The Science Of Motivation: How To Make Habits That Actually Stick | T. Morgan Dixon and Dr. Gary Bennett

How to overcome inertia and research-backed plans that actually work. Dr. Gary G. Bennett https://trinity.duke.edu/dean-gary-g-bennett is Dean of the Trinity College of Arts & Sciences at Duke University. He is also a professor of psychology & neuroscience, global health, medicine, and nursing, and is the founding director of the Duke Digital Health Science Center. T. Morgan Dixon https://www.girltrek.org/ is the founder and CEO of Girl Trek https://www.girltrek.org/, the largest health movement in America for Black women– with over one million members. This episode originally aired in June 2024 – and it's part of our Get Fit Sanely https://www.danharris.com/p/get-fit-sanely-0f2 series. In this episode we talk about: The two important questions to ask yourself in order to get out of bed in the morning Techniques to help you find your "why" Ways to combat the "three deadly i"s The power of community – and how to find one How to track your fitness and wellbeing And much more Paid subscribers of DanHarris.com will have exclusive access to a set of all-new guided meditations, led by friend of the show Cara Lai https://www.caralai.org/#/, customized to accompany each episode of the Get Fit Sanely series. We're super excited to offer a way to help you put the ideas from the episodes into practice. Learn all about it here. https://www.danharris.com/p/a-month-of-guided-meditationsjust Related Episodes: Get Fit Sanely: the podcast playlist https://www.danharris.com/p/get-fit-sanely-0f2 The Dharma of Harriett Tubman | Spring Washam https://www.danharris.com/p/the-dharma-of-harriet-tubman-spring-f95?utm_source=publication-search Join Dan's online community here http://www.danharris.com Follow Dan on social: Instagram https://bit.ly/3tGigG5, TikTok https://bit.ly/3FOA84J Subscribe to our YouTube Channel https://bit.ly/3FybRzD Additional Resources: System Catalysts episode with Morgan and Dr. Bennett https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/girltrek-when-black-women-walk-together-things-change/id1684414362?i=1000624470504 To advertise on the show, contact [email protected] or visit https://advertising.libsyn.com/10HappierwithDanHarris.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Dan Harris?

  This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris.

• 0:19Dan Harris?

  Hello, my fellow suffering beings. How we doing? Today, we are coming back to what is, for many of us, a diabolically difficult challenge: how to overcome inertia and create habits that actually stick. In other words, how to get motivated. The good news is, this is something that has been studied quite extensively. And we've got a world-leading expert today on the science of motivation, alongside a world-changing innovator, who's helped come up with a plan, a program, that has gotten hundreds of thousands of people off the couch and on their feet. So we've got two guests today, who are really just made in a lab to help you get your shit together and get motivated.

• 1:01Dan Harris?

  We talk about the approaches that research suggests actually work in this regard. These include starting small, having social support, finding your why, and tracking/celebrating your progress. Although, big asterisk here. You want to do all of this without getting too obsessive, and my guests have some really good thoughts about how to manage that. Said guests are Dr. Gary Bennett and T. Morgan Dixon. Just a little bit about them before we dive in here. Dr. Gary G. Bennett is the dean of the Trinity College of Arts and Sciences at Duke University. He's a professor of psychology and neuroscience, global health, medicine, and nursing, and is the founding director of the Duke Digital Health Science Center. He's authored more than 200 scientific papers,

• 1:44Dan Harris?

  and is a past president of the Society of Behavioral Medicine. In other words, this is a guy who knows what he's talking about. My other guest is T. Morgan Dixon, who's an amazing human being. She's the leader of GirlTrek, the largest health movement in America for Black women with over a million members. I think you're gonna love her. This is, by the way, the penultimate episode in our month-long Get Fit Sanely series, which is all about one of life's most difficult and delicate dynamics: how to take care of your body without losing your mind. This episode first dropped, by the way, last year, but we're pulling it out of the vault because it's the perfect button for this month-long series. We've given you lots of information about gut health, about muscle strength, about

• 2:29Dan Harris?

  how to get more rest, and this episode is designed to help you choose the stuff you want to act on and get after it. As with all of the episodes during this month, this one comes with a companion-guided meditation from friend of the pod and friend of mine, Cara Lai. This one is a walking meditation, and I want to say that for me, walking meditation has been huge. It helps me bring mindfulness into all aspects of my life. In fact, Cara's meditation is called "Mindfulness is Portable." The meditation is available to paying subscribers over on DanHarris.com. Speaking of DanHarris.com, we're now gonna start releasing companion meditations for all of our Monday/Wed episodes in July and August.

• 3:12Dan Harris?

  In other words, this experiment has worked so well that we're gonna keep it going. The next meditation will come out on July 2nd. It will be led by ace teacher and friend of the pod, Dan Mauricio, so head over to DanHarris.com to subscribe and gain access to these upcoming meditations. Okay, we'll be right back with T. Morgan Dixon and Dr. Gary G. Bennett right after this break. If you care about supporting independent media, and if you care about being a node of sanity in an insane world, there are a few quick, easy, and free ways that you can support me and my team, which I would be really grateful for. One way to do it is to sign up for my newsletter, which comes out on Monday mornings. It's a little dose of sanity in your inbox at the beginning of a busy week.

• 3:57Dan Harris?

  The second way to do it is to follow and subscribe to the show wherever you're listening or watching right now. That really helps. Three, share your favorite episode with a friend. This is a great and low-stakes way to connect with somebody in your orbit, and not for nothing at Also helps us grow and all of these things take about 30 seconds and they really do help. You will be supporting me and my team and our mission and I, as I said, would be immensely grateful. You can find everything we do at danharris.com. It's all right there. Thank you. I mean that seriously. We'll be right back with more show. If you care about supporting independent media and if you care about being a node of sanity in an insane world,

• 4:38Dan Harris?

  there are a few quick, easy and free ways that you can support me and my team, which I would be really grateful for. One way to do it is to sign up for my newsletter, which comes out on Monday mornings. It's a little dose of sanity in your inbox at the beginning of a busy week. The second way to do it is to follow and subscribe to the show wherever you're listening or watching right now. That really helps. Three, share your favorite episode with a friend. This is a great and low stakes way to connect with somebody in your orbit and not for nothing, it also helps us grow. And all of these things take about 30 seconds and they really do help. You will be supporting me and my team and our mission and I, as I said, would be immensely grateful.

• 5:19Dan Harris?

  You can find everything we do at danharris.com. It's all right there. Thank you. I mean that seriously. We'll be right back with more show.

• 5:28Dan Harris?

  T. Morgan Dixon and Dr. Gary Bennett, welcome to the show.

• 5:32Speaker 01

  Thanks very much. Thank you for having us.

• 5:35Dan Harris?

  It's a pleasure. I'm excited. Morgan, I think this may be a first or maybe a second, but I think you're joining us from another continent.

• 5:42Speaker 01

  I am. I'm joining you from West Africa, the Republic of Ghana.

• 5:46Dan Harris?

  Nice.

• 5:47Speaker 01

  And I'm in the city of Accra.

• 5:49Dan Harris?

  Well, you get gold stars right from the jump here for all the extra effort, I'm sure, that went into scheduling this and actually technically setting it up. So, thank you. I'm going to start though with Dr. Bennett. So Gary, I have been thinking about how to describe your expertise and I'm probably going to screw this up, but looking at your work, it really strikes me that you have specialized in trying to get people, to get all of us, to do the stuff that we know is good for us, but that we don't otherwise want to do. So, one word that might be used to describe what you look at is motivation. Am I in the right ballpark?

• 6:31Speaker 02

  You absolutely are. That's the key challenge in our work is trying to find ways to help people to do the common sense behaviors that... Are extraordinarily impactful for our health and longevity. So yeah, you've got it in one word, motivation.

• 6:48Dan Harris?

  So, well, how did you become interested in motivation?

• 6:51Speaker 02

  Well, it starts with, I was a lab scientist in effect. I studied how stress gets under the skin to affect the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis. I was doing kinda nerdy work at the lab, but I'm trained as a clinical psychologist. And I was on a transplant team as part of my clinical training. And I kept encountering the same challenge, patient after patient after patient. So one of the psychologist's roles on transplant team is if a patient needs to get listed for transplant, but has some behavioral challenges, they need to lose weight, they need to get more active, they need to stop drinking, they need to stop smoking, then the psychologist will engage them in some treatment before they get listed. And can you imagine like needing a heart transplant or a kidney transplant or a liver transplant?

• 7:35Speaker 02

  And still smoking or still drinking or still not being active? And what I found was that in patient after patient after patient, at this moment in their lives, when they should have the maximal amount of motivation to make any behavior change, it was extraordinarily challenging to get people to stop drinking, get active, to lose weight, and those kinds of things. So it occurred to me that was the kind of challenge, solving that challenge was more important and potentially more impactful than doing a lab-based work. And so that's how I got into this.

• 8:05Dan Harris?

  Why is this so hard for humans? As you said, you're working with a population that needs a transplant to stay alive. This is not theoretical, but it's also true for the rest of us. So why is this such an issue?

• 8:20Speaker 02

  Because it's hard. It's really hard, right? You know, but the most important thing that we can do, in my view, and it's not even really my view, the data I think very clearly shows that one of the most important things we can do to protect our health and extend our longevity is to get out and get active. To just move around. Thirty minutes a day of moderate vigorous activity. It's the most important thing we can do for our health. And yet, there are so many barriers in our day to day lives that make that challenging. There are psychological barriers, just exhaustion, pain, fatigue, not sleeping well, stress, anxiety, all things incidentally that are improved when you're active. But nevertheless, they get in the way of that decision to get up in the morning and go for a walk.

• 9:01Speaker 02

  You know, just the challenges of our day to day lives and work stress and in some places, safety impairments in the neighborhood, right? It's like physically not safe to walk around, or it's physically difficult to walk around, or we live in an area where there aren't sidewalks. There are so many challenges that get in the way of the decision to be active. I'm seeing a patient in my mind who was just absolutely extraordinary in her day to day life. She had two jobs, she had two kids. And we were talking about how to establish a walking routine. And, and she said, look, you know, like, I work eight hours. I go home, I feed my kids, I put them to bed, I go out for my second shift. When am I going to do this, right? I mean, there are so many challenges to get in the way. And, and so sustaining motivation during that period in time

• 9:46Speaker 02

  and finding ways to be active amidst some of those constraints are, are some of the challenges that get in the way. And the last thing I'd say is that the amount of time that's necessary to experience the health benefits can, can be kind of long, right? It can be three, six, nine months before you start to really feel and see the kinds of benefits that accrue with activity. So it's not just getting off the couch and getting active today, but it's really finding a path to maintaining that level of activity over the mid to long term. And those are all real challenges for folks.

• 10:14Dan Harris?

  This strikes me as a real design flaw in the human operating system. Evolution was all about getting our DNA into the next generation. So we're really good at like scanning the environment for threats or food or mates. So I know you answered the question, why is this so hard for us? Because it's hard, but it is frustrating because if evolution is all about survival, this seems like a big gap in the plan.

• 10:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'd say humans have really complicated things pretty spectacularly, right? So when we all lived in environments when it was easy to move around and really necessary for us to move around to achieve the goals for our day to day life, it was getting activity was just secondary to existing. And to now, we're, you know, we're sitting in offices like, like the three of us, and this is where many, if not most of us spent our time. Our leisure time is generally spent being sedentary. We have rearranged the sort of context of human existence to prize being sedentary or minimally active, right? So it really does require us to think differently, to find ways to motivate ourselves, to find the kind of supports, both in human terms, but also in contextual and kind of group

• 11:24Speaker 02

  based terms that will help to lift us when we're having those kinds of challenges. It requires the kind of really coordinated engagement that will promote and sustain motivation over a pretty long period of time. Now, the challenge for us as scientists is it's been really hard for scientists to figure out how to do this well. And one of the reasons I'm most excited about GirlTrek is that in GirlTrek, I have found as a scientist, an intervention that works better than anything I've seen in the scientific community, because it does all of those things. It gives folks motivation, gives them the support, teaches them the skills in ways that feel familiar, that feel affirming, and it works.

• 12:03Dan Harris?

  I love when an interviewee brings me exactly where I was hoping to go. So let's bring in Morgan. Morgan, can you tell us the origin story of GirlTrek?

• 12:13Speaker 01

  Oh, hey, Dan. Dan, don't ever put me behind Dr. Bennett ever again. This is number one. This is number one. The only time I've felt like this before is when I had to go on stage after Bryan Stevenson. I was just like, I threw up my notes.

• 12:28Speaker 02

  I'm just gonna hang up now.

• 12:31Speaker 01

  Girltrek is, first of all, a movement of a million black women who walk for better health all across America and increasingly around the world and are energized. And once they become energized and active, they become change makers in their lives and their communities. How did it start? It started with me and my good old friend Vanessa trying to find the answer to what Gary is talking about, trying to find a way to move forward when we felt stuck. And I felt stuck by just looming pressure to achieve in life. I was the first one in my family to go to college. And when I was, I don't know, 21, 22, I was working in investment banking. And I was making more money than my dad and my mom

• 13:16Speaker 01

  probably combined when I was 22 years old. That exerts a tax on you that is untenable. It feels like you then are responsible at a very young age to then care for the people who have not had the opportunities that you've had. So with that pressure, I joined the Teaching Corps, Teach for America, and it didn't feel like enough to be teaching those 35 beautiful children. So then I started taking them hiking because they were deeply unhealthy, because they too were experiencing stress at very young ages. We started taking particularly the girls hiking on Saturdays. And then we said, yeah, this is not enough

• 13:58Speaker 01

  because when they go home, they're still unwell. So we said, what if we got their moms to hike with us? And better yet, what if we got a million of their moms to hike with us? That everything would change. So that was essentially the origin story. So it started as a utilitarian kind of exercise and solution making for our own lives, to save our own lives. And it is the reason why Girltrek works, because we don't do it if it doesn't work for us, for our national staff, for our hundreds of volunteers, for the crew leaders in thousands of communities. If it doesn't work for the leaders of the organization, it won't work for the million women we're trying to move every day.

• 14:34Dan Harris?

  I mean, I think that's an incredibly powerful insight. You know, you are the customer. So you know what is going to work because you test it out in the laboratory of your own life.

• 14:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, and Dan, I tell you, it's hard to move thirty minutes every day. It is difficult and it is a great privilege that we don't have to, you know? I'm calling in from Africa and that's not a choice. If you want food, you have to go get it.

• 15:03Speaker 01

  You gotta go get the food, you know? If your child needs something, you have to go do it. And there's not this kind of doorstep like delivery system where you can literally sit on Zoom all day and get fed. It doesn't exist here. And so I agree with you, Gary. It is a complexity that humans have created, seeking ease, seeking ease. So, and it is not natural. Walking is the most natural thing we're supposed to do every day. So, so we're just kind of getting back to the, getting back to normal is what it feels like when I go for a walk every day. It feels like getting back to normal.

• 15:40Dan Harris?

  I'd be curious to hear you say, why, why do you think this has worked so well?

• 15:47Speaker 01

  Dr. Bennett, why has it worked so well? It's a good question. But Dr. Bennett, he's way smarter about these kinds of change theories. I'll give my answer and I would love to hear yours, Gary. I think Girl Check has worked well because it has been co-designed by thousands of people who have a shared interest.

• 16:07Speaker 01

  And we started with a simple premise that was affordable, accessible and scientifically proven. That if you walk outside your front door, just fifteen minutes in any direction, turn around and come back to your house. That thirty minute walk, if it were bottled into a miracle drug, would be one of the most effective pills you can take. That's what the eighteenth U.S. Surgeon General, Dr. Benjamin, who's on our board, says. If she could prescribe thirty minutes of walking every single day, it would reverse chronic disease in significant ways. And it would prevent chronic disease in significant ways. It was research-based, it was affordable, it was accessible.

• 16:49Speaker 01

  And for us, there was a whole narrative that also made it cultural, right? So, we all grew up. Generation from living in the South where we walked everywhere. So like the idea of walking and talking with our mothers or walking and talking with our sisters or our neighbors was very culturally relevant. And then when we talk about walking for change in our communities, everyone from Harriet Tubman, who walked on the Underground Railroad, to the women in the Montgomery Bus Boycotts, when Black women have walked throughout history, things have changed. And so you imagine this energized, joyful army of a million Black women wearing these bright blue superhero blue, we call it, GirlTrek shirts, walking through some of the neighborhoods that are most disproportionately

• 17:34Speaker 01

  impacted by injustice with the notion that they are the change makers we've been waiting for. That feels powerful. And so that narrative is also a point of change making for us.

• 17:48Dan Harris?

  Yeah, let me bring you in, Dr. Bennett, because I'm interested in finding what are the active ingredients in GirlTrek that we can all apply in our lives? And what Morgan just described is one of at least four active ingredients that I've identified as, you know, I know enough to be dangerous. So like a semi ignorant outsider and you'll educate me as we go here. But one of the active ingredients seems like connecting people to a larger cause, framing personal health as a kind of community service. Am I right about that?

• 18:18Speaker 02

  Yes, and let me speak for just a second as a pointy headed behavioral scientist. I mean, some people would argue that I never speak in any other way. But let's just say that I were at a scientific conference and someone said, how is it that one should build and sustain motivation for behavior changes that are hard and that require a long duration of time to experience some benefits? I would tell you that across a large number of theories and many, many studies, what we find are most important are people's setting very clear achievable goals, knowing what you're going after, right? Thirty minutes a day, going out for a walk with my walking group each and every day or, you know, each once a week, like having a very clear goal.

• 19:01Speaker 02

  Two is what we scientists call increasing autonomy. That is to say that these things work better when people have more control over what it is that they're doing and when they're involved in the designing of the intervention itself.

• 19:18Speaker 02

  The third is that over time, what you want to do is build confidence, what we call self-efficacy or competence in your ability to do the thing. So, you know, when, if you have a little extra weight and you're sitting on the couch, getting up and getting active hurts, it does not feel good at first, right? So what you really need for motivation to build is you need to do this for long enough that you realize, I can do this, right? That thing. I would say social support, absolutely critical. Having people in it with you who are similarly motivated to try to achieve the same kinds of goals. And you need regular feedback. You need to know how you're doing. You need to have people in your corner saying, you're doing a good job, great job, those kinds of things. So, you know, you put all of that together. I mean, that, that's what those of us in the scientific community think is necessary

• 20:02Speaker 02

  to build and sustain motivation. And Morgan just told you how, that GirlTrek checks every single one of those boxes. They didn't start GirlTrek with that kind of scientific theory in mind, but what I've found when I first started working with GirlTrek was that, you know, as a scientist, I was, I was looking at the, what happens in some of the walking groups and I'm thinking, this is just one of the finest implementations of a theory-based approach to physical activity that I've seen. And that's for me is why it works. Dan, you're pointing to something that's really critically important. The idea of being involved in something bigger than yourself and being led by, by historical

• 20:45Speaker 02

  and cultural examples that feel deeply resonant. I have to tell you, that is such an important component of GirlTrek. In the scientific community, we often say, look, if you can make these kinds of experiences feel personally relevant in a deep and authentic way, then we know you can promote motivation and it can also produce the long-term engagement that's necessary to see health effects. I just haven't seen anyone do it better. When you invoke the notion of walking in the Montgomery boycotts, or the notion of Harriet Tubman's experiences in her life, walking people to freedom, like, these are things that have a deep and abiding cultural relevance. In my experience, watching walking groups, it just bypasses all of those kinds of barriers,

• 21:30Speaker 02

  speaks deeply to people spiritually, I think, and helps them to be motivated to do the work.

• 21:36Dan Harris?

  I really want to go down these lists of ingredients and talk a little bit more about why they're so important and how we can tap into them. Let me just stop on this. Issue we're on right now, which is the larger narrative being that if people can attach to a meaning and purpose and a story, I mean, we know humans care deeply about stories is one of the things that differentiate us from other species. We've heard the pointy headed version of that, but let me just go back to Morgan for a second. Can you talk a little bit about what it feels like and why you think it's so important to have a sort of overlay of meaning on top of, you know, quote unquote, eating your vegetables?

• 22:19Speaker 01

  Dan, I don't know one person who's not experiencing extreme overwhelm like this second. In America and in the world, the state of the world is overwhelming. And for me, every single time I lace up my sneakers, I open my front door and I go out, I take the first step out for a walk, it is an act of absolute hopefulness. It is a moving meditation that I believe that things are getting better and that I have some sense of agency in my life in order to move myself toward my healthiest, my most fulfilled life. It feels like an

• 23:01Speaker 01

  actual moving mantra toward that every single time I go for a walk. So, one of the things we did in Girl Scout is we listened. So after we hit a million members, which was initially our mission, was to get a million women to walk in their neighborhoods. We did that in 2020. And everyone said, okay, well, what happens when you get a million women walking? What do you do next? And we said, well, we will ask them what we do next. So we did, and we paused and we listened. And we tried to learn what was beneath, what were the root causes of stuckness. Because really what we're talking about is feeling stuck, or like immobilized by fear, by overwhelm, by confusion, by addiction, you know, whether it's addiction to your

• 23:46Speaker 01

  phone, or addiction to substances, or television, or whatever it is, or workiness. Like, there's so many addictions that we're working full time on. Like, how do we move from that stuckness to going forward? We've created a framework called the three deadly eyes, the things that are really hurting people. One is inactivity, that we just aren't moving enough. So we've talked a lot about that today. The second one is isolation. And this notion that loneliness is deadly, right? And particularly as you age. And then the third one is injustice, right? That when you feel like you haven't been given a fair shake, wherever you are in life, whoever you are,

• 24:28Speaker 01

  it's hard to feel like you have the agency to kind of fight back against that, like, that pressure of injustice. And so, to answer your question, having a sense of agency and identity that is connected toward broader change-making, collective action, and includes physical activities solves for all three of those things, right? Pretty elegantly, it solves for all three of those things. So when I don't want to walk, which is a lot, I have long, four and five hours Zoom marathons and I have like a headache sometime. Like, when I don't want to walk, I think about, ah, but I told my crew member I was, I was going to walk today. Or, oh my goodness, I want to get a warrior week today or this week,

• 25:13Speaker 01

  which is, means you walked for five, five times this week, or 30 minutes a day. And we have a roll call on Saturday where all these women dial into the same phone line. We open up the lines, it's like this party line, old school, it's so much fun. And I mean, women are calling in from around the world, it's unreal. And I want to be able to say, I got a warrior week. So I'm thinking about kind of the community that we've built. But then I think about the women who walked before me and how dare, how dare I get overwhelmed by what's on the news? How dare I get overwhelmed by my particular financial situation right now? Or how dare I get overwhelmed by these extra 15 pounds I put on?

• 25:55Speaker 01

  And I just have a better sense of context and gratitude for where we are right now. And that just is that extra push that gets me out of the door.

• 26:10Dan Harris?

  Coming up, T. Morgan Dixon and Dr. Gary Bennett talk about the three things to focus on in order to overcome inertia, the two important questions to ask yourself in order to get out of bed in the morning, and some techniques to help you find your why.

• 26:31Speaker 03

  How do I recover from a friendship breakup? How come there's nowhere to hang out anymore? Why do I feel lonely when I can communicate with anyone and everyone through my phone? These are the questions that you're not alone in asking. And that's where our new podcast, Cornerpiece, comes in to start small on life's biggest questions. I'm Taha, and with my friends Sabrina and Melissa, we're going to explore life's ungooglable questions on this new podcast with TED. Come hang out with us on Cornerpiece, with new episodes every other Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts.

• 27:06Dan Harris?

  Gary, there's so much in what you just said. I'm just kind of taking notes here. And again, pardon me for my obsessive focus on honing in on what we're calling active ingredients and then thinking about how people listening can operationalize them in their own lives. But let me just stay with this larger story part, because there's a lot of things you just referenced there, and you've referenced too, the sort of accountability piece, the agency piece, the sense of doing it for other people. Let me just stay with this idea of the larger narrative. If somebody listening to this is thinking, I struggle too with exercise, or meditation, or any of the trillion habits that Instagram is recommending for us, how do I yoke this

• 27:48Dan Harris?

  to some sort of larger narrative so that I, whose life circumstances may be less dramatic, can actually get off the couch over inertia and do the thing?

• 28:00Speaker 02

  I so appreciate you framing the question that way because what you describe is a this is a challenge for all of us. If I were to boil down that long list I just gave you into a couple of really key pieces, I would say these are the three things to focus on. The first are getting some skills. So that is to say, you know, thinking about how you can be active, where you can be active in ways that really comport with your own interests and your own life. For some people, and I think most people, that should be walking. Doesn't have to be like Olympic style speed walking, but like a good brisk walk is perfectly helpful. And there's lots of good examples of how to start a walking regimen online. The second thing I would say is support. So finding support from other people in your life, from

• 28:44Speaker 02

  a walking group, maybe a meetup group, those kinds of things, having other people supporting you is critically important. The third thing I would say is what we call self-monitoring or tracking. Being able to have some sense of how you're doing so that you can continue to see steady progress towards that goal. You just heard a great example of this with Morgan, who's describing having a warrior week, right? Like hitting that goal. The only way you get to hit the goal is if you know how well you're doing. So keeping track of something is really critical. So, you know, support, skills, self-monitoring, you do those three things and most of our data suggests that those are really the kind of the crucial things to be able to get moving or to make any other kind of health-related

• 29:28Speaker 02

  behavior change. The challenge, of course, is that you have to do it for a little while. And so it might require that you make changes over time. And one of the things I love about what happens with Girltrek is that the walking groups themselves are their own organic, you know, sort of social contexts in which people are responding to others' needs and they're making changes in the goals and changes to the support and changes to the kinds of ways in which they're walking over time to maximize the likelihood that everyone can be successful. Doesn't work all the time for everyone, but it's moving directionally well. I think that's the key, the real advantage of what you see in Girltrek. And those principles will work, I think largely irrespective of who you are and where you are and what you're trying to achieve.

• 30:10Dan Harris?

  I'm seeing shifts in your posture, Morgan. Does that mean you have something you want to say?

• 30:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm not very good at hiding it.

• 30:18Speaker 01

  Hang on, so much trouble in Sunday School for acting like.

• 30:23Speaker 02

  Wasn't just you.

• 30:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, I was thinking about, so you know, Sunday School, I used to be a school teacher and I taught history and one of the things I always taught is about these push and pull factors that all the great migrations, whether it was kind of the Irish coming to America, or whether, oh, had these kind of push and pull factors, right? Or whether it was westward expansion, or whatever it was. And something had to be pushing you away from where you were. People want to just be still. They want to just remain safe, right? Everyone wants to just be safe and just make it through the day. That's just kind of how we are hardwired. Well, I don't know, ask Dr. Benner if that's how we're hardwired,

• 31:06Speaker 01

  but whatever. But throughout history, what is, what has effectively moved large groups of people are push and pull factors. So for Irish Americans, it was the potato famine that kind of pushed them out of Ireland. And what drew them was this narrative of American opportunity, particularly in New York. So it created this kind of wave of immigration. And I think about that now, like, what can't I accept in my life anymore? Right? Anymore? Right this moment? What is the thing that I can no longer accept? And it is a question that I just encourage our members to think about. And then, like, what is my big why?

• 31:47Speaker 01

  Like, what is it that really energizes me every morning? Because of my children? Is it that I have a calling on my life? Is it that I'm angry about the state of my commute? Like, what is it that is really pulling you out of bed? And you need to think about both of those things. And so, the way that we frame that in Girl Trek, that kind of big why, that rationale for why you want to get out of bed, and this kind of, this thing you can't accept, is what are you walking away from and what are you walking toward? And we encourage women to think about that, at least on a weekly basis this week. What are you walking away from? And what are you walking toward? And if you can name it with great precision, I promise you that strong rationale begins to, like, rewire your motivation

• 32:31Speaker 01

  in ways that are so, it's a stronger current that you can't talk yourself out of. You know what I mean? It's just a stronger current. So, we're talking about energy here, and how do we energize ourselves when no one's looking? And part of that is thinking about what motivates you particularly. So it is your own storytelling.

• 32:51Dan Harris?

  I think that's a huge point. It's kind of extrinsic versus intrinsic motivation from an... If you're motivated by achieving the abs of your favorite influencer, that can probably get you off the couch a few times. But given this kind of uncanny valley, this interregnum that Gary keeps talking about, which is that you can start exercise or any other habit, but it often takes a long time for the benefits to kick in. It may not get you all the way to the promised land. By the way, you know, I think we can raise lots of questions whether the promised land specifically as it pertains to abs is worth pursuing. However, if you can tell yourself a different story, which is,

• 33:35Dan Harris?

  what is it that I cannot accept in the world? What was the second part of that, Morgan?

• 33:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. What is my big why? What's moving me forward?

• 33:43Dan Harris?

  Yeah, so these related questions of what can I not accept? And what's my big why? Well, that's a different kettle of fish. That's more kind of in your molecules, intrinsic to you, authentic to you, organic. But let me come back to you on this, Gary, because I think Morgan was able to find a very clear and compelling why. But there are a lot of people who may not have that or may not see that so clearly. And so I would like to hear from you whether there are techniques that you would recommend for helping us figure out what we can no longer tolerate in the world and what is our intrinsic why. I'll just say a little bit about how I've tried this. As I picked this up from Dr. Richard Davidson,

• 34:26Dan Harris?

  who's a neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin, who's been deeply influenced by Tibetan Buddhism. And Richie talked about how everything he does all day long, he tries to dedicate it to the benefit of all beings everywhere. In other words, his why is the rather grand and unachievable alleviation of suffering for everyone everywhere. And that may sound so big that it's hard to sink your teeth into. But his argument is if you just kind of make this a habit, it is a pretty good motivator. And so I've tried to do that with varying levels of success. Like, try to remind myself every time I exercise. I'm doing this for me because I feel better and less depressed if I exercise.

• 35:11Dan Harris?

  But I'm also doing it so that I can be more effective in the world and better able to alleviate suffering to the extent that I'm capable. So I just rambled for a while, but do you hear anything universally useful in any of that?

• 35:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, so you had it before, just a moment ago, when you talked about the importance of intrinsic motivation. We know very, very clearly that when people are making behavior changes on the basis of drivers that they find personally relevant, personally meaningful, that it's a far better way to both produce and sustain the behavior changes that we're looking at. The whole like, you know, I'm looking at Instagram and want to get my beach body ready for the summer thing. Neither is being responsive to often other people in your lives who say, hey, I think you need to lose a few pounds, or hey, have you ever thought about walking, you know, a bit more for your health? Those kinds of extrinsic or kind of outside of your person motivators are often, can work for a little while, but not long term.

• 36:08Speaker 02

  So I really appreciate your example, Dan, and I have to tell you, like, as a scientist who's been studying this for 25 years, I have become very accepting of a kind of a core thesis, like a core fact in my personal life around this, which is like, I am like, I hate to exercise, I can't stand to diet, like, it is hard personally. Most, every patient I've ever worked with has been more like me than other scientists I encounter in the sense that like, I really am not motivated. I'm experiencing a runner's high, like, I don't, I've tried every diet, I don't, I can't stick with them for more than three or four weeks, I don't sleep particularly well all the time, right? And so for me, I just, I can't think of the kind of higher order benefits.

• 36:50Speaker 02

  Like, I have to think very simply in order for me to find the kind of internal motivation. So that is to say, like, so for me, it might be today, I need to, I have had a stressful day at work, and I have to accept that when I walk, I actually feel better about the stress in my life. It's momentary, it doesn't last for a long time, but it does help me to manage that stress. Or, you know, if I'm trying to I've had a long day and I want to sleep better tonight. Like, I know that probably one of the best things for me to do is take a twenty or thirty minute walk in the evening. And that is a great way to help me to sleep better at night. And so I'm looking for those intrinsic motivators. The what am I walking away from? The stress, the anxiety, worry, those kinds of things.

• 37:35Speaker 02

  And what am I working, walking towards? And in Morgan's language would be like a better night's sleep. You know, more solace, more time to be present cognitively with my friends and family. Those kinds of things. I tend to think about these things in a very micro level. The good thing about the science on this is that whatever is intrinsically motivating will work. It can be kind of higher order notions of wanting to do things in the service of humanity. It can be, I just want to be sure that I can walk up these stairs. Like, my most frequent personal intrinsic motivator for strength training is that my daughter, who is ten, loves to ride on my back up the stairs when she's going to bed in the evening. Right? And I don't ever want a world in which I can't get that done. I don't know how long this is going to last. It may get weird if she's thirteen or fourteen and still wants to do it.

• 38:20Speaker 02

  But for right now, while she's ten, if she wants to do it, I want to be able to do it without huffing and puffing when I get to the top of the stairs. It's tiny, it's micro, but it really is meaningful to me. And so I, that would be my suggestion is find these creative framework. The framework that Morgan offered is terrific. What am I walking away from? What am I walking towards? And fill it with something that you find really personally meaningful.

• 38:39Dan Harris?

  Yeah. When I'm doing a high intensity workout, you know, I'm on a bike or doing a high intensity interval training on elliptical or any, in a pool, wherever, I try to think of my son, who's nine, and like, I'm not doing this just for me. You know, I want to be around for this. I'm an older dad. I want to be around for this kid. And that is, it's very useful.

• 39:02Speaker 02

  My walking, what am I walking toward is very similar to yours, right? My father died when he was sixty-eight and, and I'm an older-ish dad. And he just wasn't there for, to see these beautiful children grow. And I would love to be there for my kids in that way. And not only be there, but be there and be active, vibrant and healthy and energetic in the ways that I think they might enjoy. I think whatever you can find in your personal life that, that brings you that, just that little bit of a spark, that little bit of a jolt that's necessary to get off the couch and get out and get moving. I think the science shows we can make this more complicated, but it's not. It's finding those things that are really personally meaningful.

• 39:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, all of this is reminding me, one of the things at Girltrek that we say is like, rather than what do you want to do, who do you want to be? Because identity is the stronger driver than behavior, right? And so, you know, I want to be a good parent. I want to be an active neighbor. I want to be a good American. I want to be energized and all the things that Gary just said. And having an identity around it, sometimes we call it lifestyle activism, what we're doing with Girltrek, because we're not walking enthusiasts necessarily. We didn't set out like, we didn't go to college, the College of Walking. It is just the kind of minimum viable product of how we can be the people we want to be,

• 40:21Speaker 01

  which are energized citizens and leaders of our communities and families, and leaders of self, right? And so I think a good question for listeners is like, who do you want to be? And like, what is the most direct pathway to that?

• 40:38Dan Harris?

  Coming up, Morgan and Gary talk about ways to combat the three deadly eyes, the power of community and how to find one, and actually also whether to track your fitness and wellbeing.

• 40:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, if I could pick up one thread of what Morgan mentioned earlier that I think is critical, you know, she mentioned one of the eyes as isolation. And isolation and loneliness and social disconnectiveness is exerting a really pernicious set of effects on so many of us. Current Surgeon General has talked a lot about this and is reinforcing something we've been able to see in scientific literature for a long, long time. Loneliness and social isolation are killers of Americans and folks in other populations. One of the things that I have always loved about Girltrek is the fact that women walk in groups. And these groups are defined not by age or ability, but by the fact that they have on blue shirts and they want to walk together.

• 41:42Speaker 02

  It is a movement of motivated people who are walking in community and by extension, they're self They're reinforcing one another in ways that are really health affirming. And so, you know, one of the other things I I hope listeners will take away is we talk about GirlTrek and I think you might imagine more organization like that you'd find in a gym or something like that. It's not that. It's a group of people who've made a decision to walk together. Those groups can change from week to week and have different members and go to different places. And you can replicate some of that same effect in your own life by finding people to engage with in your own spaces in walking or whatever other kind of

• 42:25Speaker 02

  health behavior change you you hope to be taking on. But what we know very clearly is that people who experience that support do much better, feel much better, and are more likely to achieve their goals. It's an absolutely crucial part of their program.

• 42:40Dan Harris?

  Morgan, is there a catch 22 here? Because we're talking about the importance of community or social support when it comes to motivation and habit formation. From what I can tell, there's a ton of data around this. We're also talking about the fact that we're in a loneliness epidemic and people are isolated. And that's, as Dr. Bennett said, you know, pernicious impacts on our health and on our politics and many other aspects of being alive right now. So if you're isolated and lonely, how do you find a community?

• 43:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, walking out in your neighborhood is a great start, Dan. It's a great start. Every time I walk out, I meet new people all around me. It's part of why we're so isolated is because we're in these little boxes of homes. Cities aren't built quite the way they used to be. And so we don't have proximity to one another. So part of it is getting outside so that you can say, hi, neighbor. We have something called the Trek Code in GirlTrek, and one of them is single file and smiles. So like, it's so fun. You'll have this big, like, raucous group of women walking down the street, talking, laughing. And then a neighbor will come by and we'll all collapse in a line and we'll all wave at her and greet her and say, hey, good morning, good morning. And it's such a beautiful sight to behold.

• 43:50Speaker 01

  And so we are constantly building community as we get outside and make the effort to be connected to a larger world. And then I will say for listeners, many of them May know the name Harriet Tubman, but many of them may not. And in Cliff Notes, like Harriet Tubman was a great freedom fighter in America. And she was born into slavery and as a young woman, decided that she wanted to walk and walk away from the institution of slavery and to escape into freedom. And so she walked across what was in the Mason Dixon line into freedom. But when she first wanted to walk away, she was going to go with her two brothers. And one of her brother had just had a baby and he didn't want to go. He wanted to be a responsible father. He couldn't take his baby.

• 44:33Speaker 01

  The other brother just got pulled to feet and she went alone her first time. And it was terrifying. And then she went through the woods. Actually, our whole national team retraced her steps, those 100 miles on the Underground Railroad a few years back. And it was harrowing and she went by herself. But when she found the way, then she came back and got her family and took them. And when she got her family free, she came back and got her neighbors. So when she got her neighbors free, and along the way, she had all of these allies, right? People who were help, people of all races, all gender, all like states of freedom, some free, some enslaved, were helping her along the way. And then she founded a home in upstate New York. She was the first black woman to buy a home in the state of New York with the help of Governor Seward at the time.

• 45:17Speaker 01

  And she lived a joyful life into her 90s. She planted apple trees. She got married again, all these wonderful things. And so we use her life to frame out what we call the Tubman Doctrine. Number one, walk in the direction of your healthiest, most fulfilled life now. Don't wait for anyone. Go at it alone, right? Find that kind of intrinsic motivation that you need. Find the identity that you have that makes you want to get up and go toward your best life, right? So that's step one of the Tubman Doctrine. Go alone. When you find the way, come back and get a sister is number two. So there's a service charge right here that somebody said service is the rent we pay on the earth. Shirley Chisholm said that great quote, like come back and get a sister.

• 46:02Speaker 01

  And that is like, if you have a friend now, and you may be that friend who is just struggling with all this whole conversation. They're like, look, I just went through a divorce. I'm like not feeling well. I had this diagnosis. Or like my kids are just acting just bizarre. Whatever it is that you're going through in your life, you may not be able to source the motivation. But I guarantee someone around you is in a place where they can make forward momentum. And my charge is to the friend around you to come back and get your friend. Because we all need help at some point. So that is a charge for Girltrek. For the energized women who are out in the streets of their neighborhoods every single day, that's not enough. Go back and get your cousin.

• 46:44Speaker 01

  The cousin who you just hardly can't stand because she has such a bad attitude. Go get your cousin and go for a walk with her, right? And it is amazing, the kind of testimonials that we are hearing. Well, just you never regret getting outside and being in the sun and going for a walk. You never, ever regret it. And the kinds of transformations that are happening individually, in friend groups, in families and communities are just awe inspiring. And last but not least is like, think about the people who have your back. And Harriet Tubman, we call the per allies. Think about the people who have your back and who can hold you accountable. You gotta be at this place at this time and schedule appointments with them. And then the last piece we've talked about a lot is make it joyful.

• 47:29Speaker 01

  Make it practical. Make it functional and sustainable. So sometimes I schedule walking meetings. Sometimes I schedule walking dates with very good looking humans. Sometimes I schedule all sorts of things because it also has to be fun.

• 47:43Dan Harris?

  Let me just kind of, I hate this term and I'm saying it anyway. Double click on something Morgan said, Gary. And you've said this too, but I feel like it might be worth just kind of dwelling on it for a second. It seems like starting small, making it doable and achievable is a really important theme here when it comes to motivation. Can you just say a little bit more about that from the, from the research, from the pointy headed side?

• 48:09Speaker 02

  Sure. We know that goal setting, so it's been a lot, there's been hundreds and hundreds of studies on goal setting. They mostly suggest this. Do something you can actually, set a goal that you can actually achieve. And so if you are sedentary and the goal is to become routinely active, like active five days a week, walking 30 minutes a day. Then an achievable goal is not joining a gym. It's just like that. An achievable goal is not to decide that you want to run a half marathon. An achievable goal is generally not to, you know, you run a 5K in the next six weeks, right?

• 48:51Speaker 02

  Like, an achievable goal is getting out of the house, taking a walk of any length every day this week. That would be the kind of starting small that we're talking about. And once you hit that for a week, then setting a progressively, you know, progressively increasing that goal. So maybe in the second or third week, you decide, I'm going to walk every single day for 15 minutes, and then 20 minutes, and then 30 weeks minutes, up to a point at which you were able to do that 5K or the 10K or the half marathon. And one of the real traps that we get into as humans is out of a spirit of real, you know, often ambition and a real drive, is just setting those goals so high, so intensely,

• 49:33Speaker 02

  that they just set the stage for us not to meet our own expectations. And then that becomes itself, becomes negatively or reinforcing. When we say we want to do this thing, we can't achieve it. It becomes its own barrier to our motivation. So the far better approach is to set a small goal, make it simple and straightforward, and then just progressively increase that over time. Again, it's not rocket science, but it does work. And if you come out of the gates too strong, then that can be, can be a real challenge for your behavior change.

• 50:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I like to knit together those small goals and reward myself with something great at the end as well. Like, if I do that, you know, all month, if I walk five days a week, 30 minutes a day, and I do it all month, then I'm definitely going to go camping. I'm going to go camping next week, or I mean, next month. So I think I like to do that, too. And then I like to tell myself catastrophic stories of what I don't do. And I know this is not the science, but I'm just telling you. There is a whole app at one point that was like, think of the organization that you would never donate to, that you like really despise, and we're going to put your credit card here. And if you don't exercise, we're going to give to that organization. I was like, that's genius. It's genius. I don't.

• 50:45Speaker 01

  To do that. So I think all of what we talked about is really exciting. And then there's this video on YouTube called twenty three and a half hours. It's old, but it has millions of views. And it basically says, if you could reduce all of your sitting to twenty three and a half hours and just move for a half hour a day, like so many things in your health profile would change for the better. So basically, if you can walk thirty minutes a day. So that was confirmed by like the CDC and everybody's smart. And so when Vanessa and I started GirlTrek, we were like, okay, what is the least amount we can do to like have like all of the benefit? Because like we're busy, we like are not motivated. And so like, what are the things that we can do? And everyone was united that, you know, just get thirty minutes of moderate

• 51:29Speaker 01

  exercise at least every day, and it is a good start. Well, what we found is even thirty minutes felt hard for some people. And we have women who are walking with GirlTrek from over forty countries. And there was an ambassador in US foreign aid who texted me one time and she said, you said one thing on your podcast, Morgan, that did it for me. She said, you just said walk out fifteen minutes and then turn around and come back. And she said, the fact that you broke it into fifteen minute chunks for me, it really helped because I'm so busy. And there was a block in my mind of trying to find thirty minutes in the day. And I know that once I get out there for thirty minutes, I'm gonna want to try to get two miles or three miles.

• 52:11Speaker 01

  But just walking fifteen minutes in one direction, pivoting and coming back, that framing for me gave me permission to make it small. And so, listen, I couldn't agree with you more, Gary, that like it has to be bite sized, it has to be repeatable. And then I would argue that it has to have other kind of cascading benefits. That it's not just about losing weight or not just about putting a story up on social media or whatever, but that it has some other benefits. And for me, walking has the benefit of vitamin D. Like I get deeply depressed, like seasonal affective disorder, when I don't get outside, I get really depressed. So it has this kind of benefit of fresh air and sunshine.

• 52:52Speaker 01

  It has this benefit of me getting out of my office and meeting my neighbors, which is an identity that I want. I want to be a good neighbor. So it has all these other kinds of benefits that are helpful to me.

• 53:04Speaker 02

  It is striking to me, and I think as a scientist, that so many of the health conditions that concern us, depression, hypertension, diabetes, fatigue, all of these things, it's not just that they can be positively impacted by physical activity, it's that in many cases, and depression's a terrific one, exercise works better than other kinds of treatments, more reliably, more durably. And so, you know, I so appreciate what Morgan is saying, and the real tangible benefits for just sleep and energy regulation and just mobility, and again, for mental health. And this other thing that Morgan's talking

• 53:47Speaker 02

  about, which is social connectedness, is these effects are profound, and they're discernible in a pretty short amount of time. So earlier, you know, what I've been saying is like, you know, it'll take some time for the health benefits to accrue. That's, that is true for things like hypertension, and you know, and lipids, and these kinds of health markers. But you can have real benefits very quickly for things like energy, for sleep, and just getting to know the people in your community that will help you to be a more connected, less isolated person. Those all seem to me to be like really good motivators for most people.

• 54:19Dan Harris?

  Morgan was saying before that she didn't think it was scientific, this idea of negative motivation, but I think we've had guests on this show, I've done so many interviews here that it's hard for me to remember everything, chapter and verse, but I believe we've had guests who've said that actually, there are like apps you can go to where if you don't do the thing you said you were gonna do, you have to send 50 bucks to some cause or candidate you detest, and that actually there's some science behind this.

• 54:47Speaker 02

  I'd say like the, the debate in our field really concerns whether or not that kind of reinforcement can continue to promote health benefits over the long term. So what we know, that kind of effect works pretty good in the short term, say, three months. Whether or not it can continue working at month six, and month nine, and month 12, as you're progressively increasing, you know, your, your behavior change efforts, or your exercise routine, or whatever you're doing, like, that's still very hotly debated in our field.

• 55:16Speaker 01

  Dan, you know hate can't sustain you. You know hate can't sustain you. Only love can sustain you. And that's what you're getting at before around the promised land. The other thing is for all of my Christian listeners out there, or Buddhist listeners, or religious, or spiritualist, or whatever, I've never felt closer to God when I get outside, like, and I get close to nature and I get to smile at like my elders who are in my community, like, I just feel alive and I feel radically connected to all that is love and all that is life. And so, no, hate can't sustain, only love can. And it's one of the things we just really practice and promote. We, our number one core value

• 55:59Speaker 01

  in Girltrek is radical welcome, which means that everyone is welcome. And we target our programs to those who need it most because we are loving and everyone is welcome. So, to just, to double click on your research that you can't sustain hate, you just can't sustain, you have to walk toward like what lights you up. You really do.

• 56:24Dan Harris?

  Well said. I just have one last question for each of you. Dr. Bennett, on, one of the things you referenced earlier that can help us with our motivation is tracking, you know, getting progress reports, celebrating milestones. And I know Girltrek is really good at this. But it feels like there's a pitfall here, which is obsession or orthorexia, which is a term I've learned recently, but it's like an unhealthy obsession with getting healthy. So, yeah, I mean, I like that my watch tells me how many steps I've taken. I don't like the self laceration I can get into around not having achieved the goal, whatever that is. So, any thoughts from you on how to walk that line? And Morgan, of course, I'd be interested in your views as well.

• 57:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, I normally suggest to our patients and, you know, in our treatments that you pick something that works, that speaks to you, and something that you can stick with. So for some people, it might be an app or a device or a wearable of some sort. I think the orthorexia concern is not much of a concern for most people. Actually, the opposite is, which is that you can spend a lot of time and money investing in technologies and then stop wearing them pretty quickly if they're not things that really speak to you and your particular, the ways in which you tend to consume information. I'll tell you, the patient who I've had who was most effective in tracking her own data over time, simply went out and bought one of those old day planners.

• 57:48Speaker 02

  And at every day, if she hit her goal, she put a smiley face. And if she didn't hit her goal, she put a sad face. And she was probably the most successful tracker I've ever worked with. It doesn't have to be sophisticated, but it needs to be some way for you to track how you're doing and for you to be able to provide that data back to yourself. Like what we know about self-monitoring or tracking is that it's a way for you to be able to learn from your own data. So whatever speaks to you, whatever works is the way to go. I weigh myself every day, not because I care very much about the number on the scale, but because it's something I can do every single day and kind of keep track of. I've learned over time not to become obsessive about it or not to overreact to end to the

• 58:30Speaker 02

  number on any particular day, but I can't miss that scale when I walk into the bathroom in the morning. And that's a pretty good way for me to make sure that I continue to track. So again, I would say whatever tracking modality works is can be very helpful.

• 58:43Speaker 01

  Thank you for that, Gary. I'm horrible at tracking. And in fact, Girl Check is creating a mobile app because just now, after a decade, because I've never been invested in like tracking anything, but it works as per Dr. Gary's recommendation. And so we're creating an app. But what I've been a proponent of all these years is auditing your energy and figuring out, at the end of the day, do I feel good? And if I feel good, figuring out what I did today that made me feel good and repeating those behaviors. And so like almost on a microcosm of what you're talking about, Gary, is just really being aware and truly grateful for when you feel great.

• 59:26Speaker 01

  And so someone said this earlier, when you go out for a walk, you just feel good. You're just out there and you're just feeling good. And so paying attention to that feel good has been really important to so many walkers in our movement and trying to repeat and stack that feel good. It is in many ways a gratitude practice of thinking about, oh, my God, I feel great and I am grateful for that. And let me kind of pay respect to that good feeling right now by attention to it and then just doing that as much as possible. So that has been a kind of a mental discipline and fortitude and mindset that I've tried to cultivate in my own life that's been very helpful. Contrary, when I feel terrible, it's because I skipped three days and I have not moved to my desk.

• 1:00:11Speaker 01

  And I'm like, oh, pay attention to that as well.

• 1:00:15Speaker 02

  At the risk of going down the nerdy rabbit hole on this one, I'll just say that there's a pretty big debate in scientific community as we have had this proliferation of devices that make it easier for us to track. There are some devices that will do all the tracking for us and then give us a little feedback at the end of the day. You don't have to do anything. And then there's some approaches to tracking that require more effort on the part of us to sort of write down how we're doing or to take a look at the end of the day at what our data suggests and then extrapolate some meaning from it. And many of us believe that having some skin in the game, having some involvement, having, doing some work in your tracking is a far better way to experience the cognitive benefits

• 1:00:58Speaker 02

  of self-tracking, which are the ability to look at your own data and to create meaning out of them for you. If you rely on a device to do that entirely, it may miss the mark. It may not speak to you and give you the kind of data that you need to be able to discern what in the day was the strategy that you used to overcome that barrier or what gave you the motivation in the afternoon to be able to get up and take that walk after, well, as we're feeling a little tired, right? Like that actually being, having some involvement in the process is really critically important. So I always tell our patients, it would be better for you, in my estimation, to, at the end of the day, say to yourself, did I meet the goal of hitting my 30 minutes a day of activity? Yes or no? That's as ineffective a tracking mechanism as is having

• 1:01:41Speaker 02

  a device measured for you. If you actually pick up the pen, think about the answer to the question, write down your yes or no, and then really think over the course of the day, what worked for me? How did I feel? How am I going to replicate the success on the next day? So again, it doesn't need to be overly complicated or overly expensive, but something that will activate your involvement in the process, I think is the most successful approach here.

• 1:02:02Speaker 01

  Look at that. I've been tracking data all this time, Gary.

• 1:02:06Speaker 02

  Tell me.

• 1:02:06Speaker 01

  Look at that. That's great. That's great. Thank you for having us, Dan.

• 1:02:13Dan Harris?

  My pleasure. Before I let you go, can you just, I'll start with you, Morgan, can you just give people, if they want to learn more about your organization, where can they go to do that?

• 1:02:21Speaker 01

  Sure. Girltrek is an awesome organization of a million women who walk in their neighborhoods for better health all across America. You can learn more at girltrek.org. We actually just got off of social media. So I used to say all those social media handles, but we decided we wanted to meet in the streets instead. So meet us in the streets. Go to our website. Our app is coming soon to the app store near you. It will be called Girltrek Underground, where you can have a million black women cheering for you as you walk toward your healthiest, most fulfilled life.

• 1:02:52Dan Harris?

  And Gary, what about you? Do you have a website or anything else you've put out in the universe that people want to, you know, follow you?

• 1:02:59Speaker 02

  I'm at Dr. Gary Bennett on all social channels until I get smart like the Girltrek team and get off. But I strongly suggest before you come to my site, go to Girltrek's there. They're just absolutely terrific organization, doing great work in the world.

• 1:03:10Dan Harris?

  Yeah, what you're doing is incredible, both of you, but in particular, what Girltrek has achieved. So it's such a pleasure to talk to both of you. And yeah, thank you for your work and thank you for your time today.

• 1:03:20Speaker 01

  Thanks, Dan.

• 1:03:21Speaker 02

  Thank you, Dan.

• 1:03:27Dan Harris?

  Thanks again to T. Morgan Dixon and Dr. Gary Bennett. Awesome to talk to them. I also want to shout out the person who turned me on to Morgan and Gary. His name is Jeffrey Walker. He's an awesome dude. He has his own podcast called System Catalysts, where they did an episode on Morgan and Gary. We'll put a link to his show in the show notes. You should check out that episode and check out the entire show. It's really interesting. Also, don't forget that this episode comes with a guided meditation called Mindfulness is Portable, only available to paying subscribers over on DanHarris.com. We've been running this experiment of releasing guided meditations during the month of June for all of the Get Fit Sanely episodes, and we've enjoyed it so much and received such

• 1:04:09Dan Harris?

  solid feedback that we're going to be doing it during July and August as well. Lastly, thank you to everybody who worked so hard to make this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson, Caroline Keenan, and Eleanor Vasili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our managing producer. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Cashmere is our executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.