By John Brown
They fail, not because we can’t change, but because we rely on the wrong thing to make the change.
BJ Fogg is a research at Stanford and has spent his career studying persuasion and habit. He works with companies to help them create products that are habit-forming. Think about Facebook, Twitter, or Candy Crush, and the habits those products form. These and similar companies have implemented the principles of habit so well that their products have become, for some, something of an addiction.
Fogg has identified three things that must be present if we’re going to do something:
- The motivation to do the thing
- The ability to do the thing
- A trigger to remind us to do the thing
When those three things are present, we act. And we often do so without thinking. If one of those three elements is missing, we don’t act. The problem is that most of us try to change by focusing on motivation.
We tell ourselves that this time we’re really going to do it. We pump ourselves up. But motivation eventually drops—it always drops—and we suddenly look back seven months later realizing we failed to change.
There’s a much more effective way to grow habits and meet goals and change our lives. And Fogg has written a book that reveals the surprising, research-based secrets of how to do it. It’s called Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything, and it’s available now.
If you want to change, the key is to start small, start tiny, and grow a new habit. And you can learn how to do this by reading Fogg’s book.
I took Fogg’s course a couple of years ago and immediately found success in forming new habits that had previously defied me. If I can do it, so can you. Make this year the year you really do start to eat better, exercise more, find more fun in your marriage, get better grades, or whatever it is that you want to change. Give Fogg’s book a try. I think you’ll be happy you did.
In my last two columns I shared some of the surprising, research-based benefits of eating a whole-food plant-based diet. If you haven’t read or listened to The China Study by T. Colin Campbell, let me recommend it to you again. Campbell is one of the foremost researchers in the nation on nutrition. Listen to what he has to say and make up your own mind about the evidence.
For more research-based evidence, you might also want to subscribe to the daily emails at NutritionFacts.org. It’s a site run by Michael Greger, M.D. FACLM, who combs through all the research out there on nutrition so you and I don’t have to. He then presents the facts in short videos.
Recent videos have included:
• How to Get the Benefits of Aspirin Without the Risks
• Does Intermittent Fasting Increase Human Life Expectancy?
• How Much Vitamin C Should You Get Every Day?
• Are Weight-Loss Supplements Safe?
He and his team will sometimes go through dozens or hundreds of studies to find what the science really says. If you’re looking for what the research on nutrition has to say, I think you’ll enjoy his short daily videos.
