Talk Notes
Transcript
hello and welcome to the Overflow podcast my name is Craig Booker the title of this episode is the loop a lot of the material for this week’s episode was inspired by Craig Rochelle’s book the power to change mastering the habits that matter most note I will talk a lot about mental health but please note this is not a substitute for therapy or mental health care I am not a counselor or a physician if you need help with mental health challenges please find a qualified mental health professional so last week we talked about flossing saved my life we were talking about if we want to make positive changes we don’t have to do really big miraculous things to make changes in our life we just have to start small with small habits we’re picking up from there this week we are talking about the title of this section is the loop in this chapter or this section Craig Rochelle goes on talking about telling this story and it he kind of takes a funny approach to it and he starts out talking about he’s talking about his dog Sadie and he starts talking about Sadie as if Sadie is a human being almost or he gives you the impression but he throws some humor in there about about Sadie uh you know messing in their yard and so uh he talked he tells this great story about Sadie to illustrate a point and he said Sadie follows predictable routines based on visual cues so he goes into a describing how you know when he goes to the back door and he I believe he grabs a leash that Sadie knows what’s going to happen next or if you know he grabs I guess the garbage cans and starts making his way down the driveway Sadie knows that they’re taking out the trash and Sadie’s running down the driveway he’s using these illustrations of his dog Sadie to show how Sadie follows these predictable routines based on visual cues likewise as human beings we tend to do the same thing like Sadie we are creatures of habit we respond to simple cues and if we’re going to start healthy habits and stop hurtful ones we need to First make sure we we understand how habits work what is a habit a habit is like autopilot or cruise control for your brain the human brain seeks out ways to save energy and one of the ways it accomplishes this is through habits habits allow us to do things without engaging the brain to think about them or the need to make decisions quote Craig Rochelle says a habit allows a good or bad behavior to happen without your brain having to take charge you know some of the examples I think that he discusses in this chapter are like if you’ve ever driven a vehicle maybe to work or to a place that you go to frequently you know sometimes you get there and you don’t even remember how you got there or you don’t remember driving there and that happens because your brain has formed a habit for going to that destination um and so it’s pretty crazy that our brains can do that um but we get in a routine and that’s how our brains can serve energy is through that habit how are habits born and there’s Concepts that a lot of experts agree upon and these that are presented first and the notes are Q like c-u-e response reward so another habits expert if you haven’t heard of James Clear James Clear wrote a book called Atomic habits if you’re if you like to read or listen to audiobooks it’s a it’s an awesome book to check out and learn more about the process of forming habits but James Clear adds a fourth option that Craig Rochelle references in this so you still have the cue craving the response but he adds a fourth reward just to give a little bit of detail on each of these a q is a trigger that alerts your brain to go into autopilot by engaging The Habit craving is the physical mental or emotional need the cue leads you to want to satisfy and the response is the behavior you routinely fall into and then there’s reward and the reward is how the behavior makes you feel another quote if you engage in the same Loop Q craving response reward enough times the process will become automatic and that’s Craig Rochelle we’re going to get intentional about our cues so these are things that if you already have the Habit you probably don’t even recognize that they’re there he goes into detail about some potential cues the different kind of categories and one of them is place so a specific place a time a mood different moments and people so Place time mood moments and people places and a place can be the cue that initiates initiates a habit Loop example when you get in bed your body knows it’s time to sleep now that’s kind of given that you don’t do a lot of other things when you go to bed like you don’t stay up and watch TV a lot you know a lot of other activities like reading in bed experts recommend that you only sleep in bed right so your body has that cue to you know get you into the proper mood or state of mind to sleep Place could be your bed if you work at a desk and you only use that desk for work your body or your brain would know that when you go to that desk it’s time to work there’s times certain times can trigger behaviors example if you typically exercise early in the morning you might feel inspired to go for a run or ride a bicycle at night when everyone is asleep you may tend to worry as you lie in bed the book says time and place matter a lot when we create a plan for establishing new habits and ending old ones time and place will will be essential so these are really important things to take note of when we’re trying to establish new habits or possibly when we’re trying to stop old ones here’s our strategy we’ll create time and place triggers to start a good habit we will remove time and place triggers to stop a bad one next category is moods moods can cue cravings and lead us into behaviors there’s an acronym that was provided in the book and it’s something I’ve heard elsewhere it’s the the acronym Halt h-a-l-t and that stands for Hungry angry lonely and tired it goes into detail talking about how these specific moods can be cues for different habits you know like if you’re alone at night you may be prompted to do something that you normally wouldn’t do if you’re you’re angry and tired so you have a a couple of these things of these moods going going on that could cue your body to do something that you’ll regret a lot of times when I’m angry and tired that’s just not a good combination for anything or I’m not going to have a lot of productive behaviors when I’m in that mood we also have moments so certain types of moments launch specific habit Loops we also have people and it says the wrong people can be cues that lead us in the wrong direction the good news is that right people can trigger right Behavior studies prove that the closer you get to someone the more likely it is that you’ll have the same habits I don’t know you know what your personal experience with this is but I know that in my past when I hung out with certain people it led to not the best behaviors and so you know at the time maybe I didn’t realize it but after a little while I realized that hanging out with those people usually was not positive that’s why hanging out and finding the right group of friends is really important if we want to make positive changes to our life for example uh you know this group we have a group of individuals here that in some way understand the challenges we’re all facing likewise this group can encourage us because they know what we’re struggling with and what we all kind of want to accomplish we’re all looking to make positive changes in our life or help other people make positive changes so this group can come together and encourage one another to establish these habits and so that’s one great example of people we have an exercise in this exercise we’re working through five major Trigger or cues okay so you can use like trigger as a replacement for Q work through the five major trigger cues and lists positive and negatives for each in your life right now so we’re going to go through this don’t feel like you have to do this right now but I would encourage you this week if you have time to go through this on your own you know if you run into the speed bumps or get stuck on something feel free to reach out to me or other people in the group remember these are to discover consistent Tendencies not one-off incidents so what we’re trying to do is uncover patterns in our Behavior we give different categories in this exercise of each of those things we discuss so places times moods moments and people and other places we have places that cue a positive response we have places that trigger a negative response there there are just certain places that you go that can either have a positive or negative response and that trigger us to do something positive or negative I think one of the examples he gives is if you’re in church most likely you’re not going to be tempted to want to like smoke marijuana or something in church likewise if you’re in church you’re probably going to be more attuned or more likely to want to pray and connect with God because your brain is formed a habit of knowing when you go to church that is for worship and that is for connecting with God in prayer and learning through the word so likewise you could have places that trigger a negative response you know depending on your background I want to be sensitive to that say you if you go to a bar or a place that serves alcohol that may be a cue or a trigger that you know invokes a negative response and that you do things that you later regret and then we have times and we’re going to do this is very similar to one before we’re going to have times that q a positive response and times that trigger a negative response a lot of people in the evening it’s dark and it’s late a lot of times that time of day cues a negative response for a negative behavior so that could be like a time of day that you have to be you know pretty careful about your behaviors likewise that time of day could cue a positive response maybe you have a routine that you get up in the morning and you have a quiet time where you’re spending time with God you’re in your Bible you’re praying maybe you’re seeing some worship songs and that is a time of day that cues a positive response so we have moods and we’re likewise we’re gonna we’re gonna look at moods that cue a positive response or a negative response yeah we talked about those four that halt acronym hungry angry lonely and tired if we have if we make observe that we’re experiencing one of those moods we can probably see a pattern in behavior when we’re feeling either lonely angry tired or hungry that something comes after that likewise we may have certain moods that that cue a positive response we have moments there are certain moments that cue a positive and negative response then we have people we talked about that already but this is a exercise that you can go through and just do some reflection to try to identify some patterns in your life the passage of scripture here is Proverbs 13 20 and this is the New Living Translation it says walk with the wise and become wise associate with fools and get in trouble that’s all for this episode thank you for watching if you like the video give us a thumbs up and be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss out on future episodes
