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In this episode, Ross Ellenhorn explores the complexities of why we resist change and what to do about it. As Ross explains in this conversation, “staying the same protects you from the insult of small steps.” He shows us why these tiny steps can sometimes feel insulting and demoralizing. Ross also delves into the fear of raising expectations, the pain of disappointment, and why hope itself can feel threatening

Discover the six hidden saboteurs that quietly derail your best intentions—like autopilot behavior, self-doubt, and emotional escape. Download our free guide to uncover what’s getting in your way and learn simple strategies to take back control. Get it now at oneyoufeed.net/ebook.

Key Takeaways:

• Psychological concepts related to change, addiction, hope, disappointment, and self-efficacy.
• The complexities of addiction and the distinction between harmful behaviors and positive attachments.
• The challenges of personal change and the forces that resist it, including fear of disappointment and existential anxiety.
• The concept of “fear of hope” and its impact on motivation and willingness to change.
• The importance of social support and community in the recovery process.
• Critique of current addiction treatment models and the need for a more compassionate, harm reduction approach.
• The role of context in shaping an individual’s ability to change and the limitations of individualistic approaches.
• The significance of incremental change and the value of small steps in personal growth.
• The importance of respecting resistance to change as a form of self-love and preservation.

Ross Ellenhorn, PhD, is an eminent thought leader on innovative methods and programs aimed at helping individuals diagnosed with psychiatric and substance-use issues recover in their own communities, outside of hospital or residential settings. He is the founder, owner, and CEO of ellenhorn, the most robust community integration program in the United States, with offices in Boston, New York City, and Raleigh-Durham. Dr. Ellenhorn is also the cofounder and president of the Association for Community Integration Programs, and the founder of two lecture series that aim to shift current behavioral health paradigms. He gives talks and seminars throughout the country, and is an in-demand consultant to mental health agencies, psychiatric hospitals, and addiction programs in the United States and Europe. Dr. Ellenhorn is the first person to receive a joint PhD from Brandeis University’s Florence Heller School \

Connect with Ross Ellenhorn:  Website | Facebook | LinkedIn

If you enjoyed this conversation with Ross Ellenhorn, check out these other episodes:

How to Integrate Behavior Change with Your Values with Spencer Greenberg

Tiny Habits for Behavior Change with BJ Fogg

Behavior Change with Dr. John Norcross

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Episode Transcript:

Ross Ellenhorn 00:00:00  Disappointment is this profoundly important and scary thing for people, because it means when you’re actually trying to change something, it’s telling you that you’re not capable of doing it. And in that it’s saying you’re kind of helpless in running your life. So every disappointment is that message. And so it makes sense that a person might want to avoid that.

Chris Forbes 00:00:25  Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts. We have quotes like garbage in, garbage out or you are what you think ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts don’t strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don’t have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it’s not just about thinking our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction. How they feed their good wolf.

Eric Zimmer 00:01:11  I have a book coming out next year called how a Little Becomes a Lot, and it’s all about how change happens through small, incremental steps. So you can imagine how the title of chapter seven in today’s guest book stopped me cold. Staying the same, he says, protects you from the insult of small steps. Ross Ellenhorn, therapist, researcher and author of How We Change and Ten Reasons Why We Don’t, shows us why these tiny steps can sometimes feel insulting and demoralizing. In this conversation, we dig into the fear of raising expectations, the pain of disappointment, and why hope itself can feel threatening. I’m Eric Zimmer and this is the one you feed. 

Hi, Ross. Welcome to the show.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:02:02  Hi. It’s nice to be here.

Eric Zimmer 00:02:04  We’re going to be talking about two of your books today. One called How We Change and ten Reasons Why We Don’t, which is a subject I spend a lot of time thinking about. But you’ve had a book more recently than that called Purple Crayons The Art of Drawing a Life, and I want to spend some time with that book.

Eric Zimmer 00:02:21  Also great. But before we talk about either of them, we will start with a parable like we always do. And in the parable, there’s a grandparent who’s talking with their grandchild, and they say, in life there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and think about it for a second. They look up at their grandparent and they say, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I’d like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:03:01  Yeah. Well, on one level, it’s a parable that’s a little bit about righteousness. And that kind of way of thinking can be good for us, and it can also put us in difficult situations, because I actually think that there’s parts of my life where I feed the quote unquote bad wolf that I’d hate to give up.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:03:24  That life’s messy, that part of the messiness has to do with the issues of aggression and trying to get gratified and all of that stuff. And if you were to remove all those things, what would you end up with? You know, I’ve been working for over 30 years on what I consider and I’ve been observing this diagnosis a lot, and I’ve been studying this diagnosis for over 30 years. And it’s I think it’s the most, really the most terrifying diagnosis there is that when you spend time with somebody with this diagnosis. It’s disturbing. And that diagnosis is the diagnosis of normal. The normal is probably the most terrifying diagnosis there is. And so parables like this sometimes are pointing out a kind of a black and white version of things. Yeah, that helps us on some level because it helps us think about, well, what are you feeding? What areas in your life are you kind of, nurturing and how can you resist nurturing it? That’s what that parable is about. But it also fits in with these other ways of thinking that are about there’s one thing that’s kind of perfect and good and one thing that’s imperfect and bad, and we should stay away from the imperfect and bad.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:04:38  Yeah, right. Is addiction bad? No. Addiction is bad when it’s bad for you. I’m just completely addicted to my relationship with my wife. I’m addicted to writing. I can’t stand it when I don’t do it. This. This habit of mine that I can’t get away from called. My attachment with my family members is a habit, and I go into withdrawal when I don’t feed that habit. So there’s all kinds of things in our lives that are one or the other, that kind of get mixed up when we sort of split things off in the bad and good. That’s sort of my my take on it. On the other hand, what do we want to feed? We want to feed those more righteous parts of us. Yeah.

Eric Zimmer 00:05:18  Yeah. I’ve always found it ironic that I’m a guy who deeply dislikes binary answers to things, and yet I picked a completely binary parable to base this show on for the last 11 years. Yeah. you know, I think the addiction thing is an interesting thing to dive into because I would argue, and I’m a recovering alcoholic and, and drug addict, I would I would argue that one of the definitions of addiction is continuing to do something while mounting serious adverse consequences.

Eric Zimmer 00:05:51  Right? Yeah. And so in that way, I’m not sure that being addicted to loving your wife a huge amount is really the same thing, even though it shares some characteristics and I feel the same way, like I have some tendencies towards doing things a lot if I really like them, which I think is part of my character and it’s a good part of my character also, but it feels different than my addiction did.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:06:16  Yeah. So you and I differ a little bit on that because I wouldn’t put it in a context of, you know what I mean? Like addiction is only addiction when it’s bad for you. I think addiction is, habitual behavior that you don’t feel completely in control over.

Eric Zimmer 00:06:31  That’s fair.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:06:31  Yeah, yeah.

Eric Zimmer 00:06:32  Control is a big piece of it.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:06:34  Yeah. And that kind of behavior can can lead towards profound experiences of emptiness and shame. And that kind of behavior can lead towards painting a beautiful painting, you know. And so to me at base, that’s what it is.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:06:48  So there’s problematic addiction. And then there’s just habits that you can’t quite escape. And some of those habits create the most beautiful things in our lives. You know art. Art. To to to paint a painting requires a certain addictive quality to it. It kind of it kind of focus. Everything else gets pushed aside. You know, it’s kind of this kind of hyper focus. And the focus is about the experience of it, the high of it you know.

Eric Zimmer 00:07:14  Yeah. I mean control is a huge piece of addiction because you know that is one of the, the big markers of when things you know, slide from what I would call something you, you really like to do to something that’s addictive is you’re not in control of whether you do or don’t do it. To a certain I mean, to a certain degree now anyway, I don’t want to go too far down this rabbit hole because because I, I want to move on. And I want to talk a little bit about your book, how We change in ten reasons why we don’t.

Eric Zimmer 00:07:48  And there are so many things in your book that I really love. And I think one of the core ideas is that change is just really hard, and that this changes in a follow the instructions kind of thing, right? It’s much more complicated than that, and that there are always, at any time, forces that push us in the direction of change and forces that push us in the opposite direction. And I think your book is one of the few that really addresses that latter category in a lot of detail. Yeah. You know, what are these forces that cause us to want to stay the same? Now, there’s a simplistic version of this where people say, well, you keep doing drugs because you like drugs, and there’s truth in that, right? Like, I, you know, I was an addict because I liked it, and I liked what it did for me. But it goes a lot deeper than that, this resistance to change that we get into. And so I’d like to kind of talk about all that, but I’d love you to start us off by saying a little bit more about this allure of sameness.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:08:56  Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, it’s it’s pretty clear that there’s an alert to sameness, right? I mean, look out your window. Everybody’s dressing the same. Acting the same. Everybody’s worried about seeming like they’re not the same. I mean, conformity is just sort of part of our daily life now, in some ways, the way people are behaving. But I think that staying the same has a grace to it. It has a beauty to it, and that until we recognize why a person might not want to change and why there’s a logic to it, we can’t really help them change because we’re not speaking to part of them that’s attracted to that. And that that attraction isn’t just like you said to the high of the drug or liking the drug. It’s protecting them from experiences of disappointment that it’s protecting them from another time. When they tried, They got their hopes up and then the thing didn’t work out. And disappointment is this profoundly important and scary thing for people, because it means when you’re actually trying to change something, it’s telling you that you’re not capable of doing it.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:10:07  Yeah. And in that it’s saying you’re kind of helpless in running your life. So every disappointment is that message. And so it makes sense that a person might want to avoid that. All love is disordered, all love is crazy and so is self-love. So you can be staying the same out of your own love for yourself, your own wish to protect yourself. Yeah, from this powerful sense. I don’t want to feel helpless again. And that’s especially true with people in the behavioral health system who have been over and over again disappointed. And they live in a system. This comes from my work in mental health. I interviewed a group of people I was running a group for about 30 years ago, and I said, what, what, what stops you from changing? And not a single one of them said, my symptoms. All of them said, I don’t want to raise anybody’s expectations. I don’t want to raise my expectations. In this system, people are constantly, constantly raising expectations and then being disappointed, raising expectations and being disappointed.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:11:03  I mean, can you think of a more insane thing to have your job being changed? You wake up in the morning and everybody’s waiting by your bed saying, is this the day where you’ll change? We’ve been waiting for change. Is it today? Oh, not today. Okay, well, tomorrow we’ll check back in and see if you change then. Right. That kind of pressure. Yeah. Creates all these expectations. And then there’s all these disappointments one after the other. And that creates what I call fear of hope. And we can talk about that further. But we’ve done full research on this concept. We have a scale for it. It’s not it is its own thing. And that is hope is that thing that got me to disappointment. If I don’t hope, I won’t be disappointed. And yet hope is at the center of all motivation.

Eric Zimmer 00:11:47  Exactly. You you have to have it in order for real change to any kind of change to occur. Because if you don’t have some hope that you can change, you’ll never bother.

Eric Zimmer 00:11:56  So yeah, it is a little bit of a double edged sword, right?

Ross Ellenhorn 00:11:59  Yeah, yeah. Especially if you think of hope this way. Hope. Hope isn’t optimism. It’s not. Everything’s going to be great. Hope is the mindset that gets us through uncertainty to something we yearn for. Whether we get to that thing or not. The most brilliant philosopher, I hope, is probably Martin Luther King, because this is what he was trying to activate a whole, a whole movement around this concept that we don’t know where we’re headed, but we got to get through uncertainty to get there. That’s hope. It’s not the guarantee things are going to be good. And so every act of change, every act of motivation requires that because you’re always stepping in the unknown. Even if you have a workout schedule, you don’t know, am I going to quit in the middle of it? Am I going to give up all those sorts of things? And so it’s always about some level of can I get the uncertainty of this thing I want.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:12:51  So a person is afraid of hope, who has fear of hope that the well to motivation is poisoned, and then they stay the same and they’re staying the same because they just cannot handle the idea of another disappointment.

Eric Zimmer 00:13:05  Yeah. So let’s dive into a couple of the reasons not to change. I think we’ve hit on like the big overarching picture here to a certain degree, but within that there are lots of little or subtleties that we could say. And the first I’d love you to talk about is staying the same protects you from your aloneness and accountability. What do you mean by that?

Ross Ellenhorn 00:13:27  Yeah. So if you think about all change as an act that exposes you as a person in charge of your life, we’re all afraid of that on some level. It’s called existential anxiety. The idea that I’m in charge of my own life. Yeah. And so every act of change kind of exposes that that I’m making this happen, which also means I’m alone in this. On some level, this job in my life.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:13:55  I can be connected to people. People can support me, but I’m kind of alone and accountable for what happens. And so every change always has that threat to it always has that. You know, when you talk about the things that are sort of holding you back, it always has that threat. And if you are afraid of disappointment, you’re going to be more afraid of that threat of your own accountability, and you’re going to feel more alone in that process. You’re going to feel more like I’m the one that made this fall apart when things go bad.

Eric Zimmer 00:14:27  Now that is the truth. Regardless of whether we are attempting to change or not, that we are alone and responsible for our lives. This is an act of just not wanting to actually come more face to face with it, is what you’re saying?

Ross Ellenhorn 00:14:41  Yeah. On some level it’s not quite intentional, but it’s a person who is almost choosing sameness. You know, we all do on some level. I mean, this thing called resistance, which has never been proven.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:14:53  This thing called denial, which has never been proven. This thing called difficult to engage clients, never been proven that it’s a psychological issue. You know, for me, it’s all about a person saying, I don’t really want to do this because I don’t want to. I’m terrified of another disappointment. It’s not a person who’s saying, I’m not looking at my problem. It’s a person saying, I don’t want to move that way, because I don’t know if this will just be another time when I feel disappointed and harmed by that disappointment, you know?

Eric Zimmer 00:15:21  Yeah. Here’s one. Some of these are paired with each other, right? One is staying the same, protects you from your own expectations, and staying the same protects you from the expectations of others.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:15:32  Yeah. Those are kind of the big ones, you know. So one of the interesting things about hope is it appoints whatever you’re hoping for is more, more important than it was before. You hope for it. It’s like your parents asked you.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:15:45  You know what you want for your birthday. Can’t come over. And then you all of a sudden you think I want a bike? And then the bike becomes the life saving most important thing in your life, right? So once you start hoping for something, you’re raising its importance. And so all our expectations go up and the value of the thing goes up once we start moving towards it. You’re not going to feel disappointed if those things aren’t there, but those things have to be there for you to be motivated. And so when the thing doesn’t happen, that’s what’s crushing about it, is that your expectations went up and as your expectations went up, so do the value of the thing. And now that thing that you feel is going to kind of make your life what it should be, is taken away from you. And then there’s the disappointment of family disappointment or treaters. You know, there’s this thing called self-sabotage, which I don’t know if that exists either, but we see people over and over again when they start reaching points of success begin to fall apart.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:16:41  And for me, that’s because they feel as if they’re kind of terrified of raising people’s expectations even further.

Eric Zimmer 00:17:14  Any success, actually, then raises expectations.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:17:18  That’s exactly right. Yeah.

Eric Zimmer 00:17:19  Right. You do well. And now it’s not like, great. You’re at the finish line. It’s you did this. Now you can do that. And now that you can do that, now you can do this. And it just keeps going.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:17:30  Yep, yep. My son used to call home from college and say, hey, dad, I got an A in English. And I’d say, Max, that’s that’s fantastic. What are your grades in your other classes? Right. I wasn’t being a bad parent. I was being a parent. But everything becomes it begets more expectations. Every time you do better people than say, okay, well, if you can do that, you can do this. It becomes this terrifying world where things become more and more alone, and also more and more like, if I fail, it’s going to be all the way from the top.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:18:00  Now, all of this failure is going to bring everybody down, including myself. Yeah.

Eric Zimmer 00:18:05  Is this the sort of thing, this, this fear of hope that happens after we have been disappointed by our own failures to change? Is that part of it? Because I’m wondering, you know, if you’ve got somebody who has been so far successful in making the changes they want to make, maybe they don’t feel this, but the people who have tried and it hasn’t gone, it becomes a it reinforces itself.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:18:35  Yeah.

Eric Zimmer 00:18:35  Yeah, yeah. In both directions probably.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:18:37  Right. Yeah. Yeah yeah. So I think I think everybody has it. The issue is how much faith in yourself do you have that you can handle it? The disappointment. How much do you believe you can deal with it if the disappointment happens? You know, there’s all this research on this thing called self-efficacy, which is the ability to kind of feel like you’re competent in life. But but half half of self-efficacy is self-efficacy. People aren’t ruined by disappointment because they feel self efficacious about that, too.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:19:05  I can handle it. I know how to deal with disappointment. But if you’ve been sort of crushed in your faith or yourself, then everything becomes kind of terrifying. You can’t really raise people’s hope. You can’t really lower their fear of hope. But what you can do is get them to believe in themselves more. And the more that they can believe in themselves, the more likely they’re they’re going to be willing to hope, they’re going to be willing to kind of do that because the risk of the disappointment goes away. It’s not as much.

Eric Zimmer 00:19:31  You know, how do we do that? Because, you know, self-efficacy or confidence tends to come from you can’t you can’t pretend you’re way into that stuff usually, right? Yeah. That gets developed by you being successful or doing well in certain ways. So how do we get people to believe more in themselves when, let’s say, their track record isn’t great? So, I mean, I can look at myself with my getting sober the first time. I mean, it took me a bunch of attempts.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:20:01  Yeah, yeah.

Eric Zimmer 00:20:02  Yeah, yeah. So how do you get somebody who points to the, the their track record? Yeah. To believe in themselves.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:20:09  Yeah. Well, I’m going to tell you how not to do it and I’ll tell you how to do it. How’s that?

Eric Zimmer 00:20:15  Okay. Perfect.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:20:16  Maybe we should have a system if it’s going to call addiction a disease, which I don’t quite believe, I believe addiction. My favorite word for addiction I’ve come up with myself is this term called addiction. I think that’s what addiction is. It’s not disease. But if you’re going to call it a disease, we have a system that says it’s a disease, but you can’t get help for your disease unless you’re not showing symptoms of the disease. That’s a cruel and inhumane model. And it hurts people. People feel bad about themselves and they’re out there failing all the time, because abstinence is the only way to get into a program. Then we have programs that claim to get people to abstinence, and they do.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:20:56  But so what? They’re behind walls. They got abstinent. Right. And we have programs that say, you’re not ready for this. You’re not ready for that. You’re not ready to have a relationship. You’re not ready to use your phone. You’re not ready to work. You’re not ready to, Right?. All of those things are the medicine for addiction. Having a sense of purpose. I feel like a valuable member of the community, feeling connected to someone you love. Those are the medicine that help a person have faith enough in themselves to hope and to try. And so we have a system that removes the medicine for addiction by removing people from their communities. So in my mind it should be harm reduction oriented harm reduction does not mean it’s not abstinence oriented. You can use harm reduction means all kinds of things, but it’s not kicking people out all the time because they’re using. And it’s about getting people into their own lives you use today. That means you shouldn’t go to work tomorrow. You should go to an IOP.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:21:57  That job you had that you finally got, you’re not ready for it. Go to a program. Oh, you’re almost about to get your degree. Forget the degree. We gotta remove you from the place and put you somewhere instead of having a team around you outreach wise, that’s helping you stay in the world and become valuable and feel valuable. I don’t know if you if you’re a person that went through AA, but the before the meeting and after the meeting or the events. Yeah. The fellowship C of that.

Eric Zimmer 00:22:27  Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think there are I think there’s a little more nuance in it than what you’re, you’re talking about. Like, I’ll give you an example. We had to put our dog to sleep last week, and we chose to get out of our house for a week. Go visit some people. So we weren’t in the place where everywhere we looked, she wasn’t. Yeah. Now we have to come home. Yeah. And when we come home, it’s there, right? It’s waiting for us.

Eric Zimmer 00:22:57  It’s there. But we’ve had a week of building up some strength and some skills that allow us to go back to that place a little bit more supported. So I think there are, I think, any type of addiction treatment to assume that it’s the only right one for people is always a mistake, because we’re all different and our circumstances are different. So I think there are plenty there are cases where putting somebody in somewhere to build some skills to get stronger before they go back to their community. Make sense? But I also do agree with you that purpose is is really important into what makes us the medicine for addiction. I think part of the problem is this the outreach in the community around people that you’re describing doesn’t often exist.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:23:45  Yeah. No it doesn’t. No, no.

Eric Zimmer 00:23:46  Right. And so so people are kind of between a rock and a hard place a little bit.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:23:51  Yeah. No, I’m imagining something that’s not there, really. You know. I mean, our program does it, but I mean, yeah, I’m imagining something.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:23:57  I’m imagining something that’s not quite there. I’m just saying what? But, but, but I do think that the, the system we have now is almost pro addiction on some level, just like the mental health system is kind of pro suicide because it’s putting people in hospitals all the time when they’re suicidal, which doesn’t really work. But that doesn’t mean, oh, I totally agree that there’s a need for triage and their need to remove the person from their use. I don’t consider that really the curative event, though. It’s giving them enough to go back to then be in the curative event. It’s it’s giving them enough room to do that, you know. Yeah. And and sometimes people need to go away because what they’re doing so dangerous, they need to be protected from it so they can make better decisions. I mean, there’s all kinds of reasons to go away, but the idea that treatment is kind of focused on going away and not focused on how to help people feel like parts of their community, I think, is a problem.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:24:51  I don’t see things working if we don’t do that, you know?

Eric Zimmer 00:24:55  Yeah, I think the real problem. I agree with you when we say go away. So my my experience, I got sober twice, once at 25 as I was homeless, heroin addict, real low bottom. And then I stayed sober about eight years. And then I started drinking again. And I got sober at that time. The first time I went, I did treatment. Yeah, I went into treatment. I didn’t go away. I went to treatment in Columbus, and then I chose to go to a halfway house and that worked for me. I have seen what happens when people go away, away, meaning they they go to Minnesota. That happens to be a popular destination for people in this situation. they start to build a community there. Right. So I was building a community in treatment in the halfway house. I was going to meetings. I was meeting people at meetings. I was doing all that. And when I left treatment or the halfway house, that community was still there.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:25:53  Right.

Eric Zimmer 00:25:54  Right. I think when you send somebody to Minnesota, because they’re building that community, ideally in a decent program, they’re building that community right away. Right. But then you leave that whole supportive environment. And I think that is a really rough transition.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:26:08  Yeah, I agree with you. And the story you’re telling me is still about social connection. Yes. And so 100% medicine. In the end, the medicine was social connection in a sense of value in the community, you know. And if that’s the way to get it, that’s a great way to get it. You know, the other part of it is who knows? This is sort of from my book. Who knows what it was that made you susceptible to change at that point? Yeah. In my mind, it wasn’t the place. It was whatever was going on in your life that made it so you could metabolize the care that people were giving you. Yeah. You know.

Eric Zimmer 00:26:44  I always think of it as it was a combination of things in my life were really getting bad, but that I don’t think that’s enough.

Eric Zimmer 00:26:54  I think that that came up at the same time with somehow the thing we talked about, which is hope. Yeah. Some hope that I could get better. And when those two things come together, I think we’ve got a shot. But when things are just bad, that’s a really dangerous place to be. When it’s just. I’m. I’m broken, I can’t change. Yeah. There’s nothing I can do about this, right? You know, those were the most dangerous days of my my drug use, I think. And they were after I had tried 12 step programs and treatment before, and it didn’t work that time. So I concluded it doesn’t work. Yeah. Instead of recognizing very much what you’re saying, and I think this is some of what’s critical to getting people to hope again, is to recognize that you’re not the same person this time that you were last time. That’s right. Just because it didn’t work last time doesn’t mean that it won’t work this time, because you’re not the same.

Eric Zimmer 00:27:55  And I think that’s a really key piece.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:27:58  Yeah. Yeah, that’s a hard one, isn’t it? Because because, treatment becomes as repetitive as addiction, you know. And so.

Eric Zimmer 00:28:05  Yeah.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:28:06  You can. Okay. Again, just this is part of the whole thing. And the feeling of isolation, shame and loneliness doesn’t really get addressed often in the treatment. So the underlying suffering from the addiction often doesn’t go away. I’m still feel broken. I’m not drunk anymore, but I still feel broken. I still feel unheard. I still feel alone. You know. And so those things aren’t always addressed in treatment centers. Sometimes they are. But but. And then also sometimes we have to get those things from the community. We have to get it from being part of the world.

Eric Zimmer 00:28:44  Before we dive back into the conversation, let me ask you something. What’s one thing that has been holding you back lately? You know that it’s there. You’ve tried to push past it, but somehow it keeps getting in the way.

Eric Zimmer 00:28:57  You’re not alone in this, and I’ve identified six major saboteurs of self control. Things like autopilot behavior, self-doubt, emotional escapism that quietly derail our best intentions. But here’s the good news you can outsmart them. And I’ve put together a free guide to help you spot these hidden obstacles and give you simple, actionable strategies that you can use to regain control. Download the free guide now. At once you feed. And take the first step towards getting back on track. So let’s move on from there. And I want to talk about one of these reasons not to change that jumped off the page to me. And I’m going to give it a little context real quick. So I’m a big believer. I use a phrase a lot that little by little, a little becomes a lot. The change happens through these incremental small steps. I have a book coming out next year called how a Little Becomes a Lot. So obviously Reason not to change number seven. I was very intrigued by which is that staying the same protects you from the insult of small steps.

Eric Zimmer 00:30:04  I love this. Yeah, talk to me about the insult of small steps and what you mean by that.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:30:10  Tell me about the theme of your book. This idea that a little bit, a little bit means a lot. What? What does that mean?

Eric Zimmer 00:30:16  Well, it’s that my experience is that change comes through a thousand small moments and choices. Right? If you were going to film the movie of my life, you would see a scene of me going into a detox center and them saying you need to go to long term treatment, and me saying no, I don’t. Going back to my room and having a moment of clarity where I thought, God, I am going to die or I’m going to go to jail. I’ve got 50 years of jail time and I go back and I say, I’ll go to treatment. And that’s the moment, right? That, you know, the cue, the triumphant music, all that stuff. That moment only matters only has any significance because of a thousand tiny choices I made after that, again and again and again.

Eric Zimmer 00:30:57  Yeah, we over prioritize the epiphany. We over prioritize the five easy steps. We over prioritize all of that. And that change actually tends to most lasting change happens a little bit at a time over a long period of time. Yes. I love what you’re talking about with the insult of small steps, because there are reasons why. Little by little doesn’t work. And some of it is what you’re addressing here.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:31:28  Yeah, yeah. No, I think that that’s beautiful how you’re describing this, you know, and if you’re afraid of hope, the only thing you can bear is the small steps. Yeah. Because the big ones are like, oh, shit. Everybody’s gonna, like, see that it happened, you know? And it’s also like, I can only digest little moments of pride. I can’t feel completely proud of myself because I’m so afraid of it.

Eric Zimmer 00:31:50  That’s a great point. Yeah.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:31:51  So every small step is just this the most manageable unit of pride, the most manageable unit of self-efficacy.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:31:59  And anything past that scares the person. The insults of Small Steps is sort of about that. It’s like if the step is a little bit more than small, or if it’s just even small, it becomes like, well, that makes me look at where I’m at. I made a sandwich today. That’s my big event. I know, but you know, I’ve been eating out all week, and today I made a sandwich because I’m trying to be more responsible for my life because someone at AA told me to make a sandwich. I made a sandwich today. That’s the big event. But that small step, the way you’re describing it, is one of those small steps that led to the bigger one. Right? Yep. And so it’s that constant sense of being insulted by these small things I have to do, you know? Yeah. We got plenty of people in my program who say, yeah, oh, I’m ready to go back to college. I’m totally ready. I’m going to graduate next year.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:32:47  And then we say, well, you know, first you got to apply. And they’re like, oh God, apply. Which means to them I’m not as far as my friends who are already in college. Yep. And that’s sort of a big step. But even that step is like now I’m looking at where I am in relationship to my goal. The minute you take a small step, you’re looking at the distance to the goal.

Eric Zimmer 00:33:05  Yes.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:33:06  And then it becomes insulting and upsetting, you know, and you have to kind of get through those things because you’ve got to have the small steps to get there.

Eric Zimmer 00:33:33  I think your point is a really good one. There’s a couple there. I mean, one is, yeah, if we keep comparing ourselves to the end goal. Yeah, it’s demoralizing. And every time you have to sort of look at where you are, it can be very disappointing. I mean I can think about that like, well, okay, I went to two meetings today.

Eric Zimmer 00:33:50  I feel on one level I feel really good about myself. On another level, I can look at friends of mine, like you said, who just graduated from college last year, and I’ve never darkened the doors of a college due to my addiction. Yeah. You know, and these, these little steps. And it’s also just hard to sustain.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:34:08  Yeah, yeah. Unless you have some sort of credo to help you with that. Like there’s a credo called the One Day at a time, right? I mean, in other words, like, that’s really brilliant. And it is sort of about that. It’s like, don’t set your sights on the big thing, get through today and then you feel some sense of accomplishment about today, and then tomorrow you’re going to get up and start again. But don’t look too broadly. You know.

Eric Zimmer 00:34:34  Yeah. I mean, it’s there’s so many cliches around it. Rome wasn’t built in the day and all that stuff. I mean, they’re they’re cliches, but, you know, one day at a time is a huge cliche.

Eric Zimmer 00:34:44  And it happens to be actually very useful.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:34:47  Very. It might be. Without it, I don’t see how people recover. Right. Yeah. How can you not if you’re not in that mode of saying today, today is my day. This is the day I’m working on it. I’m not thinking about tomorrow, you know? Yeah. Yeah.

Eric Zimmer 00:35:01  Well, really? From both angles. Right? It’s one is, you know, a day breaks it down into, you know, recognizing it’s small steps. And the other is when you feel really overwhelmed. Yeah. My partner talking about our dog passing, the thing she said a few times is I can’t imagine how I’m going to live the rest of my life without her. Right. And the one day at a time answer to that is you don’t have to figure out how you’re going to live the rest of your life without her. All we have to figure out is how we live the next hour without her or the next. You know, today without her, right? When we start thinking about how am I going to live the rest of my life? It feels overwhelming.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:35:39  Yeah. And think about what that does for you. This isn’t a problematic problem. This is a sadness. But it allows you to grieve. You’re not. You’re not. To think about your future is not to grieve. It’s to grieve. It’s to grieve. Who will I be without? You know, this is actually a lot of grief. Turns out is about like, who will I be without this person? But still, it’s to think about who am I, not what am I? What have I lost?

Eric Zimmer 00:36:06  Right. It’s your brain trying to figure something out so that you don’t feel what you’re feeling. It is a it is a mechanism of of distancing yourself. Yeah.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:36:17  But it’s one of those situations where if you go towards the thing it’s actually more gratifying. Right. Like that’s.

Eric Zimmer 00:36:23  Great.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:36:24  Grief is we’re doing right now. We’re grieving. You know.

Eric Zimmer 00:36:27  Yeah. And I had to put a number of dogs to sleep over the years. And I do like one thing about it.

Eric Zimmer 00:36:34  It is that it is. The grief is just so pure and strong and straight and simple. Yep. Yep. It doesn’t have any of the complexity that human things have. It’s just I loved this thing. It’s gone. I miss it, and it’s just it’s a very I like it in its its intensity but also its simplicity.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:36:59  Yeah, yeah. I wrote about this a little bit to somebody that, there was a period of time in our lives where we knew things more than we know things now, but we didn’t have language. You knew what it meant to be comforted before there were words. One psychoanalyst calls it the unthought known. This place pre words after you were born in our relationships with dogs is in that world the known unthought known. And what those animals give us is uncomplicated grief because it’s not complicated by thought or by what do I mean to you? And who do you mean to me? We just know it. You’re not questioning. How did I harm? You know, like none of that stuff, is there? Yeah.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:37:52  It’s the chance for uncomplicated grief, you know? yeah. You know, immaculate grief. You know, it’s like it’s really a great.

Eric Zimmer 00:38:00  That’s a good term for it.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:38:01  Yeah, yeah. The real gift on some level. Yeah.

Eric Zimmer 00:38:04  So looking at all of these things here that we’ve, we’ve laid out these, these reasons not to change. And a lot of them as we’ve talked about being around hope, how do we get people to hope. I think I asked this question. I’m not sure we got the answer. I think we may have gone off on a tangent. I probably took us off on a tangent if if past history is any indication, this was me. Not, you know.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:38:32  Past history with me.

Eric Zimmer 00:38:32  To how how do we get people who don’t currently believe in themselves to believe in themselves enough to hope?

Ross Ellenhorn 00:38:41  Yeah, yeah yeah, yeah. If I promise I’ll get to that, I’m gonna take a little tangent. It’s just a small tangent, but I think it’s important because it’s something that after that book, I began to understand better and better.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:38:56  There’s there’s a thing in social psychology called threat assessment theory. And what it is is that something is a threat when you don’t have the resources to handle it. So if you’re in a t shirt and shorts and you’re walking around and it starts to snow, there’s a threat. But if you put on a jacket and pants, it’s just a challenge. And there are things in our lives around us that are just like that coat that make it so that challenges personal challenges. Stay in the challenge column and not the threat column. Social support. People around me who have my best interest in mind, who back me up. Self-efficacy I can get things done. Sense of purpose. Sense of value to my community. These things are really proven within social psychology that they become the resources that make it so things don’t seem threatening. Things like looking at your problem. No longer is it a threat. It’s a challenge. I’m willing to look at the fact that I have an addiction. If I don’t have those resources around me, I’m not going to accept the care, because I’m not going to be willing to look at the problem because I can’t handle it.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:40:13  It’s a threat. It’s a threat for me to go into treatment. It’s not a challenge. Life becomes just all threats. This is what there is, what their discovering and all the loneliness epidemic stuff is that people who are lonely, who don’t have the resources of social support, are constantly in this threat mode. And so if we’re going to help.

Eric Zimmer 00:40:30  Perversely makes it harder then to connect to people. Loneliness is a yeah.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:40:35  Yeah, yeah. When they’re finally ready, they’re paranoid. I mean, it really is. Yeah. Awful that way. So the answer is complicated, but it’s I think it’s a fact that if we don’t have the right social resources, we’re not going to move towards change. Those are the things that are push us forward. When we talk about things holding us back and things pushing us forward. And so we really do need to be kind of focused on who you are in the community. How do I support you to continue to be a valuable member of the community, even if you’re using? Yes.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:41:09  If you use last night, is it really the best thing for you to quit your job? Or is it better for me to show up at your job during your lunch break to make sure you’re not using then, but keep you in that job? And is it valuable for you to see that the person caring for you sees the job? Not fixing you with some intervention, sees the job as the most important thing in your life, and it’s surrounding you with that. Giving a person a sense that there’s a continuous, non-judgmental relationship. We just know this to all the addiction research, that long term relationships are the number one thing that, contribute to a person’s recovery. So how do we do that for people where they don’t feel like when they use, they lose those relationships, that social support?

Eric Zimmer 00:41:53  Yeah.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:41:54  How do we have conversations not about the addiction, but about where they want to go in life? You know, I think that’s a better conversation. And but, you know, I work in mental health largely.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:42:03  And I think it’s that’s a better conversation than talking to someone who has schizophrenia about their symptoms. It’s like, where do you where do you want to be? And by the way, your symptoms might be in the way of that, but where do you want to be, you know.

Eric Zimmer 00:42:14  Well, yeah. And I have a lot of compassion for family members, friends of addicts. And I have I’ve been in that role. So I have compassion for myself in that role and people in that role. It’s a terrible it’s an awful spot to be in. Yeah. And that part of what ends up happening, I think, is that those people become threatening to the addict.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:42:40  Yeah, absolutely.

Eric Zimmer 00:42:41  Because to look at addiction, to talk about it, to think about it is threatening because that person is so angry. Yeah. And again, I don’t blame people for being that angry. I get it. And it doesn’t really help take the it doesn’t help you take addiction from a threat to a challenge.

Eric Zimmer 00:42:59  Right? It ups the threat.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:43:01  Level, it ups the threat level. And it also creates a system of lying. So now you get like there’s no the attachments gone at that point. They’re threatening me. I’m lying. That’s our relationship. And I’m sneaking around. And now there’s a secret. And so the chance for social support is lessening at that point, you know. And that’s generated in these kind of experiences like this. You know.

Eric Zimmer 00:43:30  I want to spend a couple more minutes here on change, and then I want to get to purple crayons. Late in the book, you talk about you can’t always change, and you talk about the fact that there needs to be an acknowledgement of two things that I think are important. One is that you talk about the cruelty of purely individualistic approaches that blame people for systemic problems. Meaning you give a great example about for a CEO to go back to school and get their master’s degree is like climbing a minor hill. Yeah. For somebody who works in the warehouse of that same company who has two children and is a single parent.

Eric Zimmer 00:44:21  That’s not just a small hill to climb. That’s a that’s a big mountain to climb, right? Right. And so so it’s not just purely individualistic. What’s the circumstances? The system, all of that stuff matters. And yet accountability needs to remain crucial, right? People have to have a sense of efficacy, of hope and and about how you how do you balance these things. And you say that extremism always tends to bend towards cruelty, which is such a great line. Talk to me about this idea.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:44:55  Yeah. I mean, this sort of concept we have, that all you got to do is make the choice. To change. You know, I mean, every book that says there’s five steps is just basically saying, why aren’t you doing the five steps instead of respecting the person’s context, you know. Yeah.

Eric Zimmer 00:45:16  And context is everything.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:45:18  Everything. And so we have all these things going around us that decide whether we’re ready to make a change. And those things switch and change every day.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:45:28  And there are those resources I’ve been talking about, you know, and if you don’t have those resources, it’s insulting on some level. And it makes you feel bad when people act as if this is something you can just do. When it’s always what’s around you that’s going to support you enough to then be able to make the decision to change. And we do live in a system that’s basically saying, well, we have all the cures. Just come and take the cure and you’re done. And and that’s a lie. There’s a lot of evidence, actually. People that never go to treatment do pretty well, you know. So we’re also trying to talk people into all these treatments. Say, and then we say that there’s something wrong with them. They’re not accepting them. And what we’re not respecting is that that person lives within a context, within an experience. Now, the fact is that CEO actually could be impoverished in areas that the poor person is not to. Yes, that Theo could be living somewhere in some suburban place where there’s no culture, no sense of connection, no sense of cultural connection, no sense of shared language, nothing like that.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:46:27  And that poor person could live in a neighborhood where in at night, everybody’s out on the street talking to each other, having connected experiences. They live close to their family and all of that. Those are also resources. Yep. You know, it just depends on the situation, you know.

Eric Zimmer 00:46:44  Right. And so how how do you work with people to understand the context but not let the context define them? Because we both said context is everything. But it’s I guess I would say probably to speak less binary. It’s not it’s not quite everything because there is an element of human agency in all of this. So how do you work with people to understand their context, to have kindness and patience towards themselves, but also not allow the context to become. Something that holds them back.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:47:20  Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah. I mean, you know, for me it’s like it is all about our aloneness and our decisions. And the context is the thing that might give us enough courage to face that. Right? So that the world we’re in might give us enough room to look at that.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:47:34  I think that, we’re in trouble that way. That political debate, the debate about human beings is all totalizing. You’re this. That’s why you’re feeling this. And that includes you’re this kind of oppressed person, right? Which I appreciate, and I understand why it’s there, but it it is not it is not seeing the person as a unique humanity with all kinds of complex things going on.

Eric Zimmer 00:47:57  Right.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:47:58  And so this kind of identifying with these things is its own kind of nationalism, its its own kind of way of having a totalizing view of things. It’s a kind of nationalism I like better than other horrid forms of nationalism, but it still is. It’s this kind of totalizing idea, this idea that instead of the complete and complex mystery of a human being, you know.

Eric Zimmer 00:48:20  Exactly. And one that the outcome is not known.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:48:24  Yeah.

Eric Zimmer 00:48:24  Yeah. You know, nobody’s outcome is known. Yeah. We we can say, oh, we could predict that this type of person is going to be more successful this way, or this type of person is going to do better in this environment.

Eric Zimmer 00:48:35  We can make some predictions. Yeah. But there’s a lot going on that we don’t understand.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:48:41  That most of it we don’t understand. Yeah. I mean about about human beings. It is a completely uncertain event. change is improvisational. Growth is improvisational. Yup. Psychotherapy was invented as an improvisational art form where you didn’t know where it was going. And all of this has become these little best practice tools instead of what it was supposed to be, which is I’m here listening and I’m following you, but I’m not going to make decisions about who you are. Right. And Martin Luther King had this gorgeous concept called the sacredness of human personality. And when he talked about oppression, he was talking about that sacred thing that everybody has their own unique, fascinating world inside of them is crushed by them, made into things. And so he was celebrating that everybody has this unique, fascinating world that can’t be captured by saying you’re this or you’re or that, even when those this is and that are part of the resistance.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:49:42  He was saying every person deserves the dignity of being a fully human, unique person. And that’s the version of oppression that I appreciate is being made simple by another person’s perception. And that can include the list of things that says, your identity is this and this and this.

Eric Zimmer 00:50:06  You know, I’m thinking, you know, all of those sort of I’m this, I’m that. they they serve purposes to a point. Yep. Right. And you know, I’ve talked about this on this show a lot. You know, at what point did my identity as an addict and an alcoholic help me? And when did it become limited? Or my diagnosis of having depression? Where was that useful and served me, and where did it suddenly become non useful? And I think it’s the same thing for people who are parts of oppressed groups. There’s a there is an understanding that’s really valuable there, but it’s not the whole story. And and how you know what, whatever that thing is, is, you know, how can we use these identities, diagnoses, all these things when they’re useful but be able to discard them when they’re not? And I think what you were just talking about with Martin Luther King is a beautiful way of saying.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:50:59  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I think I often say like the DSM, what if we treated it as this remarkable book of poems about human suffering, all the different forms of human suffering. What if we said that it was that? Then it’d be pretty cool. What if it’s. If it’s a way of us designing how to fix somebody, because they’ve got this and this and this and kind of telling them what they are. It becomes something completely different.

Eric Zimmer 00:51:24  All the poets in the audience who have been issued a challenge, take the DSM and make poems out of it. I think it’s a beautiful idea.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:51:31  It already is, in a way, these little, short little things. It really is about how do you approach things as flexible and nimble and not defining. You know, and we live in an age where people are terrified of that. And so everything’s becoming the opposite of that. You know.

Eric Zimmer 00:51:46  Before we wrap up, I want you to think about this. Have you ever ended the day feeling like your choices didn’t quite match the person you wanted to be? Maybe it was autopilot mode or self-doubt that made it harder to stick to your goals.

Eric Zimmer 00:52:01  And that’s exactly why I created The Six Saboteurs of Self-control. It’s a free guide to help you recognize the hidden patterns that hold you back and give you simple, effective strategies to break through them. If you’re ready to take back control and start making lasting changes. Download your copy now at once. Let’s make those shifts happen starting today. One you feed e-book. So if listeners are listening to this and they want to take away one little thing that they could do today in their life. Small thing that would move them in the direction of the change they want to make. Like, can you give us one little takeaway thing? And I know you hate five simple steps. I’m not asking for that. I’m not asking for that. I’m asking for a particular starting point.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:52:56  I think you might want to respect and honor all the ways you try to stay the same. Then you should stop insulting it and putting it down and see That it comes from your own self-love. It comes from your own attempt to preserve yourself.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:53:12  And that. Well, in the end, it’s probably not good for you and your progress. It’s also a moment of rest, and it’s also you doing the best job you do care for yourself, and if you do that, change actually becomes easier. Change doesn’t emerge out of shame. It just doesn’t.

Eric Zimmer 00:53:30  No, it sure does not.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:53:32  And so I was going to title the book Don’t Go Changing, but Harper Collins wouldn’t let me. But that but that is kind of the message in it. Like it’s okay, you know, respect this, respect this thing you’re doing, staying the same. There’s a grace to it. There’s a beauty to it, you know? and if you do that, there’s more likelihood that you’ll be freed to change.

Eric Zimmer 00:53:49  Excellent. Well, that’s a beautiful place to wrap up. You and I are going to continue in the post-show conversation because I said we were going to talk about purple crayons and we did not. So we are going to go talk about it.

Eric Zimmer 00:54:00  Listeners, if you’d like access to that post-show conversation where we’re going to be talking about the role of creativity in all of what we’ve just been talking about and life in general. You can go to one, you feed coin and you can get ad free episodes. You can get these post-show conversations and you can help support this show, which really needs your help. Ross, thank you so much. I’ve enjoyed talking with you and I really enjoyed your books.

Ross Ellenhorn 00:54:26  Yeah, yeah, it was great. It was really great. You’re good at this and I appreciate your questions and the way you listen. So thank you.

Eric Zimmer 00:54:31  Thank you so much for listening to the show. If you found this conversation helpful, inspiring or thought provoking, I’d love for you to share it with a friend. Sharing from one person to another is the lifeblood of what we do. We don’t have a big budget, and I’m certainly not a celebrity, but we have something even better. And that’s you just hit the share button on your podcast app, or send a quick text with the episode link to someone who might enjoy it.

Eric Zimmer 00:54:57  Your support means the world, and together we can spread wisdom. One episode at a time. Thank you for being part of the one You Feed community.

Struggling to stick to your goals? In the upcoming 6 Saboteurs of Self-Control Workshop, we’ll uncover the six hidden obstacles that sabotage your progress and teach you how to overcome them. From breaking free of autopilot habits to tackling self-doubt and emotional escapism, this live session offers practical tools and strategies to help you make better choices and stay aligned with your values. Join us on Sunday, January 12 at 12pm ET and take the first step toward lasting change.

In this episode, Michelle Segar explains the importance of understanding choice points for lasting changes in eating and exercise. She is an expert in sustainable behavior change for health and well-being and provides valuable insights and strategies for implementing consistent and lasting lifestyle changes. Michelle’s insights shed light on the complexities of habit formation, challenging conventional approaches and advocating for a more holistic and compassionate perspective.

Key Takeaways:

• Mastering the art of transforming unskillful behavior into skillful actions for lasting change
• Overcoming the motivation bubble to unlock the secrets of healthy habit success
• Unveiling powerful strategies for building and maintaining consistent exercise and eating habits
• Harnessing the role of executive functions in making healthy choices for a thriving lifestyle
• Embracing value-based decision making for sustainable and meaningful behavior change

Connect with Michelle Segar: Website | X

Michelle Segar is an award-winning researcher at the University of Michigan. She has been a sustainable behavior change scientist and health coach for almost 30 years. Her work investigates how to help people adopt self-care behaviors, like exercise and healthy eating, in ways that bring joy and meaning, and can survive the complexity and unpredictability of the real world. She has authored two popular books (No Sweat, The Joy Choice), advises the World Health Organization on their physical activity initiatives, and was selected as the inaugural chair of the United States National Physical Activity Plan’s Communication Committee. Her pragmatic work is being scaled to boost patient health, employee well-being, and gym membership retention.

If you enjoyed this episode with Michelle Segar, check out these other episodes:

Michelle Segar (Interview from 2016)

How to Meet Yourself with Dr. Nicole LePera

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Episode Transcript:

Chris Forbes  00:19

Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Michelle Seager, an award winning researcher at the University of Michigan with almost 30 years studying how to help people adopt healthy behaviors in ways that can survive the complexity and unpredictability of the real world. Michele’s first book, No Sweat was featured in The New York Times and won the 2015 Best Book Awards in the diet and exercise category. It also became the number one selling book in Amazon’s exercise and fitness category. When released today, Michelle and Eric discuss her new book, The Joy choice how to finally achieve lasting changes in eating and exercise.

Eric Zimmer  01:54

Hi, Michelle, welcome to the show.

Michelle Segar  01:56

Thank you. It is great to be here again.

Eric Zimmer  01:59

Yes, I am. So happy to have you on I was saying to you before we started that, I don’t remember when we talked to you, it’s probably at least four years ago, but the conversation really has stuck with me since then. It’s one of the things I reference a lot, which is the basic idea that you know, the key is just to move in any way. Anytime that you can, and that everything counts, you know, those things really, really left an impression on me. But you’ve got a new book out called The Joy choice how to finally achieve lasting changes in eating and exercise. And we’ll get into that a second. But let’s start like we always do with a parable. In the parable. There’s a grandparent who’s talking with their grandchild. And they say in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always a battle. One is the Good Wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops, thinks about it for a second and looks up at their grandparents and says, Well, which one wins. And the grandparent replies, the one you feed. So I’d like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life. And in the work that you do.

Michelle Segar  03:08

I love that you started the podcast this way. It’s a profound, foundational thing, both I would say in my life and in my work. And this time around, I actually am going to tell you a quote that is so meaningful to me. And I think it has to do with this what you just read the parable. And it’s from Dan Siegel, who I’m sure your listeners know where our attention goes, neural firing flows, and neural connections grow. And so putting that parable within, you know, this essential neuroscience, which speaks to how important it is for us to feed the wolf that we really want to become, if you will, the virtues that we want to embody and live at. But I also I think it’s really important to bring the challenge to doing that it sounds logical to say, Well, if we feed the right wolves, then we’re going to live in the way we really value living. And again, I value this I believe in it. And it’s still challenging sometimes because and this is the thing because it takes conscious awareness before we feed the wealth and having conscious awareness number one enables us to see what we’re about to do and potentially to make a different choice to feed the Good Wolf, the one that again, represents what we aim to do.

Eric Zimmer  04:42

Yeah, I mean, so much of the quote unquote bad wolf behavior in our lives is completely unconscious, as you said, it’s just running on autopilot. It’s just the default behavior that we’ve either been conditioned into that we are left with after we deal with all our stresses and problems and busyness. The parable is a little dramatic, right? I mean, it’s, you know, good wolf and Bad Wolf. And, you know, I’ve always preferred the Buddhist terms of skillful and unskillful. Right. But as I’ve joked, many a time, a parable about an unskilful, Wolf just doesn’t work the same. But that’s really what we’re talking about. So most of our unskillful behavior is happening on autopilot. And we have to be able to bring things to conscious awareness in order to change them. And that is, at least half the battle.

Michelle Segar  05:31

I think when we first spoke about this five to seven years ago, I don’t know that I raised that issue. That’s why it’s so wonderful to have an opportunity to rethink. Well, what does it mean, to me today, that idea is so important to me that it is pasted on my wall right in front of me. So it’s hard to do when we have the intention. And when we practice, we get better at it.

Eric Zimmer  05:57

Yep, absolutely. So I want to pivot to the book. And I want to start with the idea that a lot of us who are listening, many, if not most of us have had significant challenges in building consistent exercise and eating habits. They are elusive for many, many, many people. And so a lot of this conversation where we’re going to start is trying to explore why that is. And then we’ll move into some of the ways we can solve that. But you start off by saying we initiate a change in eating or exercise in what you call a motivation bubble. Say a little bit more about what a motivation bubble is.

Michelle Segar  06:35

The motivation bubble, is a concept that just came to me when I was talking to a journalist about why we start and stop and start and stop endlessly. It’s because we’ve been taught to approach exercise, intentional eating in this way that focuses us on very aspirational goals. And of course, if we’re going to achieve aspirational goals, then we’ve got to do it right. And we have to do it precise in precise ways. And if you think about that, as a bubble, it’s this big thing. And we often don’t think of exercise or healthy eating. In the same way we think about parenting or our work or being a life partner with someone, it’s separate. And it’s over there. And we have to do it right. And I’m going to plan it. And it’s on a separate trajectory than everything else. It’s a bubble that is in a different orbit from the other life bubbles that we live in. And so because it’s so overinflated, by the moment, we make it whether it’s New Years, whether it’s leaving our doctor’s office, and we’re finally going to please them or do it right, or whatever it is, it bumps up against any other life area, and it just bursts. It’s fragile, because it’s overinflated.

Eric Zimmer  07:55

Yeah, I love that idea of how these bubbles rub up against the other areas of our life. And, you know, that’s a fundamental idea that runs through this book. And it’s a fundamental idea that I learned through coaching a lot of people over the years. And that idea, and you say it very well in the book, and in many different ways. The core idea, though, that you say is that habits require a stable context, to form. So that’s great. However, most of our lives are not anywhere near a stable context. If you have a demanding job, and you have children, and you have perhaps aging parents, and you have a social life, and I mean, our contexts are never stable, they’re always changing. And like I said, I really figured that out working with people where I’d be like, well, let’s just, you know, every morning at 10am, you’re gonna do X, right? And there’s a lot of benefit in some degree of specificity. And what do you do if 10 o’clock every day? You have no idea quite what’s going to be going on then? And so this idea of a stable context, share a little bit more about that.

Michelle Segar  09:03

Sure. And I want to say, I believe planning is very important. Yeah. So if we don’t plan something, it is unlikely to happen. So this concept that we’re talking about, it’s not mutually exclusive of planning. It’s actually what we have to do when our plans don’t work out. Yes. But before we go to that issue, I want to stay focused on your question about the stable context. So habit formation, which is doing something automatically without the need for cognition or effort or willpower is wildly popular. There’s been a lot of best selling books about it over well, quite a few years, but it’s become even more popular recently. Part of the reason it’s become more popular is because it is an easy way to develop apps. So if people are trying to develop fitness apps or different types of apps, it seems like oh, I’ll you Use the habit loop and I’ll create my app around, it’s very easy. And it makes sense. But the problem is, is that what works in theory doesn’t necessarily and often doesn’t work in reality. And so let’s go back to the stable context. habit formation is based on in academia, it’s discussed a little differently than, you know, the three steps of the habit loop, which is a context cue that is stable, it requires stability, then we’ve got to step to the behavior, let’s say, flossing, we associate that the cue is either putting our toothbrush down or walking in the bathroom at night, whatever that cue is that you’ve established. And then three is some type of reward with flossing, that could be a feeling of a clean mouth or accomplishment or whatever the reward is. Now, with a behavior like flossing that happens in the bathroom, often at night, after the kids are asleep, there’s not a lot of room for disrupting that context. But when we step out of the bathroom, into the realities of our full life context, and daily needs, like you introduced in the beginning, there are so many forces and unexpected things that we simply don’t know are going to happen. And the habit loop is based on the assumption that this context is going to remain stable. But when we’re talking about more complicated behaviors, that might have multi steps that might have a lot of resentment or ambivalence with them, like exercise, and intentional eating tends to have while those forces easily disrupt the context cue. And so that’s why the whole concept of habit formation, its value has been over generalized in the field of health promotion, because health promoting behaviors are much more complicated than a simple behavior, like flossing our teeth.

Eric Zimmer  12:03

Yeah. And it’s really interesting. You know, we’ve interviewed many of the leading proponents of the popular writing about habits, and there’s a lot of wisdom in there. And there is limitation in there. You know, let’s take BJ Fogg and tiny habits, right, a great method. But like, how do you scale from a tiny habit to a big habit? I mean, there’s some ways to do it. But there’s a point where it crosses over from something that can be automated to something that really can’t that’s and you know, I love what you just said there, because you pulled out two really important things, two things that are working against us. One is just the chaos of life. Yes, I plan to go to the gym this morning at 8am. And I woke up, my kid has a fever. Okay, well, not going to the gym. Right? Right. So we’ve got all these external things. And then you brought up the fact that we often have all this ambivalence inside of us around this. And when those two things collide, it’s a disaster, right? Because maybe I could overcome the internal ambivalence. If I can get just a routine going, you know, I often think I can’t make a habit out of exercise, but I can build momentum around it, you know, I can get some energy behind it, where it’s way easier to do than it used to be maybe when I was first starting the habit. So you’ve got these external things that rub up against the internal, we all would know this phenomenon, which is that like, Okay, we are supposed to be working out at 10am, we get a call from our boss at 10 o’clock. And at 1010, we’re done. And we don’t work out, right, we could. But that combination, we’ve got just enough excuse that is now rubbed up against our internal ambivalence, that it just comes off the rails.

Michelle Segar  13:40

And that’s why I don’t want to leave this conversation prematurely, because it’s so foundational to everything else we’re going to talk about, but that is why I call them decision disruptors and decision traps, because it’s that internal self talk. That, by the way, is not our fault. It does not derive from us, it derives from outside of us. We’ve internalized it through our socialization, through the education we’ve received in society and the media and research, you know, from our clinicians office, everything we’ve learned about exercise and eating has taught us to think about it in a very myopic, and really unhelpful way for most people. I mean, why is it that we think of exercise and healthy eating with this need for precision with this need to hit a bullseye? When all these other life areas, again, things that we want to sustain for life being parents, good parents, hopefully, but guess what, there’s ups and downs in our parenting. There’s ups and downs in our relationships, in our marriages, there’s ups and downs in our career, but we don’t bring that same sensibility and wisdom, yeah, to eating and exercise, but it’s again, it is not our fault as individuals. It is simply the way we’ve learned to approach it and I have To say some behavior change strategies cultivate a type of a precision thinking, which doesn’t help most people. Yeah,

Eric Zimmer  15:07

there’s a world of difference between something that you can manage to sort of keep rolling for 30 days, versus something that you’re going to keep rolling for 30 years, nearly any relationship can survive 30 days. But very few can survive 30 years, and it’s a completely different orientation. And so we’ll get to orientation around exercise and eating like why our orientation is difficult there. But let’s stay for a couple of minutes on this idea of habits when they work. And when they don’t you talk about people being habitus or inhabiting. What does that mean? Sure.

Michelle Segar  15:45

Well, you know, I want to be clear that that was a playful concept that I created, to get us to think more critically about what we’ve been taught about how to change our behavior, whether it’s worked for us why it may or may not work for us why it may or may not work for other people. So as you know, in my book, I use my husband, as an example, a pure habit or, and while I contend in the book, and I’ve been doing a lot of talking about this recently, that habit formation is not going to work for most people, when it comes to complex health promoting behaviors. It does work for some people. And my husband is a great example of this, because He has created a frictionless experience, again, to create his context cue for his exercise habit in the morning, he sleeps in his exercise clothes, and I always say, thank goodness, he is a good laundry person. And his alarm goes off at you know, five 530 In the morning, I’m not sure exactly what time because I am still sleeping, and he goes into the basement, he’s already dressed gets on the bike, exercises, no one else in the house is up. And then he has a sense of satisfaction. So his reward and I have asked him about it, his reward is that he feels like he’s accomplished something. And it’s often the only thing he feels that way about. So some people can do that. But he’s a habit or in all areas of his life. And this isn’t necessarily true for everyone. But I have tended in my coaching to to see that people who succeed with a complex behavior, like exercise or healthy eating, often are quite disciplined, often structure their life so that it doesn’t have a lot of interruptions, they check off their to do lists most of it everyday because of who they are. And I believe that they represent a minority of the population. And they have that innate self discipline to push through even when they don’t want to do something.

Eric Zimmer  17:50

I want to pick up that for a minute, but I’m not going to we’ll come back around to it. Because I think there’s a lot in there. That is actually very interesting, because I think some of what he’s doing is sort of best practices, right for this. So some of it is he’s naturally oriented that way. And, you know, the other is, he’s figured out how to get up at the time that nothing else is going to get in the way. You know, it’s people often ask me like, Well, should I exercise in the morning or the evening? I’m like, Well, the first answer is, it totally depends on you. Right? The second answer would be assuming there’s not a strong preference for in your life, morning tends to be better. And the reason morning tends to be better as less things can get in your way in the morning, right? By the time six o’clock rolls around any number of emergencies could have occurred in your career in your family at 6am. There’s far less of them. So there is something to be said for he’s done that, but I think what you just pointed to is there’s a rigidity, yes, in that. And some people don’t want to make this agenda. But I have seen this where, particularly in child rearing families where the father is able to sort of get some rigidity, and the mother doesn’t because she’s the front line of the support. And so it’s not fair to compare those two people in that way. Because their context are very different.

Michelle Segar  19:08

That’s right. And you know, what you’re speaking to is the chapter on chaos. Yes, the fact that research does show that the more chaos in the house, and of course, the person who is primarily responsible for managing the chaos has a much less ability to stick to the plan. Yeah, right, which is the quote unquote, we’re not using the word rigidity in a negative way. It’s descriptive, right? Yes, there still tends to be a gender that is primarily in charge of child rearing and house management. And it does tend to be the female but it really any whichever parent is going to be primarily responsible for these issues. I mean, think about how much on an anticipated unexpected Yeah, there is in our life is singular individuals. And now add on top of that, 123 Kids Yeah, maybe a couple of That’s, and you know, whatever else that might be going on, and that exponentially increases the amount of interruption that our self care behaviors are going to have.

Eric Zimmer  20:12

Yep. So let’s explore a couple of assumptions underlying you know, why habits don’t work for inhabiting? Sure got a few different assumptions. I don’t think we need to hit all of them. But you want to hit a couple of them?

Michelle Segar  20:26

Sure. Well, one of them. We’ve already spoken about this. So I’m just going to check a box by literally saying one of the assumptions of successful habit formation is that it’s going to work equally well across behaviors, because the books talk about many different types of behaviors they generalize. And so we know that that isn’t true based on how you and I’ve just been talking about, and even in the habit literature, which is, you know, going to be the most precise discussion of habit formation in the academic literature. There’s even a nuanced new conversation going on in that literature about xi is habit formation really appropriate for a complex multi step behavior, like physical activity. And so they’re, they’re discussing it right now. But I think it’s important to point out that that is occurring, and it’s a more nuanced, important conversation. Another assumption I can check the box on really quickly is that it’s going to work equally well for everyone. While we already talked about certain roles and responsibilities, really make that a much heavier, if not impossible, lift. And in fact, the most popular study that gets quoted both I would say, in academia and in industry, is a 2010 study that assessed how long it takes to form habits. Do you know that study that I’m talking about, it gets talked about all the time, and it it basically says while there’s a huge variation between behaviors, and people from like, 18 days to 256, something in that range, so huge variation, which is so huge, that it’s almost, it’s basically meaningless. But the 66 day average still gets talked about, even though it’s an average of, you know, 18 days over 200. But the important thing about that getting it everybody is that the study was conducted among university students who are very have very different lives. And yet, even among a group of students who have a lot more flexibility, traditionally 50%, at least of those University participants did not achieve the automaticity status, that that 66 day average is about so we have to ask, if students who tend to not be juggling all these things that we’ve been talking about, can achieve automaticity Wow. Then how are people who are you know, have a few kids, you know, and work outside of the home and have aging parents? The third thing I want to say is that the assumption is that automating our choices about exercise, and healthy eating is the ideal because in theory, automating it, yes, I don’t want to have to use willpower, yes, I don’t want to have to use my cognition. It’s such a limited resource, but in lives that necessitate pivoting and being flexible, we need the exact opposite. So the assumption that automaticity is the gold standard, what we should all aim for, I think is false. Because of the reasons we’ve talked about already, if we are not optimally primed to pivot, with our exercise and healthy eating, then you know, as 40 years shows us, we won’t be successful sticking with it, or at least most people want,

Eric Zimmer  23:45

right? And we want automaticity because it sounds easier. And we know that when something becomes automatic for us, it’s easy to do flossing as an example. Or I was trying to think of a habit I’ve just developed recently, that I realized has become automatic, but it’s a very small thing. I can’t remember what it is. Now, I want

Michelle Segar  24:03

to say not only does do we want it because it sounds easy. It is a wonderful resource that our brains are structured to have. So yeah, it is beneficial. You know, a lot of times people drive places that they know, you know, on autopilot, I don’t want people to think that I’m anti habit, I’m absolutely not anti habit. What I am concerned about is the overgeneralization of the value of habit formation for complicated behaviors that people keep failing at. And I think one of the reasons is because as a field, we keep telling people to do things that are just not valid in their life context.

Eric Zimmer  24:43

Right, right. It’s not that automaticity is bad, or that we wouldn’t want it where we can have it but you don’t want to insist on an approach that’s simply not going to work. That’s right. You just keep bashing your head against the wall. So we sort of debunked that you’re probably assuming you are trying to form a habit that is a myth. multistep complex habit like eating well or exercising regularly. And you have a complex life, right? Your life is such that it has chaos. And so I’m going to say, we’re now talking about 90% of the people at this point, right? Some people, if you’re already exercising every single day for the last nine years, you can just tune Michelle and it out and move on to the next show. For everybody else, though, last,

Michelle Segar  25:23

let me interrupt in want to understand unless that person who does have it down, wants to understand why other people in their lives are struggle so much. Yeah. So I think it is valuable for the people who get it right, or not get it right as the wrong word, who have successfully figured out how to sustain and be consistent with these complicated behaviors. Yep.

Eric Zimmer  25:49

And I’m going to pause here and say that listeners do not despair, or not saying like, you’re doomed to never stick with eating right, or exercise. And this is not, you know, abandon all hope ye who enter here, right? We’re gonna get there. But we’re sort of taking down some of the myths before we get there. So let’s talk a little bit about you’ve got a section called Why We don’t just do it, you know, just do it be in quotes, right, that phrase, just do it. So what are some of the reasons that we don’t just do it? We’ve identified some of them. Yes. But now I think we’re moving from the external to the internal.

Michelle Segar  26:23

Exactly. Thank you. That is a perfect introduction. So we have learned to perceive approach and experience exercise and intentional eating. Again, while these ideas might generalize to other self care behaviors, the book is really explicitly focused on eating and exercise, because of the reason they are uniquely united, or under the umbrella of weight loss, and all of that really problematic things that brings between weight ism and shame and hating exercise, because it’s punishing, because you think you have to do it hard, or feeling deprived, not because you actually are but because you’re making a choice out of this external should I can’t eat that bad food, and it makes you feel resentful, or rebel. And here I am jumping into the four decision disruptors, which reflect the inner scripts, the inner things, the things we tell ourselves at these decision points. We’re at a party, we recently started eating plan that we felt really good about and have really been successful following. And we’ve noticed that we feel good, we go to a party. And there’s nothing on our plan there. And on top of that, there, there’s a glistening chocolate cake across the room that, you know, is seducing us with the look and the aroma and all the stuff. And instead of saying to ourselves, oh, geez, I you know, yes, chocolate cake is great, but I love this eating plan I’m on the internal script tends to be again, it’s not our fault is how we’ve learned to think about it. I can’t have that chocolate cake. I can’t have it. It’s not on my eating plan. What is one of the biggest disruptors it’s rebellion, because humans are wired to rebel against anything which takes away our freedom. So that’s this internal rebellion script that we play. And of course, what happens is, there’s all this energy to just take the thing we don’t think we should or can have. And we don’t even do it with a sense of Gosh, how much do I want of the cake? Do I need to eat the whole piece of cake? Often what happens at a rebellion is we eat three pieces of cake, because we are just taking that energy of I can’t. And it’s boomeranging into, you know, screw you I’m gonna eat as much as the cake is I want to so that’s one of the primary internal decision traps I’ve seen in my coaching. And you know, as a as a coach, I’m wondering if you recognize these decision disruptors that happen at the moment of choice. And this is why instead of thinking we need things to be precisely right, and automated. I mean, how was that decision like that at a party automated, we are outside of any context, we’ve established our eating habits around and we have this seduction occurring. And so if we don’t have the mental wherewithal to make a choice, that is the most adaptive choice that’s going to enable us to both stick with our greater goals, whatever those are, it doesn’t have to be precisely right. But also feel like we’re participating in our social lives with our families and our friends, which is among the most motivating things that human beings have is other people. So if our exercise and healthy eating inner dialogue reflects a conflict between participating with the people we feel most connected to. Well, that is an automatic setup to fail to, because we are for anything in human nature motivated to align with our families to participate. And then we’re talking about rebellion we’ve talked about another really common one is perfection, we can use the chocolate cake as an example. So looking at the chocolate cake, it’s not it’s a black or white, it’s, can I have it? Or can’t I have it? It’s the can’t, is a perfect world, I cannot have at all the cake, all or nothing. And then nothing in that situation is eating the whole thing, or more. And that sets us up. When we look at our choices. Am I going to run for 45 minutes or walk for 45 minutes? Like I planned all? Oh, gee, that phone call only gives me 35 minutes, why bother? Or nothing, I’m not going to do anything. So it works. This all or nothing. Really this black and white thinking which by the way, is a cognitive distortion. Yet it’s the way potentially the majority of people think about these two choices in the arena’s of exercise and eating. Another one is what I call commendation, which is really a bit outside of the topic of exercising and eating. But it is fundamental to the decisions people make in the moment, right? If someone’s needs, or our work needs, seem to be competing with our plan to exercise or our eating plan, because a dear friend just handed us a delicious chocolate chip cookie that she made. And we feel that we need to show her that we care about her and value this gift she just gave to us that instead of thinking about, well, gee, I’m eating this way that doesn’t include the chocolate chip cookie, or whatever it is, it could be a burrito for all I care, my need to validate her needs is more important than my need. And again, if it’s all or nothing thinking, then it’s the whole cookie versus something else or not at all. And these things are the internal part that disrupt the in the moment decision. It’s how our brain has learned to think about it. And that’s why the book, and the method is really about guiding people to notice, in the moment, it gets back to your pivotal parable, which is Which am I going to feed this old reaction and habit habitual way of thinking, which tends hasn’t served most people for many years, or do I want to feed a different wolf that’s going to give me a more adaptive long term result.

Eric Zimmer  33:14

I want to ask you a question about the perfectionism the all or nothing on the exercise side, it seems very clear to me right that all or nothing thinking is not helpful. Because if I can’t work out for an hour, I don’t work out at all versus working out for 45 minutes or five minutes even right? I think if there’s anything that has changed my ability with many of these things, particularly exercise, it has been a little bit of something is better than a lot of nothing. Right? Do something, you can do something. But I want to pivot this to things like eating and particularly things like eating sweets, because there are differing opinions out there. And I think the answer you’re gonna give me is it depends. But nonetheless, I’m still going to kind of walk through the question more about how you would think about it than what your answer is. And that is there are people who say, you know, when it comes to sweets, for me, I am an abstainer abstaining works best for me. I don’t have to figure out under what circumstances you know, I’m a recovering alcoholic or addict. So in this case, I’m an abstainer. Right? I often talk about the beautiful clarity of zero, right? It’s just simple. There’s no debate in there, right? But food is a different animal than drugs and alcohol. So there are some people who say look, I just I cut it out completely. And then there are other people who are looking to integrate it in in a way where they’ve got some degree of moderation around it. And there’s some people who think that you’re kind of one of those or the other, and determining which of those you are is really a wise thing to do and then come down that way. But how do you think about that challenge when it comes to eating?

Michelle Segar  35:22

Thank you for raising that that is a really important issue. So I want to say as you already said, Now, there are some people who feel that the issue on addiction versus not when it comes to eating, I would say has not been solved, there are just really poor people and doing research who claim both sides, but a more mundane, how we live our lives perspective, it is important for us to figure out now, challenges if people say, Well, I am the type of person? Well, no, I’m going to take a step back. Part of the problem is that we’re asking this question without explicitly shining a light on the context of the food choices, because people would say, Oh, I’m a zero person, I cannot do moderation. But really, it’s a false dichotomy. If people are making choices under shirts, and feeling like they’ve got to do something, or feeling that their bodies are there, they are bad or unattractive, or whatever it is, if all of that junk surrounds the eating choice, then I would say we can’t know if someone is truly moderation versus a zero person, because it’s all these other forces that are inside of our brain that we’ve learned to have thought we have to be aware that that’s going to be going on because it’s very hard to do moderation. If you’re going to have perfection and rebellion and other decision traps. Because those forces, they’re not going to let you be successful with moderation or for zero for that matter, because we’re always going to be reacting number one, I want to make sure that that issue is clear. Getting back to the moderation versus zero, there are for sure individual differences. But here’s something that most people may not know, the emerging research on this question suggests that it is the moderation approach, which is going to be more effective for more people. So there’s a couple of studies. One study is looking at a weight loss registry, and I’m not focusing on weight loss as an outcome, because I think it really sets people up to not stick with exercise and healthy eating for many of the reasons we spoke about five to seven years ago. But they wanted to know, in this group of people who had lost and were maintaining a substantial amount of weight, which strategy was going to be most effective with eating over a year is it coming to a weekend with you know, trying to stick to the plan, which would be a zero approach, right, I don’t do any of it, I’m gonna stick to the plan, no matter what, or is coming to the weekend, eating with something with a little more flexibility, which is technically in the literature called flexible restraint, which of those two eating strategies is going to be most adaptive for eating over time. And the research found in you’re not going to be surprised because of the way I’ve set this up, that it’s the flexible restraint errs, who had more adaptive eating and outcomes. So I believe it comes back to this core wisdom about how we live every other area of our life. We can’t hit a bull’s eye, every time we parent, we cannot hit a bull’s eye every time we engage with our partners in our work. And it’s that sensibility that it’s about a journey and an intention. We want to do things a certain way. But sometimes we can’t. I can’t do it today, okay. Or I have to make the perfect imperfect choice. Or I could make no choice but that isn’t gonna get me as far as the perfect imperfect choice. So I think the biggest issue is that we have come to believe that exercise and eating are different than these other lifelong journeys.

Eric Zimmer  39:23

Yeah, I like that idea of flexible restrainers. Like I mean, I think could I moderate drugs and alcohol, I probably would. It seems like the better choice right? At this juncture in my life. I’ve proved multiple times that doesn’t work. And the risk reward ratio is just stupidly out of whack. Right? It’s just, you know, it’s like, well, what would I get? Well, I’d be able to have a drink a couple times a week. What might I lose everything okay, not worth doing right? Yeah, piece of cake is a little more subtle. And, you know, I certainly know that Ginni and I have been on a I would say very good healthy eating journey, particularly since her mom was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. I think we were healthy before and then we kind of upped it. Even from there, but it has not been rigid and restraining, you know, there is flexibility in there. And I think one of the important things is there are situations like you talked about where we find ourselves in a situation, and we have to be able to make a decision. And I want to get to that, because that’s really important. I also think that we can really do well with planned exceptions. Yes, a planned exception would be today’s Wednesday, November 23. Listeners, you are going to hear this in January. But for Michelle and I, that’s the day before Thanksgiving, I could make a plan exception tomorrow, that you know what, for Thanksgiving dinner, I’m just eating whatever. And I’m going to have one piece of dessert. And that’s it done right. Now, the problem for a lot of us is that if we’re all or nothing, right, the minute that we blow up with a Thanksgiving dinner, we think we’ll screw it. It’s Thanksgiving weekend, right? It’s the holidays, right? And the next thing we know, it’s January 1, so I found, you know, okay, let me be clear about what the rules are. And again, there’s some flexibility in them, but they’re rules that are designed to have flexibility. There’s lots of ways this can go wrong. You know, I’ve been in the only on special occasions. And the next thing you know, like Billy getting to see on his report card is a special occasion. And you know, being clear birthdays, or I’ve had other people who you know, I don’t think they have alcoholism issues. They said, I’m just not going to drink alone at my home yet in their life isn’t like they’re not out partying all the time for a college student. That’s a terrible thing. It’s not gonna make any difference. But for most adults, they just go look, if I’m out with friends, I’m gonna have a couple drinks. But when I’m home alone, nothing, right. So there are ways that we can have some flexibility, and also some clarity. It’s not all or nothing.

Michelle Segar  41:40

That’s correct. And I think inherent in the flexible approach and strategy that I’m teaching inherent in that is people are making intentional decisions. So that’s also the beauty of flexibility is it asks people to be in charge of their choices, not the inner scripts. Yeah, it’s about saying, Oh, I see you perfection, staring me down, or I see rebellions staring me down. But guess what, you’re the bad wolf. And I know that I’ve been feeding you for 30 years, and it doesn’t get me where I want to go. So I want to go in a different direction. And so I think, for me anyway, in my philosophy, and it sounds like we might align on this is that when you teach this flexible approach, it is inherently about the individual saying, Okay, this is what I care most about. This is how I want to participate in celebrations, it asks people to become very clear about what they value what they most want. And it asks people to critically think about, you know, if I’m going to stick with this, if I’m going to stick with a healthier eating lifestyle, just like a parent, and you know, a for a journey of 30 years, and the other side of the 30 years, what’s really gonna let me do that and rigidity, it works for some people. And like you said, when it comes to alcohol, being rigid is absolutely the solution. You know, it’s important for people to truly know what’s going to work for them. But again, if people don’t understand the societal context, around the meaning of eating, healthy eating and exercise, that has the potential to continuously fort, what people do, because it creates these inner dialogues, the forces that lead us to the bad wolf instead of the skilled Wolf, if you will,

Eric Zimmer  43:36

yeah, underlying a lot of what you’re saying here is reconnecting with our ability to choose, and our ability to decide what’s important to us and not doing that on autopilot. Right, not just following the scripts we’ve been given not doing this, because even because my doctor said I should, right. Like, I’m not saying we should just heedlessly ignore our doctors, it’s worth going when my doctor said that I should probably do this. And why would he have said that? It’s because if I don’t, this might happen, oh, if that happened, that would affect my relationship with my children. Like, we eventually get back to what matters to us. But reconnecting with our choice is the key piece.

Michelle Segar  44:13

Absolutely. Not just choice, conscious choice, which is the opposite of an automatic habit. Now, I do want to say something that I think is crucial. We’ve been talking about it in one way. But I think it’s really crucial to say it in this way, the value of any choice at a party. After work, the value of every single choice we make is determined by the context of the other choices and needs. If we’re not aware of that, and we’re not skilled at being able to pivot and compromise, find the creative compromise. I don’t have the 60 minutes to take the walk outside. I only have 15 minutes. But I care that it lifts my mood, you don’t have all these good things to do and I’ve got All this work that I’ve got to get done, but I have 15 minutes. So when we become skilled in being able to compromise and pivot, which is, of course, the joy choice, the perfect imperfect option that lets us do something instead of nothing. When we do that, then we can keep our momentum. If we don’t know how to successfully navigate those choices with intention, then they’re going to keep derailing us, which kicks us right off the path of lasting change.

Eric Zimmer  46:00

You actually say early in the book, what we’re talking about here are choice points, you and I had an interesting conversation about where that phrase comes from. And we realized I might have arrived at it from multiple different sources. But these choice points, I’m at a choice point, do I eat the chocolate cake? Do I not now I have a choice whether I work out whether I don’t work out, and you say I call these conflicts, choice points. And they are the real place of power for achieving lasting changes in eating and exercise. And I think that’s so much of what this is about is about learning to navigate choice points. You know, when I work with a coaching client, you know, we start off and I say, well, let’s put what structure we can put in place. Let’s put what plans we can put in place. Because you know, what, if we can get some of that in great, but you know what, at the end of the day, you’re still going to bump up against these choice points. And what we can learn to do is say what is happening inside me, when I make the right choice? And what is happening inside me when I make the wrong choice? Or the choice that I want to make or the choice I don’t want to make? Let’s non moralize it, right? The choice I want to make versus the choice I don’t want to make. And the value of a choice point, actually, is that it can narrow our window of focus to a moment, we can actually go, Oh, here’s what I was saying to myself, here’s what I was thinking, here’s what I was feeling. Okay, well, what might I say to myself next time, what might I do differently next time, it gives us a real, for lack of a better word, an actual specific point in time that we can look at. And it becomes less about, oh, I got to figure out my entire emotional makeup. Versus I have to figure out what’s going on inside me now.

Michelle Segar  47:36

That’s right. And inherent in choice point is choice. And as you know, from all of your work choice, is the epitome of what cultivates autonomy and self determination. And we know that high quality motivation is embodied in the idea that I’m in charge and I get to choose, and that is the antidote to all or nothing thinking, yeah, the all or nothing, thinking there’s only two choices, and I’m forced to choose between sticking to the plan 100%, or just tossing it all to the wind. But no, the choice point is, wait a sec, there are options here that give me freedom to align myself with the context of needs and options at the moment,

Eric Zimmer  48:21

let’s pivot to what can we do in choice points, and you talk about an executive functioning team, these are aspects of our brain that we can, and you correct me if I’m saying this wrong, but that we can call upon in choice points to help us make better decisions? Is that an accurate way of saying it?

Michelle Segar  48:38

I would say that choice points evoke our executive functioning team, okay, when we are at moments of decision making, when we’re at moments of problem solving, and potentially pivoting, that is the work of our executive functions. And, you know, as you know, in the book, I talk about three primary executive functions that are discussed in the literature on an eating especially in other areas of living like ADHD, sometimes they talk about seven executive functions. So there’s different ways of talking about it. But the bottom line when it comes to executive functioning, is it is our brains innate decision making self management problem solving. Goal striving apparatus. Yeah. And so why don’t we cultivate it, the three primary executive functions to so that we better set our brains up to help us make the skill choice.

Eric Zimmer  49:40

I want to go into those three in a second, but I want to just clarify a little bit of what we’re saying here. I think that what you’re saying is that step one is we have to recognize we are in a choice point. Yes. Right? Because so often we just slip off into not exercising, not eating right Right, without any real thought of what’s happening, you know, I often talk about the very first thing we have got to do is bring whatever is happening into consciousness. That’s right, recognize that I’m about to make a decision or a choice. It may not seem like I am, but I am about to. And I’m making it the way I traditionally have made it without thinking about it. So I first have to bring it up into recognizing, okay, I’m in a choice point. And now once I’ve done that, then I call in my executive functioning tools to help me make the right choice. And I

Michelle Segar  50:29

wouldn’t say I’m calling on because it’s that oh kind of happens automatically. What I’m saying is, the way we think about it is either going to force or support our executive functioning, right? Because the old reactions, the old decision traps that we’ve talked about the inner scripts, if you’re scripting, I can’t, I can’t or it’s gotta be all or nothing. You can see how that scripts that we tell ourselves, the narrative absolutely distracts us from the options. Yes. So how can our executive functions work effectively, when we’re going down a rabbit hole with the shoulds, and all the black and white thinking, so you are 100%? Right. And I think this is becoming more out there in mainstream, but behavior change is belief change, and different choice making. And we cannot do either of those things. If we are not conscious at the point of choice, so it isn’t as sexy as peloton or habit formation, being aware at a point of choice. But we cannot change the way we think, which is the precursor to changing what we do if we do not have conscious awareness at that point.

Eric Zimmer  51:48

Great. So let’s talk about the three executive functions that you think are critical for making healthy choices.

Michelle Segar  51:55

Okay, so the first primary executive function is called working memory. And this is the part of our brain that holds and processes information at the same time. And most people can only hold and process like 1 to 3 pieces of information. So you can see that if you’re focused on a narrative about I can’t, I can’t that sort of thing, or I’ve got to please her, or I want her to know, I love those kinds of thoughts that’s in your brain. So that kind of thinking has a huge potential to overwhelm our working memory. But working memory is the backbone of effective problem solving, because that is the space is not really, you know, I’m not calling it a literal space. But that’s where problem solving happens. And if we can’t hold the information in our brain, because we’re too focused on worrying of whether we’re going to make the right decision, then we won’t be able to problem solve and pivot. So that’s working memory. And we’ll talk about the decision tool that I created to clean up that space, if you will, then we’ve got cognitive flexibility or flexible thinking. Our brains are innately wired, to do flexible thinking, if we think about eating and exercise and more flexible ways, we are basically aligning this new thought process with this very important ability, mental ability that we have to pivot, like we do in all these other areas of our life. And then the third, primary working memory is referred to as inhibition. more popularly people think about this ability as self control. And so this has been the primary focus, changing our eating, we’re just going to inhibit ourselves, we’re going to stick to the plan. But in reality, I believe more people would be successful if instead of feeling like they have to inhibit all the time, they actually learn to think about choice points. And that being flexible is actually adaptive not having to do it perfect. But actually, you know what, just like all these other life areas, I’m going to do this perfectly imperfectly. So I stay the journey. So what is the joy choice? So there’s a technical definition, which I’ll say the joy choice is the perfect, imperfect option that lets us do something instead of nothing. This doesn’t just give us the momentum, we want to keep going forward on the path or journey of lasting change. There’s another really meaningful way to think about it. And that is that if our decision to take a part of that self care activity, a part of that exercise a part of our eating plan, and fulfill that we are doing it to take care of ourselves, to respect our greater goals, and in doing so, we are fueling ourselves for the people and projects we care most about. So it is not just about the formula for sustainability that you know, has science supporting it. It’s also about making a choice that lets us be our full selves, that harmonizes exercise choice, or our eating choice with the whole other parts of our lives and who we are, which includes our connections and loved ones. So that is why it’s called The Joy choice. It lets us harmonize exercise and eating within our full self.

Eric Zimmer  55:30

I love that. So let’s talk about the decision making tool. Is it is it pop? Is that the decision making tool? Okay, that’s what I thought I just want to make sure I’m referencing the right one. So this is a way to sort of navigate choice points.

Michelle Segar  55:44

Yes, yes. Our executive functioning is this innate brain system for pivoting and problem solving and long term cold pursuit? Like, wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could support the three primary executive functions. And so this is a tool that I’ve developed and used with my coaching clients, and I call it POP.. Now I’m going to bring us back to the very beginning of our, our conversation, where you asked me about the motivation bubble. We talked about the fact that the motivation bubble is very vulnerable, and life bursts it, right, it bumps up against something in life burst the bubble, while with the pop decision to all instead of letting life burst our bubble in this passive way, where we’re kind of victimized by things. We are autonomous ly take charge and we pop it!  So it’s both a metaphor for us being in charge, we pop our plan, it’s not workable any longer. So we’re going to pop it in what we do when we pop it is then we open up the option. So that is the overarching metaphor, but it’s actually an acronym, which is really good for our working memory, recall remembering and recall. So pop stands for pause. And like we’ve talked about throughout this conversation, if we don’t take a moment to bring our consciousness to the choice, then our automated unskillful responses will just take over. So pause, introduces this intentional moment where we can say, ah, which wolf do I want to feed, I’m going to feed the one that’s going to really take me to where I want to go. So that’s the first P unpack the oh, I designed it to support working memory, because it enables us to clear away to name any of the traps temptation, rebellion, accommodation, perfection. Oh, I see you. But guess what? That’s the unskilled Wolf. I’m not gonna go there. Let me focus my attention, take a breath. And then go on to the second step in pap, which is the Oh, open up our options and play WoW. how better to cultivate flexible thinking then can consider it as an opportunity to play well, gee, there’s this awesome chocolate cake over there. I want some of it. What are my options here? What did I plan to eat? What did they plan to eat later? I think I could eat half of the cake. And I could do wiggle around tweak something else. I mean, it invites us to think in creative and playful ways about the choice point. And that is flexible thinking or cognitive flexibility in its essence. And now the second P and the ending of the path Decision Tool is P pick the joy choice. There’s no right or wrong answer here. The joy choice is the perfect imperfect option that lets us do something instead of nothing, giving us momentum and helping us harmonize our eating and exercise choice within our full self. So what POP does as an acronym is it makes it easier to recall, I want to say it doesn’t mean it’s going to be effortless, you still have to learn how to use it and you can put it as a contact in your phone. That’s one way people use it so that you can learn to memorize it. But it also strategically guides our attention away from the decision traps to play. I have options here. Let me open them up and then to picking the imperfect choice that for the past three decades, I haven’t given myself permission to do because I’m forced to stick to the plan, which then I just rebel against. So it guides the specific thought process in a way. We don’t need to inhibit ourselves. It’s not about harnessing self control. That’s not the conversation the conversation is given the choice point and my full set of needs and the value that choice has right now based on the full context of other things, which is the one I Don’t have to rebel against that question.

Eric Zimmer  1:00:02

Yeah, yeah, I love that. I think that’s a very helpful acronym. And we do need some approach, because we’re often going to find ourselves at choice points. Also, in moments of stress. Yes, you know, that’s where the bubble tends to rub up against life in moments of stress. And we know that in moments of stress executive function tends to take a hike. So it’s really helpful to be like, have something as simple as pop, okay, here I am, what do I do, and walk through those things. And I love the joy choice, this idea of the perfectly imperfect, that allows me to do something rather than nothing in the context of everything I want to be eating, and exercise has changed. So fundamentally, for me, over the last decade, I would say, and it really has been in a complete reframing of it. And this is probably normal with age to some degree. But a reframing from vanity of reframing from shoulds. And into this is what I know supports me in being the person that I want to be in the world. You know, when I don’t exercise, I don’t make a good interviewer, I don’t make a good coach, I don’t make a good father, I don’t make a good dog owner, I’m not a particularly good partner. I’m very deeply unhappy within myself, you know, so for me with exercise, it’s just I just remind myself, like, you’re going to feel a certain way an hour from now, how do you want to feel in an hour? And I know, for me, the way I want to feel in an hour is the way I feel on the other side of exercise, proud of myself, energised, you know, and same thing with food, you know, how do I want to feel at the end of this meal? How do I want to feel and what supports me, in what matters to me, and you talk about this near the end of the book, which is really just the importance of value based decision making, right, the more we can be clear on what really matters to us, we have a much better chance of making good decisions, because there’s clarity there. But a lot of times, we don’t ever take the time to get that clarity. And so we’re making decisions in fog, about like, well, what really matters to me is this cake, man, you know, so. So I love that you sort of kind of near the very end sort of bring it back to that core idea.

Michelle Segar  1:02:11

Well, and the neuroscience, the emerging science directly supports that idea. I think that’s among the most exciting science on creating sustainable behavior change is the work showing that when we value when we believe that a choice aligns with who we are at our core, those brain regions light up. And also it’s predictive of people making decisions over time related to that healthy choice. So and the good news is, we can actually change a lot, some of your listeners might think, well, I don’t value exercise in that way, I don’t have those experiences, it feels like a should. So I mean, the beauty is, is that it’s actually quite easy to convert exercise from those shoulds and chores to feeling like a gift and that it’s a part of who you are. It’s reflecting your values. So I mean, I think that’s really important, because people might be feeling Gosh, I don’t know how to do that. The first step is to recognize whether you have been coming to your exercise and eating choice points with this feeling of should and rules and precision. And if you are that the first thing is to say, Gosh, has that worked for me or not? Yeah. And again, if it works for you, and it makes you a happy person, there’s no reason you have to pull away from that, right. Just like you said at the beginning, when we understand that our choices around what we eat, and how we move our bodies reflect who we want to be and our personal preferences and the realities the true realities of our daily lives. Yep, that’s the recipe for sustainable change.

Eric Zimmer  1:03:48

Indeed. Well, Michelle, thank you so much for coming on. It’s been such a pleasure to talk with you. I found the joy choice, a great read and so much great wisdom in it. So thank you. Thank you

Michelle Segar  1:03:59

for having you again. It was so much fun to talk Thank you.