With the start of the New Year, it’s time that people try to start new habits. Today’s podcast is about how we get habits and what types of awareness we need to create new habits.
**Transcript***
New Year’s is a time that people make resolutions and try and do things to feel better, look better, be better. But the question is, is what makes resolutions work or not work? Today on Ask Dr. Gil, I want to talk about the power of habits and how they are created and how to create new ones. So stay tuned. Hello and welcome to Ask Dr. Gil. I’m Dr. Gil Winkleman, your host. And today on the of things and talk about more of the mental, emotional aspect of things. And specifically, I want to talk about New Year’s resolutions slash habits, because I think this is something that we do not think about. And that, hence, is why it becomes a habit. So what is a habit? A habit is something that basically we do unconsciously. And it can be anything from how you brush your teeth to what your routine is in the morning and so forth. And generally, when we do something, it’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s just something that we do on autopilot. And sometimes, and I think habits are created as a result of trying to create efficiencies in our lives and make things more streamlined. Unfortunately, sometimes these habits can be detrimental to us. For example, if you eat when you’re stressed, and instead of sitting with your feelings, you eat your feelings, as a simple example. But I want you to do an exercise right now as you’re listening to this. And I want you to imagine your morning routine and think about the following things. What’s the first thing you do when you get out of bed? What’s the way that you might wash your face in the morning? How do you do that? Do you put soap in your left hand or your right hand? Do you use soap? Which hand do you brush your teeth with? When you shower in the morning or evening, which hand do you use to grab the soap? And how do you lather yourself up? Now, I bring these to mind because most of you listening to this will really have to think about, which hand do I brush my teeth with? Most people brush it with their dominant hand. And tomorrow morning, I want you to do an exercise, which is to brush your teeth with your non-dominant hand, or whichever hand you normally don’t brush your teeth with. Some people will brush it with both hands and switch it based on what side they’re on. And if that’s the case, think about another exercise like grabbing the soap with a different hand, as an example. And it’s going to feel weird. And it is something that you will need to think about before you are able to make a change with it. Now, I use these as simple examples. And changing your hand may or may not have an impact on your life, although there is some research to suggest that if you brush your teeth with your non-dominant hand, you’re actually using the other side of your brain to do an activity, which is good for neuroplasticity and for brain development. And that can be a very important aspect for many people. But as far as sort of, is it great for your life? Actually, it may be worse for your teeth because you may not do as good of a job. On the other hand, you might do a better job. But in any case, the point is, how do you bring awareness to what it is that you’re doing? Now, I bring this up as an example that is simple. And it’s the simple things and the simple awarenesses that go into making habits form or forming new habits. You don’t create a new habit without awareness. You have to be conscious about it. And you have to break through something and some form of resistance. Now, the resistance for how you brush your teeth may be a very low threshold in terms of breaking it, but it still takes awareness. And it’s interesting because I’ve actually started trying this as an experiment, mostly to work on another side of my brain. Quick aside as a story, I had an anatomy professor in college named Marion Diamond, who was a neuro anatomist and dissected Einstein’s brain. Crazy story that I won’t go into on the show. But she used to write on the chalkboard with both hands. And it was as a student trying to keep up with her. It was kind of amazing.
And she was said, you need to use both your hands so that you can work both sides of your brain. And she actually played tennis with both arms. She would play a game with one arm and then play another game with the other arm. Kind of amazing and lived a long time. Great, great woman, an amazing teacher and great researcher as well. But may she rest in peace. But I started doing that with brushing my teeth, just to work on my other side of my brain. And it takes a lot of effort to remember that. I instinctively will pick up my toothbrush with my right hand and start brushing with my right side. It’s an electric toothbrush, by the way. So it’s not even like I’m doing anything. I’m just holding it and moving it around. But there’s something about doing it with my left hand that is very, very unusual for me. And there’s a discomfort related to that, which is really interesting. And it was interesting because I was reading an article about this. And they talked about, well, how do you lather your soap in the shower? And I thought, I have no idea. I just do it. And this is the piece about habits that’s really interesting, because usually we just do them. And sometimes people point them out to us, and we say, I don’t do that. But if you stop and think about it and look at it, you’re like, yeah, I guess I do that. So making a concerted effort is important. And there are other aspects to breaking habits that I think are really, really important. And the biggest one, I think, is desire. So that is a piece that I’m going to talk about on the second half of the show.
Because if you don’t have the desire to break a habit, you won’t break the habit, because there’s no force behind it. And this is sort of an interesting piece in medicine, because many people want to break a habit. They say they do. But really, when they dig deeper, there isn’t any impetus to really break the habit. So we’re going to take a quick break. And then on the second half of the show, I’m going to talk about desires related to habits and how to break them. So stay tuned. Habits and how to create new habits and break old ones. Before I continue, I just wanted to let you know, if you have any questions, feel free to send an email to info, I-N-F-O, at askdrgill.com. And I try and answer all of them. And if you have a topic you want me to cover or you have a question, or even if you have a guest that you think I might be interested in having on the show, please send me the information and I’ll be happy to take a look at it. Okay, we’re talking about habits today. And what is really interesting is that most habits are harmless. We go through life without any sort of awareness that we’re doing things in a particular way. And if you’ve ever driven home from work and been like, wow, how did I get here? How did I get home? And that’s habit, right? That’s the unconscious mind sort of an autopilot that’s doing it. And so to pull out of the habit, you need to be conscious. You need to be aware of what is it that I am doing? How am I behaving and responding in these situations? And the big piece about this is desire. Because without desire, you’re not going to break the habit, most likely. And when I say desire, I mean, a burning desire. I don’t mean just any sort of desire. I mean, someone leaves their clothes on the floor and the other partner is upset about it. And you know, the upsetness of the other partner is usually not enough to make a change in the behavior. Sometimes it is. Sometimes people are so conscientious of their partner that they’re willing to make a sacrifice in their behavior to help make the person happier. But usually, there isn’t that happening. And we see this a lot with drug and alcohol addiction, obviously, where patients with the addiction, even in the face of the other person leaving them, cannot get away from the habit. Now, addiction is a little different. Obviously, there’s a physiologic component. And I don’t want to go into that detail. But I do see this in relationships where there’s a non-addictive component and the person isn’t willing to make a change, even in the face of the partner threatening to leave the situation. So it can be very difficult. And sometimes it’s just a lack of awareness. And sometimes it’s just, I’m not changing. And that’s just how it is. That’s how I am. And too bad for you. So there is that aspect of it as well. But so let’s talk about the desire aspect of this, though, because I do think that this is an important factor. And generally, you know, when I talk, and I’m going to talk about health issues for a minute, because I have patients who, for example, are diabetic, and they have a really hard time stopping eating carbs. And I actually had a patient recently say, I just really like cookies and breads.
And, you know, she has a serious problem with her A1C. It’s very high. And she’s using, you know, various forms of of diabetic medications. And she just can’t stop herself. And we can debate and I’m going to put this aside for a minute, we can debate the physiological, addictive qualities of some of these foods, which I do think is a real thing. And I’ve talked about that in other podcasts. But particular patient, my telling her and her other doctors telling her that her blood sugars are going to harm her body wasn’t enough to get her desire level up high enough to overcome her habit. And so for her, what we’re working on is finding what it is within her that would make her want to do this. Now, this is not something that can be imposed upon you from the external, right? In other words, as a doctor, even though we have some power in terms of suggestion to patients, it’s really up to the patient to make the decision for themselves that they’re going to make this change. And that’s true with anybody. It doesn’t matter if it’s a patient, it’s your child, it’s your spouse, it’s a partner. If you’re a teacher, if it’s a student, it’s about finding what it is that’s internal to them, or you, that is going to make the change happen. And here’s sort of an exercise you can do if you’re doing this for yourself, is let’s say you have a goal this year to lose weight, and I bring that up because that’s a goal that so many people in America have a goal to do at the beginning of the year. And my question is, why do you want to lose weight? And you keep asking, well, why do I want to do that? So for example, why do you want to lose weight? Well, I want to look better. Well, why do you want to look better? Well, I want to meet somebody. Well, why do you want to meet somebody? You keep getting down to the core of what it is that makes you want to do what you want to do. And once you get to that place, that’s the motivation, not the necessarily the initial thing. And so that’s the piece I think that is very important for people to do. Now, for a small thing, say flossing your teeth more, that’s, you know, you don’t necessarily need to drill that deeply with this. But for bigger things, I think it is important to do that, because that’s where the desire is. And everything else is sort of external to something else. So for the simple things, what can you do? Well, you create the conditions where the habit can be performed, if you will. And so that becomes the place where it becomes easier. And as a simple example, if you want to floss your teeth more, say once a day, well, you start doing it before bed, before you brush your teeth. And you keep just doing that every evening. And eventually, you get to this place where you know you’ve flossed your teeth, and you don’t have to think about it. And it’s something that you want to keep doing as part of a routine. You need to be aware and focused on it at the beginning before it becomes automatic. Think about if you drive a car, if you know how to drive a car, this will sound familiar. When you first started learning to drive, you would think about everything that you were doing before you did it. And you were very careful. You looked both ways before you changed lanes. You looked in your mirrors, all that stuff. And as you became more comfortable doing what you’re doing, you stopped doing a lot of the things that actually are safe to do. But there’s an automaticness to it, and you stop thinking. And I think that in some cases, that is not a bad thing, because it can be very exhausting thinking about everything that you do in your day to get through the day. But other things, such as driving, it’s a good thing to do. So that’s kind of the piece to that. All right, that’s what I got for you today. I hope you enjoyed this. I hope you have a wonderful new year. And I would encourage you to try incorporating one new habit in your life that you might want to do, even if it’s a small one, just to try out some of the things that I talked about. And send me an email and let me know what you did. That would be great. My email is info, i-n-f-o, at askdrgill.com. And if you have any comments, questions, as I said, you can send it to that email. And if you like the podcast, if you can like it down below, or go to YouTube or Apple Podcasts and hit something on there, that would be great. Thanks so much, and I hope to see you next time.