E195: Social Habits & How to Incorporate Them, Part Four of The Science & The Spiritual Series
E195: Social Habits & How to Incorporate Them, Part Four of The Science & The Spiritual Series
There is a lot that goes into creating habits, especially the more complex ones like social wellness habits! Here are ways to:
Cultivate Healthy Relationships,
Communicate Thoughts, Feelings and Ideas, and
Contribute to Your Community (Including Sharing Talents and Skills)…
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[00:29] Hi there! Welcome back to the Women’s Empowerment Podcast, this is your hostess with the mostess Valerie LaVigne and today we are continuing with our seven-part series all about incorporating habits in different areas of wellness!
Today features, part four: SOCIAL wellness.
If you’re new to the series, or to the podcast, welcome! My name is Valerie and I’m a certified Health Coach and Fitness instructor. My main focuses are with Healthy Habits and Pilates, although the podcast is more about the healthy habits side of my business, I do mention my pilates business once in a while!
The women’s empowerment podcast is all about health, wealth, and happiness. This specific series covers the seven dimensions of health and wellness, which are: physical, emotional, intellectual, social, spiritual, environmental, and occupational. We break down one of the areas per episode and I’ve included scientific-based research as well as spiritual practices to implement the habits discussed in each episode.
[01:34] If you haven’t listened to the other episodes in the series yet, don’t worry. They can be stand-alone episodes, however, each episode covers a separate science-based method. The science part of these episodes I find absolutely fascinating, and more importantly transferable for any type of habit you are creating!
For example, in episode one we talked about the power of understanding the science-based research of the benefits of your habits, as well as the research behind not doing the physical habits. This can be used for emotional, and social habits as well!
In episode two, I shared information all about four different brainwave patterns we experience through mindfulness, meditation, and sleep. These brainwaves aren’t just for emotional habits, but can also be helpful for creating physical, or intellectual habits.
And in episode three, I introduced the Habit Loop using self-directed neuroplasticity, and you guessed it! This can be supportive for building new environmental or occupational habits.
So technically, no you don’t HAVE to listen to every episode in the series, however I do recommend it, since the information is different for each one and can be used for any and all of your healthy habits!
[03:00] If you’re wondering what “Social Wellness” really means, “it refers to our ability to interact successfully in our global community and to live up to the expectations and demands of our personal roles. This means learning good communication skills, developing intimacy with others, and creating a support network of friends and family members.
Social wellness includes showing respect for others and yourself. Contributing to your community and to the world builds a sense of belonging.” [source]
Although there are many different ways to practice social wellness, I’ve chosen three examples that we will use in today’s episode:
Cultivating healthy relationships
Communicating thoughts, feelings and ideas
Contributing to your community (including sharing talents and skills)
Let’s break these down to better understand them. The first example: cultivating healthy relationships, can be seen in many different ways. If this is the habit you would like to work on, I suggest asking yourself: what does a healthy relationship look like/feel like/sound like to me?
Personally, I aim to treat people the way that I would like to be treated. This, as a general guideline, makes cultivating my current relationships easier to navigate because I use myself as a measure. Then as the relationship deepens, and I understand the other person more, I can adjust or balance with their own needs working together to create that healthy relationship.
If you’re looking for something more specific in terms of the habit, choose one relationship you have currently (perhaps a romantic partner, a friend, a co-worker, a family member), and ideate what that specific relationship means to you.
Is it physical touch?
Is it more quality time?
Is it balanced communication?
Is it clear boundaries?
Once you have that answer, you can work on a more specific actionable habit.
The second habit example for today is: communicating thoughts, feelings and ideas. I am well aware that some people are naturally stronger at communicating these than others. And that doesn’t mean that this skill cannot be developed, it will just take some time and practice to build or strengthen this habit.
As a podcaster, teacher, and public speaker, I have had a lot of practice and coaching on this topic so I am excited to share some of my ah-ha moments and breakthroughs with you! In fact now that I’m talking about it, I feel like this is a great solo episode idea!
If you want to specify this particular skill with certain habits, I recommend outlining where you feel most frustrated versus where you feel most satisfied. Where could you improve in this area? And where are you confident? This gives us a starting point, and it also shows us what strengths we currently have and can leverage.
As an example, you may be a strong verbal communicator, but when it comes to writing out your ideas, thoughts or feelings, you freeze! We can create habits around using verbal and written communication together to improve.
The last habit example for today is: contributing to your community (including sharing talents and skills). I strongly believe that part of our human experience is to develop and share our personal talents and skills. Each and every one of us has a unique offer to give to the world.
You may be listening and nodding along because you feel this deeply and may also know your own gifts. Or… perhaps your brow is furrowed and you haven’t aligned with your unique talent yet, and that is okay. If you resonate with the latter, and you’re looking at discovering your passion, I highly recommend listening to Episode 182 of this podcast as it can offer some valuable insights into achieving this clarity and connection to self!
Episode 182: The Power of Passion and Perseverance are the Keys to Success
[07:17 ] The Science: Automation
Hopefully you’ve decided which social wellness habit to focus on. I recommend starting with ONE and you can stack, or build on to the first habit once it has been created.
It’s important to mention, that just because you’ve decided to create a new habit or routine, doesn’t mean it becomes habitual immediately. It is our repeated actions that lead to habits.
And did you know that “various studies have shown that somewhere between 40 and 50 percent of what we do every day is the product of habit? That means that half of our lives [are] governed by what scientists term automaticity.” [source: LIMITLESS book p.153]
This includes actions from how we start our day, to how we interact with the world, and so much more in between! Anything you do without thinking is a result of habit, and is automatic.
Since this is essentially how we conduct our lives, our habits largely determine our health, wealth and happiness! When we know how to change our habits, we are empowered to manage our days, and focus on behaviours that align us with the best versions of ourselves, and how we want to live our lives.
[08:37] The Science: The Habit Loop Recap
If you remember back to the last episode in the series Episode 192: Intellectual Habits & How to Incorporate Them, we talked all about The Habit Loop.
As a recap, the habit loop has four components:
Cue: this is the trigger to your habit.
Craving: the urge or desire to motivate you
Response: engaging in the action, thought, or behaviour
Reward: the satisfying outcome you were craving
The “science” part of today’s episode builds on this habit loop. More specifically, we want to examine our bad social wellness habits and replace them with new healthy social habits. This is because, according to Dr. Elliot Berkman, director of the Social and Affective Neuroscience Laboratory at the University of Oregon, “It’s much easier to start doing something new than to stop doing something habitual without a replacement behaviour.”
When we look at our examples, we can use the notes we made about what we want to improve, and what we already have going for us and begin to swap the negative or unhelpful habit with something better.
For example, cultivating healthy relationships:
Our romantic relationship lacks freshness and physical connection, and is strong in quality time together. Now we can use face-to-face quality time to bring in the “fresh” and “physical” parts of the relationship and connection we’re craving.
Or our second habit example: communicating thoughts, feelings and ideas:
We are excellent verbal communicators, and want to improve our writing. Besides joining a writer’s workshop, we could open up a dictation app like Otter, and speak our thoughts aloud as the app dictates it. Then we can edit the dictation, such as cleaning up the punctuation or creating more flow and turn it into a blog post for our community.
And of course our last social habit example: contributing to your community (including sharing talents and skills):
Again, re-listening to Episode 182: The Power of Passion and Perseverance are the Keys to Success to build our connection to self and discover our passions.
[11:00] The Science: Breaking Bad Habits
Or getting in the habit of cultivating and strengthening our unique gifts and passions through practice and perseverance.
When it comes to breaking bad habits and the effort to do so, Dr. Thomas G. Plante, adjunct clinical professor for the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine, said, “It depends on how much you really want to break the habit. Many people are ambivalent. They want to lose weight, but they love the foods they eat. They want to reduce their alcohol consumption but love their happy hour. They want to stop picking their nails, but it reduces stress for them. So, one important issue is how strongly you really want to break the habit in question. Second, how established is the problem habit? It is easier to break a new habit than an old one. Third, what are the consequences of not breaking the habit? Will a partner leave you? Will you lose a job? Will you get sick? Will something really bad happen if you don’t change?” [source: LIMITLESS book p.159]
These are very great points and questions to consider, and many people don’t dig that deep when working on their habits, routines, and rituals. So they focus on surface level action, without understanding the deeper changes that need to and are taking place. Most people give up after a few weeks, or even days! Even though studies have shown that it takes an average of 66 days to form a new habit.
In the first episode of this series, Episode189: Physical Habits & How to Incorporate Them, we talked about intention setting and understanding WHY we’re doing the specific habit. We identified the scientific benefits of doing the new habit, and the negative effects of not doing the healthy habit.
[12:57] The Science: Motivation
Today, we’re going much deeper into habit motivation, so that we can better understand how this works beyond physical habits and into other habits, such as our social wellness habits. “Dr. B. J. Fogg created the Fogg Behavior Model to identify the circumstances that need to be present for behaviour change to occur. “For a target behaviour to happen,” he notes, “a person must have sufficient motivation, sufficient abilify, and an effective prompt. All three factors must be present at the same instant for the behaviour to occur.” [source: LIMITLESS book p.159]
Basically you need three things in place for your habit to happen:
Motivation: You need the desire to do it
Ability: You need the skills to do it
Prompts: And you need something to get you started in the habit loop AKA the “cue” from our habit loop
Let’s break these down deeper, and correlate them to our social wellness habits.
Motivation
Fogg identifies three key motivators:
Pleasure/pain: Fogg says, “I believe pleasure/pain is a primitive response, and it functions adaptively in hunger, sex, and other activites related to self-preservation and propagation of our genes.”
Hope/fear: Not as immediate as the first motivator, but rather focusing on anticipation of a good thing happening, or in terms of fear, a bad thing happening. Fogg notes, “This dimension is at times more powerful than pleasure/pain, as is evidence in everyday behaviour. For example, in some situations, people will accept pain in order to overcome fear.”
Social acceptance/rejection: “The power of social motivation is likely hardwired into us and perhaps all other creatures that historically depended on living in groups to survive.”
As we understand these motivators, we can apply them to our habit examples.
Cultivating healthy relationships
Pleasure/pain: feeling good or supported in our relationships versus feeling bad or abused
hope/fear: hope for positive results and a happy future growing together, fear for separation/breakup
Social acceptance/rejection: having healthy relationships and a vibrant social life is incredibly beneficial to our quality of life and has been shown to increase lifespan
Communicating thoughts, feelings and ideas
pleasure/pain: confidence and wholeness of self expression versus holding in thoughts, feelings and ideas
hope/fear: the hope that your thoughts, feelings and ideas matter, the fear of never sharing your truth
Social acceptance/rejection: feeling seen and heard by others, versus people not liking what you have to share
Contributing to your community (including sharing talents and skills)
pleasure/pain: self-expression and feelings of purpose, versus not feeling purposeful
hope/fear: hope that you can make a difference in the world by sharing your talents, versus the fear that you don’t have gifts or talents or purpose
Social acceptance/rejection: you help your community, your talents are rejected by your community
Ability
The second motivator, ability, is equivalent to simplicity. Not only are you capable of doing it, but it is EASY and simple to do. Fogg defines six categories of simplicity: [source: LIMITLESS book p.160]
Time: we think something is simple when we also think we have the available time to take the action
Money: similar to time, if something challenges our financial resources, it is no longer simple.
Physical Effort: things that are physically easy to do are simple
Brain Cycles: anything that doesn’t make us think too hard, too much, or too often
Social Deviance: just like acceptance motivation, the simple action also fits into societal norms
Nonroutine: How far out of the normal routine it is defines the level of simplicity
Since our social wellness habits are broad and require multiple people, interactions, and experiences, it can be challenging to see and create simplicity. Doing so will make your social wellness habits more successful!
When considering your own habits, draw the path of least resistance to achieving this new action, and refer to the six categories to help you create that easy way forward.
Prompts
The last of Fogg’s motivators is prompts, or “Cues” as we know them from our habit loop. Fogg notes three types of prompts [source LIMITLESS p.161]
Spark: a type of prompt that immediately leads to a form of motivation
Facilitator: this type of prompt works when motivation is high but ability is low.
Signal: In some cases, you’ll have both high motivation and high ability. The only other thing you need to make a behaviour a habit is some kind of reminder or signal.
Really understanding the science of motivation can help us build all sorts of habits. And prepare us for success and satisfaction in our relationships, communication, and connection to our communities. It’s important to want the new habit you’re starting, initiate the habit, and to create a cue or trigger that makes you want to do it (ASAP).
[19:05] The Spiritual
Let’s take a look at some spiritual tools and methods for creating new social wellness habits. In each of our series’ episodes I share crystals, essential oils, and sometimes other spiritual tools for enhancing our simple actions.
Here are 6 crystals for improving/enhancing social wellness habits:
[source]
[source]
[source]
Cultivating Healthy Relationships
Rose Quartz: for compassionate chats
Blue Apatite: helps us to see things as they are, so we can speak our truth without feeling guilty for vocalizing our needs
Communicating Thoughts, Feelings and Ideas
Aquamarine: for letting words flow
Carnelian: for confident public speaking
Contributing to Your Community (including sharing talents and skills)
Laborodie: for bringing wisdom to your words
Sodalite: often called the stone of peace, for soothing anxiety and communicating authentically
Here are 6 essential oils for improving/enhancing social wellness habits. I’ve organized them into each of the habit examples for today’s episode.
Cultivating Healthy Relationships
Magnolia: Oil of Compassion
This essential oil connects people with the energy of the divine matriarch; a feminine spiritual source that expects individuals to treat one another with mercy and compassion. Magnolia is a tender oil and helps us live in love and harmony. It inspires us to engage with one another in empathy and by holding mirrors of each other. It reminds us that each soul is equally deserving of kindness and respect.
Inhale from the bottle, or apply to centre of the chest (heart centre), or crown of the head
Marjoram: Oil of Connection
This oil helps those who are unable to trust others or form meaningful relationships. Marjoram shows the barriers that have been formed as protection from others. It reveals unhelpful patterns and teaches us that trust is the basis for all relationships. It helps in increasing warmth and trust in social situations by softening the heart and healing past wounds.
Inhale from the bottle, or apply 1-3 drops over the heart and chest.
Communicating Thoughts, Feelings and Ideas
Lavender: Oil of Communication & Calm
This essential oil helps verbal expression and calms the mind. Specifically it calms insecurities that are felt when one risks their true thoughts and feelings. It addresses a deep fear of being seen and heard and supports individuals in releasing the tension and constriction that stems from withheld expression. Lavender encourages emotional honesty and insists that one speaks their innermost thoughts and desires.
Inhale from bottle or apply 1-3 drops over throat, temples or on nape of neck
Spearmint: Oil of Confident Speech
This oil inspires clarity of thought and confident verbal expression. Those who need spearmint, may hide their thoughts, opinions, and ideas by withholding their voices. Spearmint encourages inner clarity about personal convictions and opinions. It then assists individuals in translating that inner clarity into words.
Inhale from bottle, or dilute 1-3 drops with carrier oil and apply over throat.
Contributing to Your Community (including sharing talents and skills)
Cedarwood: Oil of Community
This essential oil brings people together to experience the strength and value of community. Those in need of cedarwood struggle to form bonds with social groups. Cedarwood supports people in seeing that they are not alone; life is a shared experience. It also assists in opening the awareness of people to support the system that is already available to them, such as friends and family. It invites people to both give and receive, so they may experience the strength of groups and the joy of relationships.
Inhale from a bottle, or dilute 3-4 drops with carrier oil and apply on arms, legs or bottoms of feet.
Neroli: Oil of Shared Purpose & Partnership
This oil is unifying and stabilizing. It’s helpful for calming troubled hearts in relationship conflict. It influences promoting harmony and acceptance and growth. Neroli helps in realizing deeper states of connection in intimate moments. It teaches us that unity blossoms from adaptation, cooperation, tolerance, perseverance, and kindness. It encourages active acceptance and supportive space.
Inhale from the bottle, or apply 1-3 drops over heart, sacral chakra (lower stomach), throat or behind the ears.
I also wanted to share some other helpful practices that I would file under spiritual sorts.
[22:12] This first practice, or theory is for the habit of cultivating healthy relationships. In the yoga philosophy there are Eight Limbs of Yoga. One of those limbs is called the YAMA-S, and as we’ve been discussing this dimension of wellness, I am reminded of one of the YAMA-S called “ahimsa” which directly translates to “non harming” or “non injury.”
It reminds me of this dimension because social wellness encompasses respect for others, and respect to ourselves. When practicing ahimsa, we are nonharming to ourselves and others through thought, action, or words.
Secondly, I mentioned early in this episode that, as a podcaster, teacher, and public speaker, I have had a lot of practice and coaching on the topic of communicating thoughts, feelings and ideas.
One of my breakthrough moments was this past summer when I attended a virtual training with a gentleman named Mahfuz Chowdhury.
Instagram: @mahfuzc
He talked about storytelling and components of a killer presentation. I attended this training while I was also reading the book GRIT by Angela Duckworth, and I think this is why part of the presentation was so impactful for me. It was because Mahfuz has grit! He found his passion for public speaking, marketing, and storytelling and has learned to develop this skill with every opportunity possible. And if he isn’t public speaking, he’s working behind the scenes to master this craft. Talk about passion and perseverance!
One of the things Mahfuz does is hook a mic up to himself when he is doing a speech or an interview or speaking engagement. This is HIS mic, not part of the production’s technology. He demonstrates grit by recording himself, and following the speaking engagement he re-listens to the recording and makes notes of where and how he can improve.
A lot of speakers will practice leading up to an event, but not many of them FOLLOW UP with their speeches. This goes beyond practice, and adds more intention and mastery to building this skill. It’s an excellent idea and I will be using this in my own skill development as well!
Thank you so much for joining me this week on another episode of the Women’s Empowerment Podcast! It means so much to me that you’re here. I feel a bit speechless to share that we are almost at 200 episodes! And just shy of 80 000 downloads of the podcast!
THANK YOU! THANK YOU! For showing up week after week. It is such a gift to read your reviews and messages about the show. If you haven’t already left a review for the podcast on Apple Podcasts, please do. It means the world to me and I read all of them!
I have also just learned that I can only read reviews left in Canada, which I didn’t know before! So if you are from outside of Canada and leaving a review for the show, could you please screenshot your review and email it directly to hello@valerielavignelife.com !? I would love to read it and personally thank you for taking the time.
Sending you lots of love and blessings! I’ll meet you here next week for part five of our series: spiritual wellness!
Podcast Host
Valerie LaVigne
Valerie is the creator and founder of Valerie LaVigne Life and the Women's Empowerment Show. She helps busy and empowered women create healthy habits so that they can become the best version of themselves and transform their lives. Learn more about Valerie here!
