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**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** ...when you're trying to do the rationalization to say "Let's convince you that this is important, you know it'll pay out", wherein the other side of you is like "Oh, no wayyyy...!" |
**Adam Stacoviak:** "No way!" Well, let me tell you the extended version of this. |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Okay. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** \[20:06\] So my initial hack to getting to where I'm at is "Let me find something that's fun to do as fitness, rather than feeling like a drone having to go to the gym, and being a robot etc." Not that that's bad. If it's for you, it's for you, whatever; it's not for me. So one layer to this is actu... |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Yes. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** So now I'm motivated by my initial motivation to hack my routine, to go to the gym! Oh my gosh, right?! |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Right? |
**Adam Stacoviak:** So I'm still executing on this y'all, but I'm so much closer to actually getting to the gym, because now I wanna be a better mountain biker, and I realized my limitations, and what I'm gonna have to do to get there. |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Yeah, but do you see how you braided in, you moved it on over, so that your brain can see the payout? As opposed to it being a rational, ethereal "I know this in a non-relatable way", your brain has real-time data that goes "Yeah...!!" So you just got rid of that whole internal conflict ar... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** I also wanna talk about the other aspect that is an obstacle, and that is willpower. Because you hacked over that, too. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. I'm still working on the willpower part. That's a daily thing. So if you study willpower further -- which I'm sure you have, Mireille; I'm mostly speaking to the general audience... Studying willpower is pretty intensive, because it's a resource that does have limits. |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** It is. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** We've talked about this ourselves, either on some sort of episode, or in a side-conversation, but basically you only have so much to go around. |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Yeah, that's the thing. Willpower is definitely a muscle. We have to consider that when we're looking at building new habits or new neural networks, because I know that what can be commonplace is ending up more frustrated with ourselves or with others, like "Why? Why can't I just fix this?... |
I don't know if we've talked about this research study about the radishes and the cookies... Have I mentioned this? |
**Adam Stacoviak:** We've definitely talked about it; I'm not sure if it made it on tape, so retell it. |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Okay, so there was this research study done by psychologists wherein they recruited a bunch of college students (I believe it was) and had them not eat for some hours (I think it was four hours) before they arrived for the testing. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Come hungry, basically. |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Basically. And then they had plates of radishes and cookies in three different rooms. One group, they said "Hey, we just need you guys to sit here, and you can eat as many radishes or cookies as you want. Just wait, we'll be back in a little while." |
\[23:50\] The next group, they said "Hey, you guys can eat as many radishes as you want, but no cookies. You need to stay away from those." And the last group, they were like "I know you see this plates of radishes and cookies, but you need to just totally abstain, alright? We'll be back in a little while." |
So after some time passed, they came in and gave the different groups puzzles to solve. The only problem was that these puzzles weren't actually solvable. Right, always psychologists, I'll tell you. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Right... Pulling some sort of game. |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Uh-huh... So what they found out is that the group who couldn't eat anything, who had to abstain from radishes and cookies, gave up nearly immediately. They had spent all of their willpower to not eat that which was in front of them, when they were in fact hungry. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Right. |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** So they then didn't have it to spend, so to speak, over in this other lane. So the results went down successively from that. The next group then worked on the puzzles for a longer period of time, and the final group, who was able to eat freely, just continued to work, continued to work, an... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** So if you can, even in this process of modifying habits, be gracious with yourself, in recognizing that as there are other stressors, challenges, your resources internally are going to other things in your life, that you're considerate of those. |
I don't know if you've ever heard of the acronym HALT. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** I think it rings a bell, but refresh my memory. |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** HALT stands for Hungry, Angry, Lonely or Tired. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** So I haven't heard of this one... |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** It doesn't matter whether you're three, 23, 53 or 73. If you are hungry, angry, lonely or tired, you will inevitably make different decisions than if you're not any of those. I'd say willpower is sort of fitting in some of these. Because it's physiological. Your body is sending signals, "I... |
So how do we then hack these and change our habits, considering these other factors? I would say one of the things is to take a minute to reflect on your resources. If you are in a certain season of life, so to speak, or psychosocial stressor that's taking more of an energy draw from you - that's probably not the wises... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Wow... Yeah. Timing has gotta be key then, right? Because you've gotta get through that time period to eventually be in a good place to do some change. So it seems like maybe even change can't happen as often as we might like, because we're often in stressful environments. |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Right, and at least identifying that as a component. What I want people to do is consider ways in which they can set more successful or attainable goals. If I'm trying to change a significant habit, what are sort of many wins that are gonna give me that hit of dopamine, that maybe it's not... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** You won't. |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** \[28:09\] Yeah. So then it's easy. It's not really a decision, because either I do it right now, or I don't. Period. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. Well, you have to think about your time, too. You might be able to put some time in in the evening time, but that would take away from other things you're optimizing for. |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Sure. And I might go "Well, okay, so if I wanna hack that, I could look at other things I could do in the evening with my family." Or because seasons of my life have changed, and my kids are involved in activities that have access to a track that I could run in the evening, when I know my ... |
So look at the context of your own life, and think about "Okay, where am I?" And let's start there. Because where you are, versus where your friend is, versus where a sibling might be... It's all varied. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** What's interesting is habits seem so simple... You mentioned before how we can shame ourselves because we just can't get it - relating to willpower - and we just can't seem to get over X (whatever it might be) because we feel like we just can't will ourselves over it. What's interesting is that to r... |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Yeah, most certainly. And interestingly enough - and I look forward to talking more about this in upcoming episodes - remember that our frontal lobe is responsible for a lot of planning and organizing information, but also self-awareness. I don't know if I've shared this, but that is often... |
So self-awareness, aside from brain injury, is pliable. So you can grow, you can change your ability to be aware of yourself, and therefore what you're doing, so that you have access to different options and recognizing what is going to be the buy-in for me then, in light of these stressors; what am I willing to give u... |
I really think that is a key part, because as we talked about initially too, feelings being fundamental to being human, not only are habits paying us dopamine, but other feelings, too. There's other emotions that it's like "I feel better. I feel more alive, energized, and even I like myself more when I don't yell at my... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** I would also say that -- or at least that's the question, whether or not control is a piece of that, too. Because when we're vulnerable - which is a lack of control, right? |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Sure. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** \[32:04\] ...a bad habit may induce vulnerability, and a good habit may induce the opposite of vulnerability. Strength. So when we're in bad habit zone - if that's a figurative place to be - we feel vulnerable, and therefore we just feel less in control of our life. |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Sure, and I would offer that part of that is really your experience, physiologically and emotionally, would be one wherein your locus of control lies outside of you. So I am only able to manage myself to the degree that I can manage everything in my world that I actually don't have a charg... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** No. |
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