Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Join coach Molly Watts on the Alcohol Minimalist Podcast to explore mindful drinking, behavior change, and mental wellness. This show offers science-based strategies to help you break drinking habits and overcome anxiety linked to alcohol use. Whether you're an adult child of alcoholics or seeking peace with your drinking, discover tools for lasting change without shame or guilt. New episodes every Monday and Thursday.
Becoming an alcohol minimalist means:
Choosing how to include alcohol in our lives following low-risk guidelines.
Freedom from anxiety around alcohol use.
Less alcohol without feeling deprived.
Using the power of our own brains to overcome our past patterns and choose peace.
The Alcohol Minimalist Podcast explores the science behind alcohol and analyzes physical and mental wellness to empower choice. You have the power to change your relationship with alcohol, you are not sick, broken and it's not your genes!
This show is intended for educational purposes and does not constitute medical advice. If you are physically dependent on alcohol, please seek medical help to reduce your drinking.
Hey. Welcome to Think Thursday from the Alcohol Minimalist Podcast. Think Thursday is all about your beautiful, brilliant human brain. We're talking neuroscience. We're talking behavior change.
Speaker 1:We are talking about your mindset. Are you ready to get started? Let's go. Well, hello, and welcome to Think Thursday from The Alcohol Minimalist. Think Thursdays are short episodes.
Speaker 1:They are focused on neuroscience and behavior change, brain health, and your mindset. And all of this is to help support a peaceful relationship with alcohol if that's something that you're still working on or if you're someone like me that's learning to create or live in an alcohol minimalist lifestyle for the rest of my life, I've got a lot of other things that I'm working on and so behavior change is still something that I am deeply interested in and always come back to regarding my mindset. Today, we are talking about something that is going to sound maybe on the surface a little bit contradictory because if you've been here at all or listened to the podcast, you know that I'm constantly talking about taking small steps and being consistent in those actions and consistency is key to behavior change. Today, we're talking about novelty and why your brain loves it, how it can actually help rewire old habits, and why summer, if you're here in the in the Northern Hemisphere like I am, might be the ideal time to tap into novelty. This episode is about getting unstuck not by overhauling your routines completely, but by gently refreshing them so they work for your brain and not against it.
Speaker 1:Let's start with the neuroscience. You know I'm a science nerd, so we're gonna jump right into it. Novelty activates your brain's dopamine dopaminergic reward system. Say that fast three times. Regions like the ventral tegmental area and the nucleus accumbens light up when you encounter something new or unexpected, And that activation leads to increased motivation, focus, and emotional salience.
Speaker 1:And Doctor. Andrew Huberman, who I've mentioned a few times in recent weeks, who is a neuroscientist at Stanford, has explained how novelty, when combined with intention, fosters neuroplasticity. And we all know that neuroplasticity is our brain's ability to change and adapt. It's how we rewire our neural pathways, and it's really the gift of our beautiful, brilliant human brains. And that's why a small change, like a new walking path or a slightly different morning ritual, can help reset habitual thinking.
Speaker 1:And here's the paradox with the brain, of course. The brain craves efficiency. It wants to conserve energy, So it loves automated habits. It loves patterns. And the challenge is that some of those patterns no longer serve us.
Speaker 1:Right? Especially when it comes to our habitual drinking or some of our emotional coping strategies, and that's where intentional novelty can help us, not as a distraction, but as a disruption, an opportunity to break free from what's on autopilot. And here's why summer, at least again, if you're in the Northern Hemisphere and for my Southern Hemisphere listeners, I think you can use this in the winter too. Right? It's just really a difference in seasons.
Speaker 1:When things shift, use what shifts to disrupt what you normally do. For here for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, summer disrupts our routines naturally. School schedules change. There's more light. We vacation and socialize differently.
Speaker 1:And even if you don't have big travel plans, the feel of summer is distinct. That shift is a powerful opportunity. You can either slide into old seasonal habits, more drinks on the patio, maybe spontaneous events that spiral into overconsumption, or you can take advantage of the disruption to reinvent your stories. Habit expert Doctor. Wendy Wood explains in her book Good Habits, Bad Habits that context change is one of the most powerful tools for changing behavior.
Speaker 1:When your environment shifts, the cue behavior loop gets interrupted naturally, and your brain becomes more open to trying something new. So rather than resisting the change in pace that summer brings, use it. Frame it as a mini mini reinvention lab, a window to build something different in terms of your habits. Here's three ways that I would suggest to use the novelty of summer to reinvent your stories or to rewrite the narrative that you have around your habit patterns. Number one, shift your sensory cues.
Speaker 1:Change what your brain sees, your brain hears, your brain smells, or tastes in your regular routines. Try things like a different walking path. Sounds pretty simple. Sounds pretty pretty, like, if you think about it. Right?
Speaker 1:How often for those of you that walk on a daily basis, and I can speak to this, how many times do you just go out the door and walk the very same path that you walked every single day? Change it up. Go the opposite direction. Go a different way. And just that little change in habit will make you see different things, hear different things.
Speaker 1:You also might try rearranging some of your favorite spaces. I love the idea of setting up an outdoor work area space. Recently, my son set up a table and chairs outside with a with an umbrella, and I love working outside. Everybody knows I love the sunshine. But rearrange a space and and use an opportunity to shift up how you typically work, where you typically read, where you typically work out, you could work out outside.
Speaker 1:Right? Shift the things that you taste. I love summer as a great opportunity to try new mocktails, new drinks of choice, and I think that it's a missed opportunity if we're not trying different things during the summer to to extend our palate and just do different tastes instead of our regular routines. Try different music during the the summer. There there are some great, upbeat.
Speaker 1:I have a wonderful I'll I'll link it in the show notes. I haven't I don't think I've ever put this out there for the podcast. I have a really fun dopamine driving playlist, and I will link it in the show notes. And it's it's a great opportunity to shift those sensory cues during the summer. Sensory novelty pulls your brain out of its autopilot state and opens it up for mindfulness, and that is so important in terms of behavior change.
Speaker 1:It can be especially helpful when we are trying to break associations like alcohol always, you know, being the first thing I do when I get home from work for having a drink right after dinner or a drink always being the way that I relax with TV. These are sensory novelty is really the number one way to help break that and disrupt that association. Number two, run mini experiments instead of making big grand plans. Alright? Mini experiments, not big grand plans.
Speaker 1:Novelty doesn't have to be some big dramatic shift. Try small, intentional experiments that allow you to observe rather than to pressure yourself. For example, you know, say to yourself, for three days, I'm going to replace my usual evening drink with a new iced tea or lemonade and tea combination, I'm gonna go for a walk, or I'm gonna write down exactly how I feel when I have this drink. This weekend, instead of doing my usual of Friday night wine with Netflix, I will try a new hobby, or I will cook a new recipe. Little tiny intentions.
Speaker 1:One day. One you know, three days. Instead of saying, okay. I am going to, you know, give this up completely for the rest of my life. These micro shifts create novelty and give your brain a new feedback loop, one that rewards exploration instead of deprivation.
Speaker 1:Right? You're not missing out on something else, you're trying something new. Number three, reframe familiar rituals. And this is where the emotional story around habits gets rewritten. If summer means barbecues, lake trips, porch cocktails, you don't have to cancel the whole thing, right?
Speaker 1:But you can reframe it. Host the gathering, but change something different. Make it a brunch and don't serve, you know, don't serve alcohol. Serve coffee and serve, mock mock mimosas Instead of focusing on, you know, drinking beer at the barbecue and being really focused on that being like the the highlight of the barbecue, bring a playlist. Bring a a lawn game.
Speaker 1:Bring some sort of special alcohol free mocktail, like I said. Add a new sensory layer that doesn't involve alcohol. And this approach draws on the work of doctor Ethan Cross, and I recently became became aware of the book Chatter. I haven't finished it yet, but I I started reading it. I just love it.
Speaker 1:And he studies how we regulate our internal narratives. And he found that even slight reframes of our experience, especially when novel, when they're new, help reduce that re rumination and the emotional react reactivity, meaning that that feeling of deprivation or the feeling of missing out. When we try something new and it helps, it helps if we tell a better story about our choices. So when you bring novelty into a familiar setting, you're not just creating variety, but you're giving your inner narrator something to work with. Right?
Speaker 1:So you've gotta look for and tell the story, reframe that ritual for yourself, and change your mental chatter about what's happening. Now you might be thinking, but, Molly, you're always saying consistency is the key to changing drinking habits. Isn't novelty the opposite of that? And I totally get it. But here's the nuance.
Speaker 1:Consistency and novelty aren't mutually exclusive. In fact, they are a powerful combination. Consistency gives your brain structure and reliability. It helps automate supportive behaviors. We have to have things on autopilot.
Speaker 1:Our brains would become overloaded if we couldn't commit things to have it. But the flip side of that is that novelty reengages our intention, our attention, and our motivation, and it helps us prevent burnout or complacency. Think of consistency as the container and novelty as the spark that keeps it meaningful. You can still show up consistently and introduce small twists. Try journaling in a different location in your house or outside, like I said.
Speaker 1:Add one different question to your reflection practice. Air your usual habit like your morning routine with a new sensory cue. This way, you're reinforcing the neural pathways of consistency while still keeping your brain curious and elastic, which is what keeps habit change sustainable over time. So as summer unfolds, I want to challenge you. What's one small novelty you can introduce this week?
Speaker 1:What part of your routine can get a light refresh, not as a rejection of who you are, but as an invitation to expand? Your brain loves novelty, and when you offer it mindfully, it becomes a catalyst, not just for pleasure, but for progress. Thanks so much for joining me here on ThinkThursday. If you want more tools like this, check out the show notes, look for related episodes. And of course, you can always visit me over at www.mollywatts.com and check out the resources there.
Speaker 1:If this episode resonated with you, I would love for you to share it with a friend or you can leave a review. Leaving reviews is just a small kindness that you can do helps the show, be found by more listeners, and that is just helping us do better things, good things out in the world. Until next time, my friends, choose peace, and I will see you on Monday.