How in just 1 day I stopped a bad habit I had for 10 years: we are what we design for, not what we think about

What if everything you thought about changing habits is backward? Most of us believe high performance comes from discipline, willpower, and pushing ourselves harder. But what if your environment shapes your behavior far more than your intentions ever could? What if high performers are just better at putting themselves in a situation to win? Drawing from recent conversations with behavioral scientists and my own experience as an executive coach, I've discovered something revolutionary: the secret to lasting behavior change isn't trying harder, it's designing smarter systems around you. Humans possess a unique superpower that sets us apart from every other species on earth. While animals must adapt to their environments, we can consciously create environments that transform us into the people we want to become. Through personal examples, including how I broke a decades-long lip-picking habit overnight, I reveal the 3-part habit loop that governs our behavior. By manipulating these elements we can achieve effortless change where willpower repeatedly fails. Research consistently shows that environmental design strategies work dramatically better than information or motivation alone. This isn't just about personal habits. The principles apply equally to leading teams, raising children, or influencing friends. As Charles Duhigg's work shows, approximately 40% of our behaviors are habitual, and even our non-habitual actions are largely triggered by environmental cues. By shifting your focus from changing yourself to changing your surroundings, you'll unlock a more effective path to transformation. Ready to redesign your environment and watch your habits transform? Listen now and discover how to leverage the science of behavior change to create lasting results in your life and work. Text Me Your Thoughts and IdeasSupport the showBrought to you by Angela Shurina Behavior-First Change Leadership & Culture Transformation ConsultantEXECUTIVE & OPTIMAL PERFORMANCE COACH

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Hey guys, listeners, readers and leaders. Welcome back to another episode of Change Wired Podcast. My name is Angela Sharina, I'm your host, I'm your executive coach, 360 partner in change leadership, change management and changing your own behavior. So you could evolve, grow, create better life experience for yourself and more positive impact in the world. Yesterday, I had two amazing podcast recordings with applied behavioral scientists who spend quite a lot of time in business world,

• 0:41Speaker 00

  helping businesses to shape behavior externally for customers, for example, and internally for their culture. And it made me think about high performance. I think for the first time in my life, I realized that high performance is so much less about a person, so much more about the environment and the system in which that person operates. And I think the beauty of being a human being is that we can think of the performance or the person we want to become, and we can design systems around us to create this outcome. Like, this is freaking amazing. Can you...

• 1:27Speaker 00

  No other animal can do that. Not chimpanzees, no cats, no birds. They can just stuck with the environment around them. And not only that, they are not very adaptable and just stuck being well fitted or well fit for a specific environment. And that's why they can't really move freely, whereas we humans, not only can we adapt to the environment really, really fast, and our environment start shaping, starts shaping us internally and externally, whether that's, you know, people environment and just the place where you live, the culture. So not only we adapt really fast to that, which also has its downside. But also, we can consciously and intentionally

• 2:10Speaker 00

  shape those environments to make us the people we wanna become. Isn't that freaking cool? And today, guys, you're gonna learn in small ways, which usually end up being quite big things, in small ways, how to shape your own behavior, specifically your own habits that sometimes work for you really well and sometimes they don't work for you really well. So by the end of this podcast, you're gonna learn how to change your own behavior in so much more effective way, especially when it comes to habitual behaviors, which compound. And if they are not working for you, not serving you,

• 2:54Speaker 00

  they can bring negative results, even when it's a small thing. So let's start with small things. I had this habit for quite a while. I would bite or pick my lip with my fingers when I was in deep thought, working on my computer on something. And I would start picking my lip, and not in like cute kind of way, but bleeding kind of way. And then I would end up with cranky lips and not really able to put lipstick all properly. Just, and also, I don't know, it just was like kinda like biting your nails. Not a good habit to have. Your nails suffer and you kinda feel not that great.

• 3:40Speaker 00

  And probably there are better ways to manage your thoughts or a little bit of anxiety, you know, the main trigger. Well, let's, let me stop here. So the habit, you know, that habit of picking my lip. And I couldn't stop for probably like decades, until I did something different. First, I asked myself like, what would a coach with a lot of experience helping other people change their behaviors and habits to achieve their goals? What would that coach advise myself?

• 4:13Speaker 00

  And I thought, well, I would go to the basics. How do habits work?

• 4:19Speaker 00

  And I remembered from the work by Charles Duhie. He was the one popularizing it. That habit, habits work in this loop. You have cue or a trigger, something internally or externally that reminds you of certain behavior. That triggers, kind of like push of a button, launches an app or a program on your phone or on your computer. So that cue, that trigger launches this program in your brain. And then you sort of act on autopilot. For me and my leap, well, before we jump into that, you know, Charles Duhie in two thousand and twelve, he released this book, The Power of Habit, Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business,

• 5:04Speaker 00

  which distills complex scientific and psychological research into practical framework for understanding and changing human behavior. Now, Charles Duhie did not invent anything, but he popularized it and made it into a good actionable framework. The research was actually done like a century before him in the mid of twentieth century. So cue, action, reward. Cue, the trigger can be internal or external. So let's take my leap picking habit. It had this external trigger. I would sit down in front of my computer and start working a cognitively demanding task, which was challenging and produced some anxiety in me.

• 5:49Speaker 00

  And that was my brain's way of reducing that anxiety and occupying my also body, which I'm usually very active and fidgety. So that was, I guess, also a way for my brain to fidget, to calm myself down and. Keep working on the important things. Whichever the queue, like whatever the exact reason, nobody will probably ever find out. But then there was another thing, this queue internally. My lips would be dry and there was some discomfort. And that feeling, oh, my lips are dry. Let me do something about that with my fingers biting my lip, right?

• 6:33Speaker 00

  Maybe there is a piece of like skin. So that was external and internal trigger. Now, I couldn't do much about sitting down, working in front of my computer. I did also notice then when I would work in a coworking space with people around me, I would do it less just because I would monitor myself more. And that didn't really look really nice, biting my lip to bleeding. So that was external, so I couldn't change much about that. And but I could change something about this internal queue of my lips being dry, that one. And I also could make it more, less convenient and more messy.

• 7:18Speaker 00

  So what I decided to do, I would have either some lip balm or even better, some bright lipstick and I would put it on my lips often. And especially when I feel that my lips are getting dry. And that would make the whole picking my lip behavior messy. And then, you know, my fingers would get greasy, so that wasn't convenient. So I didn't eliminate the trigger, the queue completely, but I disrupted it. You know, kind of like when you try to play a record or maybe a piece of music and the DJ does like. So that is the pattern interrupter, the trigger interrupter,

• 7:59Speaker 00

  which did not allow my whole program launch properly. Or at least it made it a lot more, it made me a lot more aware of this thing that I was doing. And so almost instantly, this whole habit stopped because.

• 8:15Speaker 00

  Hey, whenever I would feel that trigger, I would sit down in front of my computer and my lips would be dry. I would use lipstick and all of a sudden it's all greasy, inconvenient. If it was bright lipstick, it's also messy with the potential to look silly, especially if I was in a coworking or just face with people. And so that's how I stopped my lip picking behavior forever. And now whenever it reappears, it just proves that long standing habits never really die. I, I would use this, you know, put some chopsticks, some lip balm or lipstick and I always have it with me. And plus my lips get additional moisturizing, so everyone wins.

• 9:00Speaker 00

  The point here, we often, humans, think that by consciously thinking about changing our habits or trying to willpower or discipline our way out of certain behaviors, like that is our best bet. We're, you know, we can do it as if we just try harder. Where in reality, what research and science shows us is actually not the case. Changing your environment and interrupting those triggers and cues with some sort of technology, like, you know, putting lipstick or making it less convenient, which we're gonna talk about more in, in a bit. It works a lot, a lot better.

• 9:47Speaker 00

  Another piece of research, so I just finished a book, Behavioral Science in the Wild. And it's all about what behavioral economics, behavioral research can do in different arenas, from business to government, to health, to paying taxes, to saving money. And there was a chapter on healthy eating. And the chapter was about how to incentivize or promote healthy eating behaviors at scale. And they analyzed a bunch of data and research. And what they learned is that what works the best is making healthier food a lot more convenient and unhealthy food inconvenient.

• 10:28Speaker 00

  What it might look like with a lot of my clients, I tried this and it works so beautifully. One of the examples, a client liked pineapples.

• 10:39Speaker 00

  But they failed to eat them a lot. And when we dug into that, what I learned is they would buy a whole pineapple and it would sit on their counter. But because you had to peel it before you could eat it. And usually when you're hungry and you usually are short on time and in a rush, you wouldn't get to peeling that pineapple because like I don't have time and I wanna eat now. Like what's available? When we decided to just buy pineapples in pieces, cut and ready to eat and put it in the fridge on the shelf where they can see it and it's right in front. Guess what? On the next call, they ate that pineapple just fine.

• 11:22Speaker 00

  Another one, somebody trying to eat less ice cream or a particular sweet or particular kind of food. Believe it or not, leaving it at a store and not going into the aisle where your ice cream is works a lot, a lot better than trying to willpower yourself to eating less ice cream. Or what research also showed, just buying ice cream in smaller containers. Like for example, if you struggle to not eat the whole gallon of ice cream, buy that ice cream in small containers. Now you might think, well, it's a little bit more expensive.

• 12:00Speaker 00

  Yes, but you will eat less of it, which makes the whole thing sort of equal. You might spend a little bit more money, but you'll eat less of it and your health wins. So I'd say I'd take that, that benefit uh any time.

• 12:19Speaker 00

  But another one, another insight here. When people were asked what they liked most and what they thought was more effective, making food convenient or inconvenient, or giving them more information about healthiness and in healthiness of food. For example, putting calories upfront on the food or telling with different, you know, the, there is traffic light system like green, healthy food, uh red, eat less of that food.

• 12:51Speaker 00

  People thought that their willpower, their knowledge, their discipline, their decision making will work a lot better. And this additional information, additional nudges in a different way of presenting information would help them a lot more with making better choices. They also thought that when food in the supermarket, for example, is at your eye level, that also would help a lot. And they thought that would be more effective. But research showed again and again and again that that is actually the least effective way of changing anyone's eating behavior. And so now back to you, dear listener.

• 13:31Speaker 00

  Where can you, where do you now try changing your behavior, your habits? And you try willpowering yourself out or in it. For example, you might wanna start running every morning. Have you tried, as Charles Duhigg, the author of this habit book, who popularized the whole concept? Have you tried putting your shoes out in front of your bed? So when you wake up, you see the shoes, ideally with your whole fitness gear, or maybe even going to bed in your shorts and your T-shirt, something very comfortable that you can just run out of the door?

• 14:14Speaker 00

  Or putting your clothes right there by your shoes? So you just put your shoes on, you get this reminder, and you can be getting out of the door right away. For Charles, that worked magic. Plus, he created a reward. You know, the third pillar or point in the loop is the reward, which also is very potent in helping you to wire a certain behavior or removing that reward if you don't wanna do that habit any longer. Like for me, I guess with my lip picking behavior, the reward was feeling less anxiety, having my hands occupied with something so my doubts maybe don't bother my mind so much and I can just dig into work.

• 14:59Speaker 00

  But then, you know, I stopped doing that and I started... Other things like breathing more or going for walks when I would feel if anxiety or drinking some nice cup of skinny hot chocolate. Whenever I would feel a little bit more on edge and not necessarily able to start the work or just dive deep into my work. Also, listening to music, as I found out, helped a lot, especially Brain FM, which is specifically designed to help your to help your mind stay in focus, especially if you have this mind that tends to sort of jump from one place to another and you needed to focus what that music specifically does.

• 15:42Speaker 00

  It gives you additional a point of focus, which eliminates this destructing thought loop when you just jump all over the place with your thoughts, right? So, music is in itself a very rewarding experience for the brain itself. So, I changed the reward, I disrupted the queue and almost instantly my habit disappeared. And Charles Duhigg, in his case, when he was trying to run, he put his shoes out and his clothing out and then after the run, he would reward himself with these amazing smoothies that he absolutely loved. I just recently listened to a podcast with Charles Duhigg where he talked about what changed since he last changed the book.

• 16:27Speaker 00

  And what he talked about as he even more convinced now and does more research and thinking and writing about that. That environment is what drives predominantly our behavior, not our conscious thinking and decision making. They say up to forty percent of our behaviors are habitual, but even our non-habitual behaviors in most cases are driven by something in our environment. Something you see, something that somebody told you, something that you internally feel. Like, for example, when you feel stressed, you must, you might turn to eating or when somebody tells you something, you start, I don't know, thinking about.

• 17:09Speaker 00

  Or watching more TV or whatever that might be. Most of the behaviors in our lives are triggered by our environment. Again, whether that's people in our environment, whether that's where we spend our leisure, where we live. And so a smart human, what a smart human would do to change your own behavior or behavior of people like your kids, your spouses, your friends, your teammates. What a smart human would do is look at the environment and ask themselves. And also, don't be shy, use ChatGPT, ask for advice. It's very well versed in this behavior loop

• 17:53Speaker 00

  theory and practice. So ask ChatGPT or whatever AI agent to use, like, how can I redesign my environment to help my team, my kids, my spouses to eat certain things or do certain behaviors? So that what a smart human would do with the knowledge of behavioral science and how habits work. And that's what I said myself, like, what would a coach do in this situation with this leap picking behavior? Well, the coach would ask, what's the habit? What's the cue? What's the action? What's the reward? And what's in my control? How can I disrupt or redesign that cue and trigger? So the behavior, the whole change of behavior doesn't happen.

• 18:36Speaker 00

  And I did that and it worked like magic. That's why probably people studied it and put books out there because it works so well in life and in business. Don't forget that the name of the book by Charles Duhigg is The Power of Habit. Why we do what we do in life, in business? Because again, at least forty percent of our behaviors are habitual. And on top of that, our non-habitual behaviors also are triggered by the environment around us. There is a reason why there is a longstanding saying, you are, as a human, an average or five people around you or in your reference group. We are also very influenced by our social environment.

• 19:18Speaker 00

  So also, that gives you a clue into leading by example. So be that person in your environment who promotes and inspires and triggers better behaviors in people. You are a part of someone's environment as well.

• 19:38Speaker 00

  And that's it for today, guys. I hope you found a lot of insights, you learned a lot of insights, and you are eager to apply them, whether it's for changing your own behavior or behavior. So people around you, in your family, in your friendships, in your work environment. Please don't forget to share this podcast episode, to send it to someone, one person who might be struggling. Maybe they shared with you, "I'm struggling with this habit, not sure how to go about that." Or maybe collectively in your workplace, you are struggling to change some behavior that doesn't really work all that well for you. So share this, listen to this podcast together,

• 20:22Speaker 00

  and then discuss the concept, how you can implement that in your family, in your personal life, in your workplace. Also brainstorm with ChatGPT, and then instead of again looking at yourself, trying to change yourself, look at the environment, because we humans are changed much better and easier by the things around us versus trying to change yourself without changing the environment and expecting the result to last. That seems to be the dumbest approach of all. Thank you, guys, for listening. I thank you for tuning in. Thank you for your time and attention.

• 21:02Speaker 00

  Let's together change the world a couple of years at a time. Thank you, and till next time, keep learning, keep improving, keep growing, and keep changing.