Why You Have Bad Habits: and how to make them disappear without struggle.

Your “bad habits” might not be bad at all. When you eat late at night, pour a glass of wine even though it wrecks your sleep, or end up scrolling and binge watching instead of resting, your brain is often doing its best to manage overwhelm, exhaustion, stress, anxiety, and worry. Those behaviors are usually a self-regulation strategy, not a personality flaw, and you can replace them by learning how to get calm on purpose. We start with a real client message about fear, overwhelm, and the pul...

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  Hello and welcome back to another episode of Change Wired Podcast. Podcast dedicated to learning how, one step at a time, one habit at a time, one action at a time, to unlock more of our potential, to do better, 1%, or even less than then, just better, moving towards unlocking, fulfilling, and growing our potential and the positive impact we can create in the world every single day, and also live our extraordinary lives while doing so. Today, guys, we will be talking about how to really dial in, how to master your "bad habits",

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  but more specifically, we talk about why those bad habits happened to us in the first place. Like, doesn't our brain know better what is better for us? Why do bad habits like eating late at night, or drinking wine, even though you know it's gonna trash your sleep, or scrolling on your phone, or binge-watching Netflix even though you know you gotta sleep to feel your best the next day? Like, why those habits happen? Doesn't our brain know better that those things aren't really great for us? They don't work for our best version of self? Hey, like, why do they happen? And how can we make them happen less,

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  without having to create some sort of bucket or reserve of additional willpower and discipline, and getting strict on ourselves? Why do we do that? And how do we do better? How do we take more better care of ourselves instead? That's what we're talking about. Experience and practices from 18 years of my coaching career, and latest research on stress management, stress regulation, emotional regulation, recovery, all of this in a very short episode that you are about to dive in with me.

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  Based on the blog that I write daily on Substack, feel free to join the tribe of consistent self-regulated or well-regulated people. The blog's title is "You don't have bad habits, you just never learned how to get calm", and the promise is intentional calm protocol when you're overwhelmed, stressed, tired, wired, and anxious. Again, you don't have bad habits, guys. You just never learned how to get calm, and you're about to learn how to do just that. First, I'm gonna share a note from a client's conversation, one of our WhatsApp chats.

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  It was a really good one, like, it captured the essence of what you're about to learn. The note from WhatsApp. "The overwhelm and fear gives me the most issues, and gives me the most desires to eat off plan", and I think it's just feeling exhausted after a long day working and taking care of my babies while working. So this is from a client's message. You know, again, I've been coaching for 18 years, guys, and much of that time went into helping people dial in their health habits, eating habits, drinking less habits, the binge-watching Netflix or scrolling instead of sleeping kind of habits.

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  And nothing, nothing sums up the true cause of those behaviors better than this honest, clear, very self-aware note from a client. "The overwhelm and fear gives me the most issues and gives me the most desires to eat off plan, and I think it's just feeling exhausted after a long day working and taking care of my babies while working."

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  The client is not lazy, obviously, you know, working and taking care of kids, not weak, not broken, just exhausted. There is nothing wrong with you either, guys. When you decide to eat too much, drink too much, scroll, or binge-watch, you aren't self-sabotaging for some mysterious reason. You're just tired, overwhelmed, overstressed, and you haven't yet developed, haven't developed yet, the skills to get back to balance, to calm your mind, turn overwhelm into peace, turn stress into relaxation.

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  So the cookie, the glass of wine, the third episode at midnight, they're not the problem. They are your best attempt at a solution. Good news: a better solution is just a set of habits you can learn, a set of skills, away. And with practice, they become your second nature, and you forget about all the bad habits. Your healthy habits become your consistent new default.

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  And so, to help you start building the right kind of habits that cancel all of your bad habits without any willpower and discipline, I'm gonna share with you a very simple toolkit to help yourself regulate well. So all those other behaviors that don't serve you really well overall, your life, your health goals, your productivity goals, often, so those behaviors just disappear without you having to battle with them or struggle with them. Let's address one issue at a time. That's the best way to approach solving any problem. One piece at a time, you know? How do you eat a whole elephant? One piece at a time.

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  Overwhelmed, right? Just feeling like your heart is about to burst. There is just so much. It feels like even if you work 24/7, it will never get done.

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  The cause, the real cause? No clear filter for priorities, no system for capturing what's actually on your plate.

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  And the solution is quite simple.

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  Every Sunday, write down the most important things to get done this week. Like, the most important, not everything, the most important. I usually like to use a very small notepad, so I have this natural constraint, and I can't write all of it, just the most essential one. And when the page is over, it's done. And when I'm not satisfied with those priorities that I put on the page, and I turn the page, and I use a new page, and look, okay, these are my true priorities. But I'm only allowed to use one page on this small notepad, that I shared, by the way, on my Instagram, Angela Brain Body Coach, that's my handle on Instagram. So first, write down your priorities every Sunday.

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  Every day, choose what's essential for those priorities. Like, you have a big to-do list, but choose only those things that move those priorities in a meaningful way. And then, park the rest of stuff that comes up, or your ideas, or new to-dos, park it somewhere in the doc. I usually like to use Google Docs, so then, it's not in your mind, you're not trying to remember it, and it's not all over the place, but you have one document where you park those things, and then maybe check in on them, either at the end of the day or at the end of the week. And you'll never catch all the balls, guys. You will never do all the to-dos. As technology accelerates our progress,

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  there are gonna be more and more things on your plate, and you're gonna be less and less able to do it all. So you really gotta get good at prioritizing. So you will never catch all the balls, so pick the ones that matter. So this is how you deal with overwhelm. Figure out your priorities and write them down. And every day, choose the things that move those priorities, and park the rest of the ideas and to-dos in the doc of some sort for later review. Tired. Now, how do you deal with tired? First, you are supposed to get tired. You're not a machine. You are supposed to rest as well. Welcome to being human in a world where machines work 24/7. You're not a machine, guys.

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  You're human. Your biology requires sufficient rest.

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  If you want to feel and do your best, make peace with this fact that you are human, that you need rest and you get tired. You prioritize better, you schedule rest and breaks, so you show up as your best for what really matters and deliver the most possible impact. So this is your rest protocol as a human being, a really good one, based on the science of stress management, recovery, resilience, self-regulation. Schedule time in bed, eight hours. You might never get like the perfect sleep. Oh, you might. Work to that, like I teach my clients to get really good sleep, right?

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  So schedule time in bed for eight hours consistently. Every hour, take five, 10 minutes away from technology, just take a break. You'll be surprised how much more productive you get throughout the day when you take those breaks, instead of pushing to the point of exhaustion. Midday, between 12 and 3 P M. For different people, it hits differently. Take a longer break, 20, 30 minutes. Just, you know, eat, move, nap, do yoga, nidra, meditate outside, and moving is always better, especially with some sunshine and vitamin D, which all also brings additional boost to your alertness and focus later in the day. So midday, again, take a really good break away from technology.

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  And then at night, 30 to 60 minutes before bed, wind down. Do things that calm your mind, not wire it up. Read a book, play music, take a bath, spend time with loved ones. Your brain is not a computer. The shutdown sequence takes time. It's not on off switch. It's transition, just like most of the things in biological systems. Again, you're a human, not a machine. You're not supposed to be off by the push of some button. So that is how you get rested, the opposite of tired. Again, you're supposed to get tired, you're supposed to rest.

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  And then the last but not least, so we talked about how to deal with overwhelm, we talked about how to rest, so, you know, when you get tired, you get refreshed and you keep on going, working on important things and living highest possible quality of life. The last one, stressed, anxious, worried and wired, how do you deal with those states which are, which are actually useful and show you what to pay attention to? Challenges or possible, possible challenges, like in terms of anxiety, you know, about the future, worries also help you to pay attention to things that you might need to

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  address. So three things that work really, really well and will address almost anything that stresses you out and makes you anxious or worried. Journal it out. The best way to close your mental loops that keeps going on repeat, the best way to close those mental loops is to brain dump, to write it all down on a piece of paper. By the way, journaling works a lot differently than from typing, different brain circuits. So journaling is even used to process traumas and different therapies. It will work just as well for your daily worries.

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  A lot of people really underestimate journaling, like how effective it is to unwind your mind and to get the worries and anxieties out of the way. The second practice is breathing. Your biology, your nervous system, biochemistry, heart rate, shapes your emotions, thoughts and feelings. And breath, changing to calming breath, to longer exhales, to deeper exhales. So breath is the most effective tool you have to switch on calm biology, which then drives calm emotions, calm states and makes you, and distress you, makes you not anxious,

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  worried and helps you to feel lighter from biology up to your mind and emotions. So breathe, five cycles, 4 to 8 breathing is a good way to start. And then a couple of other exercises, cognitive exercises, control spheres, and another one that I love is fear setting, based on Tim Ferriss exercise that he developed for a reducing fear that might be holding you back from taking certain risks to live your life fuller, to live your dreams fuller. Control spheres, in a simple form, you, they don't even have to be spheres, you write

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  down everything that is out of your control and you shift your attention from there, your focus to what's in your control, you also write it down and then you take action, your brain cannot usually, well, not usually, your brain cannot be in two states simultaneously, anxiety and action. So when you start taking action, your anxiety start going away. So you are the most effective with taking action, that's just how your brain is wired, so take action to remove stress, worry and anxiety and take action on the things that you can control. That allows you to also shift your focus a lot faster from things that are out of your control.

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  And with practice, you just get better, you're like, okay, it is what it is, I can't control it, so let me think about things that actually are under my control, influence, and that is your zone of effectiveness. And zone of effectiveness is where, again, you can create impact, you can influence things, you can control things and create more positive outcomes. And once you again start taking action, that will reduce your anxiety, worries and stress and increase your feeling of efficacy, that you can do things, accomplish things and create positive outcomes. And fear setting is also very simple, it's all about what am I afraid of in detail? What is the worst case scenario that can happen here?

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  Then prevent, what can I do that will make this worst case scenario or bad outcome a lot less likely to happen? Like what can I do? And again, action, further removes anxiety and worries. And then how can I repair? How, even if the worst case scenario happens, how can I then get back to normal, to getting better? Once you talk yourself through that, what is my fear exactly, all the details, what the worst case scenario, what can I do to prevent it? What will I do to repair it? You'll be surprised how easy it is to not be fearful. It's like, oh, well, even if that happens, I'll be okay.

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  And you know, it might be uncomfortable, it might be painful in some way, but I'll be okay. And then like, okay, if I'm gonna be okay, then I might as well focus on things that, where I can take action, how I can improve things. So those exercises will help you to deal with most anxieties, worries and stresses to the point that they are manageable. Again, three main protocols here to deal with stress, anxiety, worries, so it doesn't get in the way of you living your best possible life. A, journal it out, out of head, on a piece of paper, so then you can be more present

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  for what's happening right now, dealing with the moment, and also just being more cheerful and positive. Journaling really helps you to process a lot of this mental junk that's happening in your head. Breathe, breathing turns on your calming biology and control spheres or fear setting by Tim Ferriss. Re-listen to the last part of our podcast if you wanna look into those protocols. I created a whole one pager for this whole podcast, how to deal with overwhelm, how to deal with when you're tired, how to deal with the feelings of stress, anxiety, worries and being just wired all the time.

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  If you want one pager, then email me, [email protected], [email protected]. Or just re-listen to this podcast. And don't forget, guys, to share this podcast episode with at least one other person who might be struggling with overwhelmed or feeling tired and wired and stressed and anxious and worried. Also, rate, review this podcast so we can help more people together around the world. And again, just to sum it up, when you are overwhelmed, it means just too much in your head and you need to clarify your priorities and park everything that is in your head

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  somewhere where you can store it. Your brain is not well designed for storing a lot of things and the more you try to store stuff there, the more overwhelmed you're gonna feel. So park it somewhere and know your priorities, you will never be able to catch all the balls. Tired, you're supposed to get tired, so learn how to rest properly. And again, we talked about a whole protocol that you can get if you email me, [email protected] or WhatsApp me using the link in the show notes. And stress, anxious, worried, wired, journal it out, breathe, and then control spheres and fear setting. Exercise, again, WhatsApp me for the full protocol.

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  If you'd like a simple one pager that you can print it out and stick it to the wall in front of your computer perhaps. And that's it for today, guys. Thank you for tuning in, thank you for listening. Again, just remember, why did we talk about all these protocols in the first place? Because your bad habits are not bad habits, they are the best attempt of your brain and your body to help you deal with overwhelm, stress, tiredness, to help you to relax, to chill, to calm down, to not feel overwhelmed. And once you apply better protocols, those bad habits will disappear.

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  I promise you, it worked for me, how I got rid of emotional eating and got into the best shape of my life for my entire life. And that is exactly how I helped my clients to lose weight, to get fit, to get peaceful, doing the, getting done the most important things. All of that is possible when you, again, start giving your body and your brain the solutions that work for you 360. And all the bad habits that are in your way will just fall off. Thank you, guys, for tuning in, thank you for listening. Connect on WhatsApp, the link is in the show notes. Share this podcast episode. Until next time, stay chill and keep growing.