Michelle Segar, PhD. outlines how embracing imperfection can help you make better decisions, and it's about to get elevated

"Being flexible is not only adaptive for solving problems, it enhances our well-being." In this latest installment of You've Got This, behavioral change researcher and author Michelle Segar, PhD. shares what's inspired her professional research and career, the surprising things that "habiters" and "unhabiters" have in common, and some simple steps towards making better choices. Don't miss her answers below, along with announcing our next guests, Eric Martin and Kent Johnson of Black & Abroad.

Victoria: "How did you decide to center your career around research relating to sustainable behavioral self-regulation and participation?"

Michelle: "In 1994, while working toward my first master’s degree (in Kinesiology), I conducted a study to investigate whether twelve weeks of exercise would decrease anxiety and depressive symptoms among a group of cancer survivors. We randomized participants into two groups, one exercised while the other one did not. The initial results were as we hypothesized—?the exercisers showed significantly lower levels of both depression and anxiety than the control group. I thought that was the end of the story until the participants came back three months later to participate in focus groups

The results were stunning: When their commitment to our study ended, most of the participants stopped committing to their own exercise. When I asked this group of participants why they had stopped exercising, they all answered pretty much in the same way: they had to go back their real lives—working, taking care of the kids, aging parents.

"They had survived a life-threatening illness yet they didn’t feel comfortable committing to sustaining healthy lifestyles. I realized that something was very wrong with the way society had taught us to prioritize our own self-care. This was my big Ah-Ha! Moment, and it has guided my entire career ever since."?

I went on to earn a master’s degree in Health Behavior/Health Education and a Ph.D. in Psychology. Through research, grants from the NIH, and the health coaching I’ve been doing for almost 30 years, I’ve been studying the full set of barriers people face to sustaining self-care behaviors like exercise and healthy eating. Most importantly, my passion for learning how to help people overcome these barriers so their self-care behaviors can survive the complexity and unpredictability of the real world has never ceased."

Victoria: "In your new book?The Joy Choice, you outline the differences between individuals who might be "Habiters"—focused on a dependable schedule with structure —or "Unhabiters" who may be more improvisational, busy and unpredictable in their approach. What inspired your approach with the book, and what were some of the surprising findings you uncovered along the way?"

Michelle: "Popular thinking says everyone can form automatic habits for everything, yet, there’s actually very little research to suggest habit formation successfully produces changes in behavior that are sustained.

It’s easy to see that while habit formation can be great for simple behaviors that happen in a fixed, dependable context — like flossing your teeth after brushing — it doesn’t work with complex behaviors like eating and exercise, and it can’t work for many people in today’s quickly moving world. I created the habiter vs. unhabiter concept as a fun and accessible way to help people be more self-compassionate, and to think more critically about whether the behavior change strategies they try are actually a good fit with their underlying personality and the realities of their daily lives.

I wrote The Joy Choice to help unhabiters. or those who find trouble with setting routines or habits, find the behavior change strategy that science suggests will set us up for sustainable success. It turns out that we can all access something we’ve already got: executive functioning, our brain’s innate self-management system. I am awed by executive functioning, especially how awesome and interesting the working memory executive function is, and how important cognitive flexibility is, too. Being flexible is not only adaptive for solving problems, it enhances our well-being. But it was important to me to design a decision tool that would support and strengthen our innate executive functions in ways that could go beyond just solving problems to enable us to do so in ways that align our choices with our greater values as we continuously improvise the many meaningful areas of our lives."

Victoria: "Whether someone is looking at making a decision big or small, how would you recommend approaching decision-making with joy?"

Michelle: "Absolutely. I call it POP!, which is an acronym for the three steps: Pause, Open up your options and play, and Pick the Joy Choice. It’s not only easy to remember, it was designed by what science suggests supports our brain’s executive functioning, which is critical for making good decisions, especially challenging ones.

• Step 1. Pause: Pause before moving toward solving your current problem. While reflecting ancient wisdom, intentionally pausing and taking a few slow breaths supports working memory, helping us focus and create the space we need to get some perspective on the problem we’re facing. Talking to ourselves using our own name and use the second-person term “you” at this point —??a science-based strategy called “distanced self-talk” —?helps us detach from the chatter in our head and harness our attention for step 2.
• Step 2. Open up your options and play. In this step, we open up and play with the options in low-stakes, self-compassionate ways. This step is the antidote to the black-and-white thinking that tends to sabotage good decision making. It replaces the stress and anxiety we often bring to problem solving with a playful curiosity about what’s possible. This type of flexible thinking doesn’t just support the aligned executive function, its considered essential to flourishing businesses and societies.
• Step 3. Pick the Joy Choice. After generating and evaluating the possible options in Step 2, we Pick the Joy Choice—?the perfect imperfect option that best addresses the specific problem and aligns with our greater goals and values. When our in-the-moment decision making is guided to by the science about supporting our executive functioning we will be more likely to create the flexible solutions that both fit the bill and help us contribute toward the people and projects we care most about.

"One of the things I’ve learned over the last three decades about helping people change their behavior and solve unanticipated in-the-moment problems is that when they learn how to align their choices with what matters most and use flexibility as a key tactic, they not only get better results they experience more meaning and joy doing it."

Follow Michelle on LinkedIn.

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Our next guests: Kent Johnson and Eric Martin

If you've got summer travel top-of-mind, you'll be as excited as I am to learn more about our next guests, Co-Founders Eric Martin and Kent Johnson of travel & lifestyle company Black & Abroad.

As Chief Creative Officer and Chief Strategy Officer, respectively, Eric and Kent have been building Black & Abroad content, experiences and ideas to life since 2015 with a focus on supporting Black travelers and building community across continents and countries. With that in mind, here's what I'll be asking them:

• Can you tell us about what kickstarted the creative collaboration that launched Black & Abroad?
• You recently launched the Black Elevation Map, an interactive map of the United States visualizing cultural data alongside curated guides to bring to the forefront cities and locations that tie back to the?Black?traveler and the?Black?experience from architecture to cuisine. What's the reception to the map been like thus far, and how do you hope to continue to grow and expand the experience?

• What advice would you have for other aspiring creators and entrepreneurs in the travel space?

Have a question for Kent or Eric? Join in the conversation by asking in the comments below?—and thank you for being a part of You've Got This!