Something happened, I was traveling or I was out of my routine and I kind of fell off right. So the important note here is I didn’t get down on myself. Hell, I’ve been trying this for three years and I haven’t cracked it. So what’s another week? So I said, okay, it’s a new week, let me start fresh. So I do it and I get three days, and then I get four days flossing, and now three months go by and I’m up to five or six days, sometimes every single day of the week, and now I don’t even think about it.

Todd Bertsch: 14:49

It’s became a habit. Yay, I cracked the code, but it took a lot to get there right. But I went through these steps. I didn’t get down on myself, I kept at it because it was really important to me. And now I have this accountability partner, my dentist. So instead of going once a year, I’m going every four months, and that’s going to be the reward. When I go in there next time. I’m kind of excited to see the dentist. I want to hear what he has to say. Todd, great job, man, you did it. Your gums look excellent. Nice work, all right. So enough about me.

Todd Bertsch: 15:26

Some research states that it takes roughly three weeks or 21 days before a habit actually sticks. I think it really depends on the actual habit and the person. But the moral of this story is that creating new habits is tough and you’re likely going to fail. But you can’t give up. And if you truly want to create this new habit, it’s going to benefit you in some positive way and you need to stick to it or try different iterations, just don’t give up.

Todd Bertsch: 15:58

So how do you get started? Well, first you need to commit to starting right. You need to decide on a new habit to create or a bad one that you want to break. So to help you figure this out, maybe you can solicit feedback we call this kind of 360 degree feedback from your partner, your spouse, your friends, your colleagues, your parents, your kids. Maybe you know anybody that is willing to give you some feedback. You would be surprised. People will tell you honestly. You know how they feel and you know it’s great to learn about what your shortcomings are. What are some things that you can work on?

Todd Bertsch: 16:44

So it’s kind of like doing a life audit. Look at the areas of your life that need improvement. What habits could you start that would help you feel more fulfilled or happier or get to a different level in your career? Then follow the habit loop and the four laws of behavioral change and try those out. Then start tracking your progress. It could be as simple as jotting them down in a daily journal or downloading an app. There are many of them out there. I’ve tried several of them and for me I needed to create my own thing and have goals, and that’s just how I operate.

Todd Bertsch: 17:30

The key here is accountability, and tracking is one method of accountability. Another method of accountability would be finding yourself accountability partner partner. Maybe it is your spouse or your partner, or maybe it’s a colleague or a friend. In fact, it doesn’t need to be somebody that’s close to you. In fact, in some ways, it might be best to find someone at work or someone that you’re not as close with, because some of these new habits that you’re about to create and work on might not be welcomed by everybody that’s closest to you, because they’re going to change the way that you do things, and maybe they are the ones that are really driving you into these bad habits, and by having this accountability partner, you will have kind of put it out there You’ve made a statement that you’re going to change. This will give you the drive to take action and to stay with it. A life coach may also be a great partner for this. I’m winking right now.

Todd Bertsch: 18:35

There are some things to be aware of, though, that I want to talk through real quick. Creating new habits are hard. Breaking old habits are even harder, but you can do it. It just takes time. All right, it’s one small change. Take it slow and let that momentum build, and don’t get down on yourself. You will fail, but get back up on that horse. Keep at it Again. It takes time. The fact that you’re starting today is your first win Congrats.

Todd Bertsch: 19:12

Sometimes habits are not so good. It becomes so routine that we miss the finer details. We can also get bored Plain out. Stop doing the habit. When I start to feel like this is coming, I try to mix things up a little bit, and my high performance coach always talks about taking a detour, and I love this. So just try something different. In fact, an example might be if your habit or routine might be driving to work every day and you take the same route every time, day in and day out. Sometimes it feels like Groundhog Day. Just take a detour, go a slightly different way. Maybe it’s adding five, eight extra minutes to your drive, your commute, but do it. It’ll mix things up a little bit. Then you get back into the normal routine. So just keep that in mind.

Todd Bertsch: 20:05

As I mentioned earlier, there’s a lot of great research and a lot of great books on habits. Atomic Habits by James Clear should be at the top of your list. Here are some other books that you might want to consider the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey Great book, over 40 million copies sold. I’ve been through it several times. It’s a big one, but there are a lot of great nuggets in there. Highly recommend it. The Power of Habit by Charles has very similar research to Atomic Habits A lot of similar things in there, but a great book. Also, What Got you here, won’t Get you there, by Marshall Goldsmith, and you’ll hear me refer to this book in several episodes of the podcast, because I just love this book. It focuses on 10 habits that professionals need to work on to get to that next level of their career. So another great book, and you can find all the links to these in the show notes on the website.

Todd Bertsch: 21:09

So, in summary, we’ve embarked on an exhilarating journey through the electrifying realm of habits, where even the tiniest changes have the potential to spark monumental transformation in our lives. Like lightning bolts illuminating the sky, habits have the power to shake up our routines and propel us towards a brighter future. While the road to habit formation may be paved with challenges, persistence and small changes can lead to significant results. So, as we continue to navigate the ever-changing landscape of habits, let’s remember to embrace the journey, celebrate our successes and never lose sight of the transformative power within us. Good luck, my friends. Now ignite that spark within you today. Good luck, my friends. Now ignite that spark within you today. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. You are on your way to growth, transformation and joy. If you find this episode helpful, please like and share with your friends and, by all means, please leave a review. You can also view the show notes and subscribe to the Bolt newsletter at toddbertsch.com. Remember real change takes time. Start small and watch the growth take shape.