Small Habits, Big Changes: Rewire Your Brain for Success | Spotlight Convo

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Episode Transcript:

Jonathan Fields: [00:00:00] So what if I told you your entire reality could be reshaped by something as small as a high five or a two minute morning routine? That may sound like an outrageous claim, but in today’s compelling conversation, you’ll discover how making tiny changes to your habits can quite literally rewire your brain and transform your life from the inside out. Tiny little steps at a time. My guests today are pioneering voices who’ve dedicated their work to empowering individuals through strategies for personal growth and transformation. And through their insights, you’ll discover really practical tools to cultivate positive habits, rewire your mindset, and embrace a life of possibility. First up, we have Mel Robbins, a dear friend and a world renowned expert on transformation. Mel will share her groundbreaking high five habit. It’s this deceptively simple yet profoundly effective practice that can flood your body with confidence boosting chemicals and rewire your self perception. Next up, we have James Clear, author and continuous improvement enthusiast who’ll guide us through the power of small, incremental changes, you’ll learn how seemingly insignificant habits can pave the way for remarkable achievements, and how to harness the compound effect of consistent action to reshape your identity. And finally, Nicole Vignola, a trailblazer in personal growth, offers a transformative toolkit. Nicole will share strategies to break free from limiting patterns and beliefs, equipping you with the tools to really embrace a mindset of growth and possibility. So whether you want to amplify your confidence or cultivate productive habits or open yourself to limitless possibility, this conversation will hand you a blueprint grounded in cutting edge neuroscience and behavioral psychology. You’ll walk away with profound realizations about the malleability of your mind, inspiration to dream bigger and practical steps to become the architect of your habits, your mindset, and your reality. So excited to share this spotlight conversation with you! I’m Jonathan Fields and this is Good Life Project.

Jonathan Fields: [00:02:00] Hey. So our first guest is Mel Robbins, one of the world’s leading voices in personal transformation and a long time friend. Mel’s groundbreaking high five habit has helped really millions embrace their worth and potential. In this conversation, Mel shares her profoundly personal journey from rock bottom to radical self-acceptance, and you’ll discover the surprising science behind high fiving yourself daily and how this kind of goofy yet powerful practice can flood your body with confidence boosting chemicals and change the way you see yourself and live. More than just surface level affirmations. This approach. It forges a sort of an unshakable mind body connection with your truest, most capable self. So here’s Mel.

Mel Robbins: [00:02:43] The fact of the matter is, we all have a particular habit every morning, and that habit is to ignore yourself or to criticize yourself when you see yourself in the mirror. You know, I’ve been shocked by how many people Jonathan can’t even look at themselves in the mirror. That’s the habit. So it’s going to feel weird to be with yourself because this is new. But what I’ve noticed practicing this very simple habit every morning, I have literally deleted the soundtrack that I have lived with for 52 years, and it is the most beautiful and liberating feeling in the world to have quieted that insane self-criticism. It’s one of the most extraordinary experiences I’ve ever felt in my life.

Jonathan Fields: [00:03:30] Hey, so our first guest is Mel Robbins, one of the world’s leading voices in personal transformation and a longtime friend. Mel’s groundbreaking high five habit has helped really millions embrace their worth and potential. In this conversation, Mel shares her profoundly personal journey from rock bottom to radical self-acceptance, and you’ll discover the surprising science behind high fiving yourself daily and how this kind of goofy yet powerful practice can flood your body with confidence boosting chemicals and change the way you see yourself and live. More than just surface level affirmations this approach. It forges a sort of an unshakeable mind body connection with your truest, most capable self. So here’s Mel. So the high five habit. This is something that literally came to you again after moving through this season of profound disruption, upset, suffering, just like a metric ton of things not going your way, you know, and.

Mel Robbins: [00:04:29] And those are just the things the lawyer also let us talk about.

Jonathan Fields: [00:04:32] Right, exactly. You know, and and you effectively wake up in the morning and you’re looking in the mirror and you end up high fiving yourself, goofy as it sounds, right? It does something to you. So you show up and you do it again the next morning and the next morning. And similar to your own, everything starts with you, your own personal experience. You’re like, ah, like, I kind of did this and it made me feel different. Oh, let me try it again. And it’s making me feel even more different. And then it’s almost like. And this is literally simply looking in the mirror and high fiving yourself, right? It sounds like you said, like, how could this possibly do anything? And yet it.

Mel Robbins: [00:05:07] Does. Ridiculously cheesy. Yeah.

Jonathan Fields: [00:05:09] And so you start doing it and so many things start to change. And like you said, it’s almost like this interesting bookend. Or it’s like the five second rule gets you up off the couch. And then this starts to rewire your state of mind so that it puts you in a stance of action and confidence rather than victimhood. Even once you’re up off the couch and you’re like, you’re in a place to take that first action. It’s like, well, but what about all the rest throughout the day? And what about the way that I see myself? And what about the way that I see my world? You know, when you talk about it, you know, part of you also says, okay, now that I’m feeling this in my body and my life, and it’s actually for some reason it’s helping me turn everything around. I got to know what’s happening in my head. So you go on this sort of like this quest for knowledge, you know? And you’re like, okay, is there actually science behind this? And what is it? And in fact, there is, which, you know, so I remember when you first told me, I’m like, all right, sounds interesting, you know. And I pulled back and then I come back, I don’t know, a year later and you show me, I guess, what must have been sort of like the manuscript of the book, and I’m reading through it. I’m like, wait, what? You know, there’s all this science and there’s this first walk me through what’s actually happening when you do this simple act.

Mel Robbins: [00:06:32] Oh. It’s incredible. I really want to put you at the scene because it’s such a relatable moment. And when I unpack it, Jonathan, it’s jaw dropping. How foundational this is in terms of what I’ve discovered. So, you know, I wake up one morning feeling overwhelmed and beaten down and stressed out. We’ve all had that feeling right of you just wake up. The stress is right there. You’re staring at the ceiling. I don’t even need to tell you what’s going on. It doesn’t even matter because it’s a feeling that you feel overwhelmed by your life. I use the five second rule 54321 because I still, 13 years later, have to use it to get out of bed. And I make my bed and I make my bed every morning. And that morning I made it so I didn’t climb back into it. I drag myself to the bathroom, I’m brushing my teeth. And here’s the thing. You talk about morning routines. You talk about habits. You talk about mindset. You talk about science. The fact of the matter is, we all have a particular habit every morning. And that habit is to ignore yourself or to criticize yourself when you see yourself in the mirror. And as I’m brushing my teeth on this particular very low, challenging morning, I catch a glimpse of myself, Jonathan, and I think, oh my God.

Mel Robbins: [00:07:50] Odd. You look like hell. And I look at the woman standing in the mirror, and she’s got dark circles under her eyes, and her grey hair is coming in and she looks haggard. She looks exhausted. She looks beaten down. Honestly, I felt sorry for her. And, you know, the thing is, is that what’s interesting is I, you know, started kind of picking apart her tired reflection. I started to think about the day ahead, and that, of course, was negative. I woke up late. I’ve got eight minutes for the zoom call. The dog still needs to be walked. And here’s what’s fascinating. If you had walked into the bathroom, Jonathan, I would have turned on a dime. I would have been like, Jonathan, I know life sucks. It’s not fair. You don’t deserve this. But come on, dude, if anybody can face this shit, you can. I would have known what to say. I would have been energized to help you, but standing there, seeing myself, I couldn’t think of anything to say. And here’s the other thing that’s really important. I don’t think I would have believed it because I didn’t feel confident. I didn’t feel resilient. I felt beaten down, and whatever it was, I was didn’t even have a bra on. I just suddenly raised my hand and high fived the woman in the mirror because she needed it.

Mel Robbins: [00:09:14] And look, lightning did not strike that moment. It’s not like my life magically changed. That’s not how this shit works. But something shifted. I felt my shoulders drop. I felt my chin lift, and I laughed because it’s so stupid to high five yourself. I mean, it’s just like the scene itself is dumb. And so I laugh at how corny it was. But then my mood changed and I thought, all right, this does suck. But you know what? Here we go. And I sent myself into my date. But it was the second morning. The second morning is when I felt something that I’ve never felt in my entire life, and this is where this shit starts to get deep. So I wake up. Same problem, same overwhelm. Nothing’s changed about that. Five. Four. Three. Two. One. I get out of bed, I make the bed. I start walking to the bathroom. And that’s when I noticed it. You know how when you’re about to go to a cafe and you’re going to see a friend that you really like? I’m about to walk into a cafe and see Jonathan Fields. I love this guy. How do you feel, Jonathan, when you’re about to see somebody you like?

Jonathan Fields: [00:10:25] You feel great.

Mel Robbins: [00:10:27] Yeah. You’re excited. You’re, like, looking forward to it. I felt that way about the idea that I was about to see myself. I’m going to be 53 this year. I had never, ever looked forward to seeing the human being. Mel Robbins in the mirror. I’ve looked forward to seeing what an outfit might look like or a new color eyeshadow. I have never anticipated with enthusiasm seeing myself. And as I stood there in the mirror that second morning, that’s when something shifted because I actually noticed the human being I was looking at, and I started to think, who does she need me to be today? What game do we want to play together today? It was this weird experience where I was literally for the first time, feeling like I wasn’t alone. I was there with myself. It’s hard to describe. It’s this moment of objectivity, of presence, of depth, of intimacy with yourself. And then, as I thought about the game I was going to play and how I was going to show up for myself, Self. I raise my hand and high five myself. Now let’s get into the science because this stuff is crazy.

Mel Robbins: [00:11:52] Here’s the good news. The good news is your nervous system, your heart, your mind. It is already programmed to have this work because of a lifetime of experience. So yes, it’s going to feel weird. It’s going to feel weird based on neuroscience. You know, you’re learning a new behavior. If I were to start writing with my left hand, I’m a right hander. It would feel weird. It’s new. You are breaking an old habit of staring at yourself and going, er, or ignoring yourself. You know, I’ve been shocked by how many people Jonathan can’t even look at themselves in the mirror. That’s the habit. So it’s going to feel weird to be with yourself because this is new. That’s number one. Expect that. But number two is you raise your hand and you go to high five yourself. Something weird’s going to happen. You can’t think a negative thought about yourself. You can’t think a negative thought about your day because your mind isn’t programmed to think anything negative when you’re high fiving somebody when you high five somebody. Jonathan what does it communicate when you do it for somebody else?

Jonathan Fields: [00:12:52] Celebration. It’s an upbeat thing. It’s like yes. Yeah. Like it’s basically it’s a physicalized.

Mel Robbins: [00:12:57] Yes, yes, I love you I see you, we got this. Come on now. Keep going. I believe in you. It communicates all of that. You’ve never, ever, ever given somebody an authentic high five that you hated. You’ve never given somebody a high five. Like you’re going down like that’s not how that’s not what that means. And so your brain in your subconscious already has all that programming in it. The second you raise your hand to do the high five, the subconscious part of your brain takes over and it marries all that positive programming with your reflection. That’s what’s going on. The second thing that happens, and this has been validated by Doctor Daniel. Amen. Because it feels so good to get a high five and you’ve received high fives in your life. Your brain recognizes it and it gives you a drip of dopamine. That’s why if you do this for more than five days in a row and get through the resistance, which I’m going to unpack for you, because the resistance is so sad, so profoundly sad that we got to unpack it. So you get a drip of dopamine, which means you’re now starting your day with a mood booster that’s free, that helps you focus, that helps you be more upbeat. We know, based on research, that your mood in the morning impacts productivity all day long. And that’s not all. Doctor Eamonn also said that one of the reasons why you feel a little bit more energized is because your nervous system gets involved.

Mel Robbins: [00:14:19] So in life, when you wave hello to somebody, you raise your hands. When you hug somebody, you raise your hands. When you pat somebody on the back, you raise your hands. When you cross a finish line, you raise your hands. When you high five somebody, you raise your hands. These are celebratory gestures that your nervous system already is programmed to feel. So when you start to make this a habit, your nervous system gets involved and you start to feel that celebratory energy that makes you feel a little bit more confident, a little bit more resilient. That’s what I mean when I say your body is programmed to have this work for you. But now let’s talk about the resistance, because nine out of ten people, nine out of ten people resist the idea. And the reason why you’re going to resist this is more to do. It’s even deeper than the fact that you’re not used to doing it. It’s sad right now when you stand in front of that mirror, you drag with you a lifetime of judgment. If you’ve been abused or you’ve experienced trauma, or you have a heartbreak or you’ve been abandoned, you look at that stuff and you say, it makes me damaged, unworthy, not good enough. And you see a person that’s damaged and unworthy and not good enough. And you say that to yourself, and you then cannot high five yourself.

Mel Robbins: [00:15:37] That’s what the resistance is, because you don’t believe you deserve it because of those things. Or maybe you’ve done things like I have that you deeply regret, that you’ve had a hard time forgiving yourself for, and you did these things because you were surviving. You’ve forgiven other people for doing these things, but you can’t forgive yourself. That’s the resistance that you feel. You don’t see somebody worthy of a high five because you’ve done these bad things. So it makes you feel like you’re a bad person. So that’s why you don’t encourage, support, celebrate, cheer, and love yourself. And there’s even more. If you’re somebody like me who’s an overachiever, who is married, I got to be winning. I got to be achieving. Because if I’m not achieving, then I’m not lovable. And you struggle with jealousy because when somebody else is winning, it means nobody’s going to love you. If you’re somebody that believes that the car that you drive or the money in the bank, or the number on the scale or the neighborhood that you live in, or the whether your hair’s kinkier like if you believe all that outside stuff is what makes you worthy and lovable, you’re fucked because all that stuff can get taken away. And it also sets you up for a life like I had where you’re on a plane 150 days a year, exhausted because you think you got to just do one more speech. Because if you do one more speech, that means you’re that much more worthy.

Mel Robbins: [00:16:52] It’s about the outside stuff. And so the resistance is, well, I haven’t even done anything today, so why would I deserve a high five? And there’s even more research. But this is just like the holy cow. I want to go back to the kid thing, Jonathan, because I got the most incredible text exchange with our 21 year old daughter. Our 21 year old daughter is at the University of Southern California. She is a music student, so she’s at the music conservatory as a singer songwriter. And she wrote to me the other day and she said, are you getting excited about your book? And she said, I can’t wait to read it. I’ve been high fiving myself in the mirror. And I said, how’s the high five working for you? And she says, well, when I do it, I don’t know what to say because sometimes when I look in the mirror, my first thought is, you’re not as pretty as the rest of the girls. And I said, well, you don’t have to say anything because the high five itself communicates everything for you. And then she said, but what if I didn’t accomplish anything today? Like I didn’t work out or I didn’t write a song like I said I would? Should I still high five myself after the shower? And I said, yes. You have to keep showing up every day trying to do a little better.

Mel Robbins: [00:18:20] That alone makes you worthy of support and celebration. You see, we have the secret to life, happiness and motivation backwards. You think you need to accomplish something to be worthy of a high five. And then she writes, wait a minute. Are you saying the fact that I exist deserves a high five question mark. I said yes. And when you high five yourself for just standing there in front of the mirror, you are demonstrating that you see you and all your potential. You support you and you believe in you and that no matter what happened or didn’t happen today, you still have your own back. And then I asked her, so what do you think about what I wrote? And she said, I love it. It makes me feel great. And then I said, could you explain why? Because maybe it’ll help me explain this high five habit to everyone else. And this is what she wrote, Jonathan. Well, what the high five shows you is that you don’t actually know how much you’re always doing. And I think that once you start high fiving yourself every single morning, it almost allows you to be more present to everything you are doing. And it helps you recognize all those small victories. And when you compile those small victories, you can recognize all of your accomplishments, big and small, Mall and eventually come to believe that not only are you worth it, but you can do anything.

Jonathan Fields: [00:19:43] Apparently, you’re raising some pretty interesting and cool and smart kids.

Mel Robbins: [00:19:48] Who are still beating themselves up. You know.

Jonathan Fields: [00:19:50] Right, as we probably all will continue to do. But the tools like really make a difference. What was so fascinating to me about that exchange was this realization that a the simple fact of your birth gives you worth. You don’t have to do anything, you know? And somehow, like, we get all sorts of stuff caked on around that that makes us forget that through life and think that we have to earn our way back into worth. And it’s like, no, you were born. Boom, done for life. That’s it. But then the realization that this is both it serves as a prime for your day, you know. So like you do this for the day, it makes a subtle shift in your mind and the fact that you now have a subtle shift in your mind means you step out into the day differently. And as you step out into the day differently, maybe you do a little bit something here, and then maybe people respond to you differently because they see you carrying yourself a little bit differently, and maybe door is open a little bit more widely open, or maybe arms open to embrace you, not because you’re consciously doing something different, but because you primed your brain to feel differently about yourself, to get a little bit closer to that feeling of, yes, I do have worth. And when you step out into the world that radiates without you actually even consciously telling everyone around that I’m valuable, I’m valuable, I’m valuable. It’s something that people feel around your presence, which makes sense.

Mel Robbins: [00:21:17] And one of the things that has happened for me is that I don’t even need to high five myself anymore on a really low day, I do, and I will, and I still do it anyway. But what I’ve noticed, Jonathan, practicing this very simple habit every morning, both of asking myself, who does the woman in the mirror need me to be today? And what game are we playing together? And also then sealing it. I don’t even see my face. I see a human being. I have literally deleted the soundtrack that I have lived with for 52 years, and I have reprogrammed it with all of those positive associations that a high five communicates. When I see myself in a mirror, I see a human being that I like. I see a person who’s doing her best. I see a person who needs, wants and deserves celebration, support and love and encouragement. And that’s all that I see and it is the most beautiful and liberating feeling in the world to have quieted that insane self-criticism. Now, are there things that happen throughout the day that make me, of course, are the things that I do? Of course. But to have removed that beat down every morning. It’s one of the most extraordinary experiences I’ve ever felt in my life. Mhm.

Jonathan Fields: [00:22:59] Yeah. I mean that’s powerful. You know eventually the repetition like the neural grooves change.

Mel Robbins: [00:23:06] Mhm.

Jonathan Fields: [00:23:07] They do you know like it’s like the old rule you know like what. What fires together. Wires together. And over time if you keep repeating this you’re getting different patterns to fire together. Mhm. I love that. And it feels like a good place for us to come full circle as well. So hanging out in this container of the Good Life Project., if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up.

Mel Robbins: [00:23:31] Hmm. I think it’s to surround yourself with people that you want to high five. It’s to do work or make an impact in a way that makes you want to high five what you’re doing. I think it’s waking up every day and being able to look the person that you see in the mirror, in the eye and smile and raise your hand and celebrate, encourage and support them. Send them into their day to play a game worth playing. I think that’s what it is. It’s, um, it’s really feeling like you are truly in control of what happens next. Because you are.

Jonathan Fields: [00:24:16] Mm. Thank you, thank you. And we’ll be right back after a word from our sponsors. And next up, we have James Clear, author of the number one New York Times bestseller Atomic Habits. James explores how we can live better through the power of small, incremental changes, and at the core of his philosophy is cultivating positive habits one step at a time. His approach really embraces the compound effect of consistent, small actions to gradually reshape our identities. In this conversation, James shares insights from his personal journey and how seemingly insignificant habits pave the way for remarkable achievements. Here’s James. There was a moment also where you had a pretty traumatic experience in baseball.

James Clear: [00:25:00] Yeah. So, you know, I’m going through my middle school and high school career. Like I said, I didn’t really have much to show for it. It wasn’t you know, it wasn’t a great athlete or anything. And the last day of my sophomore year of high school, I was suffered this very serious injury. I was hit in the face with a baseball bat. And it was an accident. I think when you’re in the middle of something like that, your body is just, you know, you’re in total shock. So I basically felt nothing for the first two days, like, I don’t know what kind of hormones were going on, but I like, you know, there’s just like no pain. And then like a week later when they broke my nose, I was just laid up for like a month. It just felt terrible. But the that was the hardest physical part of the process. Obviously the actual injury, but the hardest mental part of the process was the next like nine months. You know, I couldn’t drive for 8 or 9 months.

Jonathan Fields: [00:25:43] Because of the seizures. Right?

James Clear: [00:25:44] Right. And the double vision took a while to go away. So we had that physical therapy. My first session, we practiced walking in a straight line. It was just like for someone who, like, had these dreams of being an athlete and had spent so much time like training and thinking about their body and having control over that, and then suddenly you have like, no control. It just felt like, I mean, one of the first things I said was I never asked for this to happen. It just felt like that. Right? It felt like stuff had been taken away from you.

Jonathan Fields: [00:26:08] Yeah. So as you’re sort of like coming back, going through physical therapy, getting your vision back, letting your brain kind of come back to its non-swollen state, are you thinking, I’m just going to do the work? Because also, you’re this guy who has this fierce work ethic and commitment to mastering and excellence and learning. In your mind, are you thinking, I’m going to just do the work and get back to where I was and be kickass athlete? Or are you, like, this might be it.

James Clear: [00:26:32] I don’t think I ever consider not playing again. Like I knew that I was gonna try. Yeah, it was like, never a thought in my mind. Like, oh, I’ll just not play now. So now maybe that could have happened. But I didn’t let my mind go there. You know, like it was. I knew that I was going to try to come back so that that was definitely part of it. So this happened right at the end of my sophomore year. You know, baseball was over the summer, so I missed that whole season. Then you come back for your junior year. Well, junior year is actually for most high school sports is the big recruiting year. Because like, you know, college coaches are coming out to look at you play and so on. And then the next year you’re deciding where you’re going to apply. And, you know, like, is this school recruiting me or not? So junior year is the one where you want to like make a mark. My junior year was basically nonexistent like it was. Nobody looked at me. Nobody. I didn’t see a single college coach like I wasn’t playing. I, you know, so that put me in a very strange spot for someone who wanted to play in college that had zero interest going into their senior season.

James Clear: [00:27:26] And in fact, I came back from the injury and I got cut from the varsity baseball team. I didn’t even make it my junior year, so I was the only junior to get cut from the varsity team the year that I came back from the injury. I don’t know, I don’t know if that was fair or not. I know that I wasn’t a good player at that point, but that’s what happened. I can remember sitting in my car just crying to myself, flipping through the radio, trying to find some song that would make me feel better. Anyway, I finally my senior season. So two years after the injury, I did make the varsity team and I did well, but in limited time I threw 11 innings total, which for people who aren’t aware, like high school baseball games go seven innings. So like, that’s barely more than a single game. You know, like I barely got to play that year. I did fine in those 11 innings. But but it wasn’t like a great season or anything.

Jonathan Fields: [00:28:11] Yeah. And yet you still you’re like, I’m not letting this go. Yeah. I mean it’s interesting too, because you missed I mean, it must have been kind of devastating also because if you know that you’re coming back and like the one season where all everyone’s scouting for their players that they’re going to bring in to college, you got nothing. Like you’re literally starting, you know, like from from scratch. And then so then even playing after that, I mean, it’s sort of like, well, this is just for me at this, at this point. And then still not being able to get back to where you want. And yet it was still there was something in you that said, I’m not done. I’m just I’m not done.

James Clear: [00:28:47] Yeah. That phrase, this is for me, like, I never said that, but that feels right to me. You know, like I just made it about that, you know, like I wasn’t doing it for anybody else. I was just doing it because I wanted to do it because I don’t know, because I was driven to do it for whatever reason. Also, you are right. It was, you know, it was a little bit hard, like, you know, the the other guys who were better or were having good junior seasons and getting recruited and so on, you know, watching that. But I don’t when I think back at that time, one, I don’t feel I don’t I don’t think I was like jealous or angry or, you know, anything about them like that was great that they were doing fine. Also, I don’t remember feeling like, oh, I’m really missing out here, instead of focusing on like what was taken away from me, I, for whatever reason, shifted my focus on like how I could improve. So I had this period of like 2 or 3 weeks after the injury where I was kind of like wallowing in victimhood and feeling like, oh, this happened to me, you know, like how bad it was or whatever. And then for whatever reason, some kind of like switch flipped and I was just like, I’m just going to try to focus on getting a little better each day, you know, like maybe, maybe it’s just physical therapy at first. Maybe it’s, uh, you know, maybe, maybe it’s just like going out and playing catch for the first time in, you know, six months or whatever. But at some point, I just started focusing on trying to get a little bit better and stopped worrying about, like, where I used to be or what what was taken away. That helped me a lot through those like two years.

Jonathan Fields: [00:30:05] Yeah. I mean, it’s interesting too, because, you know, obviously in hindsight, you know, you can see all the dots come together. Were you that person who was sort of like focused on like, you know, having a very open and optimistic affect and then just willing to do the small incremental growth thing before this or was this moment something which kind of like something changed where you’re like, you know what? Let me reframe how I need to come back from this in a, in a more positive, incremental way which, which eventually became, you know, sort of like the heartbeat of the way you live your life and now operate your profession.

James Clear: [00:30:36] Right? Yeah. So, I mean, the book that I wrote is all about small improvements, right? But I didn’t have a language for it then that I it’s only now that I would say like, oh, I was just trying to get 1% better each day or something like that. Like I would have never said that when I was in high school, but I don’t I don’t think of that moment as like an epiphany or a transformation. I just think of it as like a challenge that I faced. And I also don’t think, I mean, I should just say this overall for this whole context. Like, I don’t think I have some heroic story or legendary thing, you know, like everybody deals with stuff in their life. I mean, like I said, my sister had cancer, you know, like everybody’s got something that they deal with. This just happened to be the thing for me. And so I don’t think that it like radically transformed my personality. I think I probably was that person who had a positive affect or tried to. I enjoyed optimizing or improving or getting better. It’s is just that. This was such a pivotal moment in my life that it gave me a very. When you’re forced into an extreme situation, you find out a lot about yourself. And it forced me to figure out, like, okay, if this really is who I am, like, I’m going to need to double down on my strengths here, right? Like I’m going to need to rely on this identity that I have to get through this. So I think it may be pulled out the best in me, but it didn’t necessarily transform me or turn me into something new.

Jonathan Fields: [00:31:46] Yeah. I mean, to a certain extent, it feels like it was. It forced you into a context where there was something, there was a huge challenge and something really big to work towards in a very specific way that made you say, okay, so how do I do this? How do I how do I how do I catalyze the way I am to make this happen? And it was deeply meaningful to you as well. This ends up becoming I mean, you know, like the, the, the short end of the, the baseball story is that you start to make all these small improvements and you start to realize, like a little bit every day, a little bit every day, a little bit every day. And you end up was like towards the end of college, not just, you know, becoming good again, but becoming, achieving all these incredible goals as, as an athlete.

James Clear: [00:32:29] Yeah, I think again, like, you know, I don’t think my story is legendary or anything. I never ended up playing professionally, but I do think I fulfilled my potential and that was just as meaningful in the long run. Yeah. So I you know, my senior season, I was an academic All American. There were only 30 players across the country that were chosen for that. Selected the top male athlete at Denison University, which is the school I went to when I graduated. I was in the record books for eight different categories. Yeah, I mean, it ended up being a great career and, um, and that it’s so strange to look at how lackluster my high school career was compared to how great my college one was. It makes no sense to compare the two. You never think they’re the same athlete that you know, in a sense, like my story is kind of an encapsulation of the ideas in Atomic Habits. It’s about how small improvements can compound over time. Yeah, that kind of happened to me. My dad used to tell me when I was growing up that like on any performance day. So, you know, like I’m pitching that day or I’m going or taking a test or something like that. And he would be like, just trust your preparation and that you can only say that if you put the reps in. Right. But like, it’s a very it was a very powerful thing for me when I would like go in to perform, I’m going into a big exam. I’m going into a, you know, like a big game. And if you have prepared, you can just trust your preparation. You can show up and have that like quiet confidence, step onto the field.

Jonathan Fields: [00:33:46] Yeah. I mean, were you able to do that? Because I know I’ve heard that said a lot. And I know some people are like, yeah, I can totally own that. But I also know other people that are have legendary work ethics. They have put in the work. They were astonishing at what they do. And when they come up to that moment where, okay, everything’s on the line, this is where whether it’s athletic, academic, social, whatever it may be, there is there is a relentless spiral of mental chatter that just keeps pulling them away from. And you can say you’ve done the work. You’re incredible. Like trust. Trust the preparation. But I think so many people have this. This firestorm of opposing mental chatter that pulls you away from that trust.

James Clear: [00:34:27] Oh, and I have had plenty of experiences where I’ve performed poorly and have been a victim of that myself. You know.

Jonathan Fields: [00:34:32] I know I have also.

James Clear: [00:34:33] I think I had a coach in high school, basketball coach said something just I don’t know why, but it struck me. One practice where he said confidence is just displayed ability. And so his point was like, if you want to be a confident free throw shooter, then go shoot free throws until you’ve made ten in a row, or 20 in a row, or 30 in a row, you make 30 in a row. Like, yeah, that’s what you get from that is confidence. You’ve displayed your ability. And so now you believe it. And so I think that that line like trust your preparation. It becomes easier to believe to truly like hold on to and to not let that mental chatter creep in with experience. It becomes easier with displayed ability. So what really, in the beginning, like my dad saying that to me was probably conditioning me to get ready to perform. And then as I gained experience and performed more and more and I’ve done, you know, okay, all right, I’ve thrown 50 games now. And, you know, I know that I have put in the reps and that this is going to work out okay. Then I can actually step onto the field and actually trust my preparation in a deeper sense.

Jonathan Fields: [00:35:30] It’s like now you’ve got proof to point to. It’s like, okay.

James Clear: [00:35:32] I think that’s a huge thing though. You know, I talk about this in chapter two of the book about this idea of like identity based habits, and we need evidence to believe things about ourselves. You know, like any anything that we’re talking about like this with mindset, a lot of times people say things like, fake it till you make it. And there’s nothing wrong with trying to take like a positive view of things, but fake it till you make it specifically asks you to believe something without having evidence for it. And there’s a word for beliefs that don’t have evidence. It’s called delusion, right? And at some point, your brain doesn’t like that. It doesn’t like the mismatch between wanting to believe something and not having proof of that being you. And that’s another reason why I think small habits are so important, because whenever you perform a small habit you like, cast a vote for being that type of person. You build up a little bit of evidence, a little bit of proof that this is who you are. So, you know, even if you do five push ups, that doesn’t do a whole lot. It doesn’t transform your body. But it is a little bit of proof that I’m the type of person who doesn’t miss workouts. Or you sit down to write one sentence, and that’s a little bit of proof of I am a writer. And so those small habits seem like not that much from a physical or external results standpoint, but they can actually be very meaningful when it comes to reinforcing beliefs like trust your preparation, or be confident in your abilities, or believe in yourself or things like that, because you actually you only develop that true sense of belief when you have some evidence behind it.

Jonathan Fields: [00:36:56] Yeah, I so agree with that. The running on 100% faith thing and just fake it till you make a thing just never sounds really good on like Instagram, but practical in the real world. It just I’ve rarely ever seen that carry somebody beyond just a tiny little bit of progress.

James Clear: [00:37:12] It’s not going to carry you. It’ll just be a momentary change. Right. It’s not going to sustain.

Jonathan Fields: [00:37:17] It’s. And I agree. We’re so wired for for evidence and for feedback. I think it’s interesting because there’s I sometimes say belief precedes behavior. And and a bunch of people have called me on it. They’re like, no, no, no, you have to act first. And that creates belief. And then I’m like, yes. And but think about the I’m always focused on the first action. Like I’m always focused on going from zero to the very first step. And I’m like, you know, in a, in a perfect world where time and resources are abundant and there’s no cost to you taking that first action. Yeah, maybe you’re right. I don’t know anyone that lives in that perfect world. Like there is always a cost to taking the first step. There’s always a they’re saying no to something else, to taking that first step. So maybe you don’t need to 100% believe that something positive will come your way to take it. But you’ve got a 3% belief, you know, and that requires very, very often something more than faith because you’ve got to say no to something else. To say yes to this first step. And like, there’s got to be something else that you can point to that says, okay, I’m not sure this is going to get me something, but at least I can see the possibility of it getting me something I can. My brain can point to this to rationalize. You know, like that first behavior and then like you were saying, you start to get this feedback loop that becomes repeating evidence in the process.

James Clear: [00:38:36] I think we just call that hope. Yeah. You need some some aspect of hope to drive you, but I so I would say that you’re both right you and that beliefs and behavior are two way street. It’s like a feedback loop, you know, like. And you see this all the time, right? Like, once someone you can have positive beliefs, like I’m the type of person who works out, or you can have negative beliefs, like I’m bad at math or I’m terrible at directions, or I have a sweet tooth or whatever. And once you adopt those beliefs, once they become part of your identity, it they can reshape your next action, right? Like motivates you to act in a particular way. But where did they come in the first place? Like you weren’t born as a baby with a belief of I have a sweet tooth or I’m bad at math, so it, you know, it gets reinforced over time. Sometimes your actions feed into your beliefs, and sometimes your beliefs feed into your actions. But they they both work with each other. Yeah.

Jonathan Fields: [00:39:23] Yeah. I mean, it’s interesting also, you keep circling back to this word identity. And I know in a lot of the work that you’ve done around understanding habit, understanding why what we do, you know, works or doesn’t work and, and your whole philosophy around like incremental slow, like 1% better every day, that it feels like the foundation of that is building an identity as somebody who is a doer in X domain.

James Clear: [00:39:47] Mhm. Yeah. So I mean, one of the things I say in the book is like the goal is not to run a marathon, the goal is to become a runner. The goal is not to write a book, the goal is to become a writer. And so it’s like, yeah, become the type of person who in X domain, right, become the type of person who works out each day, or who writes a sentence each day, who meditates for ten minutes or whatever the the particular identity is that you’re looking to build. And the reason I bring that up and think it’s important is because once you there’s like one, it’s one thing to say like, I want this, but it’s something very different to say, I am this. And once you have adopted a particular identity, you’re not even really pursuing behavior change anymore. Like you’re just you’re really you’re acting in alignment with the type of person you already believe that you are. So like, for me, weightlifting has been a big part of my life now since I’ve finished like competitive sports and going to the gym doesn’t really feel like a sacrifice to me anymore. It’s just like, that’s what I do. It’s part of who I am. And so I don’t have to, like, motivate myself, so to speak, to, to go there. I think that’s true for for any identity that you adopt someone who identifies as a smoker, they don’t they don’t have to motivate themselves to smoke a cigarette. It’s just like how they see themselves. It’s what they do. It’s the habit that they have. It’s automatic. In many cases. Bad habits can be instructive that way because they tend to be very sticky. And so it’s like, well, why? Why do these bad habits stick around? You can start to invert that and look at some of the things that work well for bad habits and apply it to your good ones. But I think that same principle of once you’ve adopted an identity, you’re not really pursuing change. You’re just acting in alignment with who you already think you are.

Jonathan Fields: [00:41:20] Yeah, it makes a lot of sense, too. And it kind of jives with some of the more recent research I’ve seen around passion, where, you know, one of the sort of how do you tell if something, you know, if this is a passion of someone’s is when they start adopting, at least according to some of the research, when they start moving away from saying, I do X and they start adopting an identity level expression of it. So like I instead of I, right, I am, I am a writer, you know, instead of I run, I’m a runner.

James Clear: [00:41:46] There was a famous study done on voting behaviors. 1 in 1 cohort. They asked people to say like, you know, I am voting tomorrow. And in the other cohort they got people to say, I am a voter. And the people who identified were more likely to go to the polls and actually vote versus the people who just said what action they were going to perform.

Jonathan Fields: [00:42:05] Yeah, it’s so fascinating. It reminds me also of, uh, you know, Cialdini’s sort of legendary work where he really started to talk about this thing called the consistency principle. You know, once we put something out into the world that says, you know, like, I’m the type of person who does this, right? There’s something in our brains that makes us want to act consistently with that.

James Clear: [00:42:22] Last person in the world we want to contradict is ourselves.

Jonathan Fields: [00:42:24] Yeah.

James Clear: [00:42:25] So it’s like once you’ve stated your claim to I’m the type of person who does this, you find yourself feeling compelled to continue that behavior, good or bad.

Jonathan Fields: [00:42:34] Right, exactly. You’re positive or negative outcomes because sometimes we dig in when we really should be letting go. Right. You brought up something which I think bears exploration to the example of smoking, because what that brings in to me is kind of an interesting conversation around the relationship between habit and addiction. And there is some interesting research. I know you write about this, about what was seen as an addiction when soldiers were away in the environment, and how when they came home, things changed in a way which really changed our understanding of this relationship.

James Clear: [00:43:06] Yeah, it’s a very interesting story. So it happened in the 1970s, near the end of the Vietnam War. These two congressmen went over to Vietnam. They hung out with the soldiers there and visiting them, and they found out that tons of soldiers, U.S. soldiers in Vietnam, were addicted to heroin. They ended up like sending a special force over to a unit over to figure out, like, how deep the problem went. And it was a really high percentage, like 15 to 20% of soldiers in Vietnam were addicted to heroin. Just a crazy number anyway. So they they created this whole special action task force and like trying to figure out what this was. Well, the war ends and the soldiers come back home. And the belief at the time, the prevailing view of addiction at the at the time was that once you were addicted like that, that it was, you know, there wasn’t a whole lot you could do or it was like a very difficult battle and that most people would relapse, that like 90% of people would, would relapse. Well, the soldiers came home and the literally the exact opposite happened, like only 5% of them or so, maybe 10% would get addicted to heroin again. Most of them became clean, like almost overnight.

Jonathan Fields: [00:44:10] So this was of the 15 to 20% who who were addicted when they were in theater when they came home. A tiny fraction of those people stayed users.

James Clear: [00:44:20] Yeah. So I don’t know the exact number, but let’s just let’s move away from percentages. So it’s not confusing. Let’s say that a million soldiers were addicted to heroin when they were over there, and then they all come back. Well, 90% of those were clean once they got back and they ended up not falling back into heroin usage. So this was like this was very confusing to a lot of researchers at the time because they were like, we thought when someone was addicted, they were, you know, they were hooked. Lee Robbins was the researcher who kind of headed up this, this group, and she published a couple papers on it. And anyway, the punch line of all this is that your environment heavily influences your behavior. And so if you are a soldier who’s in a stressful environment like a war zone, surrounded by easy access to drugs, surrounded by a social environment where other users, many of whom are your friends or people in your unit who are also using. It’s very easy to see why so many people would try heroin in an environment that is, you know, so soul crushing like that. But then you come home and all those things are gone. You’re no longer in a war zone. You don’t have to be stressed each day like that. You’re not surrounded by other users. You don’t know where to go to get heroin because you haven’t used there before. And so suddenly, the behavior shifted radically. Now, what’s interesting about this is if you think about how it compares to what we do now for people who are addicted, whether it’s heroin or another substance, usually they get addicted in their neighborhood or at home, around their friends and so on. Then they leave and go to a new environment, like a detox center or a clinic to get clean.

Jonathan Fields: [00:45:46] And then they come back. Right.

James Clear: [00:45:47] And so and that works. It works the same way that, you know, soldiers leaving Vietnam worked. But the difference is now they go back to the very place that they got addicted in the first place. Now they’re surrounded by their same friends, same neighborhood, all the same cues, everything. So in one, the weird thing about the Vietnam example was they were able to leave the environment that addicted them behind. And it’s so hard for modern addicts to do that. And I should just add as a caveat, like, I don’t consider myself an expert on addiction. I think addiction is like an extreme version of a habit, almost like the habit loop is a little bit broken in the sense that for most habits, the process of learning still continues. So if the outcome that you want, even if you’re doing it on autopilot, if that outcome vanishes, your brain learns and updates for the next time. But with addiction, it doesn’t quite work that way because the reward is taken away. It doesn’t really benefit you, but you still keep doing it. You’re not like learning, and that’s one of the definitions of what addiction is. It’s you continue to repeat a behavior despite negative consequences. You know it’s not good for you. You know it derails your life and you still have a craving to do it. So it’s kind of a special use case or a broken case of habits. And or many people who understand addiction much better than I do. But it definitely overlaps with a lot of the work that I do.

Jonathan Fields: [00:47:01] Yeah. And especially because this idea of habits like two A’s on one side, addiction on the other side, automaticity, which is, you know, in theory, if you’re trying to create the neural grooves to create a good habit, one that you want to just become, you know, completely automatic in your life, and you want to just like, have your brain rewire itself. So it’s just always there and it’s taking a lot less energy. That’s a really good thing, you know? But if those same neural grooves are that way towards a destructive habit. So I do see a really strong relationship there. So even if the even if the, you know, the, the chemical addiction may be removed from your body in a relatively short period of time, you know, it’s the same process on either side. You know, like the neural wiring doesn’t it doesn’t just get washed clean.

James Clear: [00:47:46] This is something I talk about in the book that, like, habits are a double edged sword. They can either work for you or against you. So you a lot of the things I just mentioned this a couple minutes ago, but in many cases it’s instructive to look at bad habits or addictions from like a high level, like, you know, kind of outside and above the problem to say, like, what’s actually going on here? Why do we get so hooked in to these behaviors? And can you learn a little bit from that and then apply it to your good ones. But yeah, there there are plenty of similarities. It can yeah, they can compound for you or against you.

Jonathan Fields: [00:48:14] The book you’ve written, Atomic Habits, is, is is really astonishing. Just as a piece of work, as an instruction manual, I look at it as almost an operating manual to integrate intelligent, constructive habits into your life.

James Clear: [00:48:28] Thank you very much. I’m glad that you enjoyed the book and found it useful. I wrote Atomic Habits to be the definitive book on how to build a good habit or break a bad one. Like if you actually want to know what do I do? How do I apply it day to day? Then this is the book, you know. I mean, at the end of the day, like I want the same things everybody else wants. You just want your work to matter a little bit. You know, you want to, like, make your little contribution to your corner of the world. And, you know, I try my very best to do great work and to do work that matters. I, you know, I don’t think it’s necessarily the best work in the world or anything, but as long as people are finding it useful and I’m getting a signal of that, then I have a reason to show up again the next day and work hard again.

Jonathan Fields: [00:49:03] Yeah. Love that. This feels like a good place for us to come full circle too. So hanging out here Good Life Project. if I offer out the phrase to live a good life, what comes up?

James Clear: [00:49:12] Hmm. Well, I think a lot of it actually has to do with that. What I just stated this idea of like, how can I contribute my little bit to the corner of my corner of the universe? You know, like, how can I? I think a lot about can I contribute more than I consume? You know, can I get can I be like a net positive life, right? Like I gave more value than I took out. If you’re honest with yourself, you realize you take a lot from the people around you. You know, you’re learning a lot from the from others. You’re consuming things other people make all the time. You know, whatever you have for your meals or the car you drive or, you know, like the clothes you’re wearing. I mean, somebody else put work and effort into that. And so for you to add your little bit to that, you know, collective mountain of humanity, I think is, is a life well lived. Hmm.

Jonathan Fields: [00:49:53] Thank you. And we’ll be right back after a word from our sponsors. Our final guest today is Nicole Vignola, author of rewire Break the Cycle, Alter Your Thoughts, and Create Lasting Change. As a neuroscience expert, Nicole’s mission is to empower people to thrive through understanding the brain. In this conversation, she offers a transformative neuro toolkit with practical strategies to rewire your brain and cultivate lasting change. You’ll discover how to harness neuroplasticity, the brain’s ability to adapt and create new neural pathways even in adulthood. Imagine quieting your inner critic, reframing beliefs, and embracing growth. Nicole’s insights guide you on a journey of self-discovery, equipping you to break free from limiting habits and behaviors. Here’s Nicole when we’re talking about neuroplasticity, what are we actually talking about?

Nicole Vignola: [00:50:42] Absolutely. So firstly, thanks for having me. I’m very excited to finally meet you. But neuroplasticity is the ability for our brain to change pathways. So for a long time we thought that after the age of 25 we were doomed. And whatever we had adopted until then was sort of set in stone, thereabouts in the 90s. We figured out that actually the brain is still capable of change well into old age. So the brain can reorganize itself, create pathways, undo old ones, which means that we can undo bad behaviors and habits that don’t serve us. And we can also carve out new pathways to adopt habits and behaviors, maybe thought patterns that we would like to. And the brain does that by essentially creating new synapses. So you have a neuron. And then on the sort of neuron synapses which are connections. And the more one connection communicates with another part of the brain, the stronger that connection becomes. And if that connection doesn’t communicate, then it can weaken over time.

Jonathan Fields: [00:51:39] So one of my curiosities is I hear the phrase often, well, you know, we’ve learned that the brain is neuroplastic, meaning essentially you can just completely rewire this thing. But is that true? Or are there parts of it that are more susceptible and than not, you know, like, can we really, you know, make wholesale change in the brain or is it more selective.

Nicole Vignola: [00:52:00] To some degree? You know, there are parts of the brain that can’t change things that are hard wired, like vision, speech. You know, you’re never going to lose your accent, for example, your native accent, but you can potentially learn a new one. Now, the way that plasticity works is through attention. So Doctor Michael Merzenich was one of the lead researchers in the area. And back in the 90s, he discovered that there had to be attention. There had to be norepinephrine and acetylcholine present in the brain for plasticity to occur. What they did is they did a tactile discrimination activity where individuals were recording plasticity in the brain whilst touching a barrel that was turning. And when they asked them to focus on something else, there was no plasticity. And when they asked them to focus on what the finger was feeling, that’s when they started to see plasticity. So what they realized is that we have to drive attention to the things that we want to ingrain as adults. When we’re children, we can absorb things through, you know, not osmosis, but through our environment, through watching our parents. That’s observational knowledge. But as adults, we have to physically tell the brain what is and what isn’t important. So the more attention you put into something, the bigger the spike and norepinephrine, the bigger the spike in acetylcholine. And then you need repetition. So to some degree, I mean, you know, it’s arguable you can’t change your entire brain because that would require a lot of energy and a lot of effort to do so. And a lot of attention. And we have things that we need to do on a daily basis, like, you know, get to work and have these wonderful conversations so you could acquire potentially, you know, five skills a year. Maybe it’s ten skills a year, depending on how much effort you put in. And then depending on how much consistency you put in as well.

Jonathan Fields: [00:53:42] Yeah. No that makes sense. So you mentioned by about 25 or so we tend to have our model of the world. Like we kind of like well we think we know the, the rules of the game. And we think we know nothing and then everything changes. Eventually like. And it ties into this word you described to a certain extent, which is heuristics.

Nicole Vignola: [00:54:00] Yes.

Jonathan Fields: [00:54:01] You know, these sort of mental shortcuts take me a little bit deeper into what these are and why these help us function.

Nicole Vignola: [00:54:08] The heuristics are mental shortcuts. So it’s how your brain arrives to a conclusions or decisions in the brain without having to think about it. So if you don’t think about how you walk into the door and turn on the light or open the door or make your coffee, you just do it automatically because the brain is trying to save energy for more cognitively demanding tasks. If you had to spend your time thinking about all these things, it would take too much energy and then you’d probably be depleted before lunchtime. So the brain acquires a set of sort of rules and heuristics as to how the world works and how you operate based on what’s been ingrained, based on what’s been repeated and based on your environment as well. So those heuristics could be good for most people. For some people, it means that they adopt behaviors that don’t serve them based on what they learned as a child. So it’s a classic example is when individuals come from maybe an emotionally abusive household, and then they carry that pattern into their life, even though they know that it’s morally incorrect on a conscious level. But the subconscious brain, which governs the majority of our operations, about 90 to 95% of our processes are thought to be subconscious. So what happens is that they carry those same patterns, even though consciously. 5 to 10% of their brain, they know that it’s wrong, but the patterns are still ingrained because neurobiology doesn’t really have morals. It doesn’t understand the difference between right and wrong. It just knows what’s been repeated. And if this is the sequence of neurons that fire in sequence to get you to a particular action, and that’s what’s always been repeated, that is what the brain is going to know best.

Jonathan Fields: [00:55:44] Yeah. And the way you’re describing it, I think a lot of people would sort of probably recognize some of those things in themselves looking back or maybe examining the present, but they might think, well, okay, so this is a pattern I have and it’s a behavioral thing. But what you’re describing is not just a behavioral thing. This is a physiological thing as well.

Nicole Vignola: [00:56:03] Yes, exactly. And it’s one of the reasons why I used the hardware analogy in the book. Because the hardware is your brain, the software is your mental health and your patterns and habits and behaviors. But essentially you need the hardware to be in good working order for the software to upgrade. And yes, it is all down to physiology and it’s all energy as well. So every single piece of communication is neurotransmitter release which requires energy to be released. So the brain is going to take the least energy demanding path so that it can save time or energy for more cognitively demanding ones.

Jonathan Fields: [00:56:39] Mm. No, that makes a lot of sense. So when we think about we have this ability to rewire the brain. When we want to do that, we need to do it on a fundamental physiological level, so that it then can change the way we think and the way we feel and the way we behave and the way we interact. It ripples out into our lives. Right?

Nicole Vignola: [00:56:56] Yes.

Jonathan Fields: [00:56:57] When you have the conversation around neuroplasticity, why do we care so much? Like what does knowing that we can do this? How does this open up or give us a sense of possibility or change in our lives that maybe we didn’t really feel like we had a grip on before?

Nicole Vignola: [00:57:13] I think it reinstates hope because a lot of people have lost that, especially if they don’t understand that they can change. And when you explain it to them, you can kind of see this. When I explain to people anyway, I can see this kind of like aha, sense of relief. You know, it doesn’t necessarily have to be like this. For some people it maybe puts blame on them, and I don’t want them to feel like that. I don’t want them to think that now the emphasis is on them to change. But it does give us the opportunity to reassess the things that don’t serve us and give us hope that we can change them so that we can live a better life and reach peak mental well-being.

Jonathan Fields: [00:57:49] Yeah, as you’re describing that. Also, I think the blame thing is a really important element here because oftentimes people hear, where are you saying whatever state you’re in, it’s not your fault. And, you know, like there are a lot of contributors to how we each land in any moment in life. And some of it is environment, some of it is systemic, some of it is culture and family culture, like there’s so many things that were their containers that were living within. But I think what I’m hearing from you also is that part of the hope is that even if you’re in a container or an environment or an experience where you feel like it’s not easy to extract yourself, that maybe there are things you can do internally to literally change the brain the way that your brain experiences that circumstance, so that, at least for the moment, it becomes better. Even if you don’t have the capability to really fix the external circumstance quite yet. Is that right?

Nicole Vignola: [00:58:36] Yes, yes, I would completely agree with that. And I think it gives people the understanding that they can change the trajectory of whatever was programmed for them. Because if you think about it, our programming is down to our environments, you know, socio socioeconomic circumstances, religion. And for most of the part we should keep, we should hold on to those things. But for some people they programming wasn’t modeled very well. But then they it’s sort of sent them on a trajectory of their life, which always blows my mind when I think about that. We’re programming children, we’re programming people, and then sending them off into the world. But it’s nice to know that we can take back control of that if we wish to.

Jonathan Fields: [00:59:15] Yeah.

Nicole Vignola: [00:59:16] Now, I’m not a geneticist and it still blows my mind, but to some degree you could change some parts of your genes. But what I would say is more important is learning how to work with what you’ve got. So, for example, I am not one of those people that can scroll on my phone and turn around and go to sleep. My partner can do that, and that’s great for him. But I have to be very meticulous. But knowing that, and I know why, it’s because I’m so dopaminergic that it’s something like Instagram is too stimulating for me at night. If you’re the opposite, then perhaps, maybe adopting a practice that helps you raise your dopamine levels in a less volatile way might be more a healthy for you as well. And what I mean by that is things like social media, smoking, alcohol, you know, things that are quick hits that are easy to attain. There’s no morals on dopamine, but the rule for dopamine is that there needs to be an effort put in for the reward. And if you put an effort, dopamine will rise, but then it won’t drop as quickly. The problem with social media is that it’s very quick so it can raise your dopamine very high, but there was no effort involved. So then it drops down really quickly and then you need more to feel good. So then you go on it again and again and again and you’re sort of doing this to just stay above threshold and feel normal. And things like exercise, cold water exposure, sauna, breathwork, any, you know, working on your goals, anything that requires you to put in work and effort. Choosing to cook versus ordering food will raise your dopamine levels, but then sustain them over time. So if you’re somebody that maybe struggles with motivation, the catch 22 is that it’s going to feel better to want to grab your phone. And I can appreciate that. But maybe adopting practices that are more sustainable for the way that you operate.

Jonathan Fields: [01:00:56] So in your book, you basically lay out what’s effectively a sort of like a three phase process to rewire your brain. Let’s say there’s something that you’re struggling with, or let’s say there’s a behavior change or a relationship, whatever it may be, that you’re dealing and you’re like, you know what? I would love if my brain acted differently so that I behave differently so that, like, the outcomes in my life were different. And so you lay out this three stage approach to it. I’d love to walk through some of the ideas in this, like starting with the over encompassing idea of phase one is ditch the negative and you dive into this notion that negative thoughts have a very real impact. And I think a lot of us have heard this, and a lot of us have probably rolled their eyes at it. It’s like, oh, come on, you know, like your thoughts make your world all the yada yada. But you say there’s actually a lot of reality and a lot of science behind this that we need to understand.

Nicole Vignola: [01:01:43] Yes. Well, our thoughts are very powerful because they can create new synapses, which is really interesting. And the other thing is they we actually encode negative information more easily than positive. And we tend to hold on to negative information more because it suits our needs for survival. Positive information is great and it makes us feel good, but as an evolutionary species, we need it to stay alive and we’re wired for survival. How many generations is it going to take for us to unwire that? I’m not entirely sure, but I think in the future that will change, I hope. Anyway, so phase one is, you know, a variety of chapters, but one of them is understanding stress, understanding your emotions, anxiety, and how all of these neurochemicals that pertain to all of these emotions and thoughts and behaviors drive your life and what you can do to take control of it. Understanding stress, for example, is a really important part of it because while stress, chronic stress is bad, also reframing how we see stress can be beneficial to us. So you know, stress, whilst it has a bad rep and rightly so, stress is also necessary. There will be an element of activation. Right now.

Nicole Vignola: [01:02:50] We wouldn’t be able to not be some level of stress or whilst having this conversation in the same way as if you exercise. So understanding that stress can be adaptive can actually change our mindset towards it. And they’ve done research where they looked at how stress impacts different individuals based on their beliefs. So they took one group and they showed them a video of basketball players losing their call on the pitch, saying that stress is really bad. And it was this whole kind of like five minute elaborate video explaining the how bad stress is. And they showed another group the adaptive response to stress and how good stress can be, and showing these sort of players using stress as a way to to win the game. And what’s really interesting is that they measured the blood pressure and heart rate of these individuals and heart rate variability, which is your central nervous system response in the individuals and the ones that were told that stress was good, had lowered blood pressure and a better heart rate variability and a lower heart rate as well, which is phenomenal because just they believe around what stress is could already help their physiology lower cortisol as well.

Jonathan Fields: [01:03:53] It blows me away how much our beliefs can affect our physiology. They can show up not just in I mean they show up in performance. And I think a lot of people would get that. But literally it changes the way that internally, physiologically, we experience different things. I remember sitting down with Ellen Langer, who did this incredible brain research, but just the notion that simply learning how to shift your beliefs around things that you might perceive as being really negative and creating a positive frame around it, will not only change the way you think about it and the way you behave around it, but will literally change your physiology so that you experience it internally in a more positive way. The exact same circumstance.

Nicole Vignola: [01:04:32] Yes. And that in itself will help rewire your brain as well, because we’re wired for negativity. But if we reframe our thoughts, we reframe our beliefs. We can start to see more positive in our lives. And that can be a self-fulfilling snowball effect of positivity. It’s, you know, like a positive loop, if you will. So many people like to hold on to the negative when you explain about this negativity bias and you start to reframe things. So as an example, I’ll work with a client and I’ll say, what are the small wins and the big wins of your week? And they’ll start the call by saying, oh well, not much. And as we’re chatting, I’ll go, that’s a win. And they go, oh yeah. And then by the end of it they realize they’ve actually had a fantastic week. They were just focusing on the negatives. And you know, Jonathan, if I said to you now how many blue things are you in your environment right now. If you had to count them. And then I said, okay, well how many red things were there? You’re going to say, well, I don’t know. I was looking for the blue things, not the red things. And that’s how it works with negative bias, is if you say to yourself, I’m having a bad day, you’re going to overlook all the wonderful parts of your day and just focus on what’s negative.

Jonathan Fields: [01:05:39] And that goes back to what you were talking about earlier in the conversation, which is everything really comes down to attention at the end of the day when we’re talking about the brain. And then you fold in reticular activating system and it’s like what we tell ourselves to be attentive to, we become attentive to, and then we stop seeing all the other things. That’s what we’re talking about here, right?

Nicole Vignola: [01:05:57] Yes, exactly. Exactly that.

Jonathan Fields: [01:05:59] It’s so interesting because it gives science to sort of like some of the pop psychology claims or spiritual claims that you’ve heard over time. It’s like, no, actually, this is important. This matters because it really changes the way that your brain functions, and then it changes the way that you feel in life. Yes. Speaking of shifting states, phase two of your the sort of three phase approach of neuroplasticity is about shifting your narrative. So it’s not just the state, it’s about changing the story that we’re telling. And it’s based on this notion that we all show up to any given experience with a certain amount of subconscious programming. We’ve been talking a little bit about how we become. We make that subconscious conscious. But then there’s this idea of like, once we understand the experience and the story we’ve been telling about it, how do we then tell a different story about it that that is more constructive for us?

Nicole Vignola: [01:06:47] Well, in rewire, there’s the seven step process in the shift narrative. So, you know, phase one is laying down that groundwork. It’s probably a bit heavier. And then phase two it starts to shift you into this narrative. And there’s seven steps. One of them is, you know, leave your phone alone. So there’s so much subconscious programming coming from the media that we consume and the people we interact with. And, you know, there’s a saying the five people you spend your time with are the ones you’re going to become. I don’t know if that’s entirely true, but I think there’s an element of truth in there, because if you’re surrounded by negative people, you’ll probably adopt those patterns of thinking and behaviour. If you’re surrounded by inspiring people, you’re going to want to be inspired and inspire other people. So we need to be careful of what we’re allowing into our lives, subconsciously and consciously as well, because it can really impact us. So if you’re following accounts that perhaps don’t make you feel good, they’re going to trigger certain aspects of you and highlight them on a more regular basis. So step number one is trying to diminish phone use because this is so much of our cognitive processing that goes towards energy usage for phone use. But then you don’t have enough energy left for yourself. So things like meditation are fantastic because they help you go inwards. If we’re constantly living outwards thinking, what’s next? Let me consume more content. Let me think about the next thing I need to send this email. I need to do this, I need that. We don’t have time to really think about our thoughts, internalize them, process them. And what tends to happen is people will do that at night lying in bed, and then they’re tossing and turning and they can’t sleep because we haven’t activated the default mode network, which is responsible for internal mind wandering, which is the part of your brain that you would access when you’re meditating. We have things like visualization in the book as well, so I don’t know why I’m saying we. It’s me. I wrote the book. You’re a co-author.

Jonathan Fields: [01:08:40] Now.

Nicole Vignola: [01:08:40] We the royal we. But visualization is an extremely powerful tool in helping us create a blueprint to where we want our new wiring to go. Because if we haven’t experienced something, and perhaps we’re afraid of it, it’s going to be hard for us to really go down that route because the brain wants to keep us safe. I’m somebody that is more prone to challenges and putting myself out there, but there are many people who prefer to stay safe. And visualization can help you create that blueprint, because we know that through thought alone, we can start to create new synapses. So we can start to imagine what it would be like for us to be wherever we want to be with this new narrative, with these new habits, with these new behaviors. And then it helps lay down the pathway so that when you then put it into action, it’s already there. You can slowly, slowly through repetition rewire and re carve a new path for yourself.

Jonathan Fields: [01:09:35] Yeah, I love that. I remember reading a paper this was a number of years back now that blew me away, where they took untrained individuals and they split half of them into a group that worked out, did it like a workout program. I think it was three times a week. The other ones, they had visualized doing that same workout program. The people who actually did the exercise, you know, they documented gains in strength and muscle size and things like that.

Nicole Vignola: [01:09:58] Yes.

Jonathan Fields: [01:09:58] The people who simply visualized doing that exact same program had pretty significant increases in muscle strength and even like muscle size. And it is amazing how much the visualization can truly affect your physiology. It’s kind of like, on the one hand, like you think, how is that possible? But it is.

Nicole Vignola: [01:10:17] Yeah. No, I believe that. And I think I remember that paper. I haven’t read it recently, but I do remember reading it at the time, which is kind of what I remember sending me on a trajectory into this visualization practice because it’s. Yeah. Completely blew my mind as well. It’s it’s wild.

Jonathan Fields: [01:10:33] Yeah. One of the other things you talk about under this, sort of like the second phase, is the notion of the role of repetition. Like, rather than just thinking this or doing this thing once, what happens to the brain when we actually turn this into a practice?

Nicole Vignola: [01:10:46] Yes. The brain prefers. Well, it will rewire itself on consistency. So a lot of the times people will think, oh, well, five minutes isn’t enough. I’m learning to play the guitar at the moment. Actually, I started last October and it’s even just five minutes a day because you’re just repeating and through repetition. That’s how the brain creates and strengthens these synapses. So you have to make sure that you’re doing it on a regular basis. And what that means is that eventually motivation will wear off, and you’re going to have to rely on that consistency as well. So I always suggest people to kind of hone in on that motivation time. When you’ve got it, really go for it if you can, and set up a practice where you’re doing it on a regular basis, because that is what’s going to help create those pathways.

Jonathan Fields: [01:11:32] Yeah.

Nicole Vignola: [01:11:33] And also, how do you know you can’t do it if you haven’t really tried the first time? It’s always going to be rubbish. It’s the same as picking up a guitar. If you don’t know how to meditate, you don’t know how to play a guitar. It’s not going to sound nice, it’s not going to feel nice. But over time, that’s how you get through it. That’s how you get better at it. And I love speaking to people that meditate on a regular basis, because you really understand what it’s like to feel the way that you do when you meditate regularly. It’s it’s something that’s right there you can access without anything else. And that’s what I love about meditation, breathwork, all these practices that everything you need is already within you. You just need to cultivate this part of you that is able to, you know, feel the way that it can feel the best.

Jonathan Fields: [01:12:16] Yeah, it feels like a good place for us to come full circle in our conversation as well. So in this container of Good Life Project., if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up?

Nicole Vignola: [01:12:26] Oh, okay. I think to live with self alignment, because I think there’s a lot of people that will speculate and there’s a lot of research that will tell you what is the key to longevity. But my biggest question is, can you sit with yourself alone in a room? And you alluded to the fact that you can because you’re an avid meditator. And I love that because I think that that’s fundamentally what’s going to drive our wellbeing is are you constantly fighting with yourself or not? Because if you’re not, you can go through life much easier with things being thrown your way. But knowing that you are standing true in your own light, in your own alignment, however you want to phrase it. And I think that that for me is the basis of living a good life.

Jonathan Fields: [01:13:09] Mhm. Thank you.

Nicole Vignola: [01:13:10] Thank you.

Jonathan Fields: [01:13:13] And that wraps up today’s spotlight conversation on tiny habits and massive brain rewiring. Thank you to all of our guests for sharing such powerful, actionable wisdom to help us rewire our brains and reshape our realities. And if you love this episode, be sure to catch the full conversation with today’s guests. You can find a link to each of those episodes in the show notes. This episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers Lindsey Fox and me, Jonathan Fields. Editing help by, Alejandro Ramirez, and Troy Young. Kristoffer Carter crafted our theme music, and of course, if you haven’t already done so, please go ahead and follow Good Life Project in your favorite listening app or on YouTube too. If you found this conversation interesting or valuable and inspiring, chances are you did because you’re still listening here, do me a personal favor a seven-second favor. Share it with just one person. I mean, if you want to share it with more, that’s awesome too, but just one person even then, invite them to talk with you about what you’ve both discovered to reconnect and explore ideas that really matter, because that’s how we all come alive together. Until next time. I’m Jonathan Fields signing off for Good Life Project.