3 Science Backed Ways To Quit Your Most Stubborn Habits Without Discipline

You’re not “undisciplined” you’re just bad at design.

I’m Angela Shurina, and today I’m sharing 3 science-backed strategies for breaking hard-to-quit habits by design, not by disciplining your way through temptations.

If you’ve ever promised yourself you’d stop something small but stubborn (like my own coconut milk in coffee routine) and then watched autopilot win again, this is your reset button.

We dig into why routine disruption is so powerful, and why your environment beats your best intentions sooner than later. You’ll learn how to redesign what’s around you so the habit you want to quit becomes inconvenient, harder to access, and easier to forget. Think environment design, friction, and better defaults rather than more motivation.

Then we break down the habit loop from behavioral science: cue, routine, reward. Instead of “trying to break the habit,” we look for the specific part of the loop you can interrupt, replace, or remove. Finally, we use a Ulysses contract style pre-commitment to stop relying on in-the-moment willpower and start building accountability that makes the right choice the path of least resistance.

If are enjoying these, subscribe, share it with a friend who’s been stuck for years with some bad habits, and leave a quick rating and review so more people can break the habits that don’t serve them.

Transcript

0:08

Hey guys, and welcome back to another episode of Change Wired Podcast. My name is Angela Shorina. I'm your host, I'm your guide and partner in change, personal and collective evolution transformation. I'm your executive health and high performance coach 360, and someone someone who is just super passionate about using more of unlocking, discovering, figuring out how to tap into more of our human potential so together we can live the most purposeful and fulfilling lives we can, creating more positive impact in the world. Today, guys, you're gonna learn three principles, three science-backed strategies to help you break your hardest to quit hardest to break habits. And the good news, you don't have to work on more willpower or more discipline, none of that, or some complex uh uh strategies or thought restructuring. It's super simple actually. Today you're gonna be becoming a habit behavior designer using again some of the best known, best well-researched science-back strategies to effectively break and also build any habit. But today, specifically, the focus is on breaking those habits.

The Coconut Milk Habit Story

1:37

And as usual, as I try to do, I'm gonna start with a story. So, the story. As I'm speaking to you, I'm finishing up my morning coffee, which is my coffee that I brew at home and with a little bit of coconut milk. And what's so special about that is about months ago I've decided I wanna quit putting coconut milk in my coffee. I wanna drink more plain coffee, not so much for calories, but to give my gut a little bit more rest. Fasting is good for your gut microbiome. They say that fasting helps to restore some of that gut lining by allowing bacteria the time and the space, and for whichever reason, it seems like prolonging fasting window is good for you. And coconut milk is not a big deal, but I'm like, I'd like to do that, right? And so I decided to do that a month ago, and I'm still drinking that coffee with milk in it. Right? I make my coffee, I open the fridge, the coconut milk is right there, and I use it. And again, this has been going on for four months right now, and I've decided to kind of let it go because today I'm also leaving to visit home for months. And there are gonna be none of my favorite coconut milk, no idea where to find it, different coffee maker, different routine entirely. My usual morning sequence, the one that runs on autopilot, will be completely gone, completely disrupted. And when it comes to breaking and quitting habits or creating the new ones, there is nothing better than breaking and disrupting your routine. I'm not gonna get more willpower, I'm not gonna get more discipline, I'm not gonna be committing harder. I'm just gonna leave. And I know without a shadow of a doubt, that while I'm there and when I give get back, I won't even remember about that coconut milk. This is what habit researchers, habit experts like James Clear, Charles Duhig, and so many others have been saying for years. The most reliable way to break a habit isn't discipline. It never was. It's the disruption of your routines. And here are three principles from behavioral science, the science of behavior change, worth keeping in mind to apply this principle that the most reliable way to break a habit isn't disciplining yourself into it, but disrupting your current routines. So, how

Environment Beats Intention

4:32

so? Principle number one your environment, guys, will always beat your intentions and your discipline. Like always. Forget about it. Your environment will always beat your discipline sooner than later. So stop buying that milk, and note yourself. It's your best strategy to disrupt, to redesign your environment and by doing so disrupt your own routine. Right? If the milk is not there at 7 a.m. in the morning, I'm not gonna be driving to the store to just get that milk. I'm just gonna get get on with my life, with my day, and forget about it. You can't out willpower your surroundings, guys. You just can't. At some point, very often, you'll be losing. So stop trying and change the surroundings, and you will win every time. So that is principle number one. Environment will always win. So design your environment to support your intentions, not to work against your intentions.

Break The Habit Loop

5:42

Second principle is break the cue, the routine. Stop trying to break the habit. What do I mean here? Well, habit researchers, behavior science researchers figured out long ago that a habit loop works, has three elements to work really well. It has a cue or a trigger or reminder, something that reminds you to do that thing. You see something, you hear something, you feel something, and you do it, right? Then the routine or a sequence of steps, like uh, you know, I I make my coffee and I pour coconut milk. So that is the routine. I grab, I open up the fridge, I grab the milk, I pour the coffee and I drink it. And then reward. And reward for me is the coffee that tastes really nice, that I love, right? So q routine reward. In every habit, there is this loop. There is a cue, there is a routine or a set of steps, and there is a reward. And the more sort of habituated, the more similar it is every time, the easier it is for your brain to habituate at it, and the more it will repeat. And also the bigger the reward, for example, the payoff, the outcome, the stickier the habit as well. And so when you're trying to quit to break any habit again, especially the hard one, most people will try to willpower through the routine with the same cues, the same rewards, leaving everything else completely intact. And that's why so many people fail, and that's why it doesn't work. So instead, ask yourself can you change your routine, your morning routine, or other routine entirely? Obviously, you know, leaving and going to another country will be like next level luck. But if you can't, uh think through your routine. Can you get your coffee somewhere different? Can you start drinking tea? Can you walk a route that doesn't pass the coffee shop? Can you leave that milk at the store? Not work, not uh walk in that aisle where they sell that milk, go to a different store, right? What part of the loop can you disrupt, replace, remove? Can you remove the reward, perhaps? If it's a feeling, probably not that much. Or you can uh each time you drink coffee, do something that you really hate. I don't know, splash cold water or put your hands into cold water or do push-ups and or burpees if you hate burpees, right? Can you disrupt the whole thing? Either the trigger, again, no coconut milk or no coffee or routine, like walking uh through a different route, not seeing that coffee shop at all. What else? What can you disrupt? That is principle number two. Don't try to just break the habit cold. See where you can disrupt the loop, the cue, the routine or sequence of steps, or the reward.

Ulysses Contracts And Friction

8:40

And principle number three: use a Ulysses contract. What is the Ulysses contract? Ulysses was a sailor, and he was supposed to sail by this like sirens who were really pretty. It's Greek methodology, they were really pretty creatures of the sea, and they used to sink, to lure, uh, to attract the sailors towards this rocky part where the sailors would die, and I don't know, they would eat them or something. But the point is, Ulysses decided, hey, I'm gonna get smarter. I know I won't be able to overcome Siren's call with my willpower or discipline. But what am I gonna do? I'm gonna ask my sailors to uh tie me to like this pole on the boat. I'm also gonna ask them ourselves to put backs in their ears so we all like just don't hear it. He knew in the future he won't be able to resist that, so he put friction in place so he couldn't even hear it. And so the whole thing, the whole problem disappeared without any superhero strengths. Don't rely on the in-the-moment willpower. You pre-commit, you create or remove friction to accommodate the behavior that you want. Like, want to eat less of something, less of coconut milk, leave it at the store, take a different aisle, make it hard to get. Want to do more of something, then put it where you can't miss it. Tell someone, make it harder not to do it than to do it. Like a friend of mine gives me a ride to the gym, and I was saying, Hey, I'm so grateful to you that you do this, you know, you do me a favor every morning. And he's like, No, I actually do a favor to myself because every time I want to skip the gym, now I think, hey, you can't skip the gym because you have Angela to pick up. You promised you're gonna show up, right? And that is the kind of adding friction or removing friction or adding accountability that allow you to not have more discipline and willpower and still do the behavior a lot more consistently. Right? So here is what the behavioral science and the best habit formation behavior change experts have to teach us. They're very clear on one thing. People who consistently do hard things aren't more disciplined than you, they're better at design. Although I must admit that the more you do hard things that require you know discipline or willpower overcoming a little bit of friction, the better you get at it. But all of it is in a very short and limited supply. And you want to use your willpower and discipline on things that are really worth it, not on resisting coconut milk in your fridge. So people who do hard things more often, they just design better. They design their environment, their schedule, their defaults, people, places, things. So the right behavior is the path of least resistance, right? The right behavior is the path of least resistance, the things that you want to do more of. And the wrong one, the habits, the behaviors you're trying to quit to break, the stickiest ones, and the wrong ones are the path of the most friction, right? So the right behavior is the path of least resistance, and the wrong behavior is the path of most friction. Because willpower and discipline, guys, it's always in the short supply. And it's the first thing to go when your life gets busy, stressful, tired, you're alone, blood sugar, distracted, underslept, and overwhelmed. That's the first thing to go. Don't count on it. Design around it. So the takeaway and the most important question of today's episode is what habit are you trying to quit right now? And what's one thing in your environment that's keeping it alive? What's your coconut milk? Right? Let's recap the principles and then after you finish listening to this podcast, just stop for a moment and ask yourself, like, what's my coconut milk? What's keeping this sticky, hard to quit to break habit

Recap Plus Your One Question

13:15

alive? Before we jump into the recap, guys, don't forget to share this podcast episode with someone who you know is struggling with the habit of behavior they've been trying to quit maybe for years. So share this podcast with them. Help them to have it easier. Like the best behavioral scientists and researchers and habit experts would give this podcast to them as a gift. And then share, rate, review this podcast so we can reach more people, so we together can break more habits and build more good ones, the ones that serve us and our future a lot better. So, to recap, what do we have here? Number one, environment will always will over your discipline and your best intentions, right? Your environment will always win. So design for it to help you to break the behavior that you don't want to do anymore. Second, break the cue, the routine, change the reward. Don't try to break the habit, just telling yourself, I'm just gonna drink coffee with my milk later. No, remove the coffee. Well, not well, maybe not the coffee, but remove the milk and maybe the coffee, you know, if you're trying to stop drinking that much coffee. And the third one, use Ulysses contract. Add more friction to the behavior you want to do less of, and remove friction or add accountability to the behavior you want to do more of. And that's it for today, guys. Like, what's your coconut milk? What's keeping that habit that you're trying to break alive? Thank you guys for listening. Thank you for tuning in. Till next time, keep growing and keep getting better at breaking those habits that don't serve you and don't serve your best.