In this episode of the School Your Soul Podcast I interview Judson Brewer MD PhD, who is a thought leader in the field of habit change and the “science of self-mastery,” combining over 20 years of personal experience with mindfulness training with his scientific research.
Dr. Brewer is the Director of Research and Innovation at the Center for Mindfulness at UMASS and associate professor in psychiatry at the School of Medicine at Brown University, as well as a research affiliate at MIT. So this guy has no shortage of credentials.
His TED talk “A simple way to break a bad habit” has been viewed over 10 million times. And his book, “The Craving Mind: From Cigarettes to Smartphones to Love — Why We Get Hooked and How We Can Break Bad Habits,” explores how habits form, why they’re so hard to overcome, and the research that gives us hope they can be changed.
In your life – what types of behaviors do you reinforce?
It’s likely that the majority of us do not reinforce habits that lead away from stress. Once we learn how to use our stress compass – which we’ll talk about in this episode – we may realize that we are actually looking for happiness in all the wrong places. Dr. Brewer helps steer us back in the right direction.
In today’s episode we explore:
- How we develop habits – including addictions to our phones, social media, thinking and even love!
- How we can reprogram our habits
- The importance of mindfulness in this process
- And much much more..