How to Break 90% of Your Bad Habits in 2026! (Use THIS 10-Second Trick and Beat the Pattern!)

This is an I Heart Podcast, Guaranteed Human. On the podcast, health stuff, we are tackling all the health questions that keep you up at night. I'm Dr. Priyanka Wally, a double-board certified physician. And I'm Harry Kunderbolo, a comedian and someone who wants Googled, "Do I have scurvy at 3am?" And on our show, we're talking about health in a different way, like our episode where we look at diabetes. In the United States, I mean, 50% of Americans are pre-diabetic. How preventable is type 2? Extremely. Listen to health stuff on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Danny Shapiro. We were in the car. Like a rolling stone came on, and he said, "There's a line in there about your mother." And I said, "What?" What I would do if I didn't feel like I was being scepted, is choose an identity that other people can't have. I knew something can happen to me in the middle of the night, but I couldn't hold on to what had happened. These are just a few of the moving and important stories on my 13th season of Family Secrets. Listen to Family Secrets on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. No one is harmed, no death, no trauma, just a few cells grown in a dish. This is David Eagleman from the Inner Cosmos podcast, and this week, we're tackling a tough question where brain science meets the future. Lab drone meet is going to force us to confront the boundaries of our ethics. And what does this have to do with brain plastic, the social belonging, messed up boundaries between mental categories? What does this uncover about brain science and our calculations of morality? Listen to Inner Cosmos on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can't break a habit if you still see yourself as the person who does it. If you think I'm lazy, you can't break a habit that proves you're disciplined. If you think you're disorganized, you can't build a habit that proves you're focused. If you're not on top of everything, you can't prove to yourself you have a plan. So instead of saying I'm trying to quit, say I'm not someone who chooses that anymore. And number one, health and wellness podcast. J-Shed, J-Shed. D1, the only J-Shed. I could never change my habits until I did this. What if I told you that 90% of your bad habits have nothing to do with discipline and everything to do with the systems you live inside? Most people blame themselves for their habits. I'm just lazy, I'm not consistent. I always mess this up, but here's the truth. You don't have bad habits because you're a bad person. You have bad habits because you have invisible patterns that no one ever taught you to see. And once you see them, you can break them fast. Let's be honest, if you want to have a great 2026, breaking bad habits and building good habits is core to your success. We are what we repeatedly do. This is the wisdom that's been passed down for generations. Yet we rarely focus on our most repeated thoughts, actions, beliefs and values. And we think it's going to be some miraculous, manifesting moment, some random thing that happens in our life that changes the trajectory of everything. When in reality, it's all about our habits. If you want 2026 to be the best year of your life, this episode is for you. If you want to break your bad habits in 2026, this episode is for you. And if you're someone who's done just setting goals and not meeting them, this episode is for you. Let's dive in. So why can't you break your bad habits? Let's get honest. If you could have broken the habit by now, you would have. The problem isn't effort. The problem is misdiagnosis. Most people think a bad habit is a character flaw. But science shows a bad habit is usually an emotional escape. When we have a bad habit, we think it's because we're a bad person. We had bad parenting. We had a bad background. We had bad company. Now, even if you did have a lot of challenging things, the truth I want you to realize is a bad habit is more of a subconscious response. It's something that you can train. It's not something that you're stuck with. A bad habit can be a triggered loop. A bad habit can be a dopamine pattern you've repeated. A bad habit can be an environment cue. Or a story you've been carrying for years. But you can change it. You can transform it. A habit is not something you have to live with because it's who you are. You are not your habits. You are made of your habits. You're defined by your habits, but you yourself are not your habits. Here's the key idea. You don't fix bad habits by fighting them. You fix them by understanding what they're doing for you. Because every bad habit has a job. Scrolling equals distraction. Overreating equals comfort. Accrastinating equals protection. Overworking equals avoidance. People pleasing equals fear of rejection. Staying up late equals escape time. Your habit isn't random. It's a coping strategy. And once you understand the strategy, you can rewrite it. Often times when we want to change our habits, we just think, I just want to wake up earlier. Okay, great. But what does staying up late do for you? What is it providing that you need to change the strategy? If you say to yourself, oh, I just want to stop drinking sodas. What is that habit? What is the loop? What is the trigger? What is the incentive that you turn to? That for right? Every habit we have, you can say, I don't want to do this and I want to start this. I never want to do this again. I always want to do this. But in reality, if you don't get beneath the surface, if you don't get beneath the hood, you have no idea as to why you even turn to it in the first place. And if you don't understand why you turn towards something, you can't turn away from it. If you don't know why every night, even when you don't want to, you turn on the TV and waste two hours. If you don't know why you do that, you can't change it. If you don't know why you choose to sleep in instead of going to the gym, you can't change it. Here's what I want to talk to you about. The four-part loop that runs 90% of your habits. Every habit follows the same pattern. Number one, trigger. Something happens. Number two, emotion. You feel stress, boredom, loneliness, fear. Number three, behavior. You reach for the habit. And number four, reward. Your brain gets relief. The loop completes. And your brain says, let's do that again tomorrow. But here's the moment that changes everything. If you interrupt just one part of the loop, the habit collapses. That means you don't have to change yourself. You just change the loop. This is where the real transformation happens. We keep thinking, I can't change myself. I don't know what's wrong with me. I just can't do this. I'm just a lazy, useless person. But the reality is, we're trying to change the loop, not trying to change you. It's the loop that has become you. Therefore, if we can interrupt the loop, change the loop, transform the loop, we can change how we feel. Focus on the loop. Don't focus on yourself. We over focus on ourselves and our character, more than we focus on the actual trigger. So here's what I want you to do. Change your triggers. Most people try to change the habit. But your habit is not the problem. Your trigger is. Here's an example. You don't bin scroll because you want to. Right? I don't think you go to your phone and go, "I can't wait to bin scroll today." You bin scroll because your phone is beside your bed. You don't eat late at night because you're hungry. You eat because your kitchen is the only quiet moment you have. It's a place of escape. You're exhausted. You're tired. You didn't eat something right before. You don't procrastinate because you're unmotivated. You procrastinate because you're overwhelmed, because you're scared of rejection. So here's your first actionable step. Redesign your triggers. Move the phone out of the bedroom. Prep your meals early. Schedule work into smaller emotional portions. Remove the cue. Remove the craving. Your environment beats your willpower every single time. Don't try to fight the habit. Break the loop. Break the loop. Focus on the design part that you can change to shift the direction of where you're going. I really want you to think about this profoundly and thoughtfully. I'll give you an example. I know that I used to turn to sugar when I felt stressed. Sugar would get me out of that feeling. I also know that I used to turn to sugary drinks or sodas when I felt I didn't have energy. I used to think that I couldn't work out unless I had energy not realizing that working out gave me energy. When I'm working out, I'm less likely to crave a sugary drink or a snack. Also, going even a step further. When I'm sleeping well, I make better choices. Now ask yourself, why are you not sleeping well? What are you stressed about? What's keeping you up at night? Figure out that trigger and interrupt that pattern. Focus on solving that and you'll be able to wake up earlier and sleep better as opposed to just beating yourself up for not having a good bedtime routine. Next, replace the reward, not the habit. You can break your habit faster if you replace the reward before you remove the behavior. Here's what I mean. If your habit gives you comfort, replace the comfort, not the habit. If your habit gives you escape, replace the escape, not the habit. Most people try to stop a habit cold, but nature hates a vacuum. So I remember, at one point, I would just want to play video games after a day of work. No activity, my brain goes dull, I just need to switch off. Instead, I switched it for pickleball. Playing a sport in the evening gives me that sense of play, but it also gives me connection, gives me physical activity, I'm burning calories, I'm getting steps, I'm getting a sweat in. Replacing the habit is better than just saying, I'm not going to do anything this evening. I'm just going to start doing nothing from now on. That's just not going to work. For example, if you say to yourself, I'm going to start eating healthy now. I'm never going to reach for the chips. But if all you have in your snack and do is chips, if you replace the habit and now you've got healthier alternatives, that's what you're going to reach for. Remove a habit without replacing the reward, and your brain will find another habit to fill the gap. This is why emotional eating turns into bin scrolling, or why overworking turns into overthinking. Your brain is not sabotaging you. It's solving for relief. So you need an upgraded relief system. We all need relief at the end of the day. We all need relief at the end of the week. That's normal. We could impossibly read a book instead of watching a show, reading a book requires effort, watching a show requires no effort. So if you eat for comfort, call a friend for three minutes. If you know you're going to watch a show, what's something that you feel really engaged by and fulfilled by, rather than disappointed when you finish? If you scroll for escape, take a 90 second walk outdoors, and truly escape and feel the difference. If you procrastinate, set a five minute time, and let yourself procrastinate, but have a deadline. If you stress and you go shopping, write about what you're feeling. Talk to someone about it. Small replacements break big habits. On the podcast health stuff, we are tackling all the health questions that keep you up at night. Yes. I'm Dr. Priyanka Wally, a double board certified physician. And I'm Harry Kunderbolo, comedian and someone who wants Googled, "Do I have scurvy at 3am?" On health stuff, we're talking about health in a different way. It's not only about what we can do to improve our health, but also what our health says about us and the way we're living. Like our episode where we look at diabetes. In the United States, I mean 50% of Americans are prediabetic. How preventable is type two. Extremely. Or our in-depth analysis of how incredible mangoes are. Oh, it's hard to explain to rest of the world that like, your mangoes are fine because mangoes are incredible, but like you don't even know. You don't know, you don't know. It's going to be a fun ride. So tune in. Listen to health stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey there, Dr. Jesse Mills here. I'm the director of the men's clinic at UCLA Health. And I want to tell you about my new podcast called The Mailroom. And I'm Jordan, the shows producer. And like a lot of guys, I haven't been to the doctor in many years. I'll be asking the questions we probably should be asking, but aren't. Because guys usually don't go to the doctor unless a piece of their face is hanging off or they've broken a bone. Depends which bone. Oh well, that's true. Every week we're breaking down the unique world of men's health. From testosterone and fitness, to diets and fertility, and things that happen in the bedroom. You mean sleep? Yeah, something like that, Jordan. We'll talk science without the jargon and get your real answers to the stuff you actually wonder about. It's going to be fun, whether you're 27, 97, or somewhere in between. Men's Health is about more than six packs and supplements. It's about energy, confidence, and connection. We don't just want you to live longer. We want you to live better. So check out the mail room on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows. Hi, friends. Sophia Bush here, host of Work in Progress. This week we had such a special guest on the podcast. My forever flotus, a mentor, a friend, a wife, a mother, an author, attorney, advocate, television producer, and now she adds podcast host to the list herself. Friends, Michelle Obama is here. Sophia, I'm beyond thrilled to be able to sit down and chat with you. We talk about it all. Life, love, motherhood, martinis, vodka, martini, dry, straight up, olives, very cold, very, my girl, barely any for move. What's next? What she's watching on TV? I am a white looser. I am a real housewives person. I love the dating shows and tennis. I just find that to be a bit meditative. You do not want to miss this. Listen to Work in Progress on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I remember when I was first trying to give up refined sugars. I would find sweet products that were not as bad. I was eating some monk fruit. I was eating some dates. I had to still solve for my craving at the time. But I wanted to find a healthier craving so that I wasn't hurting myself. Does that make sense? I hope that's resonating with you. I don't want you to say I'm never going to do this ever again. It's really, really hard to do that. The next step is interrupt the loop in real time. This is the most important step. When a trigger hits and you feel yourself slipping into the habit, pause just 10 seconds. Your brain only needs a tiny interruption to disrupt the automatic pathway. Say this out loud. What am I actually needing right now? That one sentence moves you from subconscious habit to conscious choice. This is where the bad habit loses power because habits thrive in autopilot and die in awareness. As soon as you're aware, as soon as you ask yourself, what am I doing here? What do I really want right now? If I knew you were scrolling, you asked yourself, what do I really want right now? You might actually say to switch off. And you might actually find a 20 minute power and that better than that hour doom scroll that you're about to do. If you're watching a show late at night, and you asked yourself, what do I really need? You'd probably say to decompress and rest. And maybe getting into bed 30 minutes earlier is better than that extra episode. If you woke up in the morning and asked yourself, what do I really need right now? You'd say, I really need to get moving. Right? And you're going to choose that over snoozing. That question reestablishes what's really important to you. Now we're getting into some serious growth. The next step is to build a new identity around your choices. Let me say that again. So instead of saying, I'm trying to quit, say, I'm not someone who chooses that anymore. Notice the difference. Instead of I'm trying to wake up earlier, say, I'm a morning person in training. Instead of I'm trying to stop procrastination, say, I'm someone who starts small. This isn't about manifestation. This isn't about creating something from your mind. This is about identity. Identity is the soil. Habits are the seeds. Plant a new identity this year. And your habit will grow into it. Because we don't change our self image, we can't change our habits. Right? If you imagined yourself as an athlete every day, you would wake up, eat right and sleep well. Because you see yourself as an athlete. You treat yourself as an athlete. But if you see yourself as someone lazy and underachiever, someone who doesn't perform, why would you suddenly start doing all of that? When I'm working with a client, I encourage them to see themselves as an athlete. How would they treat their body? How would they treat their mind? How do they play game day on Saturday or Sunday or Monday and actually have an impact on the field? What does that look like? What does that sound like? What does that feel like? We have to build the identity first and the behavior will follow. When you understand your past, you understand why you reach for certain habits. And how to outgrow them. For example, breaking habits isn't about force. It's about understanding where they came from so you can finally let them go. That's one of the biggest mistakes we make. We're just trying to fight this thing and beat it and break it down. Whereas you can actually take its power away when you go, "Oh, I remember when I was stressed out at school and I started that habit because it made me feel less stressed." Guess what? I'm not stressed out anymore. You know what? I remember that I developed that habit when I was really broke and now I still feel broke even though I'm a bit safer. I can let that habit go. You disempower bad habits when you recognize where they came from. So here's the 90-day habit breaker blueprint and I need you to commit for 90 days. Here's the structure I want to give you. Month one, focus on your awareness and triggers. Track your habits for seven days. Identify the top three triggers. Re-design your environment. Month two, replacement and micro-winds. Assign a new reward for each habit. Practice the 10-second pause and celebrate tiny successes. This part is huge. Here's what you need to do. When you make the right decision, write down how you feel after it. I'll say it again. When I first started going to the gym in the morning, I used to have to write down how I felt after it because it felt amazing. It always felt better than skipping. It always felt better than sleeping in. It always felt better than not showing up. And in the beginning, I had to write that down so that the next morning when I woke up again and my mind came up with a list of excuses, I was convinced. Because here's the thing. When you're doing things that are good for you, they always feel hard before you do them. You're going to wake up and your mind is going to say, "Sleep in. You don't need to work out. You're tired. You've been working hard." But if you've recognized that even when that's the case, you feel better after you work out, you'll show up. And especially if you celebrate tiny successes, so many of us don't celebrate until the big thing happens, until the big win happens. The problem with that is that could take a year. And if you start celebrating a weekly win, a monthly win, you'll feel more momentum towards the big thing than taking energy away. Month number three, focus on identity and integration. Re-write your identity statements. Tell one friend your new commitments. Choose one habit to turn into a ritual. There's a quote that I love. And it says, "A bad habit is not a life sentence. It's just an old story waiting for a new ending." I can't stress how important this piece on identity is. We have to start seeing ourselves as not the habit. You are not your thoughts. You are not the voice in your head. You are not the habits you've practiced for all these years. That's not who you are. You are so much more than that. You're beyond that. And simply by training yourself image, your habits can change. If I don't see myself as a podcaster, I won't podcast. If I don't see myself as an interviewer, I would never sit in the interviewer's seat. A lot of us are not doing the things, not because we're not capable, but because we don't see them. You're not held back by your lack of capability. You're held back because of your lack of vision. You're not able to start that new business, launch a podcast, write a book, build a social media channel, not because you're not skilled enough, but because you think you're not there yet. You think you have to do something else before you do that. Please change your identity. Here's the thing. Most people think breaking a bad habit takes strength. But it actually takes understanding. You're not failing because you're weak. You're stuck because your system was built for a version of you. You no longer are. And so once your system changes, your habits will as well. So remember, you don't have to break everything at once. You just have to break the loop. Start today, interrupt one habit, redesign one trigger, replace one reward, shift one identity. Because when you change one habit, you don't just change your behavior. You change your future. This is the year you break the pattern. This is the year you take your life back. This is the year you make the shift. This is the year you transform your future and future generations. You can break 90% of your habits. Now why did I say 90% and not 100% because I didn't want to mislead you? I remember one of my monk teachers saying to me, even if you take the word habit, it teaches you a lot about breaking habits. When you first start breaking habits, you take away the H in habit and a bit is still left. And then he said, do you work some more on breaking your bad habits? And then you take away the A, he goes, bit is still left. And then he goes, hey, you work harder on your habits. You get rid of the H, the A, the B and guess what, it is still left. The idea being that when you're breaking your habits, it doesn't just all evaporate at once. You're really excavating every layer. The first layer is just the trigger. The second layer is the loop. Then it's the reward and then you get into the subconscious space. Why do I need that escape? Where does it come from? You could locate it to a childhood memory. You could locate it to a friend or family member in interaction. Sometimes people are not chasing their dreams and when you go to the subconscious level, the answer is because people at school, teachers, never believed in me. No one ever believed in me. And guess what? Then sometimes you hear people who are really successful and you ask them what they had in school, they said, people never believed in me. Interesting, right? Two people in the same class heard the same thing. The teacher said, I don't believe in you, to both of them. One person went on to become successful, one person didn't. Why? Because one person saw as fuel, one person saw as being held back. But you can retrain that habit. You can rewire that function. You can change it into fuel. You don't have to live up to what people expected of you. You simply have to pursue the life you want. And it all starts when you start breaking 90% of your habits, they will stay. There'll be some habits that will take years to break and that's not to discourage you. It's to be honest, but know that you can keep chipping away and it'll be worth it, because you will unlock another level of growth, performance, success every time you chip away. I really hope this is the year that you succeed in breaking the habits that are holding you back. And most of all, start seeing yourself as already capable of everything you want to achieve. Remember I'm forever in your corner and I'm always rooting for you. Thank you for being here. Make sure you subscribe so you never miss a video. Let's lock in in 2026. If you love this episode, you will also love my interview with Charles Doohig on how to hack your brain, change any habit effortlessly and the secret to making better decisions. Look, am I hesitating on this because I'm scared of making the choice because I'm scared of doing the work or am I sitting with this because it just doesn't feel right yet. What happens when Reese Witherspoon calls up the King of Thriller's Harlan Cobain and says, "Let's write a book together." I was asking him basically to let me into his secret thriller writing world. This week, bookmarked by Reese's Book Club goes live from Apple Soho in New York City for the ultimate storytelling mashup. Reese Witherspoon and Harlan Cobain on their new thriller, Gone Before Goodbye. Can you think you're going to read for 10 minutes and next thing you know it's four in the morning? Get the story behind the season's most addictive read, already a New York Times bestseller. Listen to Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey there, Dr. Jesse Mills here. I'm the director of the men's clinic at UCLA and I want to tell you about my new podcast called The Mailroom. And like most guys, I haven't been to the doctor in way too long. Every week we're breaking down the world of men's health from testosterone and fitness to diets and fertility. So check out The Mailroom on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your favorite shows. I'm Ybilongoria and I might think I'm Mr. Huan and this week on our podcast Hungry for History, we talk oysters plus the Mianbi Chief stops by. If you're not a lost or lover, don't even talk to me. Ancient Athenians used to scratch names onto oyster shells to vote politicians into exile. So our word ostracize is related to the word oyster. No way. Bring back the austrocon. Listen to Hungry for History on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.