How can we create new habits – and stick to them? Is it really a case of will power, motivation, then repetition? Or could there be a simpler approach?

This week, I talk to world leading expert in behaviour change, Professor BJ Fogg, who has spent 20 years researching and teaching insights about human behaviour. BJ and I discuss why, if you haven’t been successful when trying to change in the past, IT’S NOT YOUR FAULT. Poorly designed behaviour-change programmes, from diets to fitness regimes to alcohol-reduction plans, set people up to fail. Motivation wanes, bars are set too high, and you are not made to feel successful.

We delve into why it doesn’t take a certain amount of hours or days to establish a new habit. In fact, repetition has nothing to do with it. Instead, evidence shows that it is all about emotion and feeling successful. When you do something and feel successful, that behaviour becomes more automatic. In this conversation, we discuss exactly how you can do this by scaling it down and making a small change that’s super easy to succeed at.

Facilitating healthy, positive change is at the core of everything I do. So it was amazing to hear from BJ that the methods that have come out of his decades of research very closely match those that I’ve seen to work in practice with my patients and have written about in my new book, ‘Feel Better in 5’. Listen in to find out how they can help you, too!

Watch the video version of this interview in full below.

Watch the full interview on YouTube

Further Learning:

• Tiny Habits Free Online Program
• Tiny Habits website
• BJ’s Ted Talk: Forget big change, start with a tiny habit
• BJ’s Stanford University page
• CNBC – 12 Tiny habits that will instantly make you more productive
• Insider – A Stanford researcher did 2 push-ups every time he went to the bathroom and lost 20 pounds