{"id":563306,"date":"2026-08-09T00:50:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-09T00:50:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/563306\/"},"modified":"2026-08-09T00:50:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-09T00:50:10","slug":"former-drug-addict-and-criminal-dr-paul-wood-on-why-quitting-a-bad-habit-is-not-enough-ask-me-anything-with-paula-bennett","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/563306\/","title":{"rendered":"Former drug addict and criminal Dr Paul Wood on why quitting a bad habit is not enough – Ask Me Anything with Paula Bennett"},"content":{"rendered":"

Speaking to Paula Bennett on the Ask Me Anything<\/a> podcast, Wood says the difference between failure and success often lies in positive incentivisation.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou need something aspirational to be moving towards,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

A former drug addict, Wood says focusing on the negative consequences of his addiction didn\u2019t help him kick the habit. <\/p>\n

What did help was immersing himself in something he couldn\u2019t reconcile with his drug addiction.<\/p>\n

\u201cI found education, and education wasn\u2019t compatible with it.\u201d <\/p>\n

Wood says pouring his energy into learning offered purpose, achievement and the respect he had previously sought in destructive places.<\/p>\n

\u201cStudy gave me a vehicle for that experience of, \u2018Oh, this is what it\u2019s like to have other people proud of me\u2019, like my dad, for example, and not have to have stuff hidden.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe idea of focusing on 21 days is to shrink the horizon and go, \u2018Well, I can try something new for 21 days. I can do that\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf it really does positively impact, you\u2019ve built enough momentum that now you can carry on for the sort of 90 days it takes to actually solidify a habit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wood regularly runs the experiments himself, keeping the practices that prove useful and abandoning those that do not.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Rather than expecting perfection, Wood says the goal is to keep making progress in areas that genuinely matter.<\/p>\n

He says this is particularly important for parents worried about teenagers engaging in risky behaviour to keep in mind.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you want them to stop doing something, you need them to find something else to replace it with that\u2019s more positive.\u201d<\/p>\n

Listen to the full episode<\/a> for more on:<\/p>\n

Why teenagers\u2019 peer groups can outweigh their parents\u2019 influence The relationship exercise that reveals who deserves more of your energy Why achieving your biggest goal may not make you happier for long<\/p>\n

Ask Me Anything<\/a> is an NZ Herald podcast hosted by former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett. New episodes are available every second Sunday.<\/p>\n

You can follow the podcast at iHeartRadio<\/a>, Apple Podcasts<\/a>, Spotify<\/a> or wherever you get your podcasts. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Speaking to Paula Bennett on the Ask Me Anything podcast, Wood says the difference between failure and success…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":563307,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[48084,95,32758,40923,48052,15435,57197,12974,21137,1952,3401,23966,156,121,2740,34393,185,5829,14909,111,139,5006,69,90,17357,52990,38861,17944,16513,30509,312,1324,28355,4276,102,1339,4883],"class_list":["post-563306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-addict","tag-and","tag-anything","tag-ask","tag-attempts","tag-bad","tag-bennett","tag-change","tag-criminal","tag-dr","tag-drug","tag-enough","tag-entertainment","tag-fail","tag-former","tag-habit","tag-is","tag-many","tag-me","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-not","tag-nz","tag-on","tag-paul","tag-paula","tag-psychologist","tag-quitting","tag-reason","tag-replacing","tag-says","tag-stop","tag-trying","tag-why","tag-with","tag-without","tag-wood"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=563306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563306\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/563307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=563306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=563306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=563306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}