Dr. Jud Brewer, the Director of Research and Innovation at the Mindfulness Center and an expert in mindfulness for addiction, dives into the intricacies of habit formation and addiction. He emphasizes the importance of self-awareness and curiosity in breaking unhealthy patterns. Listeners discover practical strategies to map their habits and understand triggers, making room for healthier alternatives. Through compelling insights and real-life anecdotes, Dr. Brewer illustrates how mindfulness can transform our relationship with ourselves and foster lasting change.
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Unexpected Benefits of Mindfulness
A patient used mindfulness to address anxiety but lost weight as a side effect.
He realized stress eating wasn't rewarding, stopped, and eventually became an Uber driver despite his previous fear of driving.
volunteer_activism ADVICE
Mapping Habit Loops
Map out your biggest habit loops, especially negative ones, to understand their triggers, behaviors, and rewards.
Start with the habits that cause you the most problems, as they are easiest to identify.
volunteer_activism ADVICE
Focus on Reward
Focus on the reward value of a habit to change it effectively, not just on willpower.
Ask yourself, "What do I get from this?", focusing on the feeling, not the rationalization.
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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
The School of Greatness 
