The School of Greatness - 878 How to Build Life Changing Habits and Break Addiction with Dr. Jud Brewer

Episode Date: November 20, 2019

YOUR EGO NEEDS FEEDING. We all have addictions. Some of us know exactly what habits we need to break. Others don’t even realize we’re addicted to unhealthy patterns. Whether it’s smoking, relationships, or simply being addicted to ourselves, we could all benefit from mapping out our habits to begin to understand them. It’s important to foster our curiosity. If we can learn to investigate our minds the way we investigated our environment as children, we can begin to understand ourselves.  Sometimes it’s our ego that we continue to feed. Other times it’s a false sense of reward we think we’re receiving from an old habit. Through mindfulness, we can learn to experience our habits as they are and not as we remember them. When we do this, we can begin breaking even our most challenging addictions. On today’s episode of The School of Greatness, we discuss optimizing habits, breaking addictions, and transforming your life with one of the kindest addiction psychiatrists and mindfulness experts that I have ever met: Dr. Jud Brewer. Dr. Jud Brewer is the Director of Research and Innovation at the Mindfulness Center and associate professor in psychiatry at the School of Medicine at Brown University, as well as a research affiliate at MIT. As an addiction psychiatrist and internationally known expert in mindfulness training for treating addictions, Dr. Jud has developed and tested novel mindfulness programs for habit change, including both in-person and app-based treatments for smoking, and emotional eating and anxiety. So get ready to learn how mindfulness can free you from addiction on Episode 878. Some Questions I Ask: What was the hardest addiction for you to overcome? (11:05) What is the first thing people can do to self-assess themselves? (21:45) What are the 5 or 6 common addictions that most people have? (22:30) Are meditation and mindfulness the solution to everything? (36:00) Are there any addictions that you have not been able to overcome? (46:55) What’s the difference between a habit and an addiction? (50:00) Is mental illness something that can be cured? (54:30) What is the difference between mindfulness and overthinking? (57:50) In This Episode You Will Learn: About the ego and how many people are addicted to themselves (13:25)  How mapping out your habit loops can help you understand the truth about your experiences. (21:00) The power of curiosity (20:00)  About reward-based learning (26:30)  The science behind reward-based learning and how it helps us understand changing behavior (31:30)  How to hack cravings with curiosity (34:30)  How Dr. Jud’s apps help you map out your habits and start your habit-breaking journey (42:00) About positive habits and when they become problematic (45:00)  About the two types of curiosity (52:00)  Why we continue to struggle so much when the answers are often right in front of us (59:00)  The science behind the effect of true generosity, kindness, and connection on our habits (1:07:00) Plus much more... If you enjoyed this episode, check out the video, show notes and more at http://www.lewishowes.com/878 and follow at instagram.com/lewishowes

This is episode number 878 on how to build life-changing habits and break addiction with Dr. Jud Brewer. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro-athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur, and each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

Eckhart Tolle said, in today's rush, we all think too much, seek too much, want too much, and forget about the joy of just being. This episode will literally change your life because we all have had different habits and addictions that have hurt us and held us back. We've also had different habits that have helped move us forward and improve our life. And today I want to talk about how we can really optimize habits to transform our life in a powerful way and how to end any addiction that you've had that has held you back, whether it be 5, 10, 20, 30 years of an addiction with a habit that's been holding you back, that you've tried everything. We're going to finally break down the science,

been holding you back, that you've tried everything, we're going to finally break down the science, the proven research on how to break addiction. And I'm so excited about this. Make sure you share this out because this will literally transform so many people's lives who apply this information and actually do this. Now, Dr. Jud Brewer and I had an incredible conversation. I fell in love with this man right away. We just went in deep, and I just love that he's been doing the research and the science to prove these things for so long. He's the Director of Research and Innovation at the Mindfulness Center and Associate Professor in Psychiatry at the School of Medicine at Brown University, as well as a research affiliate at MIT. He's the founder of the digital therapeutics

platform Mind Sciences and the author of the book, The Craving Mind, From Cigarettes to Smartphones to Love, Why We Get Hooked and How We Can Break Bad Habits. As an addiction psychiatrist and internationally known expert in mindfulness training for treating addictions, Dr. Judd has developed and tested novel mindfulness programs for habit change, including both in-person and app-based treatments for smoking, emotional eating, and anxiety. This is powerful research that has proven to work over and over again. And you can visit drjudd.com to learn more about Dr. Brewer's research and apps. And you can use this code SCHOOLOFGREATNESS20 for 20% off any of the Dr. Judd habit-changing

programs. And in this episode, we talk about the root of addiction and why we struggle with it so much. The BBO, which stands for Bigger, Better Offer, that will help anyone break through even their longest addictive behavior. The difference between addiction and habits and how to map out your habit loops. How mindfulness can support us in all aspects of our lives and why scientists are now giving it credit, the important difference between mindfulness and overthinking, and so many more things on habits and addiction.

This one, my team was listening during this interview. We were all just enamored with the research, the science, the studies, and everything that was proven to help people literally free themselves from a prison of suffering with these addictions and habits that hurt people. And I really hope you get a lot of value out of this and start applying it. I want you to apply this as soon as possible to anything in your life. And you might be saying to yourself, well, Lewis, I don't have any bad addictions or bad habits, but there are certain things that we all do that affect us both positively and negatively. And if you're not

where you want to be, there might be some habits, some addictions that you have that could be holding you back. And Dr. Judd will share with you what those are. So I'm super excited. Make sure to text this to one friend, lewishouse.com slash 878, or share it with your friends on social media. Tag me, Lewis House. Let me know what you think because this is going to be a game changer. All right, guys, I'm excited about this. This one got me fired up the whole time. I hope you can hear my excitement throughout the interview. With the one and only Dr. Jud Brewer.

Welcome back to more of the School of Greenness podcast. We've got Dr. Jud in the house. My man, good seeing you. Good seeing you. Very excited about this. We're talking about habits, overcoming addiction, and how our minds think about these things. And you've been studying flow, habits, addiction, neuroscience for how many years now? 20.

20 years of research. You've done a lot of content materials on this. You had a TED Talk that blew up. Top five most watched TED Talk of content materials on this. You had a TED Talk that blew up top five most watched TED Talk of the year on the power of habit and really how to change addiction and all these different things. I'm curious, why do you obsess over this in the first place? Did you have some type of addiction yourself or did you feel like you were never able to get in the flow or something was always distracting you or what was the main cause?

I had no idea how many addictions I had until I started studying this stuff. Really? Give me a few. Thinking, self, love, exercise. Yeah. What were the addictions like? Were you overly addictive to working out and too much love? Or was it you didn't know how to love yourself the right way and you didn't work out well?

The love piece was around romance. I just loved that excited romance piece of the relationship. So the first six months. So you were good at starting a relationship but not staying in a relationship. You know, my mom used to say, don't tell me her name for the first three months. That's good. Because it was just like always another one, huh? Well, I don't know.

You know, I don't want to paint myself in a certain way. But let's just say those first three months, my mom called that the infatuation stage. And that's really sticky. It's really addictive. So addictive. Yeah. But how come, why does that eventually fade? Well, our brains habituate. Our brains actually are set up all these things, whether it's being addicted to thinking or addicted to distraction with social media or whatnot. All these things are actually based on a very basic learning principle, which is set up

for survival. We have this caveman brain that says, I need to remember where food is and I need to avoid danger. And it's actually relatively simple. There are these three elements. There's a trigger, a behavior, and a reward or a result of that behavior. And that drives a huge amount of behavior. So for example, like with the survival piece, you see food, you eat food, and then your stomach sends this dopamine signal to your brain that says, remember what you ate and where you found it. Do the same thing for avoiding danger so that we can, the reward is that you don't get eaten by the saber tooth tiger or whatnot. Sure, sure. Okay. So you're in a pattern of,

why do we, if our brains are designed to do that, then why do we have to fight against it so much? As opposed to say, well, I'm just going to jump from relationship to relationship to have that feeling. That's the way my brain is designed. Why fight against that? There are a lot of benefits to setting up habits. So you can even think of this as a habit. We can get addicted to the chase, for example.

A lot of people, they're really excited about a relationship for the pursuit piece. And then as soon as they land it, they're like, ah, you know, this isn't, you know, it's not you, it's me. And it's me because I'm addicted to the chase, which is the part that they don't even know. But that piece is set up to actually help us set up habits so we don't have to relearn everything every day. So think of getting up in the morning and if you had to relearn how every day. So think of getting up in the morning, and if you had to relearn how to walk, how to put on your clothes, how to tie your shoes, how to eat food, you'd be exhausted by breakfast, right?

So it's set up to help us learn things. I think of this as like set and forget, like set up this habit and then forget about it. And if you can forget about it, it frees your brain up to learn other things. And that process just gets carried along evolutionarily, where in modern day when food is plentiful and there's Tinder and whatnot, that can become problematic. Sure, because the addiction to junk food feels amazing in the moment,

but then you feel bad later. The addiction to the chase feels great for three months, then it feels bad when you have to do it all. Once you lose the connection, you become disconnected. I'm sure the same thing with cigarettes or drinking or whatever it may be. Yes. These all follow that same basic habit pattern. Gotcha. What was the hardest addiction for you to overcome yourself? That's a great one. I think, and it's not like I'm, let's say I'm a recovering thinker. So the addiction to thinking is a big one for me.

In what ways? Because you're an academic researcher, a teacher, so you have to think. I do. And so it doesn't mean that thinking is a problem, but when I get addicted to my own thoughts, for example, as a scientist, addicted to my own thoughts, for example. As a scientist, if I have a great idea or what my brain thinks is a great idea and I lock it in and I'm like, this is the world's greatest idea, and I start telling everybody that's the best idea, I might not get a great reputation for being humble, for one thing. And if somebody does a scientific experiment that says, you know, your idea is wrong, and I rail against that. I'm actually no longer a scientist. Because as a scientist, you're actually saying, here's a hypothesis. Right. Everyone else go prove me wrong. Right. That's the whole point. That's the beauty of science is that we don't believe our own hype. We set a hypothesis and we're just as happy to

have it disproven as we are to have it proven. Because then what? Someone finds a solution to whatever the hypothesis is and the actual answer? Yeah. And that's what science is all about, is helping move humanity forward as compared to preserving a legacy, which is me. I'm always right. Right.

I have the answers. Right, right. How fun would that be to hang out with that type of person? So are all scientists super humbled then? I wish. There's a joke in physics that physics progresses one funeral at a time. This is back in the early 1900s when there were a lot of really big names in physics. And, you know, the young folks were like, well, I don't know, you know, this, and the old guys had so much

clout that basically you had to wait until they died off to put new ideas forward. Wow. Okay. So the addiction to thought and the thoughts you had mostly were what? Oh, name. I mean, it's just the thinking process itself can be really exciting. It's like, oh, what about this? What about this? What about this? And I think it stems somewhat from just a natural curiosity that I've probably always had. Curiosity, great thing. We can certainly talk more about that.

But also curiosity can kind of morph into, oh, that's moving from like, that's a great idea to that's my great idea. And that addiction to self, like, oh, check me out you know the ego yeah the ego is problematic gotcha so you had that for how long do you think oh my whole life you know until when well i don't know it's still there but you were you're now where how did you learn to break that addiction well it's interesting yeah when you look when i started

looking and i i started doing a lot of meditation practice myself. I would go on silent meditation retreats and things like that to really start to look inward and look at my own mind and to see what was causing me suffering. And one of the big things that was causing me suffering was being addicted to my own thinking, addicted to myself. You know, it's like hope. You're on hype.

Yeah, yeah. It doesn't, when I really looked at it carefully, it's like, oh, you're on hype. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it doesn't, when, when I really looked at it carefully, it doesn't feel very good. To be addicted to your hype. Yeah. Because why, why doesn't it feel good to be right? To be, have a good, an ego where people say you're amazing and you're so smart and talented. Why does that not feel good? Because egos need to be fed. And so what if we can find something that steps out of that process that keeps the loop going? So if the trigger is that somebody says, oh, that's a great idea. And I start, the behavior is that I get all puffy chested. I'm like, yeah, that is a great idea. There's that reward that comes in the form of excitement. And that needs feeding, you know, then I need more compliments or I need more

people saying that's a great idea or come up with more great ideas. It's a lot of pressure, you know, for the ego to keep itself going in that way. And what I found was that we can actually step out of that process and find something that is more rewarding. So this actually relates to habits. The only way that we can change habits is to update that reward value. And that there are two pieces to updating the reward value, but it's helpful to kind of understand how they get set up in the first place. So think of, you know, a lot of people are trying to lose weight, for example, and maybe they're middle age and their metabolism isn't what it was when they were six. But think of all the birthday parties that they went to where they associated cake and ice cream with presents, fun, friends, and all that.

So their mind sets up this habit around cake and ice cream have a certain value. And we have a part of our brain called the orbitofrontal cortex that actually stores this whole hierarchy of reward values. So when we're presented with cake, it's back in our six-year-old brain that says, this is great, when we're in our 40- or 50-year-old body that's like, you know, my metabolism, can we slow down on this cake a little bit? And we can't use our thinking brain, our thinking part of our brain, which is the youngest and the weakest part of the brain from an evolutionary perspective, to overcome the feeling body. Because that old part of our brain, which is the youngest and the weakest part of the brain from an evolutionary perspective to overcome the feeling body. Because that old part of the brain says, this is great, do it. But it's really just our six-year-old brain and our 40-year-old body, and that's problematic. So these things get set up and laid down. And the only way to change those

habits is to give our brains accurate and updated information now. Like what? Well, literally paying attention to the results of the behavior. So I'll give you an example from some of the science that we've done. We do a lot of work with helping people quit smoking, for example. And one of the first things that we did in one of our first studies here was that we had people pay attention as they smoked. There's one guy that I'm thinking of who was smoking 40 years, okay? So a pack a day for 40 years, that's 20 cigarettes a day.

We calculated it out. It was about, he'd reinforced that habit loop 293,000 times. Oh my gosh, of smoking a cigarette. Yep, smoking a cigarette. 200, almost 300,000 times. 300,000 times. So that was a pretty ingrained habit for him.

So we said, okay, pay attention as you smoke. What does that mean, pay attention? So what does it taste like? What does the smoke smell like? And all this stuff, right? Just really pay attention to the process in this moment to give his brain accurate and updated information. Say, how good is this really?

Not your 13-year-old brain that was rebelling or trying to be cool or whatever that then got laid down as a habit and then you just smoke. You don't pay, and most people are looking at their phone when they're smoking. They're not paying attention. Well, he paid attention.

I'm thinking of somebody who just described this beautifully who said, you know, smells like stinky cheese and tastes like chemicals. Yuck. When he actually paid attention. Yeah, yeah. So they start to see, wait a minute, cigarettes actually taste like shit. They don't taste good. That's why e-cigarettes have flavors, right?

To make, to mask. More addictive now. Yes, yes. My brother was smoking for probably 20 years. And we, I shouldn't say I, not saying credit, but trying to get him off of it for 20 years. He finally stopped smoking. Great. Victory.

Starts e-smoking and justifies how it's better for you and this and that, but we can go into science there, but it's a different addiction. I guess it's the same addiction. Still nicotine. Yeah. Still nicotine. Yeah, and still hooked on the lube. Yeah.

So back to that story, this guy started paying attention, seeing that cigarettes didn't taste very good, and helped his brain get that accurate updated information that sees, oh, the reward value of smoking is not actually that great, which actually opens up the space for what I think of as the BBO, a bigger, better offer. I'll give another example. A guy who came into my clinic was referred to me for panic, you know, a panic disorder. He came in, he was actually looked pretty nervous when he walked in the door. And when I took his history, it turns out that he had such bad fear of driving. He was terrified that he would get in a car accident on the highway, that he would barely drive. He basically isolated himself to his house. So just driving a couple of miles to my clinic was already tough for him. The other thing I noticed about him was that he was very overweight. And so for him, the first

thing that we need to do is just map out what his habits were and what his habit loops were. And it turns out that he had this habit around being afraid of things. He gave an example of going out to dinner with his girlfriend and then having this thought, like, maybe I'm allergic to fish. They were at a sushi restaurant. And he got so freaked out, his rational brain was saying, you're not allergic to fish. And he knew this rationally, but his feeling body was like, let's get out of here, and they had to leave.

So we've developed these app-based mindfulness training programs to just help people pay attention and map out their habit loop so i gave him we have one for anxiety called unwinding anxiety i gave him this app sent him home two weeks later he came back and he said he had this big smile on his face and i said what's up and he said i lost 14 pounds and i said, I thought we were working on anxiety. You know, he had panic disorder. He had generalized anxiety. And he said, you know, I realized that I would eat as a way to work with my anxiety. I'd feel a little bit better by eating. But I realized that the reward wasn't actually that great.

So I just stopped stress eating. I was like, wow, I don't feel good about my body because I'm overweight. And it's not helping my anxiety. So he just like stopped. He lost 14 pounds in two weeks. He came back, what, four, three, four months later, he'd lost 50 pounds. He came back a couple of months later. His anxiety was so much better. So he lost 84 pounds, I think at this point, his blood pressure was back to normal where it was high. He was an Uber driver now. Oh, my God. So this guy was afraid of driving.

Now an Uber driver. So that highlights the key element of how we actually change habits. One, we map out these habit loops. And he was able to map this out so clearly that he could see, okay, this is exactly what's happening. But the second piece is seeing how unrewarding they are, right? Eating to work with his anxiety wasn't helping him. So he stopped stress eating, lost a bunch of weight. But he also realized that he could start to get curious about his experience and that that could actually

provide that bigger, better offer. So curiosity itself is kind of like this superpower that comes with awareness that can actually help us break a bunch of different habits. So when someone comes to you and is struggling with addiction, what is the first thing that you would have someone do if they were self-assessing themselves? If they don't have the time to talk to you or a therapist or an addiction specialist or a habit specialist, let's create a list of all your fears and anxieties and addictions currently or habits, what is the process? I would have them map out what their top habit loop is. Positive and negative habits?

Any habit? Any of them. Like I get up at 6 a.m. every morning. Yeah. I brush my teeth every day. I go to the gym at 9 a.m. every day. Yeah. And I smoke a cigarette during lunch or whatever it is.

Everything. Yeah. And I would say start with the biggest ones, especially the ones that are causing problems. We can come to the positive ones in a little bit because those we can actually foster by bringing awareness in as well. But the negative habits, the ones that are causing problems, those are a great place to map things out because it's much easier to see them because it's causing pain. Yeah. I'm a smoker. I smoke every day. I'm a drinker. I drink junk food every day. Yeah. What is the five or six common addictions that most people have, I guess, in America that you see? That I see? Well, I work a lot not only with addictions but also with anxiety and overeating.

So I would say in the top hits, one of the big ones is worrying. Worrying about the future. That's a habit. That is a habit loop. It's negatively reinforced. Okay. Because you're constantly worrying. Worrying about the future. That's a habit. That is a habit loop. It's negatively reinforced. Okay. Because you're constantly worrying. I guess our brain is designed to worry. Yeah. Well. Keep us alive, right? So worrying doesn't necessarily keep us alive, but our brain is designed to plan for the future. So what our brain's trying to do is minimize uncertainty. So it's trying to map out, okay, how is this going to play out?

And if I can know exactly how it's going to play out, either good or bad, my brain, I feel better, right? Even if I know it's going to suck, at least I know it's going to suck. That uncertainty is worse than knowing it. Okay. So worrying is a top one. Top one there. Yeah. Some of the common ones. I mean, smoking is still one of the key killers out there. Yeah. Yes, it is. And e-cigarettes aren't helping with this poor teen population that's getting addicted. Teens are now addicted to e-cigarettes more than anything, it seems like. Yeah. I just saw a study that found it was like 27% of high schoolers had used an e-cigarette in the last month, which is like the rates are going in the wrong direction, right?

Going up. Yes, they're going up. It's terrible. Why? Is it because of worry and stress and anxiety? Is it because everyone's doing it and so you pick it up? Well, and nicotine now tastes like mango and mint. It doesn't taste like smoke and tobacco, right. You've got this cool, futuristic-looking thing that looks like a USB drive

that gives you this crazy cloud of stuff that you can puff out of your mouth. It looks futuristic, cool, and tastes like mango. I mean, what teenager wouldn't want to try that out? And great marketing, just bad product. Yes. I'm not sure how those folks sleep at night. I don't know. It's crazy. But they market to get people addicted to something negative. Yes. It's not adding value to their life. Right. Especially if you can mask all of the negative aspects to it. So with cigarettes, because nicotine's a toxin, right? So with cigarettes, back in the old days, kids had to get overcome the nausea that comes with their first cigarette, right? And if parents caught you smoking, they'd make you smoke 10 cigarettes.

So you'd throw up. So you'd associate the throwing up with smoking cigarettes. Why do people get nauseated? Because nicotine is a toxin. Oh, my gosh. So they can mask all that stuff and make it taste like mango. And then, voila, 27% of high school students. So we've got the smoking.

We've got worrying. What are some other addictions or habits? Drinking has always been a big one. And you can see, I remember a patient that was referred to me for alcoholism actually. And it turns out that he would drink as a way to mask his anxiety. So there are a lot of people that socially drink to help with social anxiety. So it's a double addiction. Worry is the addiction, is like the main addiction that I'm hearing. But then drinking is like another addiction to mask one addiction. Yes. Often drinking has a comorbidity or something that comes along with it. And anxiety is one of the big ones that I see. So this guy, for example, was anxious. He would drink to make himself

not feel anxious. And then it took him a while. So when he came in to see me, I first had him map out those loops. And he realized, oh, I'm drinking to work with my anxiety. Why don't I just work with my anxiety itself? And he was able to quit drinking because he's like, wow, this is too many calories. It's expensive. I get a hangover. I can't work in the morning, all these things. He's all the negative aspects to that, which is the second piece, right? Map it out, see how unrewarding that old habit is, and then you can replace it with something that's better. What did you say?

A bigger, better offer? That bigger, better offer, the BBO. I guess because there's always a reward for the habit. There's some type of feeling, reward, relief, payoff for the price you pay. There is, that's how reward-based learning works. I'm glad you bring that up because a lot of people think, oh, if I'm going to change a behavior, I need to focus on the behavior. I'll just use my willpower and grit my teeth

and white knuckles. Just say no to it every day. Right, but that's not how our brains learn. Our brains learn based on the reward, how rewarding something is. So if we can focus on that part, we can actually hack that process and help our brain see, oh, if it's a cigarette or over drinking too much or whatever, it's not that rewarding. That's what helps us start to change the behavior without having to force ourselves to do it

because our brain just says, why would I do that? That's not so good. So step one is the assessment of what are the bad habits. Step two is figuring out what's the reward you're getting for this. What do I get from this? So we have the people using our app-based programs, whether it's eating or anxiety or smoking, to ask the simple question, what do I get from this? Not in a thinking way, right? Like, oh, I could get cancer because that thinking part of our brain doesn't hold the candle to like, oh, what's this feel like?

How do I feel? Yeah. So what's it feel like when I overeat? You know, oh, my stomach gets this gut bomb. I feel, you know, I get a sugar rush and crash if I eat junk food or whatever. That's that second piece is really diving into our direct experience. And that's what either reinforces or un-reinforces old habits. Okay. And then what's the step after that? That BBO.

We're cured. We think about it, we understand it, we're aware, and then we stop doing it. Well, our brains often think, okay, this isn't so good, but until you give me something better, I'm going to keep doing it. So we need a bigger, better offer. Otherwise, it's almost impossible to just cut something cold turkey in our brains. It can be much more challenging. Absolutely. People have done it, I'm sure. They're just like, okay, I realize I don't want to do this anymore.

Not smoking, not drinking, not whatever. The addiction. But do we know the percentages of when someone tries willpower cold turkey without a bigger, better offer versus when someone has a bigger, better offer, the percentages of it shifting? I don't know anybody that's done that experiment yet, but I can say, yeah, that'd be a great experiment. But we do know that willpower really doesn't help that much. The average person, last time I looked at these statistics, the average person that quits smoking, the likelihood that they're going to stay quit a year later is 5%. Off willpower. Yes. Well, in general, you add everything together. I quit. I did the patch. I said, no,

that's overall 5%. Even with a bigger, better offer? Well, that's the piece that hasn't been added in yet. So this is where the new science comes in. Look at this. We're bringing you something new you can try now. I like this. Well, we've actually been studying this a bit. So for example, knowing, so we've mapped out these habit loop processes and really zoomed in on this reward devaluation piece. So there've been these formulas that have been around since the 1970s, these researchers, Rescorla and Wagner. So there's this Rescorla-Wagner curve, basically, which sounds kind of fancy, but basically they said, you know, that devaluation piece, if you can devalue something, that's going to really change behavior. And they've lined this up, you know, people have lined this up in animal

behavior experiments. They've lined this up with dopamine firing. They've lined this up in a bunch of basic science models. But I really don't know of anybody that's lined this up with habit behaviors yet. So we actually built a tool right into our Eat Right Now app, this app that helps people work with overeating or stress eating, to see if we could map out that process. And what we do is we have people first just imagine whatever the type of food is or the amount of food is that they typically are struggling with, right? And so we have them go through this exercise where they remember the last time they ate it and just go through that. And then we ask them, well, how's your craving now? And if they're really still excited about it, their craving is either going to stay the same or go up, right? Because they're like, oh, ice cream. I'm thinking about it now. Now I really want ice cream. Dude, where's the ice cream,

right? So it helps us get a sense for how strong the reward value is now. And then we have them do a mindful eating exercise where we say, okay, go ahead and eat that amount of food. Right? So if they overeat or whatever, but we have them pay attention. In their mind. No, no, no. We have them actually do it.

Get the burger, get the ice cream, eat it all and do it now. Yep. Yep. Go for it. Okay. And then we ask them afterwards, how was it? How do you feel? I feel sick. My stomach hurts. I'm getting a mig afterwards, how was it? How do you feel? I feel sick.

My stomach hurts. I'm getting a migraine, whatever. Yeah, yeah. So our brains learn from what's called a positive or a negative prediction error, as in their brain was predicting that it's going to be this rewarding. Remember that five-year-old brain with birthday cake. And if they're like, wait a minute, this doesn't taste as good as I thought, or eating this amount of ice cream gives me the gut bomb,

there's this negative prediction error where their brain says, hey, wait a minute, there's new information here. You need to update this reward value. And what we found, we just finished a study where what we found was it takes about 10 times on average for somebody to really dive into this with eating, that their reward value starts to change. And with a few more uses, it actually is associated with the change in their behavior. So you do this 10 times where you are aware, you're reflecting on it, you're noticing the feeling, the energy, everything, how you feel. After 10 times of doing this, your body starts to click and you say, actually, I don't want this anymore. That's what it seems. Now, this is also in conjunction with learning mindfulness as they

go through this app-based training program. You've got to do that at the same time. Possibly. But one of the key elements may be helping our brains just really see the actual reward value. But as part of that, with the training, we also give them the BBO, that bigger, better offer. So what would the bigger, better offer be for someone who's maybe overweight and eats poorly constantly to mask anxiety or worry or self-doubt? You tell me, what feels better for you, craving or curiosity, if you're curious about something? What feels better? Yeah, in your body, if you're even curious about this question.

Feels better. Yeah, in your body. If you're even curious about this question. Curiosity feels better because craving feels like you're a slave to something. It's like you're a prisoner to this craving. I need it now. I'll do whatever I take to fulfill this emptiness that I need to fulfill. Give me the M&Ms.

Give me the ice cream. I want the pizza now. Postmates, let's go. Uber Eats, DoorDash, I'm in. Right, right. And we can have food instantaneously, almost, show up at our door. Right? And so we can reinforce those habits. Curiosity feels better because you're exploring a different part of your brain.

You're interested in something different. You're wondering what could something else be like. But even that momentary experience, you used, with your hand, you clenched your hand. Yes. So there's this contracted, closed down quality to a craving. Does curiosity feel contracted or closed down?

Expansive. Yes. What's the possibility? Yes. So which, if you just took closed versus open, or contracted versus expanded, which one feels better? Expanded. Yes.

So right there, we can give our brain a very clear bigger, better offer. Expanded. So, for example, when we're caught up in ego and we're waiting for that next compliment, does it feel closed or open? Closed. Yes. How about when you're in flow? Like when you're just totally killing it in sport or playing music or having a great conversation. Feel closed or open? Open. Yes. How about when you're in flow? Like when you're just totally killing it in sport or playing music or having a great conversation. Feel closed or open?

Open. Yes. Bigger, better offer. Boom. Okay. So you reflect on the bigger, better offer of feeling expansive, feeling healthier, happier, more fulfilled. Well, it's not even on what could be. It's right in that moment we can tap into that superpower of curiosity.

What would the curiosity be? As opposed to the craving, what are you curious about? We can get curious about the craving. Oh, what does this craving feel like in my body? And we flip the valence from this closed-down feeling of craving being caught up in a craving to, oh, wow, this feels like tightness or tension or I'm feeling my hand move to my phone to click on the food eating app or whatever. Oh, wow, wow, wow. And we can just explore our experience in that moment. So we can actually hack craving with curiosity just by bringing it in.

Okay. And what if the craving is still there? Then we can get curious about that. Hmm, how long is this going to last? Is it changing? Is it moving in my body? We actually have had people on our program saying, you know, I actually had a guy walk into my office.

I was working at the VA hospital. And he walked into my office and he said, Doc, I feel like my head's going to explode if I don't smoke. And, you know, I was a young addiction psychiatrist. I was like, oh, what do I do? So I was like, well, if your head explodes, just put the pieces back together and call me. He politely laughed, you know, it was like bad joke, but we actually got up and mapped out what head exploding felt like for him. What's it feel like? So he described it as like tightness or heat or clenching and things like

this. And we mapped it out on my, I remember mapping this out on my whiteboard where we watched that wave go up. And then over, so typically what somebody does is they'll smoke to make it go away. But he realized it goes up and it actually goes away on its own. And that was a big aha for him. And I feel like everything comes back

to mindfulness and meditation. It's like to solve anything in life is mindfulness and meditation. It's what it all seems like it comes back down to over the last few years. I've done so much research on meditation myself. I've been to India, retreats, Headspace Calm, had all the meditation teachers on. And it feels like it's the solution to so many things is that true well i would say especially for habits we can see how mindfulness helps teach us that awareness piece that can help our brains get that updated and accurate

information so there's actually a pretty good scientific basis around mindfulness helping us with habits. And those habits can extend beyond eating and anxiety and smoking. They can extend to getting caught up in ego, as we talked about a little bit. They can also extend to being attached to certain views, right? So if there are political parties where one side says, I'm right, and the other side says they're right, and they just spend all their time fighting, how are we going to do anything? So what does fighting feel like, closed or open? Closed. How does it feel when people actually collaborate and cross the aisle and say, hey, I want to understand your point of view.

I really want to understand it so we can work together. Open. Feels pretty darn good. Expansive, yeah. Yeah. It feels pretty darn good. Expensive, yeah. Yeah.

So we can even see how mindfulness can help with these things, where people are not having a good relationship or societies are fighting with each other. We can stop, notice how unrewarding the fighting is and how rewarding it is just to remember each other's humanity. Yeah. What is the likeliness then of changing a negative habit without the use of mindfulness meditation? Well, the Rescorla-Wagner curve suggests that you really have to get that updated information to devalue the old things. So there isn't anything else scientifically suggesting that we can change things.

You know, it's not about willpower. It's not about magical thinking. It's not positive thinking and hoping and wishing. Hoping and wishing doesn't fit into the math. The only research says meditation, mindfulness, awareness, however it looks for you, that type of awareness is the only solution. That's what the math is suggesting. So mindfulness helps teach us to be aware,

and awareness is what helps our brain get that updated and accurate. When we have a bigger, better offer. Yeah. So the bigger, better offer can come in the form of curiosity or connection or kindness. Which are often taught. Yeah, those are often taught as part of mindfulness practices. But even feeling physically healthy, mentally healthy feels good. And so that's going to reinforce those positive habits.

So eating healthfully feels better than eating a bunch of junk food. I certainly know this myself. So when we can really clearly see that cause and effect relationship, it's just much easier to stay on a healthy habit. What is the root of addiction in your mind? You know, I like this really simple definition of addiction, continued use despite adverse consequences. So I would say the root of addiction, because continued use despite adverse consequences can be anything from being addicted to social media to a point of view. So I think the root actually comes in

this survival mechanism that's just trying to help us remember where food is. But in modern day, when food is plentiful, most of us have a refrigerator and restaurants are open, 20 minutes to find a restaurant open any time of day. That mechanism, that survival mechanism is still in place. So I think that the root of addiction is actually, paradoxically, there is a survival mechanism. Yet in modern day, we refine coca leaves into cocaine. We make synthetic opioids so that we can pop pills. We go on Instagram to look at cute pictures of puppies when we're bored. All these different things. And food is literally engineered to be addictive now. That process, that natural

survival process has gotten hijacked. What is the amount of time it takes to break an addiction that's 10, 20, 30 years old? Is it possible to break it in a moment, a day? Does it take 30 days to break the habit or start a habit? What is the scientific research saying? Is it the longer you've been doing something, the longer it takes to break, or you can still break it in 10 days once you hit that rhythm?

Yeah, it really depends. I'm remembering a guy that came into one of our early studies who was smoking 30 cigarettes a day. And we started with the pay attention when you smoke, see what you get from it. Two days later, he came back and he'd cut 20 cigarettes. And he realized, I get up and I drink coffee and I don't like the bitter taste of coffee, so I smoke a cigarette to cover the taste. Oh, I could just brush my teeth instead. So for some people, really clearly mapping it out and seeing how unrewarding the old behavior is helps them change a lot of the habits pretty quickly. Okay. So, and as I mentioned in

some of our now preliminary research, we're seeing with using these mindfulness apps like the Eat Right Now app or the Craving to Quit app that I mentioned, we're seeing after people are using these craving tools about 10 to 15 times, that significantly changes the value of that reward. 10 to 15 times or is that 10 to 15 days? Where is that like now? It really depends on what the behavior is. So somebody could have their ice cream craving. And so they can't just eat ice cream 15 times in one day

and do the thing and have it. I mean, they probably feel pretty sick. Yeah, yeah. But it really has to come as part of their natural experience. So when you have the, when the craving comes up and you're about to do the addiction, you open up the app. There's a guided meditation. There's steps. The apps actually start with

helping people map out their habit loops. And so this is some of my, well, I learned the most when I fall on my face. We all do. Yeah. So when I was first starting this research, I had this hypothesis that it would be these formal meditation practices that would help people change their behavior. I'd been meditating for a while. I'd gone on long retreats. I would sit and meditate for a long time. I was like, this is it. It was great for me.

But it turns out when we looked at our data that these informal practices, these in-the-moment practices where people were paying attention as they were smoking or paying attention as they were eating, that's what was really helping to change the behavior itself. In the moment, not before the moment, when you wake up in the morning, at night, in the moment. Right. So the formal meditation practices can certainly be helpful, but we actually start by helping people map these things out. Because I didn't know, when I first started learning to meditate, it was like, pay attention to your breath, and when your mind wanders, bring it back. I was like, okay, this makes sense. But when I went on my first meditation meditation, seven-day silent meditation retreat. By day three, I was crying uncontrollably on the shoulder of the retreat manager because I couldn't pay.

I was like, I made it through college. I made it into medical school, and now I can't pay attention. So I thought I was a failure. And it turns out it's not about forcing ourselves to pay attention, right? That grid, that willpower certainly didn't work for me. It's really about understanding our minds. So instead of like telling people, pay attention to your breath or something like that, we first start by helping them map out how their mind works and map out those habit loops. Then we layer in informal practices and give them like these short bite-sized trainings every day.

So like 10 minutes a day, short video, some animation, some in-the-moment exercises. So people can actually layer this right into their busy day. So they can't say, I don't have time to do this. Anybody that has five or 10 minutes a day can actually do the training in the morning and then build that throughout their day. in the morning and then build that throughout their day. Then we layer in the formal practices as people start to understand how their habits work, what they're getting from these old habits, and how they can actually start to bring in that space for that bigger, better offer. So the kindness, the curiosity, the awareness, we layer that in afterwards. And we've seen some pretty significant results. We just finished two studies with our unwinding anxiety program, one with anxious physicians, who are, I can speak from personal experience, a pain in the ass to work with.

And we don't learn any tools, at least we didn't in medical school, learn any tools to work with all the difficulty. We're expected to be always alert and always helping people. So for example, when you watch a television show or movie about doctors, do you ever see them going to the bathroom? Never. No, because we're not even supposed to go to the bathroom. We're supposed to just be totally helping everybody else

and not worrying about ourselves. So that's what we learn in medical school. And always put together and always have the answers. And the white coat is always clean. Everything, everything. So if you look at that, tons of anxious physicians out there, burnout rates are sky high. Some describe this even in epidemic proportions. So we actually had them use our own running anxiety program just to see if we could get physicians to engage with this. Within three months, we got a 57% reduction in clinically validated anxiety scores.

And without teaching them anything about burnout, we got a 50% reduction in some measures of burnout because there's a correlation between becoming callous toward other people and anxiety and burnout. So we were seeing that. And then we just did a randomized control trial to make sure this was actually legit with people with generalized anxiety disorder. So people with moderate to severe anxiety, after two months, we got a 63% reduction in these clinically validated anxiety scores, whereas our control group, no change at all. Wow. We've even mapped this onto the brain where with our smoking program, the Caribbean to Quit app, we can actually target specific brain regions and show that as those brain regions change in activity, they predict clinical outcomes.

So we're seeing everything from behavioral mechanism, you know, with these Rescorla-Wagner curves to the brain mechanisms where we're targeting these brain regions that get caught up when we get, or get activated when we get caught up in anxiety or craving or whatnot. And all of this, and surprisingly, we can actually apply these digital therapeutics, basically app-based training programs, which wasn't even a term several years ago. When we started doing this work, the iPhone was just being rolled out and the Android phones looked like a big clunky Texas Instruments calculator or something like that.

So we were like, well, can we use this? And I had this aha moment where I realized, you know, this is, these processes are set up for survival, helping people remember where to find food. People don't learn to smoke in my office. They don't learn to get anxious in my office, hopefully. So can I actually package my office and bring it to them? And so that's where we started taking these manualized, these evidence-based trainings, cutting them into bite-sized pieces and delivering them via an app. Is there any addictions that you have not been able to overcome yourself? Being the one helping people overcome these addictions through all this training and teaching, do you still have an addiction?

Let's just say that my addictions are much better. I wrote a whole book about say that my addictions are much better. I wrote a whole book about all my different addictions from thinking to love to distraction to what not. And certainly over the last 20 years, I feel like they are in much better control. I have a much better life. I don't feel like I'm a slave to my addictions. Really? So they're not 100% gone, but you manage them. They're not in control of me anymore. That's good. So you're not 100% gone, but you manage them? They're not in control of me anymore. That's good. So you're not a prisoner to your addictions?

I'm not in prison anymore. Do you feel like everyone has addictions? We all do. We all do. We all do. And you can think of it as any habit that's kind of gotten a little off the rails, a little out of control, right? Continued use despite adverse consequences. What about positive addiction? Like reading every day or, I don't know, going to work out every day. Right.

Or taking care of your health every day. So let's talk about working out. So that was one of the ones that I worked with in terms of being addicted to running. I had to run every day and I would get irritable if I couldn't fit a run in. And, you know, folks would kind of avoid me until I'd gotten my exercise in and things like that. So exercise, obviously healthy and helpful for promoting health. You know, I still like to exercise every day.

But when it becomes continued use despite adverse consequences. So if we exercise even when we're injured, because we have to get that exercise in, that's a problem. We were just, I was just leading a, co-leading a retreat with the Olympic women's water polo team and was talking to some of the athletes. And one of them talked about how them talked about how she could really almost basically get into flow through exercise but was really struggling to find that mindset outside of sport, outside of exercise. The idea here is- Of being in flow in her life, not just for the two hours at the gym or in the pool.

Right. Right. Imagine somebody is in that state and they get injured. It can be really devastating. And I've heard about, especially in surfing, when folks get injured and they were so addicted to that adrenaline rush, which is kind of different than flow, but let's just say that can be even more addictive. What do they do when they're injured and they can't surf anymore? A lot of them turn to drugs because- They need the rush still.

Yes. Yeah. So what was once a positive addiction, now you substitute for a negative addiction to have, which is the alternate bigger, better offer because you can't do the thing you love. Yeah, and I'm not sure, a positive addiction, I don't know how many positive addictions are actually out there because anytime we're a slave to anything, that's problematic. What if it's a habit that adds value to your life? Great. Habits are good. Having to relearn how to tie our shoes every morning, that wouldn't be so great, right? So tying our shoes is a good habit. So what's the difference

between a habit and addiction? Continued use despite adverse consequences. Okay. Right? Tying my shoes doesn't provide adverse consequences for me. Got it. It actually helps me from tripping. Right, right, right. So there's a positive reward.

Running every day helps you stay healthier, but being obsessed with running every day, otherwise you're an angry person. Problem. Is a problem. Yeah. It's an addiction, not a habit. Yeah. So if I listen to my body and I say, okay, maybe I're an angry person. Problem. Is a problem. Yeah. Is an addiction, not a habit, yeah. So if I listen to my body and I say, okay, maybe I need a rest day, and I take a rest

day, that's much better than pushing through that and potentially getting injured. What if someone feels like, you know what, my life is just kind of, I don't feel fulfilled. I feel like I've got a little worry here, I've got some stress, some uncertainty about the future. My relationships are good, but they're not great. I'm not out of shape, but I'm not in shape. Do you teach people how to develop positive habits that would get their life into a place of more fulfillment as well?

And if so, what should they do? Yeah, I think one of the simplest ways to start to explore that for folks and to start to explore their own lives is through curiosity. Really just developing that, I would say even just awakening curiosity. Because we all were great at curiosity when we were three. You know, we could stare at a blade of grass for hours. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or whatever. A block.

Just like turn the block, yeah. Bug, bug. Bug. So that curiosity piece helps us tap into what it feels like to be open. And that openness, we can start to realize that this is actually everywhere. We have a good conversation with somebody. We're just walking outside in nature and just looking at the trees, looking at the leaves, looking at the grass, whatever, we can actually realize there's a ton of positive feeling, that openness that actually is always available,

we've just been ignoring it. So we kind of awaken that piece through fostering curiosity. Curiosity is step one. Curiosity, be curious about your life, about what's possible, taking a breath, looking at things in a different way, doing that approach. Yes. And so it's critical here because there are two types of curiosity. One's this deprivation

curiosity where it's like, oh, who was that? Oh, I saw that person in a movie. What was that? What was her name? And then we frantically pull out our phone and we're like, oh, thank God. Now I remember this person's name. Nice trivia, but not going to be a life changer for us in terms of helping us have these aha moments. So deprivation curiosity feels very much like an addiction. There's this itching. We check on Instagram. Right. There's this restless quality that says do something.

It's like that destination. We have to get somewhere. So interest curiosity is that open quality that we've been talking about that's really about being curious about the journey. Like, oh, look at this grain of wood. Isn't that interesting intellectually? But just really letting our senses rip and just letting that feeling of curiosity come pouring out.

And just letting that feeling of curiosity come pouring out. Mental illness and mental health is a topic that I've been seeing everywhere. People are talking about as a struggle that a lot of people are going through and they're opening up about it online and publications. How important is it to focus on our mental health, part one, and then when someone feels like they are mentally ill, is there a way to solve and end mental disease or mental illness? So part one, critical to focus on in mental health, and I think that actually relates to part two as well,

which is disease is often in the eye of the beholder. How do we define this stuff? And so you can think of anxiety being our planning brain, trying to secure the future, kind of going off the rails a little bit. So can we look at these processes and see what is something that was actually there to help us survive that's kind of gone off the rails a little bit and help that tweak that a little bit so it gets back into the normal range. That brings us into the range of mental health.

I see the two as really inextricably linked. Sure. Is mental illness something that you can cure? I hear people saying, I have a disease. It's mental illness. I can be cured, but I'm accepting of the disease and who I am, and I know how to work with it. Is that possible? Well, if we think of all of life having some elements of it that are out of our control or not satisfactory, right?

There are lots of things that we'd all love to have be different. Sure. So think of life as a mental dis-ease, as a not in ease, not easeful. That extends, I think, to what you're describing in terms of mental illness, so to speak. There is a dis-ease, but we can actually learn to be okay with things not being perfect. And in that sense, if we're okay with things not being perfect, what's the problem? We don't have the dis-ease's the problem? We don't have the disease anymore, right? We don't have that.

So we can, in a sense, cure that worry, stress, dis-ease feeling. Just as an example, there's a lot of work now in the field of schizophrenia where it's helping people see that, oh, they're hearing voices, and they can actually relate to their voices differently as compared to thinking, oh, I'm a sick person. I need to take medications. Not that medications aren't helpful. I'm not suggesting that. There's this whole movement that's helping people relate to those voices differently so that they are not fighting against them or thinking there's something wrong with them and start helping them see, oh, well, here are these voices in my head.

How can I work with them? There's a dis-ease that can be much less dis-easeful by helping us just relate to ourselves differently. That's really what mindfulness is all about. It's not about changing things. It's about changing our relationship to whatever comes up. What we resist persists. Yes. Now you're sounding like a personal development guru. What we resist persists. You're crossing over to the other worlds. I like it.

So what do you suggest everyone start doing to improve their mental health? Whether they feel like life is pretty good right now, but there's going to be some challenges in the future, or I can't even think for a moment. Does it all tap back into mindfulness and meditation and awareness for you? I would say it all taps back into helping. We really have to understand and know how our minds work. If we don't know how our minds work, we can't work with them. So the first step is know your mind, know how your mind works. How do we know how our minds work, we can't work with them. So the first step is know your mind.

Know how your mind works. How do we know how our mind works? Well, it starts with mapping out a bunch of our habit loops. And that's going to be a big step forward. And just once we become familiar with some of these habit loops, the other ones start jumping out of the woodwork. And we're like, oh, I didn't notice this. I didn't notice this.

I didn't notice this. So we learn a whole lot about how our mind works just by starting with, think of some of these cornerstone habits old old habits understand that piece see that they are actually workable because when we understand our mind works we can work with our mind see that they're workable with awareness start to see you know all these aspects around um what how rewarding is the old behavior bring in that bigger better offer that comes with kindness and curiosity. And we're already way down the road at that point. Wow. And what is the difference between mindfulness and overthinking? Curiosity constantly and overthinking. Yes. So overthinking

is often where we're caught up in some loop. It could be perseveration when we're worried about something. It could be rumination when we're, I can't believe I did that. You know, so past and future, we're often lost in the past and future. So mindfulness is about bringing us into the present moment, noticing when we're lost in any of those habit loops and just being aware of them. So it's really about stepping out of the loop of being caught up and just seeing them for what they are, not trying to change them, but simply notice, oh, this is happening. This is happening as compared to getting in there and trying to push against them or change them. So as a doctor and scientist, there's, you know,

thousands of years of ancient wisdom that's been teaching all of us this stuff, right? But it's taken doctors and scientists like yourself to research to find the true meaning or to find the facts of it, I guess, to prove it. Yes. Why is that? Why can't we just listen to our ancestors and say, it's not that difficult, we're over complicating life.

Why do we struggle so much? Yeah, that's a great-. We're over-complicating life. Like, why do we struggle so much? Yeah, that's a great question. When the answers have always been here. Yeah, it's a great question. So I think there are several aspects to that. One is that in the West, we tend to be kind of addicted to science. So we think, oh, if it's not scientifically proven it can't be true. Two, our experience is really the driver and the mover with changing things. So we really have to experience something ourselves. We can't just say, oh yeah, that guy said it's true. We have to actually experience this. And actually, the Buddha actually said that too. He said, don't believe what I say. See if it's true for you, yourself. So I think we have to actually experience things in our own lives and have our own experiences to see what is actually true.

All of that comes with awareness. So I think those two pieces are at play there. So how do scientists prove religion, God, Jesus? Is there a solution and provenness to all these other things? To spirituality? Like science and spirituality, how do you prove it? That's a great question. I'm going to get really curious about that, but that's way beyond my pay grade.

I'm into habits and helping people change habits. As far as those things, hopefully somebody else is really curious about those questions and I'd love to see what they come up with. That's great. I like that answer. What's a life worth living for you in terms of the habits we can apply to our life? Hmm. I would say the most fulfilling moments of my life are when I'm connected with others, when there's some sort of kindness happening, when there's, you know, I just love developing programs to help people change their lives. It's so fulfilling to have people write into us and say, you know, you're, you know, you're, I've changed my life, or I've been anxious for 15 years and I've tried

everything and this is the only thing that's worked. Some guy wrote a review who said, you know, if I could buy this app for everybody in the world, I would, because it helped me with my smoking so much. That's what's really gratifying for me, is just seeing how we can bring simple principles together, ancient wisdom together with modern science, and make these things really accessible for people because there's a lot of suffering out there. And every day, when I get up in the morning and know that I can help move people

in the direction away from suffering, that's satisfying and fulfilling for me. You know that your work is making a difference, making an impact. What if someone's listening or watching has someone close to them, a family member, a friend, a partner that they know has been suffering with an addiction for a long time, and they've tried everything. They've tried giving them more love, rewarding them with a bigger, better offer, giving them more love, rewarding them with a bigger, better offer, holding them accountable. They've tried tough love. They've called them names. They've tried everything, which I'm sure people have tried. What advice could you give them, whether they were going to be a part of

the app that you have, which I'm going to recommend everyone do, but even if they didn't do that, what advice would you give them that could potentially help solve the addiction for a loved one? Yeah, I see a lot of people, and a lot of people come to me with this very question. And the first step there I recommend to them is also understanding their own minds. Because if they can understand their own minds, they can see where they might be reactive or where they might have the best intentions, but might be feeding something or enabling something that isn't as healthy. So if they can understand their own minds a little bit more, they can actually understand the mind of their loved one and put themselves in their loved one's shoes. And have compassion and not guilt and shame, which I've done in the past, probably many times, is making someone feel bad.

Yeah, yeah. Which probably makes them more addicted to the thing. Right, shame, guilt. They are habit loops unto themselves. Right, it probably makes someone want the thing to dissolve the shame and guilt more. So taking awareness of our own brains first and having compassion for the addiction is what you would say is a powerful step. Yeah. And then have that help people be

able to just hold the suffering of somebody else. Because when we're not as worried about protecting ourselves, one thing mindfulness helps us do is to not take things so personally. And so often we take things personally. We don't even realize that we're doing it. In our efforts to help, it might be painful. And so we put up the armor or whatever. So as we learn to not take things personally, that opens us to be able to be with the suffering of others. And as you pointed out, that compassion can naturally arise.

And just being with somebody and holding their suffering can be tremendously healing unto itself. So healing. That's probably one of the hardest things as a human can do. I'm speaking for myself, but I'm assuming it's one of the hardest things

to not be triggered by your own taking offense-ness to something that someone did. Taking something personally, a wall, it's probably one of the hardest things to notice the trigger, say, I'm going to take my ego out of my chest and put it over here on a table, look at it, and not let it affect me, and be with the suffering of someone yelling or attacking or pushing a button of yours that triggers you, and just be with them. Why is that so hard to do that? Do you feel like it's hard for you still after all this time practicing? It's hard for everybody. So it goes back to these survival mechanisms that say

danger, danger, danger. And we have to be able to realize whether something is dangerous or whether something isn't dangerous. And if somebody is verbally attacking us or something and we push back, then that can just escalate things as compared to being with that suffering and not being that reaction. Do you notice yourself ever reacting still to situations that maybe trigger you? Oh, sure. Really? Still today? Even as the guy who's got the answers, who's got the research that.

I still have to practice. But I would say every day, every moment as I practice and feel the sweetness that comes with connection, with kindness, with letting go, it gets easier and easier. Wow, you're a sweet scientist. You've got a sweet heart, a kind heart. It's amazing. You've got the analytical brain and the emotional side of you,

which is really nice to see because most, not actually say most, but sometimes you see a doctor or scientist that's just all analytical and no heart. And I really see your heart, so I appreciate that. This is a question I ask everyone towards the end. Before I ask this, is there anything else we should know about habits that I'm missing here that's really important for us to know about, about building a positive habit? So let's touch on building positive habits a little bit. So we've talked about how to unwind some of these old habits. And I think noticing the cause and effect relationship helps us see how unrewarding older habits are,

but it also helps us see how rewarding some of these positive habits are. So I just want to highlight that piece. Every time we're truly, say, generous with somebody and we're not looking for something in return, like just true generosity, not looking for anything in return, how's it feel?

Amazing. Yeah. So if we can really even just reflect on that and say, wow, that felt really good, that feeds that positive habit loop. Same for kindness, same for connection. When we put away our phone and really have a conversation with somebody, as compared to having that phone burn a hole in our pocket and we notice what it just feels like to have a good connection, it makes it easier to put the phone away in the future.

Yeah. Okay. How do we build a positive habit? It's through the awareness. Again, same thing as anyone. Being aware of how it makes us feel, the bigger, better offer that we get from this and constantly doing it, that it's a good habit, it's a good reward, not a negative reward. Yes, yes. And we can look for the contracted quality of experience versus the expanded quality of experience to see. And sometimes they're mixed. We might be holding the door for our boss and we

might be like, did she actually, did she notice that I held the door for her? Was she angry? Was she grateful? Yeah, yeah. So we could look for that closed down piece and then look to see what it feels like when we just hold it just out of pure kindness. Again, you're sounding like a personal development guru over here. Tony Robbins would say the secret to living is giving. It's like the more we give, the more we feel good about ourselves and not looking for something in return. But whether it's science or the laws of the universe where something's going to come back in an abundant way when we create, when we give, when we offer value to other people. It's beautiful to see how the science is actually backing that up.

Those things, the giving has been around for thousands of years. People saying, generosity is good as compared to Gordon Gekko in Wall Street. Greed is good. No, he was just addicted to money. Generosity is good thousands compared to Gordon Gecko in Wall Street. Greed is good. No, he was just addicted to money. Generosity is good thousands of years. Now we can see, oh, the science actually supports this. There's this rewarding quality that

feels better when we're open, when we're connected as compared to when we're trying to hold on or get more. So you've done the research with this habit of giving as well or is that just we haven't yet but i there'll be a fun experiment to do amazing yes i love this personal development science coming together okay is there anything else around positive habit building that we should

know about i think that's it okay it's pretty simple this is great i love this conversation uh this question is called the three truths. Okay, so imagine It's your last day on earth many years from now you live as long as you want to live could be a couple hundred years But eventually you got to go and the physical forms got to leave. Okay, and You have achieved every dream you can think of you have the life of your dreams you Find the research to positive giving you find the solutions to spiritual out whatever you want to, you find the research to positive giving, you find the solutions to spiritual, whatever you want to do, you find the answers. Okay. And all this research is out there that you've created or your team has created with you. But for whatever reason, you've got to take the research with you. You've got to take all the content you've created, the TED Talks with

tens of millions of views. They all got to go away. And you get to leave behind three things you know to be true about your life and your experiences that you would leave with all of us. Three lessons, or what I like to call us, three truths. That's all you could leave behind. What would you say are your three truths? In no particular order, but maybe in this order. Number one, curiosity is key.

I mean, if I had to condense everything that I've learned, both personally and scientifically, to one word, it would be curiosity. That curious awareness. It's sweet. It changes habits. Just thinking about curiosity brings a smile to my face. I like that. That's number one.

Probably number one, number two, and number three. The other may sound a little more like cliches, but they're still true for me. That kindness wins every time. You know, love trumps hate. Every time. And that also fits with the rule word based learning piece so the science of that is beautiful yeah as well you know i'm not i'm gonna leave it at two because i'm not sure what else there is besides curiosity and kindness i mean both of those

lead to connection so if i had to put a third in there, but as a result of the first two is connection as humans, when we connect with each other, even connecting with other beings, like our animals, pets, whatever, that's pretty darn good. So curiosity, kindness, connection. That's powerful. How can we support you you how can we get a hold of the the materials the assessments the apps where can we go to end the negative addictions and become more complete human beings without negative addictions i have a totally self-referential website called drjud.com drjud.comR-J-U-D.com, which has information. We have a bunch of free resources there, put out courses for healthcare providers that are all free, a bunch of videos that we've,

and animations we've put together because it's just really fun to condense the science into digestible bits. And also the apps, you know, the Unwinding Anxiety app, the Eat Right Now app, and the Crave Me to Quit app, those the Eat Right Now app, and the Craving to Quit app. Those are all- They're all in the app store? They're all in the app store, but folks can find them directly through my website as well. And then I wrote a book called The Craving Mind if folks want to read more. Great.

That brings in my personal journey with the scientific journey, which was fun to write as well. The Craving Mind. And I'll link all this stuff up on the show notes too. right as well. The craving mind. And I'll link all this stuff up on the show notes too. I want to acknowledge you, Dr. Judd, for the ability to see your own addictions and dive into this to help not only yourself, but so many other people. That you had the curiosity to say, why do I have these addictions? Why am I overthinking? Why am I obsessing over this? All these things that you talked about, so that you could help heal and relieve

pain for so many people in the world. It's amazing that you had that curiosity and you worked so hard over the years to do the research. Because I can only imagine how much time that has taken you to find the results and to find the research that proves these things scientifically. Decades of time and energy. So I thank you for your service, sacrifice, whatever you want to call it, for showing up and helping.

The results are helping a lot of people heal and feel at peace, which is what we're all looking to do is figure out how to suffer less and have more peace and love in our heart. Like you said, kindness, curiosity. So I'm very grateful and acknowledge you for that. Oh, thank you. It's an honor and a privilege and it's been a wild ride so far. Yeah. And we're just getting started. Yes. You're just getting started. This is my final question. It's what's your definition of greatness? Ego-lessness. No ego. Mm-hmm. There you go. Dr. John. Thanks, man. Appreciate you.

Thank you. Oh, my friend. Was this powerful for you? Was this helpful? Did you find something that you know you needed work on in your life? Some addiction. Maybe it's not some big addiction,

but it's a smaller addiction that you know has been holding you back. Do you realize that there's some negative habits that you do? And can you replace it with a BBO, with a bigger, better offer, with a positive habit to help you transform something in your life you want to grow into? If you enjoyed this, please share it with one friend. Let me know. You can tag me on social media at lewishouse share it out on your social media platforms this interview and episode and content can transform the lives of millions of people but i need your support to get the message out there so make sure to share it with one friend post it in a whatsapp group message hold someone accountable in your life who you know maybe has

got a habit that they could break free of. Someone who's addicted to something that you know is holding them back. Even just addiction to laziness. Just not being consistent. Not being their word. Not showing up at the potential you know they could show up at. Have them listen to this episode and let me know what they got out of it. Let me know. This is a game changer, guys. And if you want more inspiration and weekly updates, then make sure to go to lewishouse.com and sign up for our newsletter where we update you every week on the latest podcast episodes,

inspiration for improving the greatness in your life, and so much more. Check it out at lewishouse.com. Again, this is a game changer. You can check out some of Dr. Brewer's apps as well. You can go to drjudd.com and use the code SCHOOLOFGREATNESS20 for 20% off any of Dr. Judd's habit-changing programs. Now, if this has impacted your life, please let me know. Send me a message on social media, at Lewis Howes, on Instagram if you're over there.

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Eckhart Tolle said, in today's rush, we all think too much, seek too much, want too much, and forget about the joy of just being. Take a moment to reflect on how you're being today. If you're feeling overwhelmed and anxious, just be. Don't think too much. Just be. I love you. I hope you know that you were loved and I hope you find the strength and the courage to love yourself deeply because that's what the world needs a little bit more of. All of us to love ourselves and not hate ourselves as much. I hope you know you are loved very deeply. I'm supportive of you.

I've got your back. And as always, you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great. 🎵 Outro Music 🎵 Thank you.