De-Stress For Success with Isabella Ferguson
This podcast is about finding calm. I talk to the experts and bring you evidence-based practical methods to help you destress and live purposefully. In my early 40’s, I bowed out of a 20 year legal career “to spend more time with the kids”. However it was more than that. Decades of running on high anxiety and drinking to cope had had its toll on my nervous system and I was burnt out. I didn’t know it at the time, but from there I started years of recovery and ultimately stepped into a new way of living. I went to rehab, retrained as a counsellor and coach, created a successful counselling practice, became a motivational & corporate wellness speaker, took up painting and now support others to destress for success.
https://isabellaferguson.com.au
De-Stress For Success with Isabella Ferguson
The Science of Habit Change With Dr Gina Cleo, Author of The Habit Revolution
Ever wondered why certain habits stick like glue while we struggle to maintain others? Dr. Gina Cleo, habit expert, dietitian and author of The Habit Revolution, joins us to unpack the science behind our daily routines and how to break up with bad habits whilst making the good ones stick.
Dr. Gina Cleo is one of the world’s leading experts in habits and is passionate about translating scientific evidence into simple, actionable strategies to help improve health, wellness, mindset, and lifestyle-related habits – long-term. Gina has a PhD in habit change, is an Adjunct Professor at Bond University and an Accredited Dietitian.
Dr Cleo discusses the role of dopamine and how it influences both habits and addictions and discusses the importance of diversifying our activities to keep our brains engaged and growing. We examine the common myths surrounding habit formation and discuss practical tools and insights to help you reclaim control and break the cycle of problematic behaviours.
This episode is for you if you are wondering why your goals to get rid of bad habits such as scrolling on your phone, hitting snooze on your alarm, ignoring the gym or eating too many cherry ripes are not succeeding, or why you might be lacking motivation to stay the course and what you can start doing to move forward with your new health goals and jump into a healthier and happier version of your life today.
DR GINA CLEO
Join Dr Cleo's free Habit Change Masterclass: https://habitchangeinstitute.mykajabi.com/masterclass
Website: www.drginacleo.com
Free Habit Course: habitchangeinstitute.mykajabi.com/masterclass
‘The Habit Revolution’ Book, www.drginacleo.com/book
IG: www.instagram.com/drginacleo
ISABELLA FERGUSON
Free resource : "AM I DRINKING TOO MUCH?" FREE 5-DAY VIDEO SERIES
My web: https://isabellaferguson.com.au
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great quote that says, most of the time, what we do is what we do most of the time, and only sometimes do we do something different. Up to 70% of everything we do think and believe every single day is the exact same that we did the day before and the day before that and the day before that. It's our habits. They're automatic and impulsive.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the De-Stress for Success podcast. Did you know that we inherit our stress response from our parents or carers or generations before? But we can also train our brain to respond to stress differently. It's all about brain health. I'm Isabella Ferguson and I'm here to deliver to you the most up-to-date, evidence-based methodologies on how to find some calm.
Speaker 2:In my early 40s, I bowed out of a 20-year legal career. Decades of running on high anxiety and drinking alcohol to cope had taken its toll on my nervous system and I was burnt out. Now, as a 48-year-old corporate speaker, counsellor, coach, I'll interview the experts, ask the questions you wish you had the time to ask and I'll deliver some practical tips to you. I'm glad you tuned in. Now let's de-stress. I am so excited to welcome our next guest and when you listen to this episode you will know why. We are joined by habit expert and dietitian, dr Gina Cleo, to discuss how to break unhealthy habits, how to form healthy ones, you know, those ones that have been on the list for some time but have proven evasive. Dr Gina holds a PhD in habit change and is also an adjunct professor at Bond University. Gina is also the author of the Habit Revolution, which I cannot recommend highly enough. Absolutely stoked to have you on the podcast. Welcome.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much, Isabella. It's awesome to be here with you.
Speaker 2:Now I usually ask all of my guests the same question, and I'll ask this of you as well. Would you mind sharing with our listeners how do you know when you're stressed and what are some of your go-to ways of de-stressing?
Speaker 1:I know when I'm stressed, when I start to get a bit hypervigilant about stuff, when I'm like want to fix everything and I want to do it right now and there's sort of not a flow in things, I get a bit antsy. So that's sort of when I know I'm stressed and I can also notice myself have a reduction in my resilience so, for example, I might eat differently or snap at my partner more or get annoyed when my tech isn't working more. So then I know that obviously I'm stressed. Ways that I de-stress look to be completely honest. I have healthy ways and some not so helpful ways of de-stressing. Do you want the, the you know the habit expert version or the real Gina version? I think the real.
Speaker 2:Gina version Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Okay. Well, some of the healthy things I do which are also the Gina version, things like I love going for a walk in nature. I live on acreage so I'm really lucky to be able to just go out my backyard and be in nature. Some breath work, I found, really works for me a lot better than meditation, because my brain just can't seem to sit still a lot of the time. But breath work is dynamic so I can do that. Playing with my puppy is just the best. I love playing with my dog. She's so joyful and it just helps me to just come home to myself. Baking is also something that I really love to do to de-stress, and when I'm in a really good mood and I have that resilience, I'll exercise to help me either de-stress or certainly prevent me from feeling stressed over things I might not have stressed about if I was in a bed of headspace. They're great, they're great.
Speaker 2:It's like you've got a smorgasbord of options there to choose from, depending on your mood and, I have to say, walking in nature, it is one that probably is featured in 90% of all responses isn't it?
Speaker 1:It's such a goodie? Yeah, it is such a goodie, and research shows we only need 10 minutes of it.
Speaker 2:Ah, there you go Now examples of habits to ditch out there putting our phones down, online shopping, my cherry ripe, addiction. Habits to form, exercise, meditation, yoga, things like that. What are the main habits that you're aware of that Australians want to change?
Speaker 1:I love that you already asked me this question, because that means I got away with not exposing myself with my not so helpful de-stressing habits.
Speaker 2:Oh, what are they? No, go, go. What are they Really?
Speaker 1:quickly, yes, please. If I'm just like not in a very good state and I'm stressed, I will find myself dissociating with a trashy TV show or playing like Tetris on my phone, which, interestingly, neuroscience does show helps, but I don't think actually reduces my stress because I'm like anxiously trying to win this game. So that's my not so helpful strategy.
Speaker 2:They're not such bad ones.
Speaker 1:Oh, thank you. Yeah, I mean, I don't have anything too outrageous. I wouldn't be able to do what I do if I was, you know, going to things that were really self-sabotaging. Look, and I will find myself elbow deep in a packet of chips or Tim Tams as well, like, completely honestly, that also happens sometimes when I'm stressed.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that would be mine as well. That's my bad habits. It would be salt and vinegar chips and double coated cherry rip cherry ripes.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, you and I would have an absolute party if we were stressed together, because those are the things I would go to as well.
Speaker 2:And then you wake up the next morning going oh all right, let's put the sneakers on. Are those sorts of habits quite common in Australians that you have sort of found out in your research in terms of the sorts of habits we want to veer away from?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've done surveys with Australians across all ages and genders and, I guess, corporate levels with thousands of people and there are the top five habits that keep coming up no matter who I speak to, and they are snacking when we're not hungry. Scrolling on our phones too much is probably the top one snoozing our alarm in the morning instead of getting up and doing the exercise we said we would. Staying up too late, so binge watching TV and sort of sabotaging that way, or even scrolling and staying up too late and procrastinating. Those are the five top unwanted habits.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so they tend to be related around sort of health and food, but also just time wasting. We all know we're doing it, but it's hard to get away from.
Speaker 1:Interestingly, all those things give us a sense of pleasure and reward. You know, screen time gives us a sense of reward. Eating and chewing and things like sugar give us dopamine. They make us feel good. When we're procrastinating, we're essentially avoiding pain and seeking pleasure, and so that's going to give us a sense of reward. So it's no wonder we seek those things when we're feeling stressed or, you know, when we're tired or life just gets on top of us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yes, look, I know that dopamine is probably going to be part of the answer to this question, but look, how are we going to tell the difference between when our habits are veering into the territory of addiction?
Speaker 1:Habits and addictions share similar characteristics, but they are entirely different things. And you're right, dopamine is really the underpinning of what makes the biggest difference. So some characteristics of habits is that habits are repeated. Often they happen automatically without much conscious thought. Habits can be both positive or negative to our life and although it's not always easy, we can change any habit that we have. We can always create new habits or break old habits.
Speaker 1:Addictions, on the other hand, involve a compulsive need to engage in a particular behavior or use a substance despite its negative consequences. It often involves this feeling of being out of control and it can lead to physical or psychological dependence. And because addiction involves this loss of control, it's much harder for people to stop when they really really want to. It's not just a lack of willpower, it's so much more. It's actually our brain circuitry going. If I don't get this substance, I'm going to go in fight or flight mode and that's not good, like we are in panic stations.
Speaker 1:And what drives that a lot of the time is dopamine. Dopamine is our reward center in our brain and it's what drives motivation, anticipation and that sense of pleasure With habits. Every single habit that we have gives us that sense of reward, but it's in a much smaller amount than our addictive behaviors. So addictions tend to hijack our reward system. Addictions tend to hijack our reward system.
Speaker 1:There is nothing in nature that's going to make your dopamine times by 10 or times by 100, just like something like certain drugs do, or alcohol or nicotine. Something like chocolate might double your dopamine levels, and that's why we want to go back for more and more and more, because when the dopamine goes down, we're like, oh, I want another hit. Something like methamphetamine is going to times your dopamine level by an existential amount that you can't ever replicate that. So what happens is there's nothing in your environment that's going to make you feel that good, and so you feel like that's the only thing that you need in order to feel normal, happy, functional, and that's the of unnatural habits that we haven't found in, I guess our sort of primal life.
Speaker 2:They're new modern things, aren't they, that, I guess, tend to make other people a lot of money as well. You know, you've got the I'm thinking the gaming, the sugar, the alcohol industry, all the rest, that's right, that's right, and I guess the other factor is that with the addiction category, you're probably noticing it's impacting other sectors of your life a whole lot more if you don't have it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, or you're having too much of it, definitely because you sort of narrow your window of the things that you start to enjoy and so when you're narrowing that window, there are less things you're enjoying. Therefore, you get this very hollow vision of the circle of people that you're around or the activities you engage in. It's like, well, I can't drink all this alcohol and do this, and so I no longer do this because I am here engaging in this addiction.
Speaker 2:I find that fascinating and I think I've heard you mentioned that before. I've seen you in writing where you said that we need to make sure that we're enjoying a diverse range of experiences, and when I heard you say that I thought that is just so true and of course I keep coming back to alcohol, but I think it's also screens as well. Your world does narrow when you are focusing so much on that thing. So I guess the less experiences we enjoy, the more addicted we feel to something is what I've heard you say. Would you mind just expanding on that concept a little, because I think people find that quite interesting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's a really great quote that says most of the time what we do is what we do most of the time and only sometimes do we do something different. Up to 70% of everything we do think and believe every single day is the exact same that we did the day before and the day before that and the day before. That. It's our habits. They're automatic and pulsive.
Speaker 1:We don't feel invigorated, we don't feel alive really when we're in the monotony and the mundane of those routines, even if they're positive for us, like if you've got a habit of reading in the morning, even though that's a great habit, it's not necessarily going to make you feel alive, like doing something for the very first time does.
Speaker 1:It's not engaging certain parts of your brain, because your habits, you know, come from this really small part of your brain called the basal ganglia. It doesn't engage your prefrontal cortex, which is logic, problem solving, you know, like those decision makings. So doing something different really just involves doing something radical and it doesn't matter what it is. It could be like listening to a different genre of music, touching base with a long lost friend, wearing something in your closet that you haven't worn in a really long time, trying a different food, it can be anything, but it just expands your repertoire of behavior and actually also expands your repertoire of how you respond to things, because within that space of doing something different, there's growth, there's learning, there's understanding, there's compassion, there's all sorts of things that happen that are profound for the brain.
Speaker 2:That's fascinating, so really saying yes to new things, having many different options out there, many different options out there, it broadens your I guess just your life experience. It's actually helpful to make you feel alive and to thrive.
Speaker 1:I mean, it makes sense.
Speaker 2:It makes sense. So the habit loop, I now understand it's the creation, or what's key to the creation of our habits. What is this? Would you mind explaining that a little to our listeners?
Speaker 1:Of course, the habit loop describes the three ingredients that are found in every single habit, and those ingredients are the cue or the trigger, the routine or the habit itself, and then the reward, which we've briefly touched on. So every habit is triggered, and it can be triggered by something in our internal or external environments. Internal environment could be how you feel, so a trigger could be I'm feeling a bit sad or lonely, and your habit might be to eat some cherry ripe and the reward you get from that is a bit of dopamine. It makes you feel good in the moment, so that your brain then forms this positive feedback loop. That's like, hey, we felt really lonely and when I had that cherry ripe I now feel better. So next time I feel lonely, I know what to do and that's get a cherry ripe. And that's how a habit is formed in this loop.
Speaker 1:Without triggers, we don't have habits. If you never felt lonely, you wouldn't impulsively go and grab a cherry ripe. Or, for example, putting on your seatbelt is a habit that's triggered by sitting in the car. You don't get an urge to put your seatbelt on whenever you sit anywhere else. It's the only place. So if you remove the trigger, you essentially remove the habit entirely Makes sense.
Speaker 2:It really does make sense. So, in terms of breaking a habit, I guess, how do we do that and how long does it take? Like I've heard 21 days bandied about as a timeframe to break habits, but I see a shake of the head there, so maybe that's not necessarily true.
Speaker 1:Look honestly, though, isabella. If you think about it, if it took 21 days to break a habit, I feel like we would break all of our unwanted habits, because we can commit to something for three weeks if we really, really wanted it. Unfortunately, the research doesn't support that at all, so it can. To create a habit can take anywhere from two weeks to up to a year, and it's going to depend on a whole range of different things, like how habitual you are as a person, how complex the habit is, how much you repeat, how consistent you are with the habit, whereas to break an old habit interestingly, you can break an old habit overnight, or it can take you months Again, depending on how much you want to break it, how strong your intention is. Are you kind of like yeah, I really don't want to do that anymore? Are you like I'm done with this, this is just not part of my life anymore? Are you like I'm done with this? This is just not part of my life anymore?
Speaker 1:There's other psychological factors and also environmental factors. If you're living in a household that isn't a supportive environment, it's going to be much harder to break that habit. If you're trying to break a habit where you're exposed to the trigger a lot of the time. That's going to make it harder too, because our resilience wears thin after a while. So the time it takes varies, and really what it takes the more. I think the thing we need to focus on more is consistency, perseverance and determination. That's really. If you've got those three things you will change any of your habits. Our brain's designed to change.
Speaker 2:Okay, so it takes a degree of response. Well, personal commitment and motivation. There too, I'm hearing.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So in a lot of the work that I do there's that novelty factor. That happens when people want to change a habit. Right at the start. Yeah, they usually work, you know, eating, exercise or alcohol and then maybe I'm noticing, week two that novelty factor's died away and motivation is hard to keep up. Is there a key to keeping motivation void? Or you know, as a habit expert, what would you say to someone to really try and keep motivation at a rate that's going to help you achieve that change that you're wanting with your habit?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that dip you're describing is so common and to be expected, and I think one of the things that really helps is to expect it is to say I'm going to start week one feeling really motivated and really strong and persistent. Week two is going to be harder and week three is going to be even harder than that. And to expect it to get harder I think that sobering fact really helps to want to keep going. If you think of motivation or willpower or self-control, like a muscle, and the more you use it, the more exhausted it gets. So if you go to the gym and you were to do a set of bicep curls with a dumbbell, eventually your arm's going to get sore and you need to put the dumbbell down, rest your arm before doing another set of lifts. Well, self-control works in much the same way. So the more you're using it to resist temptation to make decisions, to initiate something, that is going to wear thin, which is why we start with all this like great feeling, huge intention, lots of self-control, and it wanes because we've been wearing it thin.
Speaker 1:The only way to replenish our self-control stores is actually to rest. It is to meditate, to have a really good night's sleep, to eat some carbohydrates, which is probably one of the reasons we, you know, go to carbohydrates in those times when we're feeling a bit weak. It's to rest your brain entirely. So we can do that, you know, periodically throughout the day. We can just have like a 10 minute break in every hour, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1:But our life and our society is not really geared for us to have these moments of space to replenish our self-control. It's like we finish a task, what's next? But also our life, you know. Just take a day you get up in the morning, you decide what to wear, you're getting the kids ready for school, you're driving through traffic, you're getting to work, there's a pile of emails, you have an uncomfortable conversation with someone. All these things are depleting your self-control. Yeah, no wonder it gets hard.
Speaker 1:And so I think one of the ways that's so important to maintain the course is, firstly, really tap into your reason why. Why are you doing it? Why is this more important to you than falling back into that unwanted habit? Yes, it's hard, it's going to really suck sometimes, and you'll be at a crossroad where you're like I really just want to grab that thing that I've been saying to myself I'm going to quit and then stop in that moment and go. If I continue to do that in five years time, what will my life look like? And if I can, if I stop doing it, what will my life look like then? So really tapping into your reason why and then accountability is an awesome tool and it's been shown to double our chances of success.
Speaker 2:Yes, and look, it's probably with every style of habit that you're trying to break. Willpower, I can hear, plays a large part in it, and I know that I mean a lot of the listeners here. They're just like probably every woman on the planet and man. We're stressed. We almost wake up stressed like hitting a nine out of ten, and we're doing that throughout the day. So I guess it kind of pays to release the stress valve throughout the day as much as you can so that you're not walking in the door susceptible to breaking the habit you're trying to kick.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I'm also hearing that there could be some mindfulness work that you can do and that seems to play into keeping you, I guess, in the present and calming you down. Is that something that you integrate into your habit? Change work?
Speaker 1:Yeah big time. So when you think of the habit loop, the cue, routine, reward happen in a split second and we're not even conscious that it's happening. The space between the trigger and the habit, that is where our freedom lies. That is the space where we get to make a decision rather than be reflexive or impulsive in our behavior. If I get the urge to grab a drink of alcohol and I just go for that urge and I have a drink, then I've strengthened that key routine association and I've actually made the habit stronger. It's not just that I've had a drink, I've actually made it stronger and I've made it harder for myself to break tomorrow. But if I get the urge and I stop just for two minutes, have a moment like a deep breath, a moment of reflection, and you create space between the urge and the behavior. There is so much power in that. That's the space where you get to make a decision, where you get to reflect on your values, where you get to decide if you want to do it or not, instead of just going for it mindlessly.
Speaker 1:Mindfulness actually also. It strengthens our prefrontal cortex, obviously. Mindfulness actually also it strengthens our prefrontal cortex, which is that logical part of our brain we never. We never grab things we know aren't good for us. Logically. It's always an emotional decision. So if we can strengthen our logical brain, that is hugely powerful when we're wanting to break an unwanted habit or create a new one. Change is hard. This is what I always say. Change is hard, but you are not stuck with your brain. You completely have the power to transform your life, to start fresh, to reclaim yourself at any moment and at any age.
Speaker 2:Thank you. That's what I find so empowering about the work that you do is that we're not just on automatic robot mode, that we've actually got a little bit of power, or a lot of power if we pause to kind of direct where we want our life to end up. Gina, I know that you have such great masterclasses and courses on your website and in fact I was just checking out your 12-week online series and I'm going to put a lot of that in the show notes so people will be able to look at the link and check it out. What would the 12-week course kind of look like? What's involved in that? If people are interested?
Speaker 1:Well, now, actually, when you sign up to the Creating Healthier Habits course, you get two courses, because that was the second one. You get access to both, but it's everything from what is a habit, why we have habits, how to recognize our own habits, how to create new habits, how to break old habits, why self-control doesn't work and all the things we need around habits. So things like what do we do when we have a setback, how do we try to manage those setbacks better and bounce back better, the importance of self-compassion, and it's all very evidence-based. So I'm a huge research geek, but I love translating that science into actionable and practical steps so that people can benefit the most from what we know is tried and tested and works. So that's what you would expect in those habit change courses that I offer.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Now you're busy. I know that you do a lot of speaking. You've got a book out running these courses. What's on the horizon for you at the moment?
Speaker 1:Life is busy, but it's awesome. You know, I'm really good at saying no to even great opportunities that I know might impact my lifestyle, because I'm aware that I need to replenish my self-control and to have those moments of rest, but I'd really. The thing that I want to work on now is creating a habit course to go alongside my book, the Habit Revolution. That really helped to guide the reader through my voice and to like offer really practical strategies, and, although a lot of it is in the book, I think having those like online modules is just another platform that some people like to learn through. I'm also creating a corporate course for organizations to use with their employees. So organizational habits, productivity, efficiency, well-being, all of that and this is like a long-term vision, but one day I'd really love to create an app.
Speaker 2:Yes, and you can almost track and change.
Speaker 1:Yes, oh yes, to track, to have like modules on there, to have meditations on there, like I. Just I have so much vision for this app, but it's such a big project I'm like, okay, this is in the future, future when I've got a little bit more space in my life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I can see the absolute enthusiasm and passion that you have for this work. Thank you see the absolute enthusiasm and passion that you have for this work, Thank you. Thank you for your time and energy in sharing all of your knowledge with us. I think it's invaluable. I know that there's this concept that we need to change our well, our habits really guide who we are and who we want to become in the future. So it is the foundation to you know, living a purposeful life.
Speaker 1:Wouldn't have said it better, totally agree.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much, Dr Gina Cleo.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for having me. You're welcome.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for listening to this episode. If you enjoyed the content, please don't forget to rate, subscribe or leave a review about this podcast. These three things really help to get this podcast out to people that might need to hear it. You can find me at wwwisabellafergusoncomau. Jump on my website. Check out all the resources I've got there about alcohol, stress and burnout. You can also book in a free introductory call. It's a 30-minute confidential chat. If you are looking for a counsellor or a coach to support you to drink less or to manage your stress, I'm always here to chat. If you've got a question, please do not hesitate to reach out. I hope you have a really good day. See you later you.
