How to Change Your Mindset for Success in 2025: Tips from WHOOP and Behavioral Scientist Dr. Gina Merchant

Kickstart your new year with a fresh mindset. WHOOP VP of Performance Kristen Holmes and behavioral scientist Dr. Gina Merchant delve into the science of mindset change and effective goal setting. With tools like the Journal and Weekly Plan, achieving a mindset change is more within reach than ever.

The Science of Mindset and Behavior Change

Jumping into behavioral changes without first addressing your mindset can hinder the process. If you have a negative outlook on the process, or if you’re not pursuing these changes in a sustainable way, you’re less likely to form lasting changes. Experts recommend adopting a growth mindset–belief that skills and abilities can be strengthened by putting in the time and effort to learn about them. It also includes a willingness to work through obstacles faced along the way. When it comes to behavioral change, behavioral scientists often talk about success with a growth mindset in relation to intrinsic motivation. 

Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Motivation

There are two major types of motivation: intrinsic and extrinsic. Intrinsic motivation is related to internal factors (i.e. feelings of enjoyment or fulfillment), whereas extrinsic motivation is related to external factors (i.e. the desire to get a reward like money or winning a contest). In general, intrinsic motivation can support lasting behavioral changes because it’s more sustainable in the long-run. Extrinsic motivation can, however, be beneficial too. If there’s a goal you don’t yet have internal motivation to complete, assigning yourself an external reward can help you get started. 

Dr. Merchant refers to extrinsic motivation as “a good foot in the door technique”, giving the example of rewarding oneself for going to the gym with a mani pedi or going out to eat with friends. While this can be a good solution in the short-term, Dr. Merchant notes that it can become costly and unsustainable over time. In the long-term, Dr. Merchant recommends asking yourself, “How could I start to enjoy the behavior change I’m working towards?” The goal here is to pay attention to the activity or habit you’re trying to build and find the parts of it that bring you joy, calm, or any other positive emotion. 

Setting the Framework for Mindset Change

Before you get started with making a behavioral change, it’s important to establish a framework for changing your mindset. Dr. Merchant outlines a few steps that can be taken to approach behavioral changes. First, consider the frequency of the behavior in question. Recurring behaviors occur on a daily basis, such as sleeping or eating. These behaviors, according to Dr. Merchant, “are usually the hardest [to change], because we have habituated to our current standard way of doing and living”. There are also behaviors like getting a yearly physical or replacing the batteries in your smoke detectors that recur far less frequently. 

When it comes to New Year’s resolutions and behavior change goals in general, Dr. Merchant states that frequently recurring behaviors are the more popular choice. To support these types of behaviors, it’s important to take a comprehensive approach to adjusting your environment and daily habits. Dr. Merchant breaks down the behavioral goal of losing weight into contributing factors: diet, physical activity, sleep, and alcohol ingestion. Once you’ve determined what kinds of factors influence your chosen behavior on a daily basis, Dr. Merchant recommends picking one to tackle first and then figuring out what changes you can make in your daily routine to address it.

Practical Tips for Changing Your Mindset

Dr. Merchant outlines three things to remember when embarking on your behavioral change journey:

1. The motivation that helps you begin your behavior change journey won’t be the motivation that keeps you going indefinitely. 

2. Non-negotiables: Social support, social accountability, and action planning. 

3. Once you make one behavioral change, you will likely end up making changes in other aspects of your life.

Start with Small, Daily Habits

Starting off with a large goal can prevent you from achieving the behavioral change you’re hoping to make. Tasking yourself with making a major adjustment in your lifestyle right away can be overwhelming. If you fail to meet this huge goal quickly, you can get discouraged and give up on trying to make any change at all. This is why behavioral experts recommend starting with small changes to your daily life. 

Self-monitoring tactics are a strategy for holding yourself accountable with behavioral change. When you write down or log your adherence to your chosen incremental changes, you will also have a record of your efforts that you can look back on to see the progress you’ve made. This can help fuel your motivation and remind you of how far you’ve come if you start to have doubts about the behavioral change process. 

With the Journal, you can track more than 140 different behavioral changes from a variety of categories such as nutrition, lifestyle, mental health, recovery, and sleep. Once you determine which incremental goals you want to start with, you can record them in your Journal. You’ll be able to monitor how these daily habit changes affect trends in your metrics and get insight into their impact on your overall health. 

WHOOP Tools for Mindset Change

Action planning is one of the three non-negotiables Dr. Merchant lists as absolutely necessary for mindset changes. Action planning involves creating a detailed, step-by-step plan of specific actions that can be taken to get you closer toward your goal. Weekly Plan allows you to set weekly goals for yourself. You can create a customized plan based on your goal and receive recommendations on behavioral changes that can help you meet that goal. You’ll also see optimal strain and sleep targets for the week. Getting into the habit of setting and tracking your goals on a weekly basis is a great example of action planning at work.

Monitoring your Recovery over time can also provide insight into how your lifestyle habits are impacting both your physical health and mental resilience. Recovery scores indicate how ready you are to take on physical and mental strain on a daily basis. Factors that influence recovery include HRV, hydration, stress levels, and behaviors. As you make positive changes to your mindset and behaviors, you may notice a positive trend in your recovery score. This can serve as another source of motivation, offering a clear example of how behavior changes benefit your health metrics.

Changing your mindset is a journey, but with the right tools and insights from experts like Dr. Gina Merchant, it’s achievable. WHOOP can help provide a comprehensive system to support your goals, helping you build consistency and track progress. Embrace the new year with a renewed mindset, and make this the year you create lasting change.