How to Get New and Better Habits

Summary

The Dr. Laura Podcast: "How to Get New and Better Habits"

Host: Dr. Laura Schlessinger
Date: July 5, 2026
Episode Focus: Practical advice and personal insights on how to build new, better habits, why change is hard, and what really drives lasting personal growth.

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Episode Overview

In this solo episode, Dr. Laura Schlessinger takes an in-depth look at habit formation—why it’s difficult, how to break old patterns, and what really works for meaningful, long-term change. Drawing from her own experiences (from learning tennis to changing her eating habits), Dr. Laura delivers tough-love wisdom, clear steps, and motivational anecdotes, all with her signature directness and humor.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Challenge of Creating New Habits

• Difficulty of Change:

  • Dr. Laura opens with the acknowledgment that forming new habits isn't easy. "Every time you try to change like a magnet, you’re drawn into old habits." — Dr. Laura (02:28)

• Example from Tennis:

  • She shares a story about learning tennis. Despite lessons, reverting to old habits was common when trying to win points instead of focusing on technique.

    "You have to decide what your goal is. Is your goal to learn how to hit the ball correctly and accurately, or is it to win the point? ... If that's your goal, there's no point in taking lessons." (04:14)

• Application:

  • The story illustrates the foundational question: Are you trying to win now, or are you trying to get better for the long run?

2. Understanding the Root of Bad Habits

• Self-Inquiry:

  • Dr. Laura encourages listeners to dig deeply into why their habits exist, using the example of not waking up early.

  • She demonstrates a root-cause analysis by repeatedly asking “because?”:

    “Why do you not wake up early enough? I'm tired. You're tired? Because I don't have enough sleep. You don't have enough sleep because I stayed up late. ...You can't finish them because I schedule more things than I actually can accomplish." (08:32)

• Chain Reaction:

  • Most bad habits are interconnected; unraveling them requires tracing back to where the cycle starts.

3. The Role of "Because" and Honest Self-Assessment

• Emotional Drivers:

  • Many bad habits exist as coping mechanisms for negative emotions—boredom, loneliness, sadness, anxiety.

    "I love the word because. Because you notice I spend a lot of time on the air with becauses. That's how we get really to know ourselves." (10:40)

4. Commitment & The Power of Small Steps

• Starting Small:

  • True change happens incrementally. Dr. Laura advocates for small, attainable adjustments:

    “If you're having half a pint of ice cream at night because you feel bad...Get down to a heaping tablespoon, get down to a teaspoon.” (13:40)

    "If you want to be able to do 50 pushups a day, do 5, 10 times, spread it out." (14:33)

• Personal Anecdotes:

  • She shares her aversion to mushy cookies and vegetables, illustrating that taste (and habits) can change with time and persistence.

5. Follow Through: The Real Difference Maker

• Intention vs. Action:

  • Good intentions are common, follow-through is rare.

• Self-Esteem and Achievement:

  • Dr. Laura describes how genuine self-esteem is a byproduct of recognizing your own follow-through and accomplishments, not external compliments.

    “Self esteem is when I impress the hell out of myself and I stand there and go, ‘Who’s your mama?’” (17:11)

• Facing Fears and Discomfort:

  • Changing habits means being uncomfortable and pushing through fear, illustrated by a rock-climbing story:

    “That’s how you get self-esteem. … I got to the top, I was impressed. I can do this. I’m flexible. When I got down ... He said, ‘Would you like to do this again?’ I said, ‘No, I’m good. I did it. I’m good.’” (19:18)

6. The Importance of Patience

• Lasting Change Takes Time:

  • Every attempt at change is a test of patience, especially when cravings or urges strike.

  • The process may mean repeatedly reducing (for example, halving the cigarettes smoked each day) and celebrating progress along the way.

    “You have to be uncomfortable, you have to be patient, because it takes a very long time to shift into a new way of being." (20:57)

7. Building Self-Esteem through Action

• Impress Yourself:

  • Lasting satisfaction comes from doing hard things and following through, not from others’ praise.

  • Procrastinating may feel good in the moment but leads to lingering regret; action brings long-term pride.

    "You have to impress yourself. You don’t get self-esteem from somebody else telling you you’re wonderful… Self esteem is when I impress the hell out of myself." (16:32)

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• “You have to decide what your goal is. Is your goal to learn how to hit the ball correctly and accurately or is it to win the point?” — Dr. Laura (04:14)
• “So you really need to understand the point of the bad habits. And they all have a point.” (09:03)
• “I love the word because. …That’s how we get really to know ourselves.” (10:40)
• “You want to be able to do 50 push-ups a day? Do 5, 10 times, spread it out.” (14:33)
• “You can change. You can get hooked on your habits. Your new habits can become habits.” (15:44)
• “Self esteem is when I impress the hell out of myself and I stand there and go, ‘Who’s your mama?’” (17:11)
• “If you want to change habits, you have to face your fears. You have to be uncomfortable, you have to be patient… It takes time and patience.” (20:57)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 02:28 — Opening question: How do you get new and better habits?
• 04:14 — Tennis lesson story: "You have to decide what your goal is..."
• 08:32 — Dissecting a bad habit: “Why do you not wake up early enough?”
• 10:40 — The power of “because” and self-inquiry.
• 13:40 — The importance of small steps in habit change.
• 15:44 — Personal stories about changing tastes and habits.
• 16:32 — Difference between external validation and self-esteem.
• 19:18 — Rock-climbing as a metaphor for facing fear and earning accomplishment.
• 20:57 — Final advice: patience, discomfort, and incremental change.

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Tone and Style

Dr. Laura is straightforward, witty, and occasionally blunt, using personal stories and analogies (tennis, rock climbing, cookies) to illustrate the grit, honesty, and self-accountability needed for personal change. She balances tough love with encouragement, urging listeners to commit to incremental progress and to impress themselves through action and perseverance.

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Takeaway

Forming new habits is an uncomfortable, long-term process, but anyone can do it by uncovering the root causes of their bad habits, starting small, celebrating incremental wins, and, most importantly, following through—because real self-esteem is something you earn from yourself.

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If you want to change your life, Dr. Laura says: Be honest about why you do what you do, commit to small manageable steps, expect discomfort, and follow through until impressing yourself becomes the best habit of all.

Transcript

[Dr. Laura]

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[Dr. Laura]

Our question today is how do you get new and better habits? It's not easy. It's not easy. Every time you try to change like a magnet, you're drawn into old habits. Easiest visual I can come up with is playing tennis on and off for brief periods of time. Very brief. Like a month over my Lifespan. I've taken tennis lessons. First of all, every tennis teacher, coach, whatever, has an entirely different view of how you should swing at the ball. That's the first thing I've noticed. It's like what I'm supposed to do, what, with the face of the racket. I'm not supposed to walk into it. I mean, really,

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[Dr. Laura]

So. But I would take the lessons. The best lessons I ever had was from this. I swear. He was 100 years old. He clearly had a profound drinking problem. And there was in the building that I had my clinic in. At one point, when I had a clinic, they had a tennis court. Not a great one, but a usable one. And somebody said, here's a phone number for this guy. He lives in the neighborhood and he can give lessons. He was once an incredible player. Well, you could tell that because as I said, he was at least 150 years old. It was clear he had a drinking problem. He didn't move much on the court, but he could place the ball on a dime anywhere. So at one time in his life he must have been incredible. So I'm taking lessons with him. And then I would try to play somebody else and I would try to remember what I was taught. And when I couldn't make it work immediately. You know, it takes a while for new habits to set in all I would go back to old ones just to get the ball over the net. And I talked to him about it and he said, you have to decide what your goal is. Is your goal to learn how to hit the ball correctly and accurately, or is it to win the point? And I said, well, the point is winning points. And he said, well, if that's your goal, there's no point in taking lessons. Point. And I said, you're right. Point. So then I would allow myself to not win time after time after time again. But my stroke improved immensely and eventually I would win points and points more consistently because I had a. My four matics were better. Same thing with shooting pool. I constantly have to remind myself that every time you climb to a higher level and start learning how to put English, what kind of English, it's not only where you hit the ball, then it's the speed. Oh God, it's very hard. And when I try to immediately use what I've learned, I miss shots.

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[Dr. Laura]

However, over the last six months I'm more consistent in being able to drop balls. So you have to decide what your goal is. And for a lot of you with bad habits, your goal is just to feel good right now. So you'll eat or drink or something, go pick somebody up at a bar and have sex, whatever it is. Not study, not get up in time. So you have to decide what your ultimate intention is or you have to decide what the ultimate point is to changing the habit. So the first thing you do is something like I just did with you and just decide, why do you have the bad habit? Why do you not wake up early enough? I'm tired. You're tired? Because I don't have enough sleep. You don't have enough sleep because I stayed up late. You stayed up late because I had so many things to do. You had so many things to do Because I can't finish them. You can't finish them because I schedule more things than I actually can accomplish in the day. So everything's attached. So if we start at the bottom and say, let's not schedule too many ridiculous things in one day, for God's sake, then we can go to bed earlier, then we can get a good night's sleep, then we can feel rested in the morning, and then we can get up early. So you just work backwards. So you really need to understand the point of the bad habits. And they all have a point. I do this so I don't have to be vulnerable. I do this so I ultimately won't be scared. I do this so nobody will ask me. There's always a reason. So take yourself back step by step to get to the point of the bad habit. Now, when you want to change, how do you change? Well, first thing you have to do, as I said, acknowledge why you have the bad habit in the first place. For example, as I said, the eating stuff, it tastes good. What happens after you eat it? And it tastes good. I feel bad. What happens after you feel bad? I get depressed. What happens after you get depressed? I eat bad to make myself feel better at the moment. And off we go. So let's look. I'm feeling bad, and that's why I'm eating this. I'm lonely. I'm sad. I'm frustrated with Blankety Blank. I'm anxious, whatever it is. Well, then we look at because. Because. I love the word because. Because you notice I spend a lot of time on the air with becauses. That's how we get really to know ourselves. So I'm sad about being lonely at night. Make believe that's what's in your head. So I eat because sitting there with ice cream, putting my feet up, putting something stupid in a movie, I just feel good right now. Are you willing to pay the price? Ill health, fat, dissatisfied with yourself. I mean, the list of what comes from that moment of ice cream with your feet up in a movie is huge. So you have to decide the Price is too great or you won't change. Now I tend to be a bit impatient and if I'm going to change something, learn something, I want to be able to master it immediately. Not too patient with that. I've gotten better. But it's not my best quality. And one of the reasons it's not my best quality is that in general, if I want to do something new, I usually can do it well within a short amount of time. I'm smart, I'm hard working, I'm perseverant, I'm focused. When you put all those qualities together. And I'll spend the time, I'll do it over and over till I get it fast. So when I have trouble doing what I normally can do, like what's wrong, which, which one of my circuits is blown. So I understand all the feelings involved and invested in. Generally I recommend people start

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small, do

[Dr. Laura]

the thing in the direction, but small. I even have people go backwards. This is for example, if you're having half a pint of ice cream at night because you feel bad. Let's see, half a pint would be a cup. Half, half a cup. Half, half a cup. Get down to a heaping tablespoon, get down to a teaspoon. It's like I used to talk about. And I don't, I don't even anymore because I lost interest in them. But I used to like Oreo cookies or I forget who used it. Mother's. Mother's cookies used to have oatmeal raisin Crisp. Crisp. I don't like the mushy ones. They're annoying. I don't know why anybody. If you can eat a cookie, it should crunch. Okay, I'm sorry, there's a rule, it should crunch. If it doesn't crunch, forget it.

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So I used to have two.

[Dr. Laura]

Not one, not three, two. And I could keep to two if I had a weight problem or something. Guaranteed I could keep to one. So you really need to be committed. Committed. You want to be able to do 50 push ups a day. Do 5, 10 times, spread it out. If you want to switch to an entirely new diet, add one goodie thing after another. Spend a week with, okay, one extra vegetable. I mean, I actually like avocado now. I have it like 16 times a day. Actually three. I'm lying. I have it with breakfast, with my scrambled eggs, I have it for lunch and whatever sandwich I'm having. And I have it for dinner and a salad. I just love avocado now and for 99% of my life I went, I'm not eating a vegetable that's mushy. I don't eat cookies that are mushy. I will not have a veggie that's mushy. That's it. You want me to eat a veggie? It's got to be crisps. Crisp, crisp, crisp. And then you try it because somebody said it's very good for your digestion, okay? And now I love it. So you can change. You can get hooked on your habits. Your new habits can become habits. I mean, there are things I cannot do now. I just can't do them because I've developed new habits and I can't go backwards. I can't do it. It's funny how that works when you really give up smoking and somebody smokes in the room. Some people just have an adverse reaction. Other people go, sort of depends, I guess. So you need to have very clear intentions and to follow through. And that's where 99% of people fail. You know, follow through. And I know so many people personally who have great intentions and do not follow through. That's it. And there's nothing you can do for that. That's really a quality of the character of the person. I'm a follow througher. I can't say because why? Because it's my character, because it's my value system. Because I like the feeling of looking back and seeing that I followed through. I have work to do. I'm proud of myself. When I finish, I like that feeling. So I go for the feeling I like because it spreads out over time. You see, if I just procrastinate and don't do it now, and I'm comfortable now, then I spend forever being regretful I didn't do it. Having it on my back that I have to do it. I don't like that. I like do it. And then for the rest of your life you look back with pride. A lot of you wonder how you get self esteem. That's how you do it. You have to impress yourself you don't get self esteem from somebody else telling you you're wonderful. A lot of people give me nice compliments and I appreciate it tremendously, but it doesn't give me self esteem. I'm gratified that my work has been useful to people, but it doesn't give me self esteem. Self esteem is when I impress the hell out of myself and I stand there and go, who's your mama? Yeah, like the time when we showed you pictures, my friend and I climbed a boulder. Now Granted, I was hooked up. There were ropes everywhere. I couldn't have fallen if I made an effort to. But I tell you when you're climbing the boulder, you're not aware that you're hooked up. And there are lines because you're not being pulled up. You're climbing, so you're not being pulled. Therefore you don't have the impression that you're safe. And I had my friend do it first so I could watch technically how it was done, because that gives me more security when I have a visual of what to expect and anticipate. Except he went up the wall like a salamander. I was really pissed. I was really pissed because there's no way I'm move anywhere that fast. He looked like a freaking salamander. So when it was my turn, I was scared. And I was sitting there going, this is dumb. Why am I doing this? And then I answered the question. Because the boulder's there, and this is a cool thing to have done the rest of my life. I have a picture of a little speck of a person climbing up this huge boulder. So when I got to the top, I was too far to the right. So the guy's yelling, go to your left. So up I got sideways, I wasn't thrilled with because, you know, you put your toe into tiny little crevices. You put your fingers in tiny little crevices, and you don't use your hands because you can't use your hands. Basically, you put your toes in tiny little crevices and then stand up. Now, fortunately, since I do so much leg power work, that was not hard. As a matter of fact, ridiculously flexible. So I have my toe up at about my shoulder height and then pushing, and I'm going, I'm impressed. I can do this. I'm flexible. So. And when I got down, the guy said, would you like to do this again? Since you guys did it so quickly, maybe the time is not up. Usually people take longer and they're crying and screaming and want to come down. Would you like to do it again? I said, no, I'm good. I did it. I'm good. That's how you get self esteem. You get off the thing, you go to lunch and you go, wow, I faced that fear. That was pretty scary. Would you do it again someday? Not right now. Right now I want lunch. Right now. I just want to be on terra firmament.

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So if you want to change habits,

[Dr. Laura]

you have to face your fears. You have to be uncomfortable, you have to be patient, because it takes a very long time to shift into a new way of being. If you're used to hitting a cigarette, you know, every half hour in your life, then that half hour is going to be a real test every time. And it takes time and patience. So maybe you cut the amount of cigarettes in half for the day and then you half that and half that and half that and start getting very impressed with yourself. I got to tell you, being impressed with yourself has a lot of power in keeping you focused because when you do what you know you're not supposed to be doing, you are not impressed with yourself. Anyway, that may be a little bit of a different take than you're used to. On the issue of habits, I do not have a habit of climbing boulders, but I do have a habit of taking on new challenges. And I do give an appraisal as to how reasonable it is for me to do considering all things size, weight, age, strength, sanity. My number

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Gonna go with C. Walmart. That is correct.

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I love not leaving my couch.

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