Speaking to Paula Bennett on the Ask Me Anything podcast, Wood says the difference between failure and success often lies in positive incentivisation.
“You need something aspirational to be moving towards,” he says.
A former drug addict, Wood says focusing on the negative consequences of his addiction didn’t help him kick the habit.
What did help was immersing himself in something he couldn’t reconcile with his drug addiction.
“I found education, and education wasn’t compatible with it.”
Wood says pouring his energy into learning offered purpose, achievement and the respect he had previously sought in destructive places.
“Study gave me a vehicle for that experience of, ‘Oh, this is what it’s like to have other people proud of me’, like my dad, for example, and not have to have stuff hidden.”
He says the positive replacement principle can apply to everyday goals. These might include trying to exercise more, drink less, improve diet or spend less time scrolling.
In his latest book, Better Never Stops, Wood encourages readers to treat change as a series of three-week experiments rather than making intimidating lifelong commitments.
“The idea of focusing on 21 days is to shrink the horizon and go, ‘Well, I can try something new for 21 days. I can do that’.”
Wood says a three-week period gives people enough time to notice whether a new behaviour is improving their life and build some initial momentum.
“If it really does positively impact, you’ve built enough momentum that now you can carry on for the sort of 90 days it takes to actually solidify a habit.”
Wood regularly runs the experiments himself, keeping the practices that prove useful and abandoning those that do not.
He believes this approach avoids the all-or-nothing thinking that can cause people to give up after a missed workout, an unhealthy meal or another evening lost to their phone.
Rather than expecting perfection, Wood says the goal is to keep making progress in areas that genuinely matter.
He says this is particularly important for parents worried about teenagers engaging in risky behaviour to keep in mind.
“If you want them to stop doing something, you need them to find something else to replace it with that’s more positive.”
Listen to the full episode for more on:
Why teenagers’ peer groups can outweigh their parents’ influence The relationship exercise that reveals who deserves more of your energy Why achieving your biggest goal may not make you happier for long
Ask Me Anything is an NZ Herald podcast hosted by former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett. New episodes are available every second Sunday.
You can follow the podcast at iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.