Pod Insights Change Wired STOP celebrating your goals if you want to achieve them. About this episode Your biggest goals might be losing because your rewards arrive too late. If you have ever crushed a plan for a week, then slid back into old patterns, the issue is not that you are “lazy” or “not disciplined enough.” We are wired to repeat what feels good right now, and that wiring runs the show when you are trying to build consistent habits for long-term goals. I am Angela Shurina, and I break down a research-backed habit formation principle drawn from behavioral psychology and neuroscience...
Transcript 0:09 Speaker 00 Hi guys and welcome back to another episode of Change Wired Podcast. My name is Angela Shurina, I'm your host, I'm your partner in change, transformation, in bettering ourselves, learning about discovering more and unlocking and using more of our human potential in this world, so together we could live the most extraordinary lives and create the most extraordinary world all around us. Today, guys, we are talking about one of my favorite topics, building habits to create and sustain long-term goals and achievement.
0:50 Speaker 00 And today you're gonna learn like why so many people, how so many people get it backwards? And that's why so many people struggle with wiring the consistent behavior, the habits that you need to create in order to achieve and maintain results that you want in your life, whether it is to be in the best shape of your life till the rest of your life, or creating the business that will fuel your life, your impact in this world and fund all of your dreams, whether that's creating a relationship of a lifetime with someone special in your world, or maybe with yourself, you know, the most important relationship in the world.
1:35 Speaker 00 All of these goals that we care about in life that make our life worth living and meaningful and so much joy and fun, all of these goals are on the other side of habitual behaviors that we need to do. It's kind of like shower or brushing your teeth. If you want to have a clean, bright smile for the rest of your life, or I don't know, you want to be clean every day, you gotta take it daily, right? You gotta do daily. And
2:03 Speaker 00 Most people get the wiring of the behaviors. So you get to do it every single day wrong. And because of it, people struggle with so many habits that can be sticking much easier. You know, changing days, not in years. That's the tagline of this podcast. And today you're going to be learning one of those concepts, which is research backed, backed by almost like a hundred years of research on the mammalian brain that we share with other animals that tells us that, hey, this is how you wire habits and consistent behaviors if you wanted to stick, not for a season, for a month, for a week, but for life.
2:47 Speaker 00 And this is how you don't do that. And the most important takeaway from this podcast that you want to remember and sort of tattoo in your brain is that celebrating your wins, your big achievements and milestones and goals, it is important, but not for the reason you think it is. Celebrating your big goals will not help you to build habits to get to those goals. Like again, whether you want to build much better health and fitness, whether you want to build much better relationships with yourself and other people, whether you want to build a career or business, and you need to work on certain learning habits or a certain self
3:32 Speaker 00 improvement habits, a certain work habits, whatever that behavior is, which is hard, which is challenging, and you need to be repeating it to get where you want to be and stay there. Celebrating big moments isn't the way to get there. And fantasizing about those big goals, big accomplishments, big...
3:55 Speaker 00 Achievements also what research and science tells us isn't that effective or helpful at all at all. I'm finishing a book that's that's called rethinking positive thinking and it's all about a about the science of fantasizing or dreaming or envisioning our goals and achievements and our dreams and how it is actually not that helpful unless it is sustained and supported by other practices, one of the core practices you're gonna learn about today. But how did this podcast
4:34 Speaker 00 episode came to be in the first place? Yesterday, I tried something new. There is this amazing app, probably the best in the world, that helps a lot of people to build long-term habits for health, well-being, doom, N O O M. And they have a new addition to their main app, which is called Noom Vibe, which is more of a community place where people do live streams, audio live streams, where people share their achievements, like step counts, where people connect with each other, support each other, listen to audio streams, to have conversations with each other.
5:18 Speaker 00 If you tried Clubhouse at any point, then that's kind of very similar experience, but also with this like background of health, well-being and fitness and building habits to take care of yourself and build that health, fitness and well-being for life. But anyhow, so I was trying this live stream as I was invited invited by one of the main hosts on the platform. And one of the guests asked me this question.
5:49 Speaker 00 As a coach, how do you celebrate wins? And how do you help your clients and others celebrate theirs? It's super important to celebrate your wins to keep yourself going. And to each other, it replied, yes and no. Yes, acknowledging your journey matters and celebrating your achievements and progress, tracking your progress to build confidence and self-esteem, self-efficacy, or this belief in yourself that you can do hard things and achieve hard things. These are the mental foundations of a good life, personal and professional growth, feeling good about yourself on your journey.
6:30 Speaker 00 But for any goal worth more than a week of effort, like again, building that business, building that health, building that relationship, which is basically, again, everything you really care about in life, celebrating milestones isn't particularly effective, if not harmful. Celebrating the behaviors that you need to get there, that is what's super effective and what science and research in human behavior, including, tells us, celebrating the habits, the behaviors, the micro steps.
7:10 Speaker 00 We humans, guys, we are more like Pavlov's dogs. I don't know if you know about this experiment. You can look it up, Pavlov's experiments with dogs on conditioning. How, for example, he, Pavlov, he was a scientist. He taught the dogs to salivate and release digestive juices in the absence of food. And what he did was, he would ring a bell, give the dog a treat, and he would do that many times. And then after a while, he would ring a bell and give nothing to a dog.
7:49 Speaker 00 And the dog would still salivate and release gastric juices, anticipating the thing. So what created this sort of like response, this positive response in a dog, was the ringing of the bell, because it is was, it is. It was connected to the actual reward and feeling good and obviously getting some nourishment. And the the main feature of that experiment, one of the main features which then was researched further in other experiment was that the reward to create this conditioning, this response of physiology
8:28 Speaker 00 to the ringing of the bell, the reward had to come really, really fast after the after the signal. So I'm reading you a quote from Science Direct and one of the research papers there. If you delay a treat, and that's talking about dogs training, by more than, and pay attention here, guys, one point three to two seconds, not minutes, seconds. If you delay the treat more than one point three to two seconds, the training quickly loses its effectiveness. Research shows that dogs fail to connect the reward to the command when delay exceeds this window.
9:12 Speaker 00 Instead of rewarding the desired action, you risk accidentally reinforcing a completely different unrelated behavior your dog just happened to do, right? The thing is, we still share our mammalian brain with dogs. And even though maybe the window is not two seconds, although later on BJ Fogg, one of the top researchers of habit formation in the world, he did his experiments as well and confirmed that when the reward is not immediate, the habit formation happens a lot longer and is a lot less effective.
9:52 Speaker 00 In fact, things like drugs are so effective at forming your habits because you get such a positive emotion or response of your physiology in such a fast manner that the brain wires that habit, this addiction, almost instantaneously. And the faster that reward or the dopamine Hit hits your system, the more addictive the drug or any experience is. So, speed does matter for your brain as well. That's what you want to understand. Speed of the reward that follows the behavior that you wanna repeat. That's what you wanna really, really understand.
10:37 Speaker 00 With dogs, you know, ring a bell, do the right thing, get a reward. That's how you train your dog effectively. That's how you also in humans build consistent action, consistent habits. And consistent action is what actually gets you the goal. The goal won't build itself without the consistent action. So do the behavior, immediate reward, newer wiring of the habit. Like a drug does, but you know, you probably never gonna have a habit that's like a drug. But you want to understand the principle, speed matters. And then you have desire to repeat and the more you repeat the action. Of if it's, you know, the action that you wanna repeat that leads you towards your goal.
11:22 Speaker 00 The more you repeat the action, the faster you're gonna get to the goal. Right? In my younger years, before my eighteen years in coaching, before all my certifications, before I understood how the brain actually works for wiring habits and consistent behaviors. I thought, set a big inspiring goal, remind yourself of it often. The rest is discipline and willpower. And I was so wrong, guys. And I really reached my long-term ambition. I really cared about, whether that's personal life, fitness or my business ambitions. This false belief stole my life for a good decade from the progress that I really desired.
12:07 Speaker 00 Willpower, guys, is scarce. Motivation is unreliable. Discipline is a subject to your mood and energy levels. The brain doesn't care about your milestone. Not really. Six months or live alone a year, a decade from now. What your brain cares about is the cookie, quote unquote, the reward, the treat right now. And the question is, are you giving that reward to your brain every time you do the right behavior? Or like most people do, hating your way through the whole process, hoping that once you hit the goal, you somehow will love the process that also is needed to maintain that goal. Right?
12:49 Speaker 00 So when I stopped fighting my brain and started working with it, everything changed. Right? And now, based on nearly 100 years of behavioral research, I make myself feel good every time I do the right behavior, and not when I achieve my goals. And to be honest, once you learn how to love the behavior that leads towards the goals that you want, celebrating your milestones and your goals is actually quite useless. You'll achieve your goals even without celebrating them. Although, again, it is very helpful to learn from that, to acknowledge, build it self-efficacy, self-confidence feeling. But to achieve those goals, all you need is start feeling good,
13:31 Speaker 00 really good, about the behavior you need to get there. Again, back to dog training. Do the trick, get the treat immediately, in one, no more than 1.3 to 2 seconds. Repeat, and then you get the skill. Human goal achieving works the same way. Again, we share our mammalian brain. Do the workout, eat the right meal, go to bed on time. Then, as soon as possible, make yourself feel genuinely good about it under 2 seconds. Notice the change. Notice the feeling after. Give yourself acknowledgement. Give yourself high five. And maybe 5 minutes of your favorite show or a little piece of dark chocolate, if that's your thing. And then repeat.
14:16 Speaker 00 And your brain starts making you do more of what you need, just like a dog, wiring the habit without all the willpower you think you need. I give myself again high fives in the mirror or just like internal like yes, right? That like feeling that I did it. I'm like, I'm so cool. After every cold sales call, full like Mel Robbins style, you know, high five yourself in five, four, three, two, one, do the thing and then high five yourself. Sales calls are something I'm actively working on and I'm at the point where I almost love them. And I started recommending it to people like, yeah, I love doing that. It's like, you know, making friends, talking to people around the world.
15:00 Speaker 00 Like I genuinely start enjoying this process. And with my clients, I help them find their power move, their high five, the internal dialogue that makes them proud. Maybe small treat, five minutes of Star Trek, of France, or their favorite song, go a small square of dark chocolate, right? And within days, again, change in days, not in years, not months, something changes. The workout you used to dread, you start looking forward to it. And that's when we start talking. The biggest mistake, guys, again, people make trying to chase a goal, especially a long term goal, a goal that requires anything more than a day or week.
15:44 Speaker 00 The biggest mistake is treating the required behavior like necessary evil instead of deliberate joy, instead of focusing on learning how to love what you need to do consistently for quite some time, probably till the rest of your life. You hate the habit, the habit doesn't stick and nothing unpleasant does. And then there are no milestones to celebrate and you keep going yo-yoing between up and down, up and down, up and down, because what you hate just doesn't stick with your brain. And the wind doesn't last, even if you happen to achieve it. And you keep again yo-yoing between your new habits and your old self.
16:29 Speaker 00 So the moral of the story and the message of today's podcast, guys, is look at your big goals you're working toward right now, your milestones, achievement. And if you wanna, especially if you want to speed it up and bring it forward faster, what you actually need to focus on is not focusing obsessively on the milestone or the goal, but start learning how to love what you gotta do to get there. The more you love it, the more you'll do it, the more you'll do it, the faster you'll achieve your goal. So are you celebrating the right things at the right time? Remember Pavlov's dogs, remember dogs training, 1.3 to 2 seconds is all you got.
17:13 Speaker 00 Actually, BJ Fogg says that is the ideal timeframe for the human as well. So are you rewarding the right behavior that you need to do on the right timeframe versus a week, a month from now? Like, I am 100% sure no brain does this connection that you do a thing and in a month or a year, you reward yourself. Like, I don't know what kind of brain you think you have, but definitely not the one that makes such a long-term connection. That's why people find it so hard to do the right thing for long periods of time, because they didn't celebrate anything for like a year and then the whole thing feels like an uphill battle all the way. The battle that you don't necessarily enjoy and find pleasurable.
17:59 Speaker 00 Right, so are you celebrating the right things at the right time? Or are you still betting on willpower and a big celebration at the finish line? So willpower, discipline are a scam, guys. That is not. And celebrating your big wins, your big milestones is useful for a complete other reason than building the actual behaviors.
18:25 Speaker 00 That you need to do consistently and very often till the rest of your life to get the goal and keep it. So besides sharing this podcast with another person who keeps yo-yoing and going back and forth and not being able to do the right behavior consistently, like share this podcast with that person, share it with your team, share it with your loved one or a friend, anyone who you think it might be useful to, to do the right thing, enjoy the journey and get the result and achieve all of their long-term goals and keep them. Whoever that person is, share this podcast with them. And also reach views
19:07 Speaker 00 so we reach more ears around the world who are eager to achieve their big milestone and goals. Let's do it together. Without your help, I can't do it effectively. Besides that, that guys, thank you for tuning in. Thank you for listening and your homework for today is this. Look at all of your long-term goals that you're currently working on. In list all the behaviors that you need to consistently do in order to get there and stay there. And then ask yourself, how can I celebrate this behavior every time I do it immediately? And that's what going to help you to wire those habits in days, not
19:49 Speaker 00 in years, and achieve your goals a lot faster. Because again, at the end of the day, what builds your goal isn't your celebration, but the actions you take every day. Thank you guys for listening. Thank you for tuning in today. Until next time, keep growing and keep celebrating the right things at the right time.
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