#14 Breaking Bad Habits: Stop the Patterns That Are Holding You Back

Episode #14: Breaking Bad Habits: Clearing the Path to Creativity dives into identifying and breaking habits that hinder creativity. Host Courtney Gray shares insights from James Clear's book, Atomic Habits, on the science of habits and offers practical strategies for transforming bad habits into beneficial ones. The episode covers the importance of understanding habitual cues, the impact of habits on creativity, and actionable steps to replace negative patterns with positive routines to enhance focus, creativity, and ease in your business.

Transcript

Episode #14 Breaking Bad Habits: Stop the Patterns That Are Holding You Back

[00:00:00] Welcome back to the Jeweler's View. Over the past couple of weeks, we've been diving into habits, how to focus on systems instead of goals, and how to use habit stacking to build momentum. If you haven't caught those episodes yet, I highly recommend giving them a listen or better yet, head over to YouTube at the Jeweler's View, where you can now watch every episode and catch up.

Today, I wanted to tackle the flip side of good habits and habit stacking with breaking bad ones. Here's the real nitty gritty, You know, the ones I'm talking about, the habits that distract us, drain our energy, or stop us from creating at our best. Whether it's procrastinating, scrolling endlessly on social media, or overthinking every detail, these habits can feel like Anchors holding us back, but the good news is they don't have to so what I want you to learn by the end of [00:01:00] this episode is some strategies to identify and break the habits that no longer serve you and Clear the way for more creativity focus and And my favorite, ease in your business.

All right, so let's dive in. Why breaking bad habits feels hard. This does feel hard, doesn't it? I'm struggling with this myself. I am an habitual creature who runs on habits and routine. So I totally feel you. This is a tough topic and it's going to take practice. So let's hang in there together and I know we can do it.

So the science of habits is one of the things I wanted to get into. And again, this is all referenced from Atomic Habits, James Clear's book on how to build good habits and break the bad ones and learn how to stack in habits into your routine. Highly recommending the book.

It was a game changer for me. I'm still referencing it. every week really. So bad habits aren't just random, they're tied to a cue. [00:02:00] So each habit has a cue, a craving, a response, and reward.

They're efficient for your brain even when they're not helpful for you. Think about it. Scrolling on Instagram gives you instant dopamine even though you're losing valuable creative time. I used to waste hours overthinking designs. I would sit at the bench, tweak every little detail, and by the end of the I really hadn't accomplished much.

It wasn't until I recognized that perfectionism was the bad habit holding me back that I could start shifting my focus. So understanding why you're stuck in a habit is the first step to breaking it. Just looking at it, understanding is always the first key, let's get into the four laws of breaking bad habits. again, from Atomic Habits, I did not make this up. I am I'm completely resharing information from this book because I find it so important and well written and just really potent information. Hopefully it's going to be helpful for you [00:03:00] too. Okay, so the first thing to do to break a bad habit, he suggests make it invisible.

If you want to stop snacking, don't keep chips on your desk. The same applies to creative distractions. If you're always scrolling on your phone, put it in another room during studio time if you can. Make it unattractive is number two. Remind yourself of the downsides. For example, if procrastination is your go to, think about how much stress it adds when deadlines pile up or sneak up on you.

The third one is to make it difficult. Add friction to the habit, make it kind of hard to get at it, . If you tend to overcheck your emails, maybe log out of your email account after every session, so it's harder to just. pop back in. I know I'm guilty of this one. Who emailed me?

I want to go check. I want to see. We're so glued to the phones. So how can we step away from that and not let it be a distraction, So make it unattractive.

Make it difficult. The fourth one is make it [00:04:00] unsatisfying. So, Replace the instant reward of the bad habit with something healthier. For instance, if you feel the urge to scroll on social media, maybe set a timer for five minutes reward yourself for only doing it for five minutes by stepping outside or having a nice coffee break, a tea break, whatever works for you. So we don't want to just break a bad habit, you have to replace it with a better one. Your brain needs to follow a path, so we're actually reprogramming our brains to follow a different path. For example, replace procrastination with a Pomodoro timer.

instead of procrastinating on starting a project, commit to just five minutes using the Pomodoro technique that I talked about earlier in this podcast. 

And you'll often find that starting is the hardest part. I want to dig into this one a little bit. Starting is the hardest part. We can talk ourselves out of it. It is amazing. It comes down to the littlest little [00:05:00] things like I need to move this over there, or I need to reorganize this drawer to make my life easier.

We can look at these things for weeks, months sometimes, and not just take the three minutes that it takes to do the task. So I'm practicing this a lot. Just do it, Courtney. Just do it. Just get up and move the thing. Why are you staring at it and see overthinking it? For example, I had a cord that was hanging by my bed and I don't like having cords by my bed, but I need to charge my device and what have you.

I think I have a heating pad in there. I didn't want to see the cord, but I stared at it for weeks thinking, God, what an annoying cord to see. Like just get up and move it. So I don't know if you can relate to this. It's those little things that we just hesitate to do that really don't take a lot of energy.

In fact, one thing I tell my clients a lot, it takes more energy to overthink. And to contemplate what it's going to take to move the thing or do the [00:06:00] thing that you're trying to do than to actually do it. So we can save a lot of time and a lot of unnecessary use of energy by just, just making that change, make the move, as you think of it.

second example I want to give you of replacing bad habits with a good one is replace overthinking with good enough. So this is a rule we could think about. Instead of overthinking, maybe we just say it's good enough. It's ready to ship. Set a timer for decisions. We've talked about this, whether it's picking stones for a project or finalizing a design.

Give yourself 10 minutes to decide and then move forward. And these are just examples of habits we might want to change to make our creative lives a little more flowing. the third example, replace endless scrolling with studio time. Instead of scrolling or looking at other people's work first thing in the morning or collecting photos that might inspire you, set up your bench or your sketchbook the night before so it's ready to go and try to make creativity the [00:07:00] first thing that you do.

just gently replacing and moving these, habits around. I'm not saying never scroll, never. look on Pinterest and collect images that inspire you, but are we spending too much time doing it might be something to look at and shake up a little bit. When I first started my jewelry school creative side, I had to break the habit of micromanaging every little detail for the first five years.

It was just me running that show. And then I had all these people coming out of the woodwork working for me with Alongside me you have to let go of a lot of things when you become a boss lady or you start hiring in your first intern or your first person, really, it's going to take a little bit of a detachment from the idea that you need to be the one doing everything.

It wasn't sustainable to micromanage every detail and it kept me from focusing on the next level on growth, letting go of that habit and trusting my team freed me up to think bigger, to [00:08:00] make bigger moves, also just relieved me from a lot of spent energy throughout the day. So let's dive into some steps to break a bad habit.

 , identify the habit's cue and the reward. So you're always gonna have a cue and a reward, what triggers the habit? What are you getting out of it? For example, if you're constantly checking your phone, the cue might be boredom, just simple boredom. And the reward might be a distraction.

How do we interrupt the cycle? Once you know the cue, interrupt it. If boredom triggers you to use your phone, have a sketchbook nearby to redirect that energy somewhere that's for you, for your business, and for your growth, So interrupt the cycle.

 Start small. I can't stress this enough. You don't have to overhaul everything at once. In fact, it's impossible. Pick one habit to work on and focus on it then track your progress. Keep a journal. [00:09:00] Again, no judgment here. Judgment free zone.

We're not picking on ourselves through this process. We're just becoming aware. We're staying curious and we're starting small. But maybe you keep a journal nearby and track that progress. Or use, there's habit tracker apps that you can grab on your phone to see how often you avoid the bad habit and then celebrate the small wins, even if it's just I skipped that bad habit a couple times today.

This will keep you motivated and hopefully seeing and feeling the shift that can happen from even these small little tweaks and changes. So let's talk a little bit about some common pitfalls and how to avoid them. I think one of the common pitfalls that we could try to avoid is all or nothing thinking. We don't need to be perfect here. Progress is what matters. I am an all or nothing girl. I used to brag on that. I'm all or nothing. I'm all in. not so good when, and we're talking about a bad habit, right?

We don't want to be all in. We want to be conscious of how these [00:10:00] habits are affecting us day to day and what they're driving us towards and who we want to become and how we want to live out our days and be in this body, in this life. So that all or nothing thinking, I think it's time to toss it for me and remember, this is about progress, it's not about perfection.

 Another common pitfall that I see a lot in my clients is people overloading themselves. We overload ourselves constantly. Trying to change everything at once is not going to work. it just doesn't work that way. So focus on one habit at a time, just like we talk about focusing on one task at a time or one piece of a project at a time.

Same thing with this breaking of bad habits and stacking new ones. Don't overload yourself one habit at a time because trying to change too much at once can be overwhelming. another common pitfall is losing momentum. So here's the thing, if you slip up, don't quit. If [00:11:00] you have a bad day and you fall completely backwards, that's okay, tomorrow's a new day, 

get up, let's do it again. Let's keep in check who we want to become and what we're striving towards. What's that end goal and the systems that we set up as we talked about earlier in the series that we've put in place fall back on those when things get tough and they will get tough. let's just get curious and if you slip up, no big deal.

Get curious about what happened and maybe just adjust the approach, figure out what cued that change, what's going on there. How can we approach it differently next time? Okay, I gave you a lot to think about here. I'm not going to read the whole book to you, and I'm not going to go through every section, but there's so much more meat to this book than what I could touch on in these three short little episodes.

to recap a little bit, Breaking Bad Habits is not about willpower. It's about understanding the habit loop and replacing it with something better. Start small, track your progress, and don't [00:12:00] forget to celebrate the wins. This week, I want you to think about identifying one bad habit that's holding you back.

Use the four laws to start breaking it that we talked about and replace it with a new habit that moves you forward.

Let's go over the four laws of breaking bad habits just really quick one more time. The first one, make it invisible. So just put it out of sight, out of mind. The second, make it unattractive. The third, make it difficult. If it's too easy to grab, it's gonna be difficult to break.

The fourth, make it unsatisfying. So replacing that instant reward of the bad habit with something healthier. let's practice together. I want to hear how you're doing. If you enjoyed this episode, please don't forget to subscribe and leave me a review. I love reading those reviews. They keep me going, keep me lit up.

And you can also watch this episode and all the other episodes soon on YouTube at The Jeweler's View for more inspiration and tips. [00:13:00] If you're not in the loop with my email newsletter. I want you to reach out. I want to hear from you and know who's listening. And I want to be in touch with you moving forward.

I'm sending a weekly inspirational email that pairs nicely with each episode that I record for you. So I want to make sure that you're getting those as well as hearing about other opportunities that are coming up in the industry. I'll be sharing with you. So email me and if you're not following me yet, that's it. Courtney gray arts on Instagram and Facebook where I'm loading my pages with inspiration for you, to help you move onward and upward next week, I'm going to get into some other topics about self belief and why you already have what it takes to succeed.

Trust me, you don't want to miss it until then. onward and upward [00:14:00]