Real Health Podcast: From the vault – James Clear on creating habits

This is a bonus episode from the vault which looks at segments from our older episodes.

On this episode of the Real Health podcast, I spoke with best-selling author of Atomic Habits, James Clear.

James started by explaining why bad habits are so easy to start and good ones are so difficult to stick to:

“For our bad habits the immediate outcome is often pretty favorable. Like the immediate outcome of eating a donut is great. It's sweet. It's sugary. With good habits though, It's often the reverse, like what is the immediate outcome of going to the gym for three weeks? Not a whole lot, your body is sore and it still kind of looks the same.”

The author then spoke about the importance of making bad habits less visible:

“For many of our bad habits, just making them less visible will be enough to curtail them. Like beer is another example. If I get a six pack of beer and I put it in the fridge, If it's right there in the front of the fridge where I can see it as soon as I open up the door, I'll grab one every night and have it at dinner just because it's there. But if I tuck it back on the lowest shelf all the way in the back where I can't really see it, and I have to bend down to spot it. Sometimes I'll forget that it's there for weeks before I pick it up and drink one again. And I'm like, well, did I want beer or not? Same sort of thing.”

You can listen to the full episode here or wherever you get your podcasts.