Mastering the Art of Midlife Reinvention: How Tiny Habits Help Us Grow

Can developing new habits help us reinvent ourselves in midlife?

That's the question I'm unpacking in the new episode of the Reinvention Rebels podcast.

Have you read Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg?  It's an easy-to-read, informative and engaging book about making small changes that stick. I'm using it as my personal framework for developing habits that will help me move forward this year and I'm already seeing results.

This episode shines a light on the significance of creating sustainable habits that fuel our self-transformation, leveraging the principles of Fogg's behavioral design model. 

As I do some deep work on myself, I've uncovered the idea that habits may help us reinvent too.

Listen in to hear:

✅How motivation, ability, and prompts are key in initiating and maintaining new habits
✅How I'm applying this model to my not-drinking-enough-water challenge (and it's working)
✅Why forming habits can be a piece of the puzzle in reinventing ourselves.

And many other tidbits to get you thinking about your own reinvention in 2024.

Ready for some inspiration to make forward progress toward your goals? This is a good place to start!

You what else? I introduce "Midlife Reinvention from the Inside Out: 8 Essentials to Green Light Your Life," an audio series that equips you with the tools for impactful change.

Tune in to this journey of inspiration, where we support one another in becoming the very best versions of ourselves – Reinvention Rebels.

Mentioned in this episode:

Reinvention Rebel Update - Embracing the Journey of Transformation at 71: From Local Beginnings to a Global Vision with Katurah Bryant part of the Where Are They Now mini-series.

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Please spread the word! Let's encourage more women to unapologetically embrace their Inner Reinvention Rebel and boldly pursue their wildest dreams.

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Transcript

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0:00:10 - Speaker 1
Welcome to ReInvention Rebels. Stories of brave and unapologetic women, 50 to 90 years young, who have boldly reinvented life on their own terms to find new purpose and possibilities. I'm your host, wendy Battles. I need to kick your fears to the curb, do it scared and step into who you are meant to be in midlife and beyond. These amazing women, these ReInvention Rebels, can help light your ReInvention path. Come join us and let's get inspired together. Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of the ReInvention Rebels podcast. I'm your host, wendy. I am so glad you're joining me today in this brief solo episode. 

I want to start talking about what will probably be a multi-part series, a little mini series, as I like to do, and it's about habits. It's that time of year where we're trying to pull ourselves together, do something new, maybe lose weight, eat more healthily, exercise. There could be anything that you might be focused on, and we often think that if we can form a habit around it, it will make it easier for us to do it consistently. The question we're going to be talking about is can we form habits that can help us reinvent ourselves? Can habit formation be a catalyst for us to reinvent in ways that really light us up. But before we get to this great conversation, I want to take a minute and walk down memory lane for just a moment. I want to check in with all of you. First of all, I hope you had a chance to listen to the when Are they Now mini series. It happened over four episodes, the last four with four of my amazing guests from season one. It's so cool to reinvent ourselves. We can make amazing changes. The truth of the matter is, as we reinvent, there's so many things we learn on our journey. We gain insights, we gain confidence, we recognize that we can do anything and so many other things. I thought it would be really cool to take that walk down memory lane with my guests so we can get into their hats and figure out what did they learn, what did they learn about themselves, what were the challenges and what might have been surprising. So if you haven't had a chance to listen to this series, it was fabulous. These women are amazing. They remind me that, over 50 women, we can do anything when we decide we can. So there's a link to the most recent episode with the amazing Couture Bryant in the show notes. I hope you will check it out if you haven't had a chance to listen to it yet. 

I also want to mention that February is going to be a big month. I'm kicking it off, beginning to talk about habits, but coming very soon are two things I want you to know about. Number one, I am so excited because I am launching something I've been working on for several months. It is my eight-part audio program called Midlife Reinvention from the Inside Out Eight Essentials to Greenlight your Life. If you have been thinking about reinvention and you don't even know where to begin, if you have ideas but you're not really sure, if you know that there's this inkling and you feel like there's something more, maybe people are saying well, why would you do that? Or aren't you a little old for that? Well, one, of course you're not. We can do anything at any time, as our reinvention rebels prove. But also this idea that sometimes we need a push to get started, sometimes we need a guide on this side. And that's what this program is all about Eight sessions, about 10 minutes each, with worksheets that accompany it that help you begin to figure out how you can start your own reinvention rebels journey. I can't wait to tell you more. More details are coming soon, but I wanted to begin to plant that seed about midlife reinvention from the inside out, and I am so excited because season six I can't believe it season six of the Reinvention Rebels podcast is around the corner. 

It is starting later in February. I cannot wait for you to meet the amazing lineup of women that are gracing me with their presence, their wisdom, their insights in season six, and I love the same. Own your awesome. It's all about the self acknowledgement that there is greatness within each of us and beginning the process, if we haven't already, of bringing that out, because there's something we are all meant to do. We have amazing gifts. The world is waiting for us to do what we do in a way, only we can, and the season is highlighting women that have tuned into their own greatness, that are owning their awesome, that are boldly saying yes, I am amazing in what I'm doing or how I'm reinventing. So you're going to be able to hear their amazing stories coming up. You're going to meet Mimi and Guler and Kim and Regina and Bettina and Antoinette and Tanya and so many others that you were going to love. So I am really looking forward to sharing more details about the upcoming season. I hope you'll be tuning in. 

Today we are talking about habits, and it's really an interesting topic because I think it's very typical that in the new year we all want to start with some fresh habits, or we've fallen off the wagon so maybe we're refreshing those things that perhaps kind of fell apart at some point during the year. And of course, like many of us, I can speak from experience. My exercise last year I was doing pretty well. I had moments of being really into exercise, but then I had knee problems that sidelined me for a while and then I got busy and didn't make it a priority at other times. Well, you know, by the end of the year I was getting off track, I went on vacation and all was lost or not. 

So can I form some new habits? Because the thing often is that at the beginning of the year we have all these resolutions and these big goals of what we're going to do, myself included. But what I've learned over the years is that I am so unrealistic about what I can do. I have crazy big goals that don't really make sense when I think about them more carefully and I don't account for things like it takes more time than I think it will to do these things. So maybe I get frustrated or I'm going really well at the beginning, but then I lose my motivation or I get distracted by other things and can't get back on track. 

So I've been thinking a lot about habits for my own life and how I can create habits where I can be much more consistent, where it can really make a difference. So that's one thing that I'm thinking about, but the other thing is that in my day job, where I work in cybersecurity and I run a cybersecurity awareness program, so it's my responsibility to help our community practice cyber safe behaviors, and one of the things my colleague, james Knife, been talking a lot about is is it possible for people to be more cyber safe in our community if they begin to build some cyber habits, some repeatable things that they can do to keep them focused on cybersecurity so it doesn't make it so hard? That was really the basis of us beginning to brainstorm, because in our job we're going to be launching what we call our 21 day cyber habit challenge and as we were thinking about that, we thought this is a great opportunity to start talking about habits. So what we did is that we each read a book about habits. My colleague James read a book called atomic habits by James Clear, a bestseller that came out in 2018, and I read tiny habits, another bestseller that came out in 2020, which is by BJ Fogg. Both of them have really fascinating information, research behind them, theories about habit formation, and it informed our thinking for a recent podcast episode we created for our community about habit formation and simple things that people can do to begin to form cyber habits healthy cyber habits. That's where I got this idea to start thinking about habits as it relates to reinvention how can we form habits that will help us reinvent? Today, I want to talk a little bit about this book. Tiny habits by BJ Fogg give you a little background and really some key points as part one of this conversation, and in the next episode, we're going to talk more specifically about how we could apply some of these ideas around habits to reinventing ourselves, how they could benefit us, and I'm going to talk about three ways that that could be the case. Let me give you a quick overview of tiny habits. I mean, the book is 300 pages long. I have gleaned what I think are some key points. Of course, as you can imagine, there's so much more depth than I can share in a brief podcast episode, but I think it's good to help us get started in thinking about habit formation. 

Who is BJ Fogg? He is a behavioral scientist at Stanford University and he runs a research lab that's all about helping people change their habits. He has done copious amounts of research over many, many years and what I think is really cool is that one he has applied this to himself. He's tested out all these theories with his own habit formation and that informed a lot of his thinking and once he kind of hacked things and figured out what worked for him and what didn't in forming habits. Then he went to the lab and tested it out, where he's worked with thousands of people clients, coaching people, testing out these ideas around habit formation. That all formed the basis of this book. 

One of the things I liked is that he challenges the conventional wisdom about change. Often we think that we have to have big changes to get the results that we want to see. Bj Fogg challenges the conventional wisdom that big changes are necessary for significant results and instead he talks about the effectiveness of starting with tiny habits. He says is that the key to habit formation there's not those big, super difficult things, but that it has to be easy to do and it needs to fit into something we're already doing. So those are key principles of this approach he has. Now, we all know that when something is easy to do, we're more likely to do it again. So that already is something that's really helpful. And this idea of building into something we're already doing well, that idea was totally new to me, but he gave a great example of how he would brush his teeth and as soon as he would brush his teeth, he would start to do some push-ups right after, so that he takes a habit he already has and then he builds something else into it. So that already makes it easy. Right, we're already doing something repeatable. Here's something else we can try in a simple way to add in. So I like that idea. 

Bj Fogg also introduces in the book a model. He calls it the behavioral design model. It's a framework that includes three key elements and he says that we can't actually form habits if we don't have all three happening around the same time. They are number one motivation. So we need to be motivated to make whatever the changes that we want to make, and we can relate that to reinvention, because when people reinvent, they're motivated because they want something different, they want to create something new or different. So number one motivation. Number two you have to have ability. You have to have the ability to make that change. And it could be when we think about reinvention that we have the ability if we've done it before, either we've reinvented before or we can look at other changes that we've made in our life. That helps us see that we have the ability to make that change. So we're motivated to make the change and we have the ability to make that change based on past history. 

And then number three is that we have to have a prompt. There's got to be something that triggers us or reminds us that we need to do that, because just having the motivation, I could just have the motivation and even the ability, but I might not do it or I might get started and not continue. So maybe the prompt is an accountability partner. Maybe the prompt is a mastermind group, what we're working together. Maybe the prompt is a calendar invite that you put on your calendar at a particular time, because that's the time you've put aside to focus on your reinvention goals. There are many different ways that this could manifest. But I really like this model and this idea of all the pieces working together, because in the past there have been so many times when I've had some of it but not all of it, where I've been motivated but I couldn't follow through. So I like how he breaks this down. 

The third key point is this idea of celebrating success with instant rewards. What BJ Fogg says that what we really need are small victories around a tiny habit. Again, we're taking these small actions and when we take these small actions and we get this instant reward, it motivates us to continue and that's a really key. So celebrating with these instant rewards Not that far off goal that takes us months to achieve, but that when we have tiny habits we're making small changes we can more quickly see the difference. Instead of a goal of losing weight in 25 pounds maybe it's two pounds I can build in habits that could help me very quickly lose two pounds. Or this idea that I think about a lot I've been trying to drink more water. That is a habit that has been tough for me to be sufficiently hydrated. I got this new bottle that someone had sent to me that actually indicates the times on it to be drinking throughout the day, instead of like sort of chugging all this water at the end of the day. Well, that's a quick win, that's a small habit, so just drinking a small amount of water. The instant gratification is that each hour I can see that I'm actually doing it. I can see that the water level is going down in the bottle and at the same time I feel energized because I'm drinking more and I'm properly hydrated. So this idea of celebrating success with instant rewards. 

Another point that I appreciated from this book is BJ Fogg's idea that emotions lead to action, and in the book he explores the role of emotion in driving behavior and he emphasizes the importance of positive emotions in habit formation. So his approach with the tiny habits and making small changes with immediate wins, is that it evokes positive feelings. I've spent so many years beating myself up over what I haven't done. I have these huge goals, then I don't achieve them, then I feel bad about myself. I beat myself up. Those are negative emotions, but this is a really different concept with positive emotions, and he encourages people to choose habits that evoke positive feelings and contribute to our overall sense of wellbeing. Because when we we know how it is when we're in that positive vibe. I want more of that. It makes it much easier. So I thought that was a really important point and I can see that when we think about reinvention, if we're in that space of reinventing ourselves and we get in the habit of spending X amount of time each week working on our reinvention plans and we see that we're making progress, even like a little step, that's that positive feeling that reinforces okay, I'm on the right track and I'm gonna keep going. Really important. 

And the final thing that really spoke to me and what he said in this big book where there are so many things, but to me it was really a key point was this idea that over time, as you integrate in tiny habits and you find success and you have positive feelings about that, that you can scale those habits into bigger habits. So just the opposite of what I've done in the past, trying to do it all and then failing. Small changes reinforce those changes, get into a rhythm with those changes, and that we can, over time, scale that into bigger movements. And you can see how that could really help us. When we think about reinvention, we start off small, with tiny things we can do, we find some success, we feel good about ourselves and perhaps we move on to larger things that we can build habits around. What he talks a lot about is that it's about continuous improvement rather than getting fixated on these really huge goals so I can get with that continuous improvement when I can say I'm making baby steps in the right direction. That can have such a powerful impact on my outlook about it. 

What does this mean for me in my habits? Well, I told you about my water drinking and this bottle I got. Let me give you this example of my water drinking. I'm motivated to drink more water because my skin will look better and I'll have more energy. That's my motivation. I have the ability to go fill up some container with water in it that I can drink during the day. But what happens is that I get super busy, I get focused on other things, I lose track of how much I've even had to drink and I often find some days I barely drink anything or certainly not enough. So what's my prompt? 

My prompt is this new water bottle I have, thanks to my amazing friend, kathy. When I mentioned I want to drink my water, she said I've got a perfect bottle for you and she sent this to me and this bottle is one I've never even seen before, but it's a BPA free plastic bottle and on this bottle that holds 32 ounces a quart, there are times, there are interval times from eight to one. So you drink 32 ounces between eight and one and then you fill it up again, or really two, and you start again from two and you finish by eight, so that over the course of the day you can see your progress and then you can refill again. You know, I get this instant feeling of success because I can see the water is going down and when I get to two o'clock I'm like I already drank a quart and then I fill it up again. I do it again, and it's helped me be so consistent, just building in this habit, and the bottle as a prompt has been really a powerful tool for me. So I can see how we can begin to build in habits of all kinds. 

And the question gets to be can we take this BJ Fog model and apply it? Can we take motivation, ability and a prompt and apply this in some way to reinventing ourselves? I believe we can, but I think we have to do a little hacking to figure out what works for us. So in our next episode, we're going to get down to the business of talking about the power of habits in reinventing ourselves. How can we take this model and these ideas that he discusses in tiny habits and apply them to the art of reinvention, and I'm going to share three specific ways that I think it can make a difference. 

I cannot wait for you to tune in and for us to continue this discussion about habit formation. How can we form habits that can help us as we reinvent ourselves? How can we be thinking about it on many different levels? So, reinvention rebels, I'll be back in your earbuds very soon and I can't wait to continue our discussion. In the meantime, don't forget to be on the lookout for my upcoming eight-part audio series, midlife reinvention from the inside out eight essentials to green light your life, and more details about our upcoming season, season six own your awesome. Until next time, keep shining your light. Reinvention rebels, the world needs you and all that you have to offer. 

Transcribed by https://podium.page