A simple way to break a bad habit

In his TedTalk, Judson Brewer talks about breaking bad habits through mindfulness. Here are some key takeouts you may find useful.

Breaking a bad habit isn’t always easy.

Psychiatrist and addiction expert Judson Brewer says habits are the product of reward-based learning, the same event that trains the mind to crave “feel good” moments, such as eating a piece of chocolate cake. He says replacing behaviours like these takes time – mostly because every habit that’s ever risen to the surface has gone through a three-step process: trigger, behaviour and reward.

It takes a deep understanding of the habit, an awareness of what’s going on in the mind, to change for the better. But in this TED Talk, Brewer reveals a simple way to do it.

Historically, the reward system for eating food was simply a matter of survival. Brewer says signals were sent to the brain to remember where food was found, especially if it tasted good. But over time, the mind found a more creative way to tweak the reward system. Habits became more than just a way to find food —they clung to emotions and became a catalyst for feeling better.

One deceptively simple way to combat this is by being curious, Brewer says. In his lab, he tested the effect of mindfulness on smoking, an experiment where participants were encouraged to smoke but had to really take in the event and be curious about what was happening in those moments. He found that one woman’s description completely took the excitement out of the habit: Mindful smoking: smells like stinky cheese and tastes like chemicals.

“Seeing what we get from our habits helps us understand them at a deeper level—to know it in our bones so we don’t have to force ourselves to hold back or restrain ourselves from behaviour,” Brewer says. “We’re just less interested in doing it in the first place.”

Brewer says this is what mindfulness is really about. It allows people to get a clear view of their behaviour, and what they notice could make all the difference. It doesn’t happen overnight, but people can be inspired to form new habits as they see the results of their actions.