A simple way to break a bad habit | Judson Brewer | TED
TED・8 minutes read
Focusing on the breath in meditation can be challenging, but it helps bring the mind back when it wanders, leading to positive outcomes like managing cravings and breaking harmful habits through mindfulness. This approach works by engaging the prefrontal cortex for cognitive control and focusing on body sensations to step out of old habit patterns.
Insights
- **Mindfulness Training and Curiosity:** Exploring experiences with curiosity and mindfulness can lead to disenchantment with harmful habits, engaging the prefrontal cortex for cognitive control, ultimately aiding in managing cravings by focusing on body sensations and breaking old habit patterns.
- **Evolutionary Learning Process:** The difficulty in maintaining attention can be attributed to an evolutionarily-conserved learning process of positive and negative reinforcement, where habits like emotional eating or smoking stem from reward-based learning loops that begin with simple actions like seeing food, eating, and feeling good.
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Recent questions
How can I improve my focus?
By practicing mindfulness and focusing on your breath.
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Summary
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"Mindfulness and Curiosity: Overcoming Harmful Habits"
- Initial meditation instruction: focus on breath, bring mind back when wandering, challenging and exhausting process.
- Difficulty in paying attention explained by evolutionarily-conserved learning process of positive and negative reinforcement.
- Reward-based learning process: see food, eat food, feel good, repeat; evolves into habits like emotional eating or smoking.
- Mindfulness approach: be curious about experiences, study on quitting smoking with mindfulness training.
- Mindfulness leads to disenchantment with harmful habits, engages prefrontal cortex for cognitive control.
- Curiosity and mindfulness help manage cravings by focusing on body sensations, stepping out of old habit patterns.
