Ep. 11: Dr. Alice Boyes — How to Create the Best Life Possible, One Habit at a Time

by Seth Gillihan

Author Alice Boyes wants to help you stop getting in your own way. She recently wrote a book called The Healthy Mind Toolkit, which addresses the many ways all of us fall prey at times to self-sabotage. By recognizing these patterns, we can take steps to think and act more adaptively. Alice presents powerful strategies that draw on research in social psychology and the proven tools of mindfulness and cognitive behavioral therapy.

In this week’s episode we discuss her recent book, including:

  • What self-sabotage is
  • What leads to perfectionism
  • How to resist perfectionistic tendencies
  • How to arrange your life to stop wasting time and energy
  • How to find the mental space and energy to break unhelpful habits
  • Simple strategies to improve your life, like batch actions and master lists
  • The surprisingly big effect of making small improvements

I met Alice through PsychologyToday.com, where she and I are both regular bloggers. She has a gift for providing really useful techniques for improving your life, in ways you haven’t even thought of. These techniques are really simple and straightforward, and are things you can start using today. As you’ll hear in our discussion, I’ve been incorporating many of these ideas into my own life. I hope you enjoy our discussion.

Dr. Alice Boyes trained as a clinical psychologist in New Zealand, where she completed her PhD. The e-book for her first book, The Anxiety Toolkit, made the Wall Street Journal bestseller list. Alice’s blog posts on Psychology Today have received over 11 million views. She’s a gifted writer and thinker, and a sought-after guest blogger.

Find Alice online at AliceBoyes.com.

Her Psychology Today blog is called In Practice.

You can check out her posts for Harvard Business Review through this link.

Both of Alice’s books are available for purchase from Amazon:

The Anxiety Toolkit
The Healthy Mind Toolkit

(Please note that these are affiliate links, meaning a small percentage of sales from these links will be used to support the podcast, at no additional charge to you.)