What’s a Giggle Step?

When I give talks, I always tell a story told by Stanford University behavioral psychologist, B.J. Fogg, who is head of Stanford’s Persuasion Technology Lab.

BJ Fogg "has been studying behavior change for more than two decades.  He is an expert in how to create habits.”  (And you can thank him for helping Facebook, Twitter and Google do that. Or not…”)

Fogg says there are three main steps to create a habit:

1. Pick the new habit you want.

2. Pick an easy first step toward that new habit.

3. Attach the new habit to one you already have.

This is the BJ Fogg story I tell—it’s about how he got himself to floss his teeth every night.

We all know how important flossing is to our heath.  And yet…while many of us try over and over to do it, we don’t.

Crazy, no?  Our Rational Brain (Pre-Frontal Cortex) knows all the very important health reasons why we should floss our teeth.  

But our Emotional Brain (Amygdala) seems to stop us at every turn.  We forget.  We think about doing it and then have a strong case of the “I don’t wanna’s.”  Etc. Etc.

Why???

How BJ Fogg got himself to floss his teeth every day tells us why:  

He told himself:

“After I finish brushing my teeth, I will floss ONE tooth.”

OK, did that make you giggle?  

Every time I tell this story, the audience giggles.  

Pretty funny isn’t it?  Like, who only flosses one tooth?!

But you know what?  Starting with a Giggle Step like that is key to stopping any Bad Habit—and replacing it with a Good Habit—one that is a permanent, automatic, “takes-no-thought,” habit. When it’s like that, it truly is Easy Effortless Fun.

Giggle Steps Are Much, Much Smaller Than "Baby Steps."

Conventional Wisdom says you need to do Baby Steps when learning a new habit.

But…just about every Baby Step I’ve ever heard of is way too big—that is, too big for the Emotional Brain, especially if you have a Scaredy-Cat Brain with a low Threat Response threshold like I have. That kind of brain gets flooded with “Fight or Flight” Cortisol at the mere hint of a real (or imagined) threat.

Oh sure, your Rational Brain thinks even big steps are a piece of cake.

To the Rational Brain it makes sense to floss all your teeth every night.  It’s not hard to do and it takes very little time.  So when you don’t, your Rational Brain beats you up, yelling, “What’s your problem, you idiot?!”

But your Rational Brain beating you up like that feels like pain and danger to your Emotional Brain so it yells at you, “Ow! Ow! Ow! That hurts!”

To escape that pain, your Emotional Brain gets you to “Fight or Flight or Freeze or Forget” with a shot of the feel-bad brain chemical, Cortisol.  It causes the “I don’t wanna” response, too, as well as the “Forget” response.

Forgetting is a particularly powerful way the Emotional Brain can keep you from doing things it feels are painful and dangerous for you to do.

What?  Flossing your teeth every night is painful and dangerous?

Well, the Emotional Brain is always in the present.  It can’t look to the future and plan.  That’s the Rational Brain’s job.

Anything that’s new (even something that’s good for you) can be a threat to your Emotional Brain.  It can be scared of any change—even a good change.

You can’t reason with the Emotional Brain.  That’s what everyone tries to do.  But the Emotional Brain and the Rational Brain do different things. Using rational logic to get your Emotional Brain to feel safe doesn’t work.

When you do only a Giggle Step-sized new habit right after you do a well-established habit you already have (like right after you brush your teeth) and you repeat it daily for a long enough time, it will feel weird when you don’t do both habits in sequence.

Get your brain used to predicting that every time you brush your teeth you then floss your teeth…then if you miss it, it will tell you by making you feel a little weird.

Feeling a little weird means your new habit has become normal and expected by the brain.  And now you have your brain helping you stick with the new habit.

Bottom line: If you want to start a new habit, figure out a way to do it every single day in connection with something that is already a daily habit of yours. And start with a Giggle Step, one so tiny and safe to your brain that it goes, “Duh, we can do THAT!”

Coming soon: More tips on how to use Giggle Steps to change any habit you want to change. I used Giggle Steps to lose 90 pounds and have keep them off for four years…and counting.