Healthy Living by Willow Creek Springs
A podcast about practices to promote healthy lives featuring experts, businesses, and clients: we gather to share our stories about success, failure, exploration, and so much more. Our subscription episodes feature some personal and vulnerable, real-life stories that are sensitive to some of the general public.
Healthy Living by Willow Creek Springs
Breaking the Cycle: Building Better Habits
Creating positive habits transforms your life, yet most of us find ourselves trapped in negative cycles of scrolling, junk food, and poor sleep. What separates those who successfully build good habits from those perpetually stuck in unhealthy patterns?
The key lies in understanding how our brains physically change during habit formation. When you repeat an activity for 21 consecutive days, you begin building neural pathways that make behaviors automatic rather than requiring constant willpower. This biological reality explains why those first three weeks of any new health practice feel so challenging - and why missing even one day can subtly undermine your progress.
Instead of relying solely on discipline, successful habit-builders use strategic accountability systems. These range from technological tools like habit tracking apps (Habitica, Habit Bull, Strides) to analog methods like vision boards and journaling. One particularly powerful technique involves writing detailed descriptions of your ideal future in present tense, as though already achieved. When revisiting such a document written 30 years earlier, everything on it had manifested - from rebuilding family life after divorce to creating a business aligned with natural talents.
Community support represents another crucial element in habit formation. Finding people who share your health goals creates natural accountability and provides invaluable experiential wisdom. Whether joining condition-specific support groups or workout partners, these connections amplify motivation and practical knowledge.
"Habit stacking" offers perhaps the most efficient approach to building positive routines - attaching new behaviors to existing ones. Rather than trying to remember multiple new practices, simply connect them to actions you already perform automatically, creating a domino effect of positive change with minimal mental effort.
The journey of habit formation ultimately reveals profound truths about yourself - what motivates you, what obstacles appear consistently, and what strategies work for your unique temperament. Be patient, make adjustments when needed, and remember that everyone's path looks different. Share your own habit-building experiences or health journey on a future episode by reaching out at grumbinejoe@gmail.com.
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Well, hello and welcome back to the Healthy Living Podcast. I'm your host, joe Grumbine, and I just want to share a little gratitude for everybody who supported this podcast, and whether it's by listening or subscribing, or sharing talking about it or even participating as a guest, sharing, talking about it or even participating as a guest. This has started out as a labor of love and it continues as such, but fortunately, the show is actually standing on its own two feet now, and the subscriptions are at least paying for the price of producing the show and allowing us to produce it in a higher standard, and so we're I'm super grateful for all of that, and if you're interested in participating as a guest, you know I would love to hear your story. I'd love to talk about your journey to health, whether you're a patient or somebody who has made some discoveries along the way. Maybe you've got questions, maybe you want to do an online consultation live. We haven't done that yet, but maybe that would be a good podcast. Practitioners, physicians, authors there's a place for all of it. I believe that having a robust conversation about a topic such as healthy living brings us to answers, real answers, truthful answers, not just one person you know, with one point of view, one set of experiences, or know one company trying to promote one product or idea or service. So if you're interested in participating, you can either respond through whatever the platform that you're listening to. Generally there's a place to leave a comment. You can put up a review that would always be wonderful or reach out grumbinejoe at gmailcom I'm pretty sure that's in the show notes. If not, I'll make sure that it is and you know, let's schedule an interview.
Speaker 1:So today I want to talk about habits, especially building habits. So it seems that we are in a constant state of habits and ruts, and more often than not they tend to be negative or unhealthy habits. Whether it's scrolling in your little square box or eating junk food or gossiping, or staying up late at night doing stupid shit or drugs or alcohol or, you know, bad eating habits, whatever, it's so easy to fall into a negative habit, a habit that has some kind of a rut, and I want to talk about building good habits. It's an activity for 21 days straight that you start to build the neural pathways that will cause a habit to exist. Now, how do you get yourself to do that, though? There's straight up willpower and discipline. Hey, if you've got it, use it. You can just decide to make a habit. How many of us do that?
Speaker 1:On January 1st with our New Year's resolutions, I'm going to go to the gym, I'm going to run a mile every day, I'm going to whatever, insert good habit there and a week or two into it, there's always that reason that, well, maybe not today or maybe I'll just do halfway. The second you compromise that repetitive motion, you undermine it, you give it less value and, yeah, we can always make those choices and get back to it. That's the one good thing. That's why I've never been a big Alcoholics Anonymous fan, even though I know it helps a lot of people. The crutches are too easy to turn into excuses, I think. However, you know, use what works. That's my answer. That's what I'm doing in my health journey is if it works, I'm doing it and that's what I'm trying to share here. So I did a little bit of research, not just my own personal experience, but I'm going to look at with the old school ways, you know, man up and just do it. But I'm going to jump into some more modern applications and technological tools. Negative experiences or feelings or impressions about all the technology we rely upon. I find myself relying upon it as well. I'll use AI a little bit to research a topic sometimes, or I'll use my GPS instead of a map, or relying on my knowledge of the lay of the land or these things. So we're using apps more and more and trying not to rely on any of these too much, but there are some good ones out there. So I want to start out with a little bit of technology as far as tools go. So there are some apps out there that track habits, and I think that's a lot of.
Speaker 1:What is required to create a habit is to be accountable. So when I started losing my weight, I made a habit of weighing myself at the same time every day. Made a habit of weighing myself at the same time every day and, no matter what, when I get up, do my business, and so you know I have this pretty accurate uh record of my weight gains and losses, monitored basically from the same spot each time and paying attention to that, and it's been helpful. I I was able to create a benchmark of where I'm willing to go above or not and where I'm willing to go below or not. I've had to deal with both of those, especially with my cancer journey. I never thought I would have to deal with a low weight acceptable level, but I came up to it and I had had to acknowledge it and it came from the same thing, from that, that recurring, uh habit of weighing myself at the same time every day. Now there are that's just me doing it, there's no, nothing tracking it.
Speaker 1:But there are habit tracking apps and uh, there's one called habitica and and it turns turning tasks into like a game. There's Habit Bull allows you to track multiple habits at a time and be able to visualize your process. There's another one called Strides. It's got all kinds of features and reminders for different kind of goals. And then there's loop habit tracker um, kind of an intuitive, more straightforward habit tracker, and and that's, you know, just to track the habits. There's also productivity and to-do list sort of apps. There's to--do list, trello, microsoft to-do. You can even use things like Outlook or you know even your calendar and just set reminders. These are all simple deals. There's also mindfulness and reflection tools. There's a little diary programs, daily, oh streaks, uh, reflective, reflectily. These are all, um, you know, apps that can help you do things like reverie, with a, with an accountability.
Speaker 1:And then nowadays there are so many ways to find things like motivation and inspiration to cause us to find a habit or to solidify a habitual practice. You know you can go to something even just like Pinterest and and set up a board that reflects the thing you're doing, or quotes, or, you know, put up like a vision board. Those are, those are. You know you can do it electronically on something like Pinterest or or old school school. I think it's a great activity to sit down with your construction paper and cut out magazines. And you know drawing pictures and make that vision board. I have a big artist pad that I use not often enough, but when I do I look back and I see the progress. Every time I create a new vision board, I look back at the last one I did and I say, wow, look at that, look at how far I've come. And a lot of that has to do with being accountable and setting goals and creating habits as a result of those things.
Speaker 1:Putting your goals in front of you is a tool that will help you to accept them and create practices that will ultimately become habits. You know, for me I have a simple weight and measurement. I have goals, and that's the first piece. Then I have a scale. It's a, you know, visual scale, a mental scale, and I place the thing that I'm looking to do on the scale and it either helps me get to my goal or keeps me from it. And if I'm on my track and I'm doing what I should be doing, I stay with the things that are helping me get to my goals and avoid the things that are keeping me from them.
Speaker 1:I think it's been a very it's a tool. I learned from a spiritual practice I studied many years ago and it was a great tool. And you know I take bits and pieces from the journeys that I go on and if I see something that works, I try to repeat it. You know that's another measurement. It doesn't work. Is it helping um goal or not? Is it something that's good? That that I'm seeing what I want to see out of it? Well, so, keep doing it is. It doesn't seem to work. You know you got two choices make a modification to it, keep trying a little bit more, or let it go, do something else.
Speaker 1:So these are all tools that you can use. You know things like YouTube you can set, or even what do you call it? There's a? There's a Google program that you can track keywords Uh, there's. There's all kinds of of places, but YouTube's great because you can set up your own playlist and you can create a search for different types of content. Maybe it's motivational uh speakers, maybe it's a fitness person, maybe it's somebody that is going through healing themselves of cancer or some other disease, maybe it's an addiction group or something like that. These are amazing tools that are out there and you can find endless sorts of of information.
Speaker 1:There's podcasts. Hopefully, you would find this podcast something that's worth following because it will help you find your way to health and find your way to good answers. If not, there's lots of other podcasts that maybe you'll find yourself more aligned with a different one. Hey, find what works for you. That's the key to this whole deal. You know the physical tools. I'm I'm probably the most aligned with.
Speaker 1:You know so things like journals, and you can create specific journals for specific projects or general journals. I think journaling itself is a habit that, if you can get yourself into and make it important, can be one of the most beneficial tools you could ever have. The best habit you can have. You can create they have habit tracker journals. I mean, geez, we live in this world where, whatever it is, if you can think about it, it's probably already been made and you know, if you type in a search tools to build good habits, you'll find tons of things. You know, even just that, using your AI to go find these kind of answers yeah, I'm not saying that any of these things are bulletproof answers. Yeah, I'm not saying that any of these things are bulletproof. I'm just saying, just like everything in this podcast, all the answers. Find your way, find the thing that speaks to you in the best possible way. You know, things like stickers and charts I think are cool.
Speaker 1:Again, vision boards, any type of. There's a tool that I've used and I recommend it to people and it's kind of like a vision board, but you can do it with words, we can do it with pictures, but the idea is to describe your perfect life in the greatest detail that you can and instead of saying this is what I want, you see that it's already happened and you say this is what it'll look like when I'm at my perfect life right now, the way I see it. Here's what I have, and I tell you what. I've done that a few times and when I do it it works, in fact, so well that one time I did this I don't know probably 30 years ago, and it came out of the advice of a mentor and I've only had a few mentors in my life but this guy had some really good advice for me at that time in my life and he gave me this tool and I used it, I ran with it and I drew this map and I don't know, it was probably four or five years ago, but I look back at this tool that I had written and, son of a bitch, everything that I put down had happened and they were not little things, they were things like I.
Speaker 1:You know, at the time I wrote this, I was recently divorced and single and I wanted a stable relationship, a family. I wanted that. I wanted a stable relationship, a family. I wanted that. At the time I had lost my home and I was living in an apartment and I wanted some land again. I wanted to own a home and have a land. I wanted a business where I did the things that came natural to me, just all these pieces. And then, you know, several years later, I went back and I looked and no shit if I hadn't checked off everything on that list and I didn't even look at it again after I wrote it. I wrote it and I put it away somewhere. So these are tools.
Speaker 1:Vision boards can be powerful, especially if you do them regularly, you know, create a marker maybe four times a year and revisit your vision board and don't look at the old one until you've made the new one. Make that new one first and then go back and look at the old one and see where you've come from and see what's changed. These are all good things. Community is powerful. Are all good things? Community is powerful Finding people that share your goals and experiences.
Speaker 1:So for me, in my journey to heal myself from cancer, I have found a number of groups Dr Hoffman's group, which there's a link in this show notes of this podcast. I found Mark Simon's group. He has a website called Nori and I found that group to be very interesting and informative, and some of the people on Dr Hoffman's group are in Mark Simon's group. That's great. We share these common experiences, remind each other of things that we've learned. I found a Facebook group of people that are going through, or have gone through, squamous cell carcinoma, just like me, and this has got over 1,700 active members around the world. So I'm seeing this wealth of experience. That is my experience and it's helping me solve problems that are unique to my experience. There's all kinds of Facebook groups, meetup groups, you name it. There's all kinds of places to find people that are like-minded. It doesn't take much effort, but you know, again, go to your AI, your Google and search these sorts of things and you'll find them.
Speaker 1:Creating your own small group is huge, especially for being accountable. So if you find, you know, some workout buddies, if your goals are to get healthy physically, well then great. Find some people that share some of the same goals. If you're running, if you like to run, then find some running buddies. If you lift weights or do yoga, pilatesates, whatever is your your poison, find people to do that with that share your goals and hold each other accountable. That's kind of the whole practice with aa is you have sponsors and and people that share their experience and you hold each other accountable. That part of those kind of programs I do support. I think that's important. All the rules and regulations I'm not so keen on, but that part of it I think is powerful. So connect yourself with people a person or people that you share goals and values with, and hold each other accountability. Goals and values with, and hold each other accountability.
Speaker 1:Things like time management tools can be very helpful, because I think a lot of times, the thing that keeps us from keeping a good habit from developing is we never have time because we're busy with all of our bad habits, we're busy scrolling, we're busy watching the videos, we're busy yapping and gossiping and doing all the stupid shit to take our time and we don't make the time to do the things we really want to do. And so managing your time can be powerful. It can. You'd be surprised how much time you can clear out when you prioritize and actually start being accountable for the things that you have time for, because, frankly, you're the only one that decides that. So if you go, well, I don't have time for this, well, why not? What do you do it instead? And you know things like screen time monitors. They're important because it reminds you hey, look at that, yesterday you spent eight hours on the frigging screen. What were you doing? If you're doing research and important stuff, then great, acknowledge it, own it, use it as a tool If you're wasting your time on stupid shit, well, maybe you could have done something better with it, own it as well. So this is all good stuff.
Speaker 1:There's drastic measures like behavioral change techniques. I mean things like holding yourself accountable, giving yourself consequences. You say to yourself well, if I do this and I manage to do it for a period of time, I give myself a reward. If I don't do it, maybe you give yourself a consequence. Maybe you're able to be disciplined enough to do something like that. There's extreme measures, things like NLP, neuro-linguistic programming. There's all types of energy work, hypnosis, self-hypnosis, affirmations. There's all kinds of things you can do to cause your behavior to change.
Speaker 1:But I think the most important thing to do is to own it, to make the decision, to say out loud this is what I'm doing, this is what I want to do. I'm doing this because I want to own it. And so many times we make excuses for why we did something or didn't do something. Well, you made me do this or I did it because of this. No, no, no. Own it. And if you can do that, you'd be surprised how many things you'll start to do that you set out to because there's nobody. It's like that Zeppelin song nobody's fault but mine. And if you can own that, well, guess what? You're just making choices. And you come to realize that, yes, you're just making choices. So, you know, get out there and start making some good ones.
Speaker 1:Habit stacking is another little tool that can get you to a goal. So, if you think about it, you go well, you know, I want to be healthy, I want to lose weight, so I'm going to start eating better. Okay, cool, maybe you do a series of things to eat better. Maybe you cut the sugar out, maybe you cut the processed foods out, maybe you start growing your own food, maybe you start, you know, choosing to make your own food more and being mindful of the ingredient on and on and on, label reading, sourcing your food, all of those things. But stacking these habits can sometimes make it easier. It's like chunking a big task out into smaller tasks and when they overlap and feed each other, you know, you say to yourself well, I'm going to start intermittent fasting. Okay, well, great, when I get off my fast, I'm frigging hungry. What am I going to eat? And then you go okay, well, remember, we're not eating this, that or the other thing, or we are eating this.
Speaker 1:You just stack these habits and you'd be surprised how powerful that can be. Or even things like timetables, like say, well, every day I make coffee, every day I go and I take a dump in the morning. Every day I brush my teeth. Every day I tie my shoes. Whatever is your, you're already given. Well, attach a habit to that and say, well, you know what, every time I'm sitting on that toilet, I'm going to set the timer, I'm going to meditate for five minutes. Five minutes, two minutes, one minute, whatever. Give yourself something that's attainable. After I brush my teeth, I'm going to drink a big glass of water, whatever. You can stack these things anyway, but I think it can be. A powerful tool is to attach one good habit to another.
Speaker 1:There are lots of good resources. There are lots of good speakers, tools, authors here's a couple of just off the cuff. There's books, audio books, physical books, workshops, seminars. There's so many tools of reinforcement and being told what to do by people who have done it. There's a book called Atomic Habits by James Clear, the Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg, mindset by Carol S Dweck. These are all good resources, but there's so many, so many. But there's so many, so many, and maybe looking at your goals and finding a resource that's more tied to your goal in particular than just setting the habit might be better for you. There's online courses. There's just so many great resources, so I don't know. I think that we've touched on a lot of good ideas.
Speaker 1:Just remember, to create a good habit, it's going to probably involve a combination of tools. It's going to involve consistency. It's going to involve self-awareness. It's going to involve commitment. It's going to involve self-awareness. It's going to involve commitment. It's going to involve accountability, motivation and all of these things. So go after a big goal, start small.
Speaker 1:The hardest step is the first step. The second hardest step is the last step. Be patient with yourself. Be willing to make adjustments. If you screw up, pat yourself on the back and say all right, well, let's get up and do it again Quickly. Don't give yourself time to fall into another bad habit. Be willing to adjust and as you're working towards a goal and creating a good habit, you're going to get to know yourself better and you're going to learn how you respond better.
Speaker 1:And remember the things that I do may or may not be things that will work for you. I'm just sharing my experience with you and invite you to come on the show and be a guest and do the same. So I think there's a lot of good information here. I want to thank everybody who has supported the show once again, and if you think this is a good show, tell somebody about it, make a post, share this somewhere. Those are things that really let me know that you matter, or that this work that we do matters, and really, if you want to go deep, you can subscribe for as little as three bucks a month and access some really personal, private content and more to come. So thank you to everybody who's been a part of this show and we will see you next time.
