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Pre-reed week 1

Pre-read before session:

What is this week’s tool?

Let’s begin by learning a few basic behavior change tools. We’ll use them to take better care of ourselves by making evidence-based lifestyle changes that meet our basic needs and can improve our baseline mental wellbeing.

This chapter's goal is to empower you to use the tips and hacks about behavior change to design, test and fit new healthy habits into your life. This initial overview will also include many of the new tools you will focus on for practice during weeks 3 to 8

Why use these tools? Why lifestyle changes?

You may be wondering why we are starting a CBT program with self-care related lifestyle changes. We are specifically focusing on changes that will help meet our brain’s and body’s basic needs, which will help us with just about anything we want to do, including fulfilling our goals for this program.

Basic needs include things like nutrients, water, sleep, sunlight, physical activity, social and physical safety, and

social connection. If you look at the science, having good sleep, regular exercise, and good nutrition are often

the most influential factors in strengthening mental wellbeing, with sleep being the most important predictor for

mental wellbeing, followed by exercise and nutrition.

Therefore, throughout this program, it should be an ongoing mission for you to improve your habits to support those three main pillars of wellbeing.

When our basic needs are not met, it affects our mental wellbeing for the worse. Our emotions become more negative, since emotions are driven partly by the brain’s interpretation of the

body’s physiological state. Our thoughts become biased to see the world as more threatening, less rewarding. Our attention is strained, as our brains distract us with attempts to get us to meet those basic needs before anything else. Our brains perform worse due to stress and/or lack of physical resources, causing problems like lower motivation, worse concentration, mood swings, and so on.

As much as we’d like to, we can’t think our way out of the need for sleep, nutritious food, movement, social connection, and so on. It’s much easier—and better for us in the long run—to try to meet as many of our needs as we can, rather than trying to trick our brain into believing that they’re met!

1.What are some of your basic needs that might not be getting sufficiently met? Consider your modifiable sources of stress or physical ill-being—that is, ones that you might be able to change.

2. How might those insufficiently-met needs be affecting your everyday mental wellbeing?

1 Wickham, S-R, et al (2020). The Big Three Health Behaviors and Mental Health and Well-Being Among Young Adults: A Cross-Sectional Investigation of Sleep, Exercise, and Diet. Frontiers in Psychology, 11.

2Seth, A. K. (2013). Interoceptive inference, emotion, and the embodied self. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 17(11), 565-573.

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Overview Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4 Week 5 Week 6 Week 7 Week 8 Week 12 Notes

Week 02: Habits – Raising Baseline Wellbeing Pre-read Home Practice Let’s begin this program by trying to give our brain more signs of abundance and safety, and fewer

signs of scarcity and threat. This will have several benefits:

Our brains and bodies will function better overall. We will be less prone to negative biases in our emotions, thinking, and attention. We will be less vulnerable to stressors. It will be easier to tell the difference between unhelpful thoughts, emotions, behaviors and the brain’s healthy attempts to get us to take care of ourselves. It will be easier to learn and implement CBT tools.

The effects of lifestyle changes on our mental wellbeing may be subtle, but they can have a huge cumulative effect. It’s important to keep this in mind so that we don’t give up if we feel like our lifestyle changes are not working at first.

For example, improving sleep, and thereby increasing motivation and executive functioning, might initially lower the chance of procrastination by 10%. That might not sound like a lot, but it certainly adds up over time, and it can make it easier to use other tools to negate the remaining 90% chance of procrastination.

Why behavior change tools?

Applying behavior change tools will make it easier to turn our lifestyle changes into habits. Additionally, it’s useful to start the program by reviewing and practicing behavior change tools because they can help us consistently practice core techniques inherent to the CBT skills we’ll be learning throughout the rest of the program.

Some of the tools may already be familiar, but if you’re anything like us, you might not always act on that knowledge! This week will give us an opportunity to experiment with these tools and figure out which ones work best for us.

How do I use these tools? Choosing lifestyle change(s)

Pick 1-2 lifestyle changes that you want to focus on during this program. See the menu of lifestyle changes for some self-care practices that can raise your baseline mental wellbeing.

Our first goal is to make our brains and bodies feel less stressed, less threatened, and better cared for. So, now is not the time to focus on “productivity habits” or doing more! Additionally, we are trying to give a quick-and-easy boost to our baseline wellbeing, not solve our own complicated problems or habits such as clinical insomnia or addiction. Let’s choose “quick wins” or “low hanging fruit –: changes that could have a positive impact on us and that will be fairly easy to implement.

After reviewing the lifestyle changes menu: What lifestyle changes could make your brain and body feel safer and more cared for? Pick 1-2 changes to start during this program. You may want to choose the ones that will be most impactful for you, either because they are a neglected area or because you will find it easy to improve that area.

3 Again, we’re not trying to “trick” our brains. We aim to create real signs of abundance and safety, e.g., that we’re properly hydrated.

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Overview Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4 Week 5 Week 6 Week 7 Week 8 Week 12 Notes

Week 02: Habits – Raising Baseline Wellbeing Pre-read Home Practice Behavior change tools

There are many behavior change tools that you could use to turn your lifestyle changes into habits. To maximize your chances of success, we suggest that you take these steps:

1.Set a SMART goal that includes both “process” and “outcome” components. 2.Keep track of your progress on a daily basis 3.Review the list of additional tools below for inspiration on tactics you might want to use. 4.Use mental contrasting with implementation intentions (MCII) to cement your plan.

We hope that you keep coming back to this section of the playbook. You can use these tools to turn the other skills you’ll learn in this program into habits and to overcome roadblocks in doing your home practice. You can also refer back to this list after a week or two of trying your new lifestyle change to get ideas for making it even easier to practice and to address any problems that may arise.

SMART goals

Before we talk about SMART goals, it’s important to distinguish between outcome goals and process goals. Outcome goals are focused on the outcome alone, without specifying what actions you need to take to achieve that outcome, like “start a romantic relationship” or “win a 5 kilometer race.” Process goals are goals about your own actions, like “attend two new weekly social activities and introduce myself to people” or “run 3 times per week.”

Evidence suggests it’s best to combine process and outcome goals. In other words, consider what actions you want to do (process), without losing sight of what you want to happen as a result of your actions (outcome). That way, if your planned actions don’t lead to the desired outcome, you can modify your process goal to better align with your outcome goal, or shift your outcome goal to reflect the consequences of your process goal. In one study, people who set a combined process and outcome goal improved their performance by >50%, more than those who set only an outcome goal (17%) or only a process goal (30%).4

Once you have set a combined process and outcome goal, make sure that it’s SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.

Specific: The clearer, the better. “Cut down on sugary beverages” is better than “eat healthier,” and “walk for 20 minutes every day” is better than “be more active.”

Measurable: This doesn’t mean that your goal needs to include a number metric, although it can; it just means that it should be easy to determine if you have met the goal or not. For instance, you might set a goal to “spend only half an hour on social media per day,” which can be tracked as time, or “ask my spouse how she’s feeling every day,” which can be tracked as a daily event. These goals are more measurable than “cut down on social media” or “be more caring.”

Achievable: Given what you know about yourself and your situation, try to set goals that are challenging but still realistic. In other words, try to push yourself a little without being too hard on yourself. If you've unsuccessfully tried to quit smoking four times before, going cold turkey tomorrow might not be realistic, but it might instead be achievable to cut down your intake on a gradual but strict schedule.

Relevant: Is the goal relevant to your values? Try to set goals anchored in your values so that you can remind yourself why the goal is important and maintain your motivation when encountering challenges or inconveniences.

Time-bound: Include a deadline—keeping in mind the ‘A’ for Achievable, of course. If your goal is a one- time action, just simply specify when that action needs to be completed by. If you want to develop a new habit, like getting more physical activity or spending less time on social media, then it is best to set yourself a start date and create several benchmarks for smaller goals along the way. For instance, if you begin a new habit at the beginning of the month, you might check in with yourself in the middle and end of that month to assess your progress.

4 Filby, W. C., Maynard, I. W., & Graydon, J. K. (1999). The effect of multiple-goal strategies on performance outcomes in training and competition. Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 11(2), 230-246.

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Overview Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4 Week 5 Week 6 Week 7 Week 8 Week 12 Notes

Week 02: Habits – Raising Baseline Wellbeing Pre-read Home Practice Progress Tracking: Why is it important and how to do it?

As we mentioned before, tracking our progress allows us to see how far we have come and can also help us stay on track to close the gap between our present reality and our end goals. Progress trapping is akin to creating a roadmap to complete our goals.

Some simple forms of progress tracking include: Journaling (digital or on paper) – this is a useful way to record notes and next steps. Spreadsheets – there are many freely available online templates for goal tracking. Free mood or habit tracking apps – i.e. Strides, Habitica, Way of Life, Goalify, etc.

We highly recommend that you choose a progress tracking tool/approach that suits you the best and stick to it throughout the program. If you find this decision challenging, your group, your buddy or the group facilitator may be able to assist you.

Additional Tools

Such a large number of behavior change tools have been developed that we can’t possibly list all of them here. In brief, here are a few favorites to consider:

Intentional imperfection

Definition: Set a goal of doing your behavior inconsistently or imperfectly to allow flexibility and maximize your chance of overall success. Example: Plan to do your behavior 5 out of every 7 days, or once every 2 days, as opposed to planning to do your behavior every day.

Micro habits Definition: Begin with the smallest possible action that could lead to a change. Example: If you are trying to start running, first make a habit of putting on running shoes every day; then make a habit of wearing them outside; then make a habit of walking for 5 minutes in them; all the way up to running. Reading suggestion: Atomic Habits by James Clear

Intrinsic motivation Definition: Choose a version of the habit that is inherently enjoyable to you. Example: Exchange 3-minute backrubs with your partner after dinner each day to enhance social connection; add a delicious flavor to your water to motivate yourself to drink more water; dance around to get physical activity.

Positive reinforcement Definition: Celebrate and reward any movement in the right direction, even if it’s not perfect or if it is not a large step. Example: Draw a star in your notebook on days where you achieved movement towards your goal, or share with a friend when you remembered to put your phone away by 9 PM—even if you didn’t quite make it to bed at your target time.

Environmental change Definition: Changing your environment, especially to make it easier to engage in a desired habit or harder to engage in a behavior you want to reduce. Example: To hydrate more, keep full water bottles in multiple locations at home or in the office; to moderate your media engagement, install digital software to block websites that cause stress.

Habit stacking Definition: Combine any new habit with an existing activity to make it easier to remember; if you schedule the new habit right before a rewarding activity, this is called the Premack’s Principle. Example: Practice gratitude on the bus or before your daily gaming session.

Cues and reminders Definition: Add objects to your environment, such as sticky-note reminders, or create digital notifications, that remind you to do the habit. Example: To improve sleep, set a “get ready for bed” alarm; to moderate alcohol use, wear an “anti- alcohol” necklace , such that you only allow yourself to drink when you remove it; to improve social connection, put a post-it on your workstation reminding you to call a friend.

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Overview Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4 Week 5 Week 6 Week 7 Week 8 Week 12 Notes

Week 02: Habits – Raising Baseline Wellbeing Pre-read Home Practice Considering some of the tools mentioned, how might you make your lifestyle changes easy, manageable,

and motivating?

We will discuss our lifestyle change plans in more depth during this week’s session. This will give us an opportunity to exchange ideas that are specific to our own habits with other people in the program before setting an “official” SMART goal.

The graphic below shows you an easy summary of factors that may help with desired behavioral change. If you want to make your plan even more likely to be successful, or if you want to iterate your habit because it doesn’t work quite well enough yet (to be expected during the first attempts), you can look at this graphic to get inspiration for how you might improve it. We recommend printing and hanging this graphic somewhere you can see it often. Anytime you are stuck, you can check it out.

view/download the full-size graphic here

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Overview Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4 Week 5 Week 6 Week 7 Week 8 Week 12 Notes

Week 02: Habits – Raising Baseline Wellbeing Pre-read Home Practice Optional: Mental contrasting with implementation intentions (MCII)

MCII is a 5-minute tool for increasing the probability that you will reach a goal.5

1.Visualize all the steps necessary to achieve your goal. Then, visualize yourself successfully carrying out these actions and achieving your goal.

2.Identify obstacles. Imagine the top 2-4 things that are most likely to get in the way of achieving your goal. Think about obstacles that could arise in the world around you and within you (i.e. thoughts, feelings, behaviors). Forgetting to implement is one of the most common obstacles, so make sure to include that one!

3.Make if-then plans for obstacles. For each obstacle, come up with a one-sentence plan about what you can do if you encounter it, using the following: “If X happens, then I will Y.” That way, instead of getting stuck, feeling hopeless, or acting on impulse when something gets in your way, you’ll instantly know your next step.

4.Visualize enacting if-then plans. See the obstacle happening, then vividly imagine yourself taking the planned action. This mental rehearsal should create associations in your brain that will get activated when an obstacle arises.6

FAQ What if my plan “fails” and I don’t meet my goal?

That’s okay! Failure is just a lesson waiting to be integrated.

In fact, let’s assume that our plans won’t work right away, and that we will encounter unanticipated obstacles. This just means that we need to iterate on our plan and keep trying.

Repeated attempts will be part of the process, not a sign of a failure. The only “failure“ is giving up right away. Learning to “get back on the wagon” is a valuable skill to develop.

Do I have to do my habit at the same time every day? What if my schedule is unpredictable or different from day to day?

It is a common misconception that you need to perform a habit at the same time every day in order to stick to it.

While it is true that doing so can make it easier to remember to engage in the habit or to make time for it,research suggests that people who engage in their habits at flexible times actually stick with their habits longer, probably because the habit is resilient to schedule disruptions.

So it can certainly help to schedule a daily time for your habit, but you might also want to schedule a back-up time to more easily move the scheduled time on days when you have a conflict. You might also want to identify situational triggers for engaging in the habit (e.g., I will drink some water during every work meeting and at meals; I will stretch when waiting in line; etc.), and/or set engagement reminders on your phone.

In other words, choose tactics that help you remember to engage in the habit and that still allow for some flexibility, depending upon the nature of the habit.

5 Filby, W. C., Maynard, I. W., & Graydon, J. K. (1999). The effect of multiple-goal strategies on performance outcomes in training and competition. Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 11(2), 230-246.

6 Gollwitzer, P. M., & Sheeran, P. (2006). Implementation intentions and goal achievement: A meta‐analysis of effects and processes. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 38, 69-119.

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Overview Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4 Week 5 Week 6 Week 7 Week 8 Week 12 Notes

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