Why Smaller Goals Can Lead to Bigger Changes with Eric Zimmer | The Happiness Lab Podcast

Key Takeaway

Pick one goal that matters most and shrink it until you can complete it with low resistance today. Instead of promising an hour at the gym, walk for 10 minutes; instead of a long meditation, sit for 3 minutes. Repeat the action consistently, acknowledge each kept promise, and increase the difficulty only after you are succeeding reliably. Small wins build motivation, self-trust, and momentum—while oversized goals often create an all-or-nothing cycle of discouragement.

Episode Overview

Eric Zimmer joins Dr. Laurie Santos to explain why lasting behavior change is usually built through small, repeatable actions rather than dramatic bursts of motivation. Drawing on his recovery from addiction and his book, Zimmer shares tools for choosing meaningful goals, tolerating resistance, designing supportive environments, and recovering from inevitable disruptions.

Full Transcript

Transcript of Why Smaller Goals Can Lead to Bigger Changes with Eric Zimmer | The Happiness Lab Podcast from The Happiness Lab. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

Pushkin Changing behavior is difficult. We talk about this a lot at the Happiness Lab, and I'm sure no one knows this fact about the mind better than today's guest. I've already been through detox. I have already undergone treatment. So there were many times when I tried to change, and none of those attempts worked. This is podcaster and author Eric Zimmer. I think for many, if not most, addicts it will be a similar story, likely lasting years before they achieve complete sobriety. There are many small attempts at change.

There are many attempts at moderation. Only on weekends, or I'll drink whiskey, but I won't do heroin, right ? And I had all of that. I also had my "Okay, that's it. I'm done. I swear I'm quitting. I'm detoxing. I go through cold turkey moments when I try this. It didn't work, and I really felt like I couldn't change. But Eric was wrong. In the end, he changed in ways his younger self never could have imagined. My life has been filled with all sorts of incredible things, hasn't it?

I wrote a book and hosted a podcast. I started a solar energy company. I've been part of a lot of software startups . But first, I had to get better . And now Eric works to help others do the same. Not just when it comes to major life changes like addiction, but also the more mundane ones that we all struggle with . Things like going to the gym more often, getting enough sleep, or spending less time on social media. Whatever behavior you're working on, chances are it's something you're already have tried to change before but haven’t gotten the results they want .

In his new book, Eric argues that the long-term changes we want may be more achievable than we think. And in this episode of our back-to-school book series, Eric shares what he’s learned about why our attempts at change often fail, and how we can dramatically improve our chances of success. So whether you’ve been struggling with the same goal for years or are hoping to start fresh this fall, stay tuned , because Eric and I have you covered. Our minds are constantly telling us what to do to be happy.

But what if our minds are wrong? What if our minds are lying to us, leading us away from what will truly make us happy? The good news is that understanding the science of the mind can get us all back on track . You’re listening to The Happiness Lab with Dr. Lori Santos. I’m chatting with Eric Zimmer about his new book, How Little becomes many: the art of small changes for a more meaningful life.” But the ideas behind Eric’s book go back decades , to his own recovery from addiction and to a famous parable that continues to inspire his award-winning podcast.

A grandparent is talking to his grandson and says, “In life, there are two wolves inside us who are always fighting. One is the good wolf, who represents kindness, courage, and love. And the other is the bad wolf, who represents greed, hatred, and fear.” And the grandson stops, thinks for a second , looks at his grandparents, and says, “Well, who wins?” And my grandparents say, "He whom you feed." I first heard this parable, I think, about 30 years ago in a church basement in Columbus, Ohio , when I was recovering from heroin addiction.

And that parable really hit me hard. I'm not even sure if I was feeding the good wolf or the bad wolf at that moment. It almost felt like it was eating me. But it was really clear that there were actions that I could take to get me to recovery, and actions that I could take to get me where I was going, which was to die or to be institutionalized. And that parable was very moving to me at that moment, and it has been for many years, mainly in the sense that it's a beautiful parable.

We hear it, we know what it means, our choices matter. But I also love it because it points to something that I think is really fundamental, which is that we all have competing desires, forces, call it what you want inside of us. We are motivationally complex beings. And I love that this parable normalizes that. So what's the main idea of ​​your new book? What's the goal? The main idea of ​​the new book is that we've been sold a pretty dramatic version of change. We've been sold the idea that there are big moments.

If you were to make a movie of my life, you'd see me walking into this detox center in Columbus, Ohio, in 1994 as a homeless heroin addict. I weighed 100 pounds. I was yellow and had hepatitis C. The prosecutor said I could go to prison for 50 years. And they ask me to get treatment, long-term treatment, and I say, " Uh, no, thank you." And I go back to my room, and I have what we describe in recovery as a moment of clarity, where I see very clearly that if I walk out of here, I I'm either going to die or I'm going to jail, and very soon .

So I come back and I say, "Okay, I'm going to get treatment." That would be that big moment, right? The director would spend a lot of time there, and then there would be , you know, inspirational music playing in the background. And that moment was big, but it only has its meaning because of the thousands of little decisions that I made after that, day after day, month after month, year after year , that made those changes possible. And so my book tries to get that idea out to people.

And it's also just a book in general about how we can make any kind of change in our lives, not big dramatic changes like I did, but the changes that we all struggle with, and what allows us to do that more effectively. I think when we have trouble with change, we often tell ourselves that there's one thing that can make us change more, and if we could just use that thing, everything would be great. And that's what you're talking about in book. What do we think we need to change, and why is that assumption wrong?

Well, we almost always assume that it's something you would call willpower, discipline, or self-control. It's usually something we think we lack. And we usually think that there's something wrong with us. And one of my main messages in the book and in all of my work is that I truly believe that change is a skill. It's something we can learn. I finally sobered up because I figured out what it took for me to make that change. And so most of us take it as if there's something wrong with us , right?

If I gave you a trombone right now , you're not a trombonist, are you? No, I'm not a trombonist. If I gave you a trombone and you picked it up and started playing, it would sound terrible. We wouldn't conclude that you're a bad player. person. We would just conclude that you can't play the trombone. But when it comes to our own behavior and our emotions, we take it very personally and think that it tells a story about us. And I think it's incredibly important that we turn that story around and say, " Okay, we can learn to change." And some of those are skills and things that we do before we even get to the point of change.

And we can also learn how in the moment when we make decisions that we don't want to make, when we find ourselves making choices that we don't want to make, we can learn to develop more self-control, discipline, willpower , whatever you want to call it at that point . And so the key to success is to realize that we can all do this if we have the right resources, the right training, and the right attitude. And one of the things that we need to learn is how change works and what things tend to inhibit change.

And you argued that we need to learn how our biology and nervous system sometimes affect our ability to change. What is the problem with our nervous system's response that we need to understand better? Well, I'm oversimplifying here a complex process called homeostasis, which is that things mostly stay the way they are. Our bodies are always trying to balance things out . If I get too hot, my body tries to cool me down. If I haven't eaten enough, my body tries to make me eat. There's a constant balance to balance things out.

And I think something similar happens within us when it comes to change. Because change really makes us uncomfortable. When we start doing something unusual, it often comes with discomfort. There can also be a lot of good with it, and we can learn to tune in to the good and less to the bad, but that discomfort makes us want to go back to what we know. And so I think we fight that. And I think there's a certain resistance that's built into doing some of the things that we want to do to improve our life.

Yes, we think about putting down our phones, or exercising, or eating better. There's a reason why it's hard for everyone. And part of it is just the resistance to doing something that we all face. Tell me about what this idea of ​​resistance looks like in practice. I think resistance is something that we all feel when it's time to do something that we do n't want to do. Every time I've done exercise in my life, and I'm not a young person anymore, so we talk about it thousands and thousands of times.

Every time I finish, I say, "I'm glad I did that." You would think , based on basic reward learning, that I would go for a run every morning, but I don't. I still face resistance a lot. There's a book called "The War of Art" by Steven Pressfield, and he also talks about this same idea that creative people face . There's a resistance to doing these things that really matter to us. So I think the first thing is to realize that resistance is just there, and I do n't think it's going to go away.

I think that's part of the reason we've become obsessed with the habit literature is because we just want it to be easy. We want it to be automatic. We don't want it to be hard to practice. We don't want it to be hard to sit down and work on that novel that we're trying to write . We want it to be easy, and it gets easier. But I've found that resistance is still part of the game. And that's okay, because we can learn to overcome resistance.

And we can build momentum that makes it easier. How do we make overcoming that resistance easier? Because I know I'm great at setting ambitious goals, but I'm also great at sitting on the couch when it comes time to do them. When we get back from our break, Eric will outline an approach from his book that can help us all get off that metaphorical couch and start achieving. progress toward what we want to achieve. We’ll go into all of this in more detail when The Happiness Lab returns in a moment.

Podcaster Eric Zimmer’s new book is called How Little Becomes Much: The Art of Small Changes for a More Meaningful Life. And that title is also the main idea behind his approach to behavior change. Instead of focusing on one big transformation, Eric says we should focus on small actions that can accumulate over time. He calls it the “ little by little” approach. When I say “little by little ,” I mean something pretty specific. I mean low-resistance actions that are done consistently over a period of time in the same direction.

So part of the “sneaking in to change” of these low-resistance actions is that when we do what we promise ourselves, when we make and keep promises, even if they’re really small, there ’s a subtle feeling inside that feels good when we do them. And we know that motivation tends to increase when we do them well. feel about ourselves and our chances of success. So by doing a little bit of what we can force ourselves to do, we also become more motivated. So, for example, imagine you're trying to become a runner.

At first, if you walk a half mile, that might be relatively easy for you. Well, after a couple of weeks, you might be able to run a half mile, and the level of difficulty will stay the same because you're getting better. You're getting stronger. And that's what incremental growth does. It allows us to increase our motivation and keep the tasks at a level of difficulty that we're doing them. And then success breeds success. I know when I think about making changes in my life, it's so tempting to start big, is n't it?

It's so tempting to start with, like, I want to go to the gym 5 days a week, or I'm going to write a whole novel. Explain to me why that's so bad. It seems like this temptation to go at a fast pace is always going to backfire on us. It's important that we get back to defining "little by little" because "little by little" doesn't necessarily mean " tiny." It means low-resistance actions, things that you can force yourself to do. So if you can force yourself to do something important and keep doing it, then go for it, right?

This is for people who keep trying hard, but it's not working. The harder something is to do, the more motivated you are to do it. So if you're going to go to the gym 5 days a week for an hour and you've never worked out at all, it can be really hard. And when I say hard, I mean a lot of different things. I don't just mean the effort in the gym. I mean, how much time do you have in your schedule? That matters, right? If you don't have a lot of time in your schedule and you're trying to add five new hours, it's going to be hard.

So the difficulty can vary a lot. But when we try to do something difficult, the only way to do it is to be super- super motivated. And we usually don't stay that way. It comes and goes. And so inevitably we start not doing the things that we would have focused on. So if I think, "Well, I'm going to train five days this week, and we're doing it two days," we focus on the two days that we didn't. We completely beat ourselves up and say, "Oh my God, I failed." I could never do that," etc.

That's exactly what reinforces it: "Well, I'm just one of those people who can't do that." I have no willpower. I have no discipline. And then our motivation drops." So I always work with people and say, "Let's start small if we can, and then we'll build up." My story on that is meditation. I've been trying to become a regular meditator since I was 18. And when I wanted to start meditating, the options were: there were books to read, and there was this weird guy in Columbus who taught Transcendental Meditation, right?

It was a long time ago. So I read books, and they said, "Do this for 30 minutes to an hour a day." And even the people who did Transcendental Meditation did it for about 20 minutes twice a day. Well, for me, it was really hard. When I sat down, my brain was in chaos. It was like a dark circus had come to town . So I could do it when I was really motivated, for a day, a week, maybe a month, but inevitably I wouldn't continue.

Then I would start thinking, "See, you're back again. "You're going to quit ." And I quit. And then, a few months later, I thought, " I really need to learn how to meditate." And even though I did it over and over again for decades, how awkward, until I finally said, " Okay, you know what? I'm just going to do this for 3 minutes a day ." And I did it. And I tried to do my best after I did it, " Well done. You did what you promised." That led to 5 minutes, then 10 minutes, then a few 7- day, 10-day retreats.

That led to deep study with a Zen master, reading 100 koans, all of this really deep study. But it came from my willingness to start at what seemed like an almost embarrassingly basic level. You had this Roman saying that you shared in your book that I love, and it really captured this idea. What is it? Justina Lent says: hurry up slowly. And that means we can often move faster if we actually slow down in the moments that we're in . Right? I tried for two decades to become a person who could meditate every day and go on meditation retreats.

And I tried to do it quickly, right? Every time I picked up a book, I had about 30 minutes or an hour. That did n't work. When I moved slowly, 3... minutes a day, I got to my goal much faster. I got there in a couple of years, even though I'd been trying the opposite for decades. So it's the rush that pays off slowly in situations like that. So do you have any ideas on how to know if a goal is too small to miss? Like, how do we know when we're really in that small range that you're talking about?

It's a process of trial and error calibration. I usually say that if you're consistently successful, I don't mean perfectly, but consistently, then you're probably doing well. But if not, if your goal is to work out 5 days a week and you're working out 2 days a week, we probably need to change our goal. And I think it's always better to start a little bit smaller than we think we are because it's easy to add. Okay , great. It's been 2 weeks and I've been going to the gym 3 days a week.

Let's add another day. Let's see what happens. But the downside of increasing too much...is that we reinforce our belief that there's something wrong with us when we fail. We reinforce our belief that we can't change. We don't have the discipline. We do n't have it. Whatever it is, we don't have it . And those are really high stakes, right? I talk about the rates of change in my book. And one of the rates of change is that you're just not getting the benefit of what you're trying to change.

So if you're trying to develop an exercise habit that's consistently not works, you don't get the benefits that exercise will bring you . Okay , that's important. But I think more importantly, we're destroying our self-confidence, and we're destroying our belief that we have the power to control our own lives. And that's a very high price to pay. I was a behavior coach for years. That's part of what I do. And the only reason someone hires a behavior coach is because they've tried a lot to change something and it hasn't worked.

So, the same thing is happening here. We had to try to disprove the story that they've now bought into. They knew for themselves that there was something wrong with them. We had to succeed, and we had to get them to realize that success and get back to believing that they are a person who can change, who is the author of their own life. So one way to succeed is to choose a goal that's small enough that we can't screw it up. Another thing we get wrong is that we We're choosing too many goals at once.

You were talking about how we go into these self-improvement binges. What do you mean? Yeah, well, going back to the definition of " little by little," I said low- resistance actions that are done consistently over a period of time in one direction. And part of what I mean is that yes, we have access to a lot of ways to change our lives. If you go on Instagram and you're connected to all the self-help-type accounts, you could have 30 ideas for things you need to do to improve your life in the first hour.

So what do we do with that? And there's a temptation to try to do everything that doesn't work because we're trying to do too much. We also try something, do it for a few days, and expect to see a change. We think to ourselves, "Okay , I started meditating, and I've been doing it for 4 days now, and I'm not a different person." Right? Then we give up and try something else. And that distraction doesn't help. For me, it was It's much better to narrow it down to, " Okay, what's the next most important thing I want to change in my life?" And let me really focus on that and give it time to work.

In your book, you talked about a time when you screwed up your first few attempts at getting treatment, when you thought, "I'm going to get sober, but I'm also going to do a lot of things at once." So , so tell me what you learned from that. The first time I went to treatment, a long-term treatment, and I got out, and I thought, "Okay, I've been sober for 30 days , I need to stay sober, but my life is falling behind. Okay. I'm 23 years old, and I've never been to college.

I don't have a job, I don't make money, I do n't have a car. I need to get sober, but I also need to get in shape, because I was in bad shape, and I better start eating right, and I need to join a local college because I have to get my education right. And what ended up happening to me is that in doing all these different things, I missed the thing that made all of them possible ..." which was my recovery. My recovery needed more care and attention for a little longer before I was ready to diversify.

It was the driving force behind everything else. And that's what I did differently this time. I made it a priority. I gave it the attention it needed for the time it needed to be strong. And then I was able to start building on that foundation. And this idea of making sure that you give your goal the time it needs to be strong goes into another part of your incremental strategy , which is that instead of trying to develop any particular habit, we should think about developing momentum.

Why is momentum so important, but so underrated? Well, let's go back to what I said earlier about habits. We want habits because we want these things to be easier. And most the larger patterns of behavior that we do in life will not fall into the category of what researchers call a habit, which happens automatically. And it usually happens the same way, at about the same time. And one of the big problems is that most of us have lives that are constantly changing in context. So I can say that I'm going to work on my novel right after that.

The kids ride the school bus every day, but there are a lot of days when the kids don't get on the bus, or the dog gets sick, or something happens, and that means it doesn't become automatic. But we can have momentum, which makes it a lot easier, and we can work on maintaining momentum even when we can't do something perfectly. Well, an example that I often use is my goal to move my body every morning, and usually in some kind of energetic way. There was a period when my mom was constantly going to the hospital.

And when my mom was in the hospital, it was like it took over everything. And I had to get up at the crack of dawn and go to the hospital because I never You don't know when the doctors are going to come. They don't say, "We'll check on your mom at 8:30." "You just have to be there if you want to talk to the doctor. So I couldn't exercise. But what I could do is walk the halls for 20 minutes. There are ways to do a smaller version.

I often say that a little bit of something is better than a lot of nothing. So we can do a smaller version of whatever we do. It helps us keep our momentum going. And we all know what momentum is. Imagine it on a bike. The first few pedal strokes are a little hard. You're a little wobbly. You have to put in extra effort. Once you get going, it's easier. It's not that you don't have to pedal or steer. You do. But it's easier. And that's what we strive for.

Another thing we can do to keep our momentum going is celebrate the little accomplishments along the way. And that's something I struggle with, especially when I use your approach. "a little bit." If I go to the gym every day for a month, I can give myself a perfect gold star. I'm..." like, you know, patting myself on the back. But when I just look at the momentum, I'm like, well, I'm training a little bit harder than I did last month, it's so hard to see that as a win.

So, any tips on how to celebrate even when we're not perfect? ​​There are two parts to this question that I want to address. The first is about the celebration aspect. And I think that's important, and I think the word " celebrate" can overstate what we're actually doing. But I try to have a moment every time I do something that I promise to do, big or small, where I give myself a little bit of a good job, a good job. And I try to notice that feeling.

It's subtle, but it's always there in my experience of doing what I promised to do. There's an internal consistency that feels good. And I I try to notice it. And we can compare that to when we do n't do what we promise to do. And we all know the mental anguish that comes with that. So part of it is realizing that ... Oh, it's a nice feeling, it's just a little bit , but compared to that other thing , boy, it's so much better. "I think perfection is a whole different thing, because in my experience, that's the real problem with people trying to change.

We expect to do it perfectly. And for the vast, vast, vast majority of people, that just doesn't exist. I often talk about the 80% rule. What it means is that if I try to do something every day, and those two things for me are moving my body for 30 minutes and meditating . If I do it about 80% of the time, I consider myself successful. I try to give myself a gold star for that. Because if I can do it week after week, month after month , year after year, I get all the possible benefits.

The 20% that I missed simply doesn't matter. But if I focus on the 20% that I'm not doing , I risk derailing the entire project. So abandoning the all-or-nothing mindset is critical when it comes to achieving lasting change. And another thing we need to get right in terms of our thinking is that we need to understand what goals we actually want to achieve in the beginning." place. You argue that one of the reasons why behavior change is difficult is that we often want more than one thing at a time.

Give me some examples of that and explain why that can be such a huge problem for behavior change. Well, I think if any of us pay attention to what's coming up in our daily lives, we realize that we want a lot of things. I was in New York recently, and I wanted to enjoy New York. I also wanted to continue promoting the book that came out. I also wanted take a nap because I'm tired. Right? I mean, I have all these things that just pop up moment by moment.

And there's a chapter in the book called "what's worth wanting," and there's a little bit of a song, one of my favorite songs by Jimmy Dale Gilmore, that says, "My mind's got a mind of its own." "And I think we can all relate to that. When we start to get into all these conflicting things inside of us, there's a lot of theories about it . And I ended up really simplifying. I hope I'm not oversimplifying, but I've simplified it down to two things: values and desires.

Values are what the best, wisest part of us has decided to want. And desires are just things that pop up. You just want them because you want them. So the first type of conflict that we find ourselves in is the conflict of values ​​and desires, or what I like to call it, what I want. most, versus what I want right now. And we're all familiar with this. Most of all, I want to be in shape. Right now, I want to keep sitting on the couch and reading Substack, because, oh my God, there are so many great writers.

That's what I want most , versus what I want right now. But the phrasing of this question is really valuable, because it makes me realize that I want something that I do n't feel like doing right now. And I think that's critical. Well, there's a lot more to this question, but even the phrasing of this question allows us to make better choices. Then there 's the second type of conflict, which is in some ways even more complicated, and that's value conflicts. Give me some examples of these more complicated ones.

Well, I did some exercises on my values, and I have two values ​​on my list . One of them is adventure. I realized that I'm happiest, most fulfilled, most alive when I 'm on an adventure. I don't mean that I need to summon Everest, but I doing something that I haven't done before or don't know how to do. So that's one value. Another value that's really important to me is being able to be content with where I am, with my life as it is. Well, there 's almost a constant tension between those two values.

And I don't know how to resolve it. I actually got to the point where I finally realized that it's not solvable. It's a constant negotiation or dance between the two. And for me, it helps me relax. I kept asking myself some version of that question on the podcast. Like, how ambitious should I be, and how content should I be? It's like someone would give me a formula and that tension would go away. And in my experience, it hasn't worked. But knowing that it is there allows me to think and say, " Oh, okay.

Yeah, I feel the call to adventure again." "Well, you've been on the road for the last 4 weeks. Maybe it's time to dedicate a little more time to contentment. I I'm facing this with the book launch, right? The book launch takes you into a future mindset, like all this energy that's going into this day. And I found that it's harder for me to be happy with the moment that I'm in. So I had to try to emphasize that a little bit more , because the rest just happens.

Another issue that almost everyone recognizes is the tension between family and career. That's why we talk so much about work- life balance, because it's hard, because it's a tension that doesn't go away. It's time for another break, but when we come back, Eric will tell us how he figured out what his true values ​​are. He will also share his thoughts on how we can all spend more time on what's important and less time frantically checking and adding things to our to-do lists. The Happiness Lab will be back in a moment.

Before the break, Eric and I talked about the importance of figuring out what we ...' really appreciate that we can choose goals that matter. But it can be harder than it seems, because sometimes what we think we value is not really our own values ​​at all. Eric realized this a few years ago while driving through an affluent area of Atlanta. My partner's mother had Alzheimer's, and she lived there. So for 6 years we would commute back and forth between Columbus and Atlanta. And her mother lived on the north side of Atlanta, and I would commute to the library for work, and I would drive through Buckhead, Atlanta.

And if you've been to Buckhead, Atlanta, you'll probably notice one thing that I've definitely noticed is that street after street is being built up with huge houses with giant yards , like jaw-dropping wealth. And one day I was driving down those roads, and what happened was something that sometimes happens when I drive down those roads by the way, that's what I start to think: I want this. You know what's wrong with me, that I don't have this? So I notice this, and at that very moment I pay attention to what's playing on my car stereo.

And it's a band that I love called The Gaslight Anthem , who are kind of a punk band. They play punk/rock. And that made me think for a second, because I thought, "Well, what's so important?" And I realized, "Oh, there 's an authenticity to punk music . There's a spirit of doing what's really important to you. There's a spirit of contributing." And I was able to just see in that second, like, "Here's one value that I've been presented with, and that I'm striving for, and here's another one." "And what I was able to do in that moment is see that one of those values ​​is one that I've wanted to have for a very, very long time.

It's deeply ingrained in me. It's the value of being authentic, doing what I want to do, doing what matters. This other one, this value of wealth, seems to only come out when I'm exposed to it. And it's a way of saying that there are things for me that I keep coming back to, that remain the same as I remain. And that come out when I'm exposed to them or when I'm around them. I was in L.A. recently , and one night I was at a party in the Hollywood Hills, and there's a lot of money, a great house, a lot people, lots of money.

And I find myself thinking, oh yeah, okay, maybe I want to be here. And the next night I was hanging out with a bunch of, you know, quote, starving artists. And I found myself wanting to be like, oh, I really want to fit in there. And I just noticed that I'm influenced by what I'm around. So it's really important to be clear about who I am as I move through these different places in the world. Another dichotomy between our goals that we need to pay attention to is how they appear to us.

You talked about this difference between " want to" goals and "should" goals and how they interact differently with this idea of ​​resistance. Explain the difference between those goals and what they might look like. Well, if we think about saying to ourselves, "I have to do X, Y, or Z." And I'm not against the word " should." I think that sometimes good summary. But what do I tell myself I should do? And is this what I should do or what I want to do? And when we're constantly immersed in " should" goals, we lose motivation, we get frustrated, we feel trapped.

And so the example of this for me that I'm talking about is when the kids were younger: I took one to soccer practice here, and I had to take the other one across town for that, and then I had to take another one. My "brain works," it's funny. "I have to take these kids everywhere. I have to do this, and I have to do that. And I just had a thought, and I thought, no, I don't have to. There's no law that says I can't take these kids to these away soccer leagues and all these different events.

So I paused and thought, "Well, why am I doing this then ?" "And that allowed me to go." Oh, I do it because I think it's good for them for a reason. I do it because I really value my son's development. I do the same thing now, but I do it in a slightly different spirit. And I think a lot of us get into that. We actually do a lot of things that are important to us, but we allow ourselves to get into a "I have to do this" situation, which becomes problematic because then we feel trapped.

So the first step for me is often just reconnecting. Why am I doing what I'm doing? Now, if you look at your list and you find that there are things that you do that don't really matter to you, that you feel like you have to do but don't matter, then that's what we want to work on to change. I don't want to keep doing what I think I have to do if it doesn't align with what's really important to me . These are very difficult things.

I had to spend a lot of time reexamining my relationship with my parents. You know, how much does this align with my values ​​about what I want to do, so that to care for them, and how much of that is in line with some inherited sense of duty. It's often hard to tell. It takes some time to think about these things. But I think the more time we spend thinking about why am I doing what I'm doing? The more likely we are to lead meaningful and purposeful lives .

So it's about thinking about all of our values ​​and goals so that we can create the right lasting change. But once we choose our goals, we need to not just set our internal compass, we need to make sure that the world doesn't mess with us. We don't want the world around us to sabotage us. And in the last part of our conversation, I'd like to talk about what you've learned about behavior change in terms of tuning our external environment, right? I know in your book you talked about different structural ways that we can bring our goals to life, and you have this handy acronym that you use for that.

What is it? So we need to get the right structure how we set ourselves up for success. So I lay out a process in the book that I call SPAR, which is a way to go through all of these things. S stands for Specificity. Because so much of what we think of as a failure of willpower is often a failure of clarity. We're not specific enough about what we need to do. So we might have a goal, but are we really specific? If I have to decide what to do and do it at the same time, I'm at risk of failure, right?

I know that very well. I wake up, it's the weekend, and I know I'm going to work out, and I think, " Okay, what do I do?" Today is a good day. Maybe I should go for a bike ride." Yeah, but if I go for a bike ride, I'll have to bring my lunch. You know what? I'll go to yoga instead. Well, what time is this class? Yeah, I'll be completely lost trying to decide what to do soon. So that ambiguity is the real problem .

The next part is the prompts. How do I remind myself to do what I'm doing ? It sounds simple, but it's often not. Yeah, the mornings when I'm doing my Substack exercise challenge are the mornings when the alarm goes off and says, "It's time." The alignment is actually what you just mentioned, our environment. Right, and our environment is made up of whether we've made it easy? The classic version that people always use is, "Do I need to lay out my gym clothes the night before? " My version of this, which shows me how important the environment is, and every time, I feel like an imperfect being when I talk about it, is that I play my guitar much more when it's on a stand than when it's in a case next to me.

I timed it at about 30 seconds. It takes about 30 seconds to open a guitar case and take out the guitar. The fact that I end up playing more because of some 30-second friction, again, makes me wonder what kind of weird animal I am? And yet it's definitely true. So the better we set up our environment, the better our chances are. We kept saying in recovery that if you hang around the barbershop long enough, you'll get a haircut, right? That suggests that if I'm around people who use, then eventually I'll start using.

So who supports us and the environment we're in are all very important. And the last part is the R, which is for resilience, which is planning to what will I do if my plan doesn't work out ? So when I coach someone, we come up with a great plan, and then I say, " Okay, how could this fail?" Going back to the example I gave earlier, work on your novel right after the kids get on the school bus every day. What are we going to do on the days when the kids don't get on the school bus?

The answer might be, I say, "This day just fell through." And that's okay. That's better than feeling bad that we didn't do it that day. It's much better to say, "Well, on the days when the kids don't get on the school bus, I just don't do it ." But we can come up with an alternative plan. So these are the structural elements and the environmental alignment that are so critical . All of these things are really important to our chances of success. The last aspect of resilience that you talk about a lot in the book is the importance of other people and social support.

Tell me about the power of social support . The more people who support you and are on your side, the more your chances of making a change increase many times over. So it could be as simple as asking a friend, "Hey , you know how "Did you manage that today?" It could be spreading the word on social media that I'm going to try to make these changes. It could be asking your partner. I did this this morning. Last week was n't a great week for me in terms of exercise, was it?

It was the week of the book launch. So I said to my partner last night, "I really need to get back to my morning exercise this week. You know, could you give me a pep talk? " She helped cheer me on, right? I got back to it. And those are the things that make a big difference. And my experience of the changes in my life, you know, some of the biggest changes, and obviously the biggest one was my sobriety, came from the support of a lot of other people.

You know, that came from 12- step support. But we don't all need a support group to get support from the people around us . And it's important to just ask, because we're much more likely to achieve our goals. I've had friends who were heroin addicts and cigarette smokers who told me that It was harder to quit. I think there are a few different reasons for that, so I don't want to oversimplify. But I think one of the factors is that when they were trying to get off heroin , they had people around them who were helping them and supporting them.

And when they were trying to quit, it was just them. They just said, " Today is the day. I'm not going to smoke. I'm not going to smoke." They weren't getting any help. That makes a big difference. So, what are some strategies for asking for that kind of help, like you did with your wife? Because I think it can be hard to admit to other people that we want to change and that we need help. So having the humility to be able to do that is hard.

I understand. And that makes a big difference. One way to do that is to just encourage other people to do it with you. A few years ago, when I was in the software business, I was working in an office. People would always come up to me and say, " Hey, I'm not going to eat this today. I'm on a diet this week." And this person tried, and that person tried. None of them really seemed to change much. And then finally, at some point, I said, " You know what?

Let's try something. Let's do a body fat challenge where we just take our body fat at the beginning and at the end, and whoever has the most body fat change over that period gets a prize ." Well, it was remarkable that almost all seven of us made significant changes in those three months. Sometimes our support wasn't support in the sense that you would think of it. Sometimes we tease each other. We play games, but we still do it together. It's not just me who's involved in this.

And so I think there are a lot of ways to set that up. There are people in your life who might be hesitant to ask, and you don't want to ask, don't ask them. Your partner might not be the right person. It could be random people on Facebook when you you join a group where they're all trying to do it. So there are many ways to find it, and I think it's just a matter of finding the one that works best for you. And so we've talked about so many different ways that we can develop our skills to change better.

How has this step-by-step approach affected how you achieve your own behavior change? That's basically how I wrote the entire book. I've had the privilege of reading great authors for my podcast for 12 years. I've read probably five or 600 books in this field. So I know what a really good book in this field looks like. And so, I got a book deal and I started writing, and I can assure you that at first my writing didn't look like that at all . I had this self-doubt that I hadn't faced in ages.

So when I sat down and thought about writing for a long time, I just didn't want to do it. It brought up such feelings of doubt and discomfort that I tried to just to turn away. So I wrote the book in 30- minute increments. Now I could say, "Oh, okay, it's Monday afternoon, and I have 4 hours to write." But I would sit down every time, and I would set my 30- minute timer, and I would turn on my playlist, and I would set up all my distraction blockers, and my goal was to not get discouraged in those 30 minutes.

And if I got to the end of those 30 minutes and I was working, I would still reset the timer and write for 30 minutes. But if I got to the end of those 30 minutes and I was really struggling and I was feeling really miserable, I could stop and walk away. And I would be like, "Well done, you did it . You did it. You lasted 30 minutes." At first, I just thought, "If I put in the time, I 'll get a gold star A+." Now, over time, you start to see results, and the process gets a little easier.

It never gets easy, but it does easier. But that's how I wrote the book. So I follow that advice. And then, another piece of advice: I use this phrase: "A little bit of something is better than a lot of nothing." "I used that this morning. I was going to work out this morning. I didn't make the best choice in the world at the beginning. You know, I still check, like, "What are the reviews on Amazon? And did so-and-so share this ?" And then I realized, “Okay, well, I don’t have time to do what I had planned.” “Then I jumped on the exercise bike for 15 minutes.

I was still thinking, ‘A little bit of something is better than a lot of nothing.’” And that’s valuable. So if there’s a small change you’re trying to make, why not take Eric’s advice and start small. Choose actions that feel manageable to you. Focus on consistency, not perfection, and make sure the goal you’re working towards is something you truly value, because those little bits of progress, repeated over time, can ultimately change your life. If you want to learn more about Eric’s advice on how to make lasting changes, check out his book, How to Make a Little More, which is out now.

Next week, we’ll continue our back-to-school book series with comedian Chris Duffy. I’ll ask him about some of my favorite takeaways from his new book. "Smile at me," and we'll learn that your inner goof can help you become a better version of yourself. The humor I want to celebrate is when you're just laughing so hard that you're holding your sides and tears are streaming down your face, and then it's really hard to even explain what was funny about it. But in that moment, you're so locked in, 100% present, and it's so rare these days to be 100% present with another person, when they're not half on their phone and half thinking about something else.

That's what I'll be talking about next week on The Happiness Lab with me, Dr. Lori Santos.

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