The 3 Easy Steps For Creating Good Habits with Wendy Wood

Wendy Wood is a professor at the University of Southern California and visiting faculty at Insead Business school in France. Wendy has spent the last 30 years studying people's habits and understanding how to change them, and her research has been featured in media publications all over the world and is the focus of her forthcoming book Good Habits, Bad Habits. In this week’s episode, we explore what the latest research is finding out about how we can create and sustain good habits to support our wellbeing. Connect with Wendy Wood:  http://goodhabitsbadhabits.org/ You’ll Learn: [02:38] - Wendy explains why creating good habits can be challenging for many of us. [04:27] - Wendy shares what her research is finding about how we can develop good habits. [06:22] - Wendy shares why her research has found that it doesn’t take 21 days to build a habit. [08:40] - Wendy explains why thinking about the context for the habits we want to create is so important and offers some tips to make it easier to activate the habits we want to build. [11:24] - Wendy explains the power of repetition when it comes to building the habits we most want. [13:09] - Wendy outlines the role rewards play in creating our habits and what kind of rewards work best. [16:13] - Wendy offers some tips for aligning our goals and our habits to make them easier to sustain. [17:28] - Wendy explains the surprising finding in her research on the impact our habits have on our levels of self-control. [19:47] - Wendy helps us understand how stacking or swapping habits can make it easier to create changes in our behavior. [22:26] - Wendy offers some cautions and caveats for building good habits in ways that are good for you and others. [24:29] - Wendy offers tips for breaking bad habits like constantly checking our mobile phones. [27:20] - Wendy shares why she believes friction is important for our habits. [28:24] - Wendy completes the Lightning Round. Your Resources: MPPW Podcast on Facebook Nudge by Richard Thaler & Cass Sunstein Atomic Habits by James Clear Thanks for listening!  Thanks so much for joining me again this week.  If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of this post. Please leave an honest review of the Making Positive Psychology Work Podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated. They do matter in the rankings of the show, and I read each and every one of them.  And don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes to get automatic updates. It’s free! You can also listen to all the episodes of Making Positive Psychology Work streamed directly to your smartphone or iPad through stitcher. No need for downloading or syncing. Until next time, take care!  Thank you Wendy!