This year I've been really rethinking my relationship with alcohol and so I decided to commit to Dry January to really kickstart 2025 and just test myself.
Heineken 00 is the perfect companion for Dry January because you feel like you're still participating when you're out for dinner with friends, out for drinks whilst you're still meeting your lifestyle goals.
I'm a big beer fan so I also love the taste of Heineken 00 plus being alcohol -free you can enjoy whenever refreshment calls.
Heineken 00 is available at your local Heineken retailer or for delivery at Heineken .com.
You must be 21 plus to purchase, enjoy Heineken responsibly and good luck with Dry January.
Do you want to see into the future?
Do you want to understand an invisible force that's shaping your life?
Do you want to experience the frontiers of what makes us human?
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From conversations with Nobel Prize winners to the depths of TikTok to ask burning questions about technology.
From high tech to low culture and everywhere in between, join us.
Listen to Tech Stuff on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hello and welcome back to the psychology of your 20s.
The podcast where we talk through some of the big life changes and transitions of our 20s and what they mean for our psychology.
Hello everybody, welcome back to the show.
Welcome back to the podcast for another episode, another bonus episode.
I should say welcome.
If you are listening to this right now you are one of my top listeners.
You're one of my paid subscribers.
I just want to say a huge thank you.
I've got you all in one place all right here.
So I just want to say thank you so much for you know wanting to listen to the sound of my voice multiple times a week.
It is I don't know a weird feeling but I'm so so grateful that you care about this podcast, you care about this show and you care about what we're trying to do which is apply psychology.
Something that can often seem really inaccessible and distant to every area of our life, every area of our life in our 20s and hopefully learn something new every week about what we're experiencing, what we go through and how that interacts with our mental well -being and the psychological processes
that underpin it. So I just want to say a huge thank you to all of you who are listening to this episode right now.
You guys chose the topic this week as well.
We're talking about micro habits.
I gave you guys two options on my instagram so if you don't follow me there that's normally where I make the decision about what I want to record this week and I gave you two options either a bonus guest episode or an episode on micro habits and here we are you chose right.
I'm very excited to be recording this today and the research was so fascinating.
Some of the studies, some of the things that I found out I was like this is crazy like I am learning so much.
I also just want to say we hit a huge milestone this week which was one million listeners and I honestly still can't like fathom that.
Like I genuinely am so like honestly baffled, a bit confused, a bit overwhelmed to be honest, that there are so many people listening to this show.
Like I started this as like a side project, as like a hobby, just to kind of verbalize the things that I was going through and to be able to have an outlet for the research I was doing and the things that I love to talk about with my wonderful friends.
Shout out to them if they're listening.
You guys are amazing and suddenly it has an audience so it's been really unexpected and I'm so grateful.
I think the other thing I've been really worried about is that as this show grows it might become less authentic.
I just that's something that's really been on my mind.
What I want to be able to do is continue posting the things that I really want to talk about and that I hope other people want to hear about.
Not just things that I feel pressure I need to speak on or following trends.
I don't know I just don't want to lose that authenticity and I think that's why a lot of people listen to this because I don't know I'm someone in my 20s.
I'm dealing with this stuff as we all are so I don't know some of my fears and anxieties for the for the people who listen to the bonus episodes so take away whatever you want from that but once again thank you for listening.
Let's get into what we're talking about today.
Micro habits. It is such a fascinating, fascinating topic.
They've become like the term micro habits has become quite a trendy saying or a trendy term or concept in wellness communities recently and I think for mostly really really good reasons.
So what they are is they are these small simple actions that you're able to take every day or integrate into your life really easily that help you achieve big results.
They're basically just small habits, micro habits.
Sometimes when we think about you know big overhauls of our entire lifestyle it can seem really overwhelming but we can use micro habits which are just small actions that we can change day to day to transform I think any area any facet of our lives that we might not be entirely satisfied with by starting
really small by starting from the ground up and keeping you know the end goal in sight but making it easier for us to get there and to ease into those changes and those transformations and to ensure that the changes we want to make to our lives are sustainable.
You know there's no point putting a lot of effort into something putting all your eggs in one basket dedicating yourself entirely to some goal if you're going to give up after one month because you're mentally and physically exhausted but micro habits are a really I think sneaky amazing way around that and there's
so much fascinating psychology around them.
When we set ourselves big and ambitious and sometimes ambiguous goals like I don't know I want to eat healthier or to be more active or fix my anxiety make new friends it can be super overwhelming to a try and stick to it b figure out how we're going to achieve that goal through concrete steps you know
saying something like I want to make new friends it's such a scary and daunting goal like how do we actually get there and I think it's really hard to know when when your goal has been achieved how do you know when you're no longer anxious how do you know when you're healthier like yes you'll feel it
but how exactly did you get there if the goal is this big huge thing that you want and you're pining after and you get there and you know how do you know that you could do it again how can you maintain those lifestyle changes I think big goals are always going to be really hard to achieve hence that saying
you know if it was easy everyone would do it the reason is that they offer require major lifestyle overhaul and changes to our daily habits which we've become rather attached to but what if you could achieve those exact same goals by just doing something small every day that sounds you know kind of amazing
and that's the idea behind micro habits you are still able to make those big changes but by making a series of small ones instead tasks that are so small and so you know convenient that you don't even you know notice them half the time and you don't really have an excuse not to do them and when you
keep these small habits up and when you keep these promises to yourself not only are you able to see progress and reach your goals sustainably whilst also ensuring that your healthy habits stick but you also gain confidence over over time you know I think when we set out to achieve big goals and we're
really pushing so hard in those first few weeks in those first few months when we are you know we fail or we have a small setback it can be really easy to see all that progress being you know to sense that that progress has been undone or to feel a sense of failure but micro habits allow us to achieve
those goals over time and sustainably so that we're allowed to have small setbacks as long as we keep up these small habits so let's talk about some examples when I was doing this research and just from like my general overall view of how the term micro habits is used they're often applied to you know
fitness and weight loss and diet culture and physical health which of course I appreciate and I think it's so important that people want to take care of themselves in whatever capacity that might be but I kind of want to discuss them in other areas of our lives because I think that although a lot of the time
people especially in our 20s are really worried about how we look and whether we're active and whether we're physically healthy sometimes it's not the only focus and I kind of don't like to talk about that too much on my show I think it can contribute and easily become a discussion about things that actually
are unhealthy and aren't for the you know the best for ourselves so let's talk about some other areas for example if you want to start a podcast what is a micro habit that can build that I get people ask me or like asking me all the time like I want to start a podcast and my first answer is always like
yes absolutely you should do it there is room for everyone and you know you definitely have something to share and the second question is and the second kind of statement is always like how do I do it a micro habit could be I don't know write 300 like write down one idea every day for what you want
to talk about on your show or record just one episode a week even if you only do five minutes each day that's a really achievable goal you know writing something down in your nerds app once a day some idea that you've had for content or for an episode it's not going to take too much from you it's not going
to take too much effort and it's really doable another one that I hear a lot from my friends is spending less time on social media what's the simple micro habit you can do for that you know put your like make a promise to yourself I can go on my phone as much as I want throughout the day but I'm going
to put it down at 10 pm or between the hours of you know every 30 minutes I have to turn my phone off you know for the rest of that half hour into the next until the next hour just so you have those small breaks or okay I want to slowly decrease the amount of pickups I have I don't know if you have an iPhone
you can see how many times you like pick up and you open a social media app like instagram or tiktok say that's like 50 times a day be like okay by tomorrow I want it to be 49 and then maybe 48 and 47 next week not even like on a day -to -day just trying to think about small things you can do small goals
you can set getting over heartbreak that's a massive topic we talk about on the show because you know I think we all have been through that in our 20s and it's often really fucking brutal um how do we you know make sure that how do how can we apply micro habits to heartbreak what about just checking
their messages less being like okay my only the only thing I need to do today is to only check to see if they've messaged me once or twice I can't check it compulsibly throughout the day but I'm still allowed to because I still want to know um or if you're setting up a heartbreak setting a goal of like
okay well I'm going to listen to one song I really really love and just have like a wild dance manic singing moment just once a day to make myself feel better another way that it's I think micro habits are often applied is productivity and creativity as we enter into full -time work or we're struggling
with uni and we have you know jobs and things to do and bills to pay and relationships to maintain and I don't know cleaning I don't know whatever you're doing with your life we're all pretty busy and sometimes the first thing to go is the things that really fuel our soul our creative passions and our
hobbies so maybe one of your micro habits if you're someone who's realizing that they're a little bit disconnected from that creative right side of their brain is to you know read just one page of a book each night or simply list five things you're grateful for if you want to get into journaling or you
know just only you only need to spend five minutes a day doing like a meditation or a yoga pose or watching a really interesting video that you can contribute to conversations with those don't sound too hard do they they sound really doable everyone has five minutes in their day to do one small thing
that might actually make your life a lot better and over time these habits build and become bigger and we're able to challenge ourselves to set a new micro habit that actually feels a lot less significant than if we'd started with that step to begin with small blocks can still build really big towers
and it's harder to take them apart harder to take that final structure that final lifestyle that you're looking for apart if those habits that have contributed to it are really easy to do and are really sustainable so why are we talking about them today why are we talking about them in the context of our
20s i think personally in our 20s we have a responsibility to ourselves to decide what kind of lives we want to have it's often i think when we begin to recognize unhealthy habits or patterns of thinking that might not be the healthiest that may have come from our upbringing may have come from our childhood
if you want to listen to the childhood trauma episode we talk about this a little bit more about how our perspectives and our ways that we see ourselves and the habits that we form really do begin in in our early infancy even but when we get to adulthood when we get to our 20s we might want to improve
ourselves for the better we have the emotional and the mental capacity to recognize what's not working to have self -awareness i feel like many of the people who listen to this show are doing so out of an eagerness to improve themselves their well -being and their lives or because there's something they're
struggling with in their day -to -day lives honestly no matter your circumstances whatever you're going through right now implementing these daily micro habits can actually lead to massive improvements no matter what area of your life you want to change or improve one of the micro habits that i've set
myself recently is i found that because i work full -time and i'm doing this podcast and you know i've got to keep up with you know my chores and with my friends and trying to be active um the one thing that's kind of fallen off the radar is being physically active and feeling like my body is doing what i
want it to do so i've set this micro habit of like anytime i want to go into the office and my office is in the city i have to walk in it's a 45 minute walk it's not that far it takes like 35 minutes on the train and that's a really easy habit to implement for me because it's not every day that i have to
do it but it's and it's really small it's really doable um and it's really rewarding as well i think we do often think of physical health when we think of lifestyle change but it can be so much more than that we can use micro habits to reduce anxiety promote our sleep be more productive creative get
over a bad breakup make more connections their beauty is in their simplicity but also their universality they're so easy to integrate into our lives and into really any area of our lives so let's talk about why they work i'm really um hyping these up today making them sound like some kind of universal
antidote but there's a reason why micro habits are a lot easier to implement and i know it sounds intuitive but there's some stronger science backing it as well basically they limit how often we can apply an all or nothing mindset and consequently the likelihood of failure so the all or nothing mindset
it's a way of thinking that kind of relies on extremes and particularly the extreme of either success or failure you know you've got this goal in mind and you're either doing everything completely right you meet your goal instantly you're sticking with all of your habits you're doing everything you
need to do perfectly all the time or you don't do that you make a slip up you forget to do something and you fail you can't go forward that's done you know like it's success or failure and there's nothing in between all or nothing thinking usually leads to really unrealistic standards for yourself and for others
and it's really hard to maintain motivation because we're humans we're going to make mistakes life gets in the way of implementing healthy habits and this type of thinking it's known as a cognitive distortion which essentially is an exaggerated pattern of thought and of thinking that derails our progress
and can lead us to viewing things in a way that's false to how they truly are you know say that one of your goals is like i want to use social media less and you're being really strict you're like only an hour a day and that's that and then one day you go over an hour to hour and five minutes and like
well i've ruined it perhaps i've ruined it like this shows that i don't have self -discipline and i can't meet my goal and this all or nothing distortion is exactly is exactly what we're talking about in this instance if we engage too frequently in this style of thinking particularly when we're trying
to achieve a goal it can be really difficult to forgive our failures to make progress or feel satisfied and ensure that the goal is sustainable because we're always going to make mistakes we are you know forgetful creatures we are funny creatures we're messy creatures but micro habits they're able to
interrupt that extreme way of thinking that feedback loop of success or failure we're able to not only have smaller successes but teach ourselves that our energy does not need to be a hundred million percent committed and tied to one goal with no slip -ups allowed they allow us to break things down into
smaller bite -sized pieces which we know are easier for our brains to digest and they're easier to implement because they require less challenge and less change and we're more likely to be successful so the other reason they work is to do with dopamine i know we talk about dopamine so often on this show
like all the time but it's because it's so crucial to so many of our behaviors and our actions in our daily lives it's like it is the one of the most important neurotransmitters we have in our artillery often the habits we see is being unhealthy i'm going to use the tick tock example again like scrolling
tick tock for hours tick tock don't sue me because i'm defaming you or whatever but you know scrolling tick tock for hours before bed or sleeping in or eating food that makes us feel bad these habits actually bring us some form of dopamine like we get a dopamine hit or we feel comfortable so when we
attempt to interrupt those habits and overhaul our lives not only do we prevent activities that our brain actually relies on for dopamine the chemical that motivates us and creates pleasant feelings and stability but we also alter our mental comfort space and that's kind of the area that's like the things
that make our brain feel safe and often routine habits even if they cause long -term damage do make us feel safe and often that causes us to withdraw back into our old habits quicker when we are challenged with other possibly you know just uncomfortable situations in the external world i think we see
this so often people set out with big goals for example to quit drinking or stop smoking like cold turkey but those habits bring comfort and dopamine and serotonin so as soon as something else challenges us and we no longer have that you know that stability that's created by that habit we're likely
to fall straight back into them you know but if we say instead of like i'm gonna completely quit drinking and then you know you go through a breakup or you know you get a parking fine or you have a shit day at work and suddenly you know you're back on it what if we instead said you know i'm going to
drink one less drink than i normally would on a night out or i'm only going to drink drinks with lower levels of alcohol or only drink one to two days a week we give our brains time to adapt to these new habits which makes them easier and our goals more sustainable while still giving ourselves the comfort
that something we enjoy might provide so how do we implement these how do we implement micro habits i think often when we have a big goal we are not particularly patient and we want to reach it right now we're like okay i've decided i want to be fit and healthy so i want to be able to run a marathon in like
five days and that's so sexy and like fast results are exciting and we want them right now especially in you know the modern world where we can get things that we want so easily but trust me doing small boring things gets the job done much more sustainably and much more reliably because of all of those
reasons that we've talked about you know it doesn't leave us completely devoid of the dopamine attached to our old habits they prevent us from having that all or nothing thinking they're easier to implement into our lives they cause less disruption but i think that it's important to also have a sense
of balance here and not go overboard with the micro habits you know i mean because then essentially you're doing exactly what you would have done if you'd done that all or nothing thinking and were completely committed to a goal it's probably best to not have more than three to five you know your three
might be i'm going to drink one extra glass of water a day i'm going to wake up 30 minutes earlier and i'm going to read one page of a book at night so simple but if you're like i'm going to read one page of a book at night i'm going to um eat an extra serve of vegetables and i'm going to wake up at 7
30 instead of at eight and i'm also going to call one friend every single day and i'm also going to do a hundred million things firstly that just sounds really hard to keep track of but also you know yeah you're not going to be able to keep up and it's going to become really mentally exhausting and you're
probably going to have more failures and successes so try and make it easier for yourself um and just choose three to five five like five even is probably a few too many but maybe just three um that target things you really want to change in your life um and i think once you start implementing those
little practices every single day those series of of small wins and those confidence boosters that you give yourself allows you to build momentum and allows you to sustainably get to the goal that you ultimately want in the at the end of the day it might take a little bit longer you're still going to
get there you have time and when you do get there it's going to be sustainable thank you so much for listening this is such a fun episode it was a shorter one but i was like this is so fascinating to me and i think such an important ritual and idea to implement into our lives especially in our 20s when we're
trying to construct um the lifestyle that we want to lead and we're trying to you know fix things that may have gone wrong in childhood and fix unhealthy habits that we might have so i really hope that if this is something you're considering you give it a go um you try it out and see what happens you
know you really don't have anything to lose and they're so easy you know oh my god i sound like this is some like micro habits as like a brand if it's like sponsoring me i swear it's like i just think it's a great idea and hopefully you do too before we wrap up i do just want to say a huge thank you
again for subscribing for bonus content you really allow me to do what i love and that is such a huge privilege like it's crazy so i want to thank you so much and i hope that you continue to support the show and you continue to love the content that we're putting out well i don't know why i say we it's
only me and if you have any feedback if you have any suggestions for episodes shoot me a message on instagram i love hearing from you and hopefully i can i can do them um and yeah let me know what you think of the show leave it a five star rating on spotify if you get the chance and if you feel called
to do so and thank you again for listening i will see you in our main episode for this week which is why rejection stings thank you so much have a lovely lovely day this year i've been really rethinking my relationship with alcohol and so i decided to commit to dry january to really kickstart 2025 and just
test myself heineken zero zero is the perfect companion for dry january because you feel like you're still participating when you're out for dinner with friends out for drinks whilst you're still meeting your lifestyle goals i'm a big beer fan so i also love the taste of heineken zero zero plus being
alcohol free you can enjoy whenever refreshment calls heineken zero zero is available at your local heineken retailer or for delivery at heineken .com you must be 21 plus to purchase enjoy heineken responsibly and good luck with dry january do you want to see into the future do you want to understand an invisible
force that's shaping your life do you want to experience the frontiers of what makes us human on tech stuff we travel from the minds of congo to the surface of mars from conversations with nobel prize winners to the depths of tiktok to ask burning questions about technology from high tech to low culture
and everywhere in between join us listen to tech stuff on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts
