7 Habit Episodes to Help You Make Change That Lasts [Round Up]

Have you ever downloaded a habit tracker, set an alarm for a new morning routine, or told yourself "this time it's going to stick," only to find yourself back where you started two weeks later? Lisa knows the feeling—and she knows you're not alone. Habits are one of the most talked-about topics in productivity and self-improvement, and also one of the most frustrating to actually live out. That's exactly why Lisa keeps coming back to this topic on the podcast.

In this episode, Lisa isn't introducing new material—she's connecting the dots. She rounds up seven of the show's top habit-related episodes, giving you a flavor of each one so you can decide which to revisit in full. It's a look at how the conversation around habits has grown on the podcast, from the foundational framework in episode 15 all the way through the personality-based approach in episode 268.

Lisa walks through where it all began in episode 15, leaning on Charles Duhigg and James Clear to explain what habits are and how the brain uses "chunking" to make decisions easier. From there, she revisits her strategy call with Katie Henson in episode 164, applying habit theory to a real morning routine and real life clutter. She covers episode 210's exploration of gratitude as a protective, habit-forming practice, and episode 225's four tips for rebuilding a habit after life disrupts it. She then connects episode 227's approach to habit stacking and keystone habits, episode 249's five energizing habits for sustainable productivity, and closes with episode 268's personality-based approach using the Big Five (OCEAN) traits. Throughout, Lisa ties it all back to self-awareness—the same foundation she introduced all the way back in episode 1.

Habits, Lisa reminds us, aren't about willpower or discipline alone. They're about understanding how your brain works, designing your environment and expectations to support you, and building routines that flex with your actual life instead of demanding a version of you that doesn't exist on your hardest days.

Key Takeaways:

• Discover the foundational framework from episode 15 for understanding how habits form and how the brain uses "chunking."
• Learn how episode 164 applied personality, environment, and timers to build a real, sustainable morning routine.
• Explore why gratitude (episode 210) functions as a protective factor and a tool for habit reversal training.
• Understand the concept of "friction" from episode 225 and four tips for rebuilding a habit after life gets in the way.
• Learn how habit stacking and anchoring (episode 227) help you link new habits to ones you already do automatically.
• Discover the five keystone habits from episode 249 that support energy management and sustainable productivity.
• Explore how the Big Five (OCEAN) personality traits from episode 268 help you design habits that fit who you actually are.
• Understand why self-awareness, first introduced in episode 1, is the real foundation of effective habit building.

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LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

Episode 15: How to Harness the Power of Habits

Episode 164: Decluttering and Habit Management for Multi-Passionate Creatives with Katie Henson

Episode 210: Gratitude: One of the Simplest Habits to Improve Mental Wellbeing

Episode 225: How to Rebuild a Lost Habit or Create a Better One

Episode 227: Combining and Stacking Habits for Better Results

Episode 249: Five Energizing Habits to Make You More Productive

Episode 268: Build Strong Habits Based On Your Personality

Episode 1: The #1 Tool to Achieve Productivity

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Transcript

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Lisa Zawrotny: 0:20

Habits aren't about willpower or discipline alone. They're about understanding how your brain works, designing your environment and your expectations to support you, and building routines that can flex with your actual life instead of demanding a version of you that doesn't exist on your hardest days, which is the quickest way to lose a habit that you want to keep. You're listening to the Positively Living podcast. I'm your host Lisa Zorotne, founder of Positively Productive Systems and a productivity coach certified in positive psychology and stress management. Join me as we explore ways to live a more proactive, positive life with episodes on productivity, self-awareness, mindset, entrepreneur life, habits and systems, simplicity, fun, and more. I understand overwhelm personally as a multi-passionate entrepreneur, wife and mom to kids and cats, and as a caregiver. I'm here to help you choose what's right for you, so you can do less, live more, and breathe easier. Sound good? Let's get to it. Welcome to the Positively Living podcast. I'm your host Lisa, and if you've ever downloaded a habit tracker, set an alarm for a new morning routine, or told yourself this time it's going to stick, only to find yourself back where you started. Two weeks later, you're not alone-not by a long shot. We are all there with you. Habits are one of the most talked-about topics in productivity and self-improvement for a reason, and they're also one of the most frustrating to actually live out, which is probably why they're talked about so much. We know they matter. We know consistency is the goal, and somehow that gap between knowing that and actually doing them can feel impossibly wide. I'm hoping that I can help shrink that gap for you. Habits are essential yet elusive, and that's why I keep coming back to this topic on the podcast. And it's one of the most requested topics, and it's one I genuinely never get tired of exploring because the conversation keeps evolving. We learn more, and when we know better, we can do better. What I understood about habits five years ago isn't the same as what I understand now, and what I understand about myself is so different now than five years ago. I'm different now, and all of these things come together to help us develop the habits that will stay with us. So there's layers of the science behind why habits form, the practical tools for building them, the personality pieces that explain why a system that works beautifully for one person falls apart for another, and it all helps us understand that it's habits for us that matter, not for everyone else. We've covered this topic a good bit on the podcast, but more options means more choices to make, and that's not always a good thing. So I wanted to make it easier for you today. I'm rounding up seven of the top habit-related episodes in the show so far, so you can see how this conversation has grown, and you can get a sampling of this full set, focusing on the ones that are most listened to and most foundational for habit development, you'll get a flavor of each one. I'll give you a summary of them, and then you can decide which ones you want to go back to and listen to in full, or maybe revisit. You'll find all of these and more on the habits playlist at positivelyproductive.com/podcast. Where it all began back in episode 15 in the very beginning how to harness habits to achieve your goals I laid the groundwork here for everything that came after I leaned on two of my favorite habit authors Charles Duhigg from The Power of Habit and Smarter Faster Better and James Clear with his Atomic Habits to explain what habits actually are and how our brains use something called chunking to make decisions easier. That episode also introduced a simple framework for building new habits and breaking old ones. If you've never heard this foundational habit episode, it's a great place to start, and if you're looking for those books that I mentioned, check out the resources page of the website positivelyproductive.com/resources. You want to scroll down to the podcast resource link, and that's where all of the books that I mentioned in the podcast are listed.

Unknown: 4:59

A few years later, in episode 164, I sat down for a strategy call with Katie Henson, a multi-passionate creative who wanted a better morning routine, but kept running into life clutter that got in her way. And remember, clutter is whole life. It's not just the stuff on the floor, but everything that gets in between you and the life you want to live. That comes from Peter Walsh, and I love that quote. What I love about this episode is how we applied habits to real life. We assessed her personality and tendencies to figure out what would actually work for her. Talked about using her environment to make good habits easier instead of relying purely on willpower, and use timers to set gentle boundaries around tasks that felt overwhelming. We also got into the sunk cost fallacy, that trap where we hold onto things or routines or efforts simply because we've already invested time in them, even if they're not serving us anymore. Episode 210 focuses on one of the simplest and most powerful habits: gratitude. During Mental Health Awareness Month, I revisited gratitude as a habit, not just a nice sentiment. I had recently been certified in mental health first aid, and in that curriculum, they reference gratitude as a protective factor, something that actively guards your well-being, I had covered aspects of gratitude before on the podcast, but wanted to bring it back within the context of habit development. Knowing how important this habit is, I wanted to provide a way to develop it to help you create that protective factor. In the episode, I shared how gratitude can be used in something called habit reversal training, a technique for interrupting a loop of unhelpful thoughts and replacing it with something that actually serves you. Of all the habits we'll talk about on this podcast, this might be the easiest and most impactful one to try first. I started today's episode by saying that habits can be elusive, the kind we want to develop. That is, what's important to understand about that is those supportive habits that we seek don't tend to disappear on us because we're lazy or undisciplined. They disappear because life happens. Life lifes us, and that's the heart of episode 225: How to rebuild a lost habit or create a better one. I talk about the concept of friction, the resistance that builds up and makes a habit harder to return to, and offered four tips for rebuilding routines that fit who you are right now or in that moment, not who you were before everything got disrupted. I also shared the importance of celebrating small steps and tracking your progress, not to be rigid about it, but to get an honest picture of what you want to do and how far you've actually come. Once you've rebuilt the habits that you're looking for, or started building habits that you want in your life, the next natural step is making them work together, and that's exactly what episode 227 covers: combining and stacking habits for better results. Dives into where the term habit stacking comes from, and gives you a simple approach for linking a new habit to one you already do automatically, called anchoring, and it's incredibly effective. I also talked about keystone habits, the ones that have a ripple effect on everything else in your day. Once you identify your keystone habits, a lot of other good choices start to follow almost automatically. In episode 249, I offer a set of habits you may want to start with to support energy management. Another popular topic here, and what I maintain, is the real key to sustainable productivity. In five energizing habits to make you more productive, I walk through five specific habits that you could argue are keystone habits: rest, nourishment, a creative outlet, movement, and built-in rewards that genuinely refill your tank instead of draining it further, if you've ever pushed through exhaustion to check a box on your to-do list or used punishment to drive your productivity, you'll appreciate the permission this episode offers to actually take care of you first, and everything else will follow. Most recently, in episode 268, build strong habits based on your personality. I tackled the one size fits all myth head on. Self awareness is the real foundation of productivity and of effective habit building, and I started that off in episode one on self awareness being your number one productivity tool, and I maintain that you can see it in the strategy episode I mentioned with Katie Henson. This is what I coach all the time, and I wanted to have an episode that showed the connection. So understanding your own inner and outer motivation, along with how your personality shapes what's sustainable for you, is critical. To design habits in the best way for you, and in this episode, I use the Big Five personality traits, also known as ocean, O C E A N, because it represents each of the traits. The traits are openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. And don't be scared by those words, these are psychological terms, and I do have an episode on that that I will link in the show notes as well. So I use this framework for figuring out which habits will actually align with who you are, instead of constantly fighting against your own nature. So those are the seven episodes. Seven episodes with seven different perspectives that center on the same idea. Habits aren't about willpower or discipline alone. They're about understanding how your brain works, designing your environment and your expectations to support you, and building routines that can flex with your actual life instead of demanding a version of you that doesn't exist on your hardest days, which is the quickest way to lose a habit that you want to keep, I'm curious which one will you listen to or maybe revisit, or did you want to go through the whole list? Are you ready to understand habits better, rebuild one you lost, figure out how your personality could help you create a stronger habit, or maybe all of the above. I'd love to know what resonated with you, and I'm here to help if you'd like support. And if you are in the mood to binge that collection, the full habits playlist is waiting for you at positivelyproductive.com/podcast with these seven and more. Remember, the best habits are the ones that work for your life, not someone else's. Now you have a list to help you design the ones that fit best.