Your Environment is Stronger Than Your Willpower: The Neuroscience of Behavior Change

0:03Darin Olien:Welcome to Super Life with me, Darin Olien, a podcast where we explore, discover, and share solutions that promote a healthier life and a better world. Together, we'll ignite possibilities, inspire change, and build sovereignty, creating a roadmap towards a super life for you and for all. Get ready to start living your super life.

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2:42the difference between our environment, what's in and around us versus our willpower. This is the hidden driver of behavior and behavior change and maybe what you can do to actually get what you want. This is powerful. You've been told that willpower is everything, but I'm going to tell you something different. That if you just try harder, eat better, exercise more you'll finally get it right you'll finally do the thing that's gonna get you there but here's the truth most people don't see willpower is the backup system it's weak it's slow it's easily hijacked by your environment what's around you who's around you what are you doing what are you not doing your notifications on your on your phone your couch that looks so inviting to lay down on.

3:38Your kitchen, what's in your kitchen, even your friends group, they are shaping your habits more than any motivational speech could ever do.

3:50Darin Olien:Just let that sink in for a second. Today, we're going to dive into the neuroscience of behavior change, how modern stress hijacks your dopamine system, why food and tech are engineered to override your willpower really at ease. And more importantly, what you can do to design your super life environment that makes good habits automatic and the unhealthy ones nearly impossible to continue to follow. By the end of this episode, you'll understand exactly why your willpower fails and how to win with what really aligns with you without fighting yourself every step of the way. Thanks for tuning in. Please like and subscribe and share this episode.

4:39If you've got anything from this episode, just take a moment, give a review, share it with a friend. This really helps me get motivated, stay motivated, and all the people that can benefit from this information. It really helps me out a lot. And it helps out more people. More people living their super life is just a better life for all of us,

5:03Darin Olien:which is what keeps me going every day. So why this matters so much? This topic ranks because it intersects between behavior change, neuroscience, modern stressors, and habit formation. These are all huge search trends right now. People want actionable solutions, not vague motivational fluff that is easily scrollable all over social media. This episode answers questions like, why can't I stick to my goals? Why does willpower fail me? And how do environments, my environment, change my behavior? Modern life bombards us with cues, some that drive us towards distraction, overeating, and stress, and others can be designed to support us, support productivity, and most importantly, our well-being.

5:59External cues shape behavior automatically. Neuroscience shows that external cues, sights, smells, sound, spatial layouts, trigger automatic behaviors in the brain way before your conscious decision was made. The hippocampus and the basal ganglia link specific environments with behavioral responses, which is why routines feel almost reflexive. They're automatic. One review summarized it essentially as, our environments influence our habits more than willpower does. It was a great research and article out of the psychology of today where it really exemplified that our environments influence us way more than our willpower does.

6:55This aligns with the nudge theory. A well-studied behavioral science concept says you can architect choices by altering environments, not just relying on willpower. This is really powerful. So if you get this, this is how you can take this year's resolutions, goals, dreams, desires into real actionable spaces where you get the overall over time dopamine hit because you've worked at it, you've built it, but your environment matters so much. The willpower is a backup system. It shouldn't be leading. Willpower is slow, reflexive. This constantly battles the automatic impulses. So this system is heavily influenced by the environmental cues, cues that evolve to help us survive scarcity, not handle abundance.

7:54That's why, for example, just seeing junk food and certainly smelling it increases cravings. Our phones, seeing the colors of certain apps, the notifications that show up as, oh, I missed that message or the ding or whatever is there to trigger us, that pulls our attention immediately, absolutely immediately. So habits trigger before the rational thought ever engages. This is deeply happening in your awareness and in your brain. So this explains why the changing of our environment often works infinitely better than just trying to work harder. This just doesn't work. So the hyper reward cues and dopamine.

8:44This is what's hijacking us in our modern world, the stressors. So the modern environments are engineered. They are engineered to hit these systems. So if you're not aware of it, you are being manipulated by them. They're being engineered to hit your brain's dopamine reward system repeatedly, all the time. Keep you engaged, take your attention, take your time. These dopamine neurons fire in response to a reward prediction. And eventually, in response to cues predicting reward, which means your brain starts linking cues, your phone chimes, the color of certain packages of food, whatever it is, that is linking the cues to the reward expectations.

9:35Okay, so that chime, that number, that I've got to respond, all of that is triggering the reward system of the brain. You experience cravings and action without your conscious choice. It's already neurologically happening even before you're consciously aware. Environmental cues that predicted rewards eventually trigger dopamine on their own. So when you set up your environment to support you in a better way, eventually gets you to the reward system, but it's not this addictive behavior. You actually get there over time. You've worked at it, but you've created a supportive environment to not distract you with these quick dopamine fixes that ultimately are not going to get you to the big rewards that you want to cultivate in your life.

10:30So this is incredibly important to understand. Stress hormones amplify the cue reward learning. So research suggests stress hormones like cortisol interact with the dopamine pathways and strengthen the cue reward learning. The more stressed, the more distracted you are with the dings and the chimes and the whatever reward systems are being triggered.

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13:33The stressful environments then amplify the undesirable habits, the scrolling, an hour goes by and you've been just scrolling, just feeding your dopamine system, that hour that you are not there to build what it is and the architecture that you want to build towards your greater goals, that job that you want to be connected to and fulfilled by, that art piece you want to create, that important phone call you want to have, the dream of the home you want to build, whatever it is, the quick dopamine cues and responses you're getting hit now and are less likely to get the dopamine real rewards that you would get upon building the life that you want.

14:26Stress makes junk food feel more irresistible. So the more stressed, the more dopamine you want to get, and it's a vicious, vicious cycle of addiction. Notifications feel more urgent. The more stressed you are, bad habits feel harder and harder to shake. Environment plus stress hormones equal behavior that feels automatic and hard to control. So you need to change that environment. The food environment also influences what we crave. Scientific reviews show that exposure to environmental cues changes our food preferences, literally shifting what we desire. For example, cues of a harsh environment made participants want more energy-dense foods, while safe cues reduce desire for them.

15:21So again, you change your environment, you change what you're going to want, and you change your cravings. This connects directly to how modern engineered food work. They're designed with a combination of sugar, salt, and fat that strongly activate the immediate reward circuits. They create cues and cravings that override easily your willpower. Modern food environments aren't neutral. They're actively pushing you towards overconsumption by unhealthy choices. The color of the packaging, what they're made out of, the preservatives, the sugar, salts, and fats, all of that stuff is geared to make you make unhealthy choices.

16:09Some tech cues that we can use to modulate the stress and attention. Because every ding, buzz, pop-up on your phone is a cue, a micro-stimulus, that hijacks your attention and time. Research indicates that environmental stress, like unpredictable cues, can alter neural processing and behavioral choices. Notifications and what they do. They interrupt focus, elevate stress hormones. Did you know that?

16:39Darin Olien:Every time you get a ding, a cue, a message, actually increases your stress hormones, just like that, cortisol. They also reset the attentional state. They push behavior towards immediate gratification rather than the gratification you have towards an overall goal that you want. This is the environmental trumping of willpower in the moment to moment. So how do I design a super life environment? What are the solutions? Here's the practical part. But if you implement and change your environment, environment is everything. And remember, mitochondria is listening to your environment. Your soul is listening to your environment.

17:25Your cells are listening to your environment. So to change what you want, to change and go towards what you want to create in the world, especially it's a new year, you have to start with what your environment is. So you want to design, you want to strategize, and this is all backed in great real science.

17:46Darin Olien:your physical environment. Place healthy foods, nuts, seeds, whole fruit, display them on your counters. This is incredible. When you make a fruit bowl, which I do every day, the colors, the invitation that they're trying to hijack with candies and processed food, they're using the same colors. Colors are what nature created, but display your whole foods, your fruits and everything on the counter and hide away all the stuff that you less want to consume. Remove those cues for this unhealthy behavior, especially in your environment. If you have kids around, display the beautiful fruits and nuts and seeds and open containers and clear containers, things like that.

18:36Remove the junk food so you can't see it, so the kids can't find it. Arrange your workspace to reduce distraction. So you can use single purpose zones. In this zone, I do my podcast. In this zone, I rest. In this zone, I sleep. In this zone, I play. Whatever it is that you need to set that up, start doing that. Removing the triggers prevents the automatic system from engaging before your willpower ever kicks in. Some more of the digital side. Reduce cue reactivity. Turn off non-critical notifications, especially when you're focused on something. Group notifications into a different box. And here's another thing, and I'm going to display anyone watching this.

19:25I'll talk through it too. So I've got my iPhone here. Use the gray zone mode on your phone. So It turns off all the color and immediately you don't get that hit of all the color and this app and this Instagram app is red and blah, blah, blah. It turns everything gray. So if you go to your phone and you want to go to the gray scale, try this, really try this. Go to settings, go down to accessibility. So I click on accessibility. Then I go to display and text size. Then I click on color filters and then all this color stuff shows up. And then I select, I just hit that button that turns off all the color and now it's gray.

20:10Look at this stuff. So if anyone's looking at this, my entire phone is gray. No app has color. Zero. There's no hit. There's no. You just turn that off and it's gray mode. And it turns off that hit of dopamine of just that color itself. Use these tactics to reduce the dopamine hijacking. The next is the social environment. Align your people with your goals. Talk to the people that you resonate with. Call them. Make meetings. Have those Zoom calls with people, even if you don't have all the answers. Surround yourself with people who also model the behavior you want. Join communities while the norms support your habits.

20:55That's why I created the Super Life Patreon. I was like, who wants a super life? I think everyone does. And that's why the nature of it is to create an environment where we're supporting each other. And I'm giving you insight from all my decades of work in the health space so that you can use that information to build upon and build your super life. Social cues are huge. They shape behavior unconsciously. That's why they say, you want to be successful, surround yourself with successful people. That is supporting you on levels that we can't even really understand. Support your eating environment.

21:35Keep healthy, nutrient-dense foods visible, smaller plates of other stuff. Prep your food. Be aware of what food you're eating throughout the day. Plan so you don't fall into, I'm hungry and I'm just grabbing everything. environmental cues can be biased so environmental cues are huge prepare your meals beware of what you're going to eat that is huge because you're going to get hungry and you're going to start reaching make easy accessible fast food available not the regular fast food i'm like a banana the og of fast food peel it eat it boom those are the things bring in the colors of your life Make your environment signal safe.

22:22If you have, I have windows all around me. I have nature all around me. I'm currently still in the yurt. So I have nature is basically inside, right? So, but if you're not in that environment, bring plants into your environment, make it life, bring life into our homes. Our homes are, we're not meant with the energy of flow. They're boxes and they can be stagnant energy zones. So prepare and bring in that nature. Nature is you. This is incredible. It creates calm. It decompresses just by looking at a candle, for example, rather than turning on lights. Your brain senses safety. It's very important that your home is safe.

23:09It reduces hormones, decreases this executive control of stress response. So some deeper thoughts. Our environment influences our habits more than our willpower does. Period. Full stop. Environmental cues change food desire. Simple manipulations of perceived environmental conditions may trigger changes in desire for different kinds of food. Period. Stress interacts with learning. Cortisol affects learning. And reward-related behaviors linked to the environment. There is so much here if you're willing to enact what it is that I'm saying. If you don't, if you don't step in and change your environment, there is things that are making choices way beyond your conscious ability.

24:01Therefore, leading you down a road where another year goes by and you don't have what you want. You don't have what your heart desires. So let's change our environment to change our lives, to build the life we want and support our habits in doing so. I'm Darren O 'Lean. This is Super Life. This is the cornerstone of Super Life and building the life that we want. If you want to sign up for a Super Life Patreon, it's just$7.49 a month where we dig into all this stuff. We take action on this stuff. I give insights and clues and live podcasts and all this kind of stuff. Live interactions. We just did a live Zoom with all the Patreon members.

24:48Darin Olien:It was fantastic. And everyone asked questions and we had a great time. But if you don't want, that's okay too. Take down the notes for this. Change your environment. Do something today. Like and subscribe and send this to your friends, your family, so that they can take better action and building the life that they want. But it starts with the environment that you're sitting in, that you're living in. I'm Darren Lean. I'm out. Peace.