What if a habit you've been trying to break isn't a failure of discipline — but a sequence you've become very good at repeating?

In this episode of The Practice Ground, we take the cue-craving-response-reward framework from Episode 3 out of theory and into practice.

Ken volunteers a habit he's wanted to change for some time: after late-night tennis, he often finds himself stopping for a burger, fries, or another favorite fast-food meal. As we unpack the habit, we discover that the craving isn't simply about hunger. Food — and certain foods in particular — has a long history for Ken as a reward after effort, stress, and experiences he'd rather not endure.

Together, we examine the sequence he's already been training, the associations that may be helping keep it in place, and what it could look like to deliberately design, test, and train a different one — without turning the process into another referendum on willpower, consistency, or self-trust.

What you'll hear inside the episode:

• how a behavior we want to change can make more sense when we examine the cue, craving, response, and reward already supporting it
• why understanding the associations we've built around a behavior can help us decide which new associations we want to train
• how Ken's history of food as a reward helped illuminate what his after-tennis snack may actually be satisfying
• the difference between trying to stop a behavior and deliberately designing a new sequence to practice instead
• why testing, observing, and refining a sequence can replace the usual cycle of judgment when a habit doesn't go according to plan
• why we can accidentally give one habit the enormous job of proving that we're disciplined, consistent, intentional, or finally able to trust ourselves
• what changes when we let the habit be the habit — and remove some of the emotional weight we've attached to succeeding at it
• two questions Kari now asks when training a habit: How much time do I want to spend training this? And how much energy do I want to expend training it?
• why “I've been trying to change this habit for years” isn't necessarily the same as having spent those years deliberately training a new sequence
• how habit training can become an experiment in creating a sequence that's manageable and rewarding enough to keep repeating

Cited in this episode:

Book | Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones

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Ken Li is a confidence coach. Connect with Ken on LinkedIn, where he regularly shares mindset tools, resources, and strategies to help professionals who second-guess themselves feel as confident inside as they look.

Kari Watterson is a mindset and habits coach. Connect with Kari on Instagram (@theadhdhabittrainer). where she shares her ongoing series, The Habit Training Diaries, or visit her website at KariWatterson.com.

What if struggling to stick with a habit isn't only about willpower or discipline — but how well the habit has been designed?

In this episode of The Practice Ground, Ken and Kari explore James Clear's four-stage habit loop from Atomic Habits — cue, craving, response, and reward — and what it can look like to deliberately design and train that sequence in real life.

Ken turns the conversation into a case study, asking Kari to deconstruct her experiment with running: Could she design the sequence well enough that running became not only easier to initiate, but rewarding enough that she wanted to keep repeating and training it?

Said differently: Can a desired behavior be trained until it becomes predictable?

And what does designing a behavior even look like?

What you'll hear inside the episode:

• how the cue-craving-response-reward habit loop can be used as a framework for designing and training habits
• why designing a habit and training a habit are two different parts of the process
• Kari's real-life experiment with designing and training a running habit
• why Kari deliberately designed the response to include not only what she would do, but how she would respond to mental chatter and physical resistance before, during, and after the run
• what happened when she began training zero mental negotiation rather than allowing thoughts and resistance to determine whether she followed through
  why the reward may matter not only after a behavior, but in whether we want to repeat it
• how repetition can begin changing what we expect ourselves to do when a familiar cue arises
• why observing, testing, and refining a habit sequence can be more useful than judging yourself when it doesn't work

Cited in this episode:

Book | Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones

Podcast | The Diary of a CEO - Steven Bartlett's conversation with James Clear

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Ken Li is a confidence coach. Connect with Ken on LinkedIn, where he regularly shares mindset tools, resources, and strategies to help professionals who second-guess themselves feel as confident inside as they look.

Kari Watterson is a mindset and habits coach. Connect with Kari on Instagram (@theadhdhabittrainer). where she shares her ongoing series, The Habit Training Diaries.