Latest / Success Story with Scott Clary / Dr. Judson Brewer - Neuroscientist, Addiction Psychiatrist & Bestselling Author | The Science of Habits

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Dr. Judson Brewer - Neuroscientist, Addiction Psychiatrist & Bestselling Author | The Science of Habits · Success Story with Scott Clary

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  Just because we can think our way through things that that's going to change behavior,
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  that that is so far from the neuroscience, it's not even fun.
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  Dr. Judson Brewer, an American psychiatrist, neuroscientist, and expert in mindfulness.
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  Abid is basically something that we do automatically, and habits are set up so that we can
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  learn things and then have the energy the next day to not have to relearn that and learn something new.
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  With over 25 years of research, Dr. Brewer has developed groundbreaking digital
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  therapeutic programs for treating anxiety, overeating, and addiction.
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  Been people see very clearly that something is not rewarding.
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  It makes it much easier to stop doing the behavior.
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  He's also the founder of Dr. Judd and the Director of Research and Innovation at Brown
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  University's Mindfulness Center.
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  In this episode, we'll explore how his innovative research has transformed the way we think
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  about habit change, mindfulness, and mental health.
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  Get ready for a fascinating conversation that could reshape your understanding of wellness.
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  From a neuroscience perspective, nobody has found a pathway, a mechanism, a brain region,
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  brain network, involved in well power.
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  Don't take yourself too seriously, which goes to the self-judgmental piece.
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  That's really important.
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  Welcome to Success Story.
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  I'm your host, Scott Clary.
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  The Success Story podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast network.
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  Judd, I'm super excited that you're here today.
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  I'm very excited to jump into both your books, all your life's work.
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  We're going to get, we're going to go into everything.
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  I want to kick this off with just an observation that I made when I was sort of doing my research
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  and prepping a little bit.
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  So your TED Talk on Breaking Habit has been viewed over 19 million times.
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  What do you think resonates so strongly with people about your particular approach to habit change?
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  That's a good question.
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  So based on feedback that I've gotten, you know, people randomly find my email address and send
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  me an email and say, hey, I quit smoking after I watch your TED Talk or whatever,
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  I think it's two things.
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  One is simplicity and another is, you know, is really about the non-will-powered
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  based approach, which is the dominant paradigm.
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  Everybody's tried willpower, you know, forever and it still hasn't worked.
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  So taking a paradoxical approach that is more playful than worse based, I think has been
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  the thing that is differentiated and I'll say, but it doesn't show up in my talks.
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  You know, all of this is based on the science that my lab's been doing for 20 years.
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  So as a clinician, I'm not going to put anything out there that it's woo-woo or just like,
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  I think this is a good idea or I'm trying to sell some product.
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  This is really about helping people.
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  Why do you think, I mean, so that you've put your life into this work so you understand it
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  intimately. What do you think there is such an incorrect leading paradigm about habit formation?
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  Or willpower rather, excuse me yet.
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  Yeah, I can give you some, how about some baseless speculation, some BS?
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  Because who knows historically where this started? You can look, you know, in ancient Greece,
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  there was a relief that was, you know, that was carved into the path and on that depicted a
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  horse and a rider to pick. There was really highlighting this struggle between our passions and
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  reason. And reason is the rider, you know, not nearly as strong as the horse. And so, you know,
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  you can look at ancient Greece, you can, you can blame the cart, you know, who, you know,
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  got us into this whole thinking thing and thinking that because we can think that we're
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  suddenly in control, you know, and divorced from our bodies, which is pretty interesting.
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  We can even come back to that because that is a major issue with willpower where, you know,
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  we think that just because we can think our way through things that that's going to change
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  behavior, but that is so far from the neuroscience, it's not even funny. So honestly, I think that
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  people like to think that they can be in control. And so we tell ourselves this story that I can
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  be in control and willpower as part of that story. And so it's so facto, you know, if I'm in control,
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  I can tell myself to do things. Therefore, I should be able to tell myself to change whatever
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  the behavior is that I want to change. And obviously that doesn't work out so well. I mean,
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  so you're your background. It's in a psychiatry and neuroscience. And I'm curious. I mean,
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  you focus on so many things over your career, just like playing off that point that you just made
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  about, we think we're in control and we're really not wide because there's a lot of lessons
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  your book, the hunger habit and you focus on eating and you focus on applying that particular
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  thesis to eating. Why are there so many lessons just in that particular activity of eating,
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  of gaining weight, of feeling out of control? It seems like to be this little petri dish
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  that we can learn from that can affect almost every other habit that we have in our life.
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  Yes. What was it reminds me of this quote from Ted Lasso where Danny the football player says,
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  football is life, you know, and I think of it this way, eating is life. And it literally is more
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  so than some people really believe that football is life. And I can't argue with them. And I will
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  say that eating literally is life. We have to eat to survive. And so from you can look at it from
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  this entire spectrum of survival, all the way to comfort, to habits, to addiction,
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  and you can place eating anywhere along that spectrum very easily. And all along the spectrum,
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  for a lot of people, it is all along that spectrum. So, you know, it just encompasses so many aspects
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  of life from survival to habits. And actually I wanted to describe. So for people listening,
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  what is the actual clinical definition of a habit? Because I think that setting the baselines
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  people understand what we're actually speaking about, because I think people also, I mean,
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  I don't want to jump too deep in before they even understand how you understand a habit.
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  Yeah. I'll actually give you a two-fer. Let's define habit and let's define addiction as well,
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  so that we can differentiate those two. So habit is basically something that we do automatically.
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  You know, that's a simple operational definition that generally holds pretty well.
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  And habits are set up so that we can learn things and then have the energy the next day to not
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  have to relearn that and learn something new. So most habits are extremely helpful,
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  and it's an efficiency process for our brain. You know, imagine waking up every morning and having
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  to relearn everything from walking to making breakfast. You know, it would be exhausted before we
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  had even relearned how to make coffee. So that's, you know, habit is automatic behavior,
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  something that we see a queue and that queues this process, this automated process to just do the
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  thing. In contrast, addiction, I think of habit along a spectrum and at the far end of that
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  spectrum is addiction. And the definition of addiction I learned in residency was continued
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  use despite adverse consequences. And the reason I bring that forward as well is that often people
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  think and they describe their addictions in terms of a habit on and the habit of smoking in
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  the habit of overeating or whatever. But if you look at that definition, continue to
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  spite adverse consequences, we can see how, you know, they're the obvious ones like smoking,
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  which aren't helpful for survival. But then the ones that are not so obvious where it overlaps
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  between the survival mechanisms like eating, we all have to eat to survive. And doing that same
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  behavior despite adverse consequences where we, for example, overeating and clinical obesity has
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  been linked to anti-survival, you know, a lot of a lot of negative health consequences from
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  not being an ideal weight. So that's how I think of habit and then that's how I think of
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  its relationship. We can be in a habit of doing something where we're continuing to do it despite
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  adverse consequences. So addiction, it can even fall into that addiction spectrum as well. Does that
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  make sense? It does. And it's very interesting because something seemed to be more black and white.
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  So I think that most people in 2024 would agree that smoking is more of an addiction than a habit.
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  But I'm curious about food in particular. And maybe we can just extrapolate to other habits that
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  maybe turn into addictions. And what is that bridge that we cross when we're not aware? Because I
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  think that's where people predominantly get into trouble. I don't think people wake up and are like,
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  hey, I want to be clinically obese or just out of shape or or eat more than I really need.
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  Like people don't go in to life thinking that. But that's the output after 5, 10 years. So how does
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  that happen in the brain? We turn a habit into an addiction. Yes. Well, let's, well, let's use
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  eating as an example. Our brains learn to do behaviors based on how rewarding they are. And often
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  we'll set up these habits early in life. So for example, if we were five years old and we go to
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  a birthday party, our parents aren't sending us to that birthday party saying, why don't you go
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  and get some nutritious food at this. You know, this is going to substitute for lunch. You know,
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  they're sending us probably trying to have us eat some a healthy meal before we go. So we don't
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  over indulge on the cake and ice cream. But the point there is that we're already starting to learn
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  to associate ice cream cake, you know, things like that with celebrations with connection with
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  people and all that. And you can see as we go through life, we start to learn to eat in the absence
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  of hunger. So we set up these habitual behaviors, you know, celebrations that we're we're over
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  indulging in ways that are not aligned with our physiology, our brain and our body aren't saying,
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  hey, you know, you're hungry. Go eat that cake, typically not right at an office party or whatever.
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  It's like, oh, here's a celebration. Here's some cake. It looks good. And so we just go into the
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  habit mode of eating. So these habits get set up in the way that we are we're doing the thing
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  because it's now associated not with a survival strategy. Like I need calories now, but with something
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  else. And if that's something else is rewarding, we're going to keep doing it to the point where it
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  is habitual. So with eating, it could be celebrations. It could also be consolations where we learn,
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  you know, we're bored one day and we go into that we're rummaging around the kitchen just looking
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  for something we eat, you know, and that boredom gap is filled with some typically some type of
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  a comfort food. And so we learn, oh, if I'm bored, if I'm sad, if I'm mad, if I'm lonely, all these
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  things, we learn that food becomes this consolation mechanism that can make us feel less bad. And it's
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  rewarding enough that it gets set up as a habit. So we've got these two reinforcement learning
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  processes. One is called positive reinforcement where it's all the celebratory stuff. It's like,
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  oh, you know, just at a good meal, go have some dessert. And the other is this negative reinforcement
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  loop where it says, oh, you feel bad, make yourself feel better. And this is just using food as an
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  example, almost every habit falls into the same category where if we're continuing the pleasant,
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  the behavior gets reinforced through positive reinforcement. If we're making the unpleasant go away
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  or avoiding it, we're reinforcing that habit through negative reinforcement. And this, you know,
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  honestly, this process, not that sea slugs eat birthday cake, but this has been shown, you know,
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  Air Kendall got the Nobel Prize back in the year 2000 showing that this is a very evolutionarily
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  conservative process all the way back to the most basic of nervous systems. Well, because I think
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  I mean, there's again, your work helps a wide spectrum of people, but I think that the people that
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  I really want to tap into, especially with the audience listens to this show, people that
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  overwork and get addicted to work. And then it actually has a verse impacts even though
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  it starts off as just a very a very healthy habit, right? You're motivated. You're putting in the hours,
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  you're waking up every morning and you're going to the office or you're building your thing.
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  But then there's like you just mentioned, people lose track of that habit turning into some
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  some addiction. And I think that's really where a lot of people look back and they're like,
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  shit, what have I become? And that's really that's really a scary, it's a very scary space and
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  a very scary place to find yourself in. And I want to we'll talk about sort of how to overcome that.
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  But I still want to stick on hunger and food and eating because you speak about
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  hedonic hunger. And I want to speak about that. I want to understand it and how it relates
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  to emotional eating because that's a very big. So this is if we're looking at the spectrum of
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  or the sort of the journey of the person that has all these reinforcement mechanisms that
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  eventually turn into an addiction, where does hedonic hunger fit into that journey?
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  Yeah, that's a great question. So scientists, we scientists, I'll let you in on the secret.
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  We make up new terms so that we can sound smart. Okay. So relatively recently,
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  a scientist came up with a term called hedonic hunger, which interestingly is a misnomer.
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  So hedonic is about, you know, emotion, basically pleasure. Yeah, pleasure. Right. And so we're eating,
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  it's a misnomer because it's about emotional eating. And so it's not about hunger itself.
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  It's not physiologic hunger. That's called homeostatic hunger. But this hedonic hunger basically
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  relates to what you're talking about, which is we're eating due to an emotion, whether it's a
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  positive emotion or a negative emotion, rather than direct physiologic hunger itself. And that's
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  where these habits come into play because then it bypasses our physiologic mechanisms that are
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  putting on the brakes and saying, Hey, you're not actually hungry. Why are you putting stuff in your
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  in your mouth? Hey, guys, Scott here. I just wanted to take a quick moment to say a heartfelt
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  thanks to every single one of you six years of this show. And it's really all because of you.
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  Your listens, your support, your shares, it will keep this thing going. When I started, I had no
• 15:49
  idea how big this would get, how many lives we touch, the stories we share, the lessons that we
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  learned together, it's truly humbling. And I believe that we're building something really special
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  here, a community where no one has to reinvent the wheel. We're all in this together learning and
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  keep this thing going strong, bring on even better guests and share more life, changing wisdom.
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  And you can find us on all the spots. So you can go to successstorypodcast.com if you like listening
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  to podcasts, if you like video, you can go to YouTube, it's youtube.com slash c slash Scott
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• 16:38
  grateful for each and every one of you. Let's keep learning. Let's keep growing and let's keep
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  making this world a little bit better together. All right, let's get back to the show.
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  And that's I mean, so that turns into the emotional eating. So
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  help me understand, help me understand what is the, what is this strategy to start to reverse this
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  process? Once you've developed this edition and we'll use food as an example, but then I know you
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  work with you work with Olympic athletes, you work with business leaders, so I want to start to
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  unpack other addictions. I want to even understand what an Olympic athlete is addicted to.
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  Or what a business leader is addicted to. I can speak from experience is probably working too
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  much and and maybe, you know, I see a lot of people that have been very successful. They have
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  broken in families and divorces and I think that's probably the end result of addiction, but
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  you tell me. So how do we start to reverse, you know, this, this progression into addition?
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  What we found over the last couple of decades and it, and it spans every habit and addiction
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  that we've studied. So we've studied alcohol, cocaine, you know, smoking, eating, anxiety,
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  all of these. And the basic, there seems to be a, you can break it down into three steps.
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  The first is just understanding how habits form. If we don't know how our mind works,
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  there's no way that we can work with it. And so that's the first, the simplest and the most
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  basic piece to start with. So, you know, you can break it down to, you know, what's the behavior
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  and what's the result of the behavior. We can also map out what's queuing the behavior,
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  what's triggering it. But that's actually the least important part of the equation.
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  So that's the first step is just recognizing that we're doing something and that it is a habit.
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  Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. So with eating, it's not the, you know, we're eating because we're
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  hungry. That's not a habit. That's helpful. But it's that we're reaching for food when we're
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  bored, lonely, sad, celebrating, you know, as we talked about earlier, often because of emotions,
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  we're emotionally eating rather than eating because we're at a caloric deficit.
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  So being able to recognize the behavior then helps us shift into this second step,
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  which really highlights the how our brains learn to differentiate behaviors, which is all about
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  how rewarding a behavior is. So I have people start paying attention to the results of the behavior.
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  And it's interesting. This goes all the way back to ancient Buddhist psychology where they talk
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  about cause and effect. If you look at modern psychology, this is really about reinforcement
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  learning, which highlights that if a behavior, a cause, is rewarding effect, we're going to keep
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  doing it. If it's not rewarding, we're going to stop doing it. So the key here with a habit is
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  we've already established a reward value of a behavior to the point where it's automatic. And so
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  we're not even paying attention to the how rewarding it is. So for example, if we have learned to
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  overeat or stress eat a long time ago, we're just going to do that automatically. And we're not
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  going to be asking ourselves, hey, what am I getting from this? So that's really what the
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  second step is all about is asking this simple question, what am I getting from this? For example,
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  my lab did a study within app that we'd felt called E right now where we help people pay attention
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  to the results of eating. And we found that within 10 to 15 times of somebody paying attention
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  when they're overeating, for example, that reward value dropped below zero, meaning that they
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  were updating the reward value to the present day. Like, what are they getting from overeating? Typically,
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  it doesn't feel good. They feel bloated. They feel lethargic. They feel guilty. All these things
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  that are not rewarding, they're anti rewarding. You can think of it as punishing is not the best
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  term for it, but is psychologist like to use that term? So there when people see very clearly
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  that something is not rewarding, it makes it much easier to stop doing the behavior.
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  Ancient Buddhist psychologists describe this as disenchantment. We become disenchanted with a
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  behavior. So it's actually pretty straightforward and you can we could talk, you know, if you want,
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  we can talk for a long time about the brain mechanisms, but that's not actually as pragmatically
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  important as understanding the psychological process, which is, you know, asking ourselves this
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  question, what am I getting from this behavior? So if it's overeating, asking, what am I getting when
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  I over you? How's it feel in my body and letting our body tell us the answer, which typically is,
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  this doesn't feel very good. And that's enough. It typically pretty quickly to start shifting that
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  behavior. Well, I would assume that this problem is compounded twofold. So obviously food is
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  much more addictive than it used to be because everything, every, you know, every food manufacturer
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  optimizes just for consumption. But the second thing is we multitask and we're so distracted when
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  we're eating now. We're just, we're watching TV. We have, you know, TV laptop, phone right in front
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  of it. Like we're so not paying attention to what's going on. So I actually thought it was really
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  interesting. So your eat right now plan is the only mindfulness-driven behavior change curriculum
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  that's approved by the CDC. Is that correct? Yes. So it has a diabetes prevention program. Yeah.
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  That's fantastic. What's the, what sets it apart from everything else that people are trying?
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  Because you're not the first person to try and solve this problem. But if you are the only person
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  that's been for one particular use case, at least, approved by the CDC, you're doing something
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  right, which is scary because there's a lot of other people trying to solve this problem. Yeah.
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  Yeah. Well, I don't want to scare people. But the, you know, I'll say that for humans,
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  change is scary. And for Institution, especially governmental institutions, change can change
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  can be scary. They're not exempt from that human tendency. So the diabetes prevention program was
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  based on research that was done 40 years ago now, maybe even longer, that was largely based on
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  willpower, where, you know, it was based on calorie restriction exercise, the typical things that
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  I learned at medical school, the typical things that nutritionists tell their patients, which is,
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  you know, eat the salad, not the cake, you know, get your steps in types of things. So we can tell
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  ourselves to do these things. And if we can stick to that program, people lose weight and it
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  prevents diabetes. So there's a lot of evidence suggesting that that works. The, the asterisk,
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  besides that is that most people and stick to that willpower based thing. So the, the typical
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  diabetes prevention program, you know, has, you know, has been updated over the years, where they'll
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  include some new information, but largely is based on the foundation of this willpower based
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  approach. Where we're different is that it's basically what a, what we just talked about, which
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  is we focus on helping people identify forming habits. And it's funny, as we were going through the
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  process, we were, let's just say back and forth a lot in dialogue with the CDC around how,
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  you know, the evidence behind what we were doing and how, you know, the science supported it.
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  And then the next CDC recommend update for the diabetes prevention program happened to include
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  teaching people about habit loops. You know, the, what is the flatteries, the, the highest form of
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  flattery's imitation or whatever. So correct. It's nice to see that there's recognition that the
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  curricula can be updated. Right. But the, the differentiator really was where we are focusing on
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  not helping people develop more willpower, but really using this neuroscience based approach,
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  which is leveraging the strength of our brain, which is reinforcement learning, right. We're
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  going to learn through reinforcement in something that we all have that doesn't take willpower
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  is awareness. And so we emphasize curiosity quite a bit in the program. Yeah. I want to,
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  so there's a lot of time back there. The first thing I want to just touch on is so the second,
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  this is the second time you brought up willpower. Obviously, you know, if you've listened to this so
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  far, you understand the willpower is not the best mechanism to, to change a habit or to change a
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  behavior. But maybe, I mean, you study this, go, go a step further, a step deeper why
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  scientifically or biologically or what's the mechanism as to why willpower is so ineffective.
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  To put it bluntly, from a neuroscience perspective, nobody has found a pathway, a mechanism,
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  a, you know, a brain region, a brain network involved in willpower.
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  Nobody's found one. So there's this, this story that humans have willpower. But if you really
• 25:45
  take an agnostic approach and ask as a neuroscientist, like, where's willpower? Is there true evidence
• 25:52
  for it? There is none. Which is a bitter pill for a lot of people to swallow, you know, because
• 25:59
  but I've got it. There must be. Yeah. So in a lot of that goes back to control that feeling
• 26:08
  of control. And so, and even philosophers agree with that, you know, they'll talk about the illusion
• 26:14
  of control being part of the, you know, the matrix of human life. But it's not about true control.
• 26:20
  And I don't, we don't need to get into free will debates here. That's been debated for thousands
• 26:25
  of years. I'm not going to wait into that. But pragmatically speaking, from a neuroscience
• 26:30
  standpoint, it, the reward-based learning or the reinforcement learning mechanisms are very
• 26:36
  clearly mapped out down to the neural circuit. And even, you know, you can, you can get to the
• 26:42
  neural neural level, right? You can look at the neurotransmitters. And you can map out the whole
• 26:46
  process. You can knock out specific genes or pathways and show that it affects them.
• 26:51
  So there's, there's, there are causal mechanisms that have been shown that this is how habits
• 26:56
  form and also how you can change habits. No width of willpower in that. It's so interesting.
• 27:03
  When you, when you look at, you work with a whole bunch of, like I mentioned before,
• 27:09
  Olympic athletes, business leaders. So what's the work that you do with this particular segment?
• 27:14
  These, these kinds of high performing individuals. What are they addicted to? What are the habits?
• 27:19
  They have to form, have to break. Where does this, where does this, where does your work with this
• 27:24
  framework sort of fit into that subset of society? Well, everybody's individual. And I would say,
• 27:33
  there can be general categories that I've seen with, however you want to categorize Olympic
• 27:42
  athletes or high performing business individuals. And a lot of it, you know, boils down, basically
• 27:50
  down to the behaviors that have been reinforced. And so for some people, whether it's an Olympic
• 27:57
  athlete or a CEO, it's about that, that reward that has come in the past from overworking,
• 28:05
  let's say, or, you know, performing at a very high level, where somebody performs at a very
• 28:10
  high level, they get all sorts of rewards, whether it's, you know, praise, whether it's a promotion,
• 28:17
  whether it's a gold medal, or whatnot. And those things can become literally the goal where
• 28:25
  people are then driven. I want to get more of that type of thing. And so it becomes a
• 28:30
  compulsion. It can become an addiction for some people where, you know, they're, they're
• 28:36
  doing the behaviors to try to get that, quote unquote, reward or the medal, despite adverse
• 28:42
  consequences. So, and then there are all sorts of sub routines or subhabits that come along with
• 28:49
  that, including, you know, shame, guilt, imposter syndrome, you know, you name it and somebody has it.
• 28:57
  And you know, as you were mentioning earlier this, this overworking phenomena, maybe we could just
• 29:02
  use that as a concrete example if that's helpful. I just want to take a second to thank the sponsor
• 29:06
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• 29:11
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• 29:32
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• 29:37
  part of the HubSpot podcast network, wherever you get your podcasts. Yeah, definitely because I think
• 29:43
  that that's an issue with me. That's an issue with a lot of, I mean, I'm not an Olympic athlete,
• 29:47
  but I'm assuming that the .001% of entrepreneurs have a very similar psychological profile to the .001%
• 29:56
  of high performance athletes. Yeah, yeah. So, if you don't mind, let's just do this in real time.
• 30:02
  If you want to kind of personify that overachieving entrepreneur, we can just, I'll just ask you
• 30:10
  a couple of questions and it might go for how this works. Sometimes I'll even start with,
• 30:17
  so typically a patient will come to me and say, I have a problem with this. So, let's say that
• 30:21
  you've come to me and said, you know, I have a problem. I'm overworking and I might ask the question,
• 30:27
  well, why don't you work even more? How would you answer that question? I would answer it. I don't
• 30:34
  think there's any more hours in a day. That's the honest answer. And I think that so as a patient,
• 30:42
  I'll give you my specific situation. Yeah, I have a girlfriend soon to be fiance and wife don't
• 30:48
  have kids yet. We're in a season in our lives where we're both really okay with spending, you know,
• 30:55
  basically 24, 7, 365 working and building. And it's probably been like that for the past. I mean,
• 31:01
  I'm 34 now, so it's been like that for the past eight to 10 years or just nonstop. Like,
• 31:06
  on vacation, you work nonstop. Now, I keep telling myself that to win at the game of business
• 31:13
  or entrepreneurship, there has to be seasons of, of unbalanced, right? There's seasons of
• 31:20
  giving it your all and that's really what it requires to build anything meaningful. But,
• 31:25
  you know, when I have kids and I want kids and she wants kids and I don't want to be,
• 31:30
  the life that I live today is not the life that I want to live when I have kids. So I'm,
• 31:33
  it's, it's concerning. And I can tell myself that I'm going to shut off in three years or whatever,
• 31:38
  but there's no, there's no proof that I can do that because I've been doing life this way for so long.
• 31:45
  Yeah. So what happens when you try to cut back on, on that amount of work, anxiety that I'm,
• 31:52
  that I'm missing out? Yeah. Yeah. So you can see right there and that's a great example that's very
• 31:58
  common where when we're in the habit of doing x, y, z, and you know, we're living that story of
• 32:04
  like, this is what I need to do to succeed. We, we cut back whether it's like, I want to spend more
• 32:10
  time with my girlfriend or I just, you know, I'm feeling burnt out or whatever, we start to cut back
• 32:14
  and immediately this anxiety kicks in and says, Hey, but you need to be doing this or you're not
• 32:19
  going to succeed or whatever story we tell ourselves. And so that, that trigger says, Hey,
• 32:26
  keep doing the thing. And so often we'll just, we'll be like, wow, that doesn't feel very good.
• 32:33
  I'm going to keep doing the thing because it's actually helping me succeed. So that's a great
• 32:37
  example of how we can get stuck in these overworking habit loops simply from the feeling of anxiety
• 32:44
  or it could even be, wow, this is different. I should be working. Often people tell themselves, oh,
• 32:49
  I, you know, what I should be doing something right now as compared to the best thing that I can
• 32:53
  be doing, which is probably taking a break. Okay. So we, we lived that, that habit loop
• 32:59
  enough that that's all that we know that's literally the definition of a habit and goes back to
• 33:05
  this idea that our brains don't like change. And so the habits over, overworking as soon as we deviate
• 33:12
  from that habit, our brain's going to say, what's wrong? Go back and go back into that habit. And
• 33:16
  then we feel better. The irony is we feel better because we felt worse by not doing the thing.
• 33:24
  Well, this is, this is actually, this is like, this actually dovetails into your second.
• 33:29
  Your, your previous work, which is unwinding anxiety, which is literally the situation that I'm
• 33:35
  in right now. It's interesting because right now it serves me. So right now there is no
• 33:43
  immediate or at least perceived immediate negative because this is, it's sort of aligning with
• 33:49
  my personal North Star. And if I have kids, then all of a sudden, okay, will you tell me? So when
• 33:56
  I have kids, is it as easy as understanding my new North Star is now my family and not
• 34:05
  work? Is that is that the first step? Like what's the steps that I would have to take? And should I
• 34:11
  take steps now to start the process or should I take steps when I have to, when I have to, not when
• 34:19
  it's just a nicety? Well, I think both can be true. So here, you know, the more we understand
• 34:26
  how our minds work, the more we're going to be able to flex down the road and not be stuck in
• 34:32
  these rigid habit loops. The other piece is the more we understand what is important to us in life
• 34:39
  and what truly brings, you know, their quote-unquote happiness. The more that will help us have that
• 34:46
  be the North Star that guides us as compared to the Hedonic treadmill, which everybody agrees
• 34:54
  is not a happiness, but yet everybody doesn't seem to still be on. They're like, yeah, this is not
• 35:00
  happiness and they're still running along, you know, like you need to go faster. But you just said,
• 35:05
  and they're like, yeah, I know. I don't know how to get off it, but it's it's terrible.
• 35:10
  So here, you know, what was the that Conan the barbarian quote way back from the movie where
• 35:16
  you were the guy asked Conan like, what's meaning, you know, what's what's the meaning of life? And
• 35:20
  he's like vanquishing your enemies and hearing the lamentation of the women and the children or
• 35:24
  something like that. And the reason I bring that word is that, you know, if we're not careful
• 35:31
  about looking at what's truly rewarding for us, we're going to get stuck in that and following
• 35:38
  that false North Star. And then be way off somewhere, you know, this word pricey's come in.
• 35:45
  We're like, where did I get to this desolate, terrible place, you know? And we don't we have no idea
• 35:53
  how we got there because we haven't been able to follow the process of how our mind works,
• 35:58
  where it's just been led by all these hedonic things. So that's why I say both can be true.
• 36:02
  If we can understand what that what the North stars that we're following right now and see if
• 36:07
  it is a true North star, that will help us now and also will help us be able to be more flexible
• 36:13
  in the future so that when there is a new, you know, there's a new reward value like, you know,
• 36:19
  family life kids or, you know, some shift in our in our personal life, we can say, you know,
• 36:24
  oh, yeah, that's better than vanquishing my enemies. Yeah, that makes, no, that makes a lot
• 36:30
  of sense. And even I'm curious, maybe you've touched on this just when we first started chatting,
• 36:37
  but is there, um, is there like, uh, an an internal test that we can do to understand if a behavior
• 36:50
  is, uh, is an addition versus the habit? That's a great question. In shorts? Yes.
• 36:58
  They can get more nuance, but let's start with the short answer, which is, well, let me ask you,
• 37:04
  when you feel anxious, if you had to put it in the category of feeling more closed or contracted
• 37:12
  versus open and expanded, which category would you put it in? Which bucket would you put it in?
• 37:18
  Clothes are open, contracted or expanded. I'm not sure. I'm maybe define them a little bit better
• 37:23
  and that I can, I can give you an answer. It is not a podcast or strategy. This is really me,
• 37:29
  yeah. Well, and, and that's fine. And I'm also purposefully trying to get you not to think too
• 37:34
  much about it, but, uh, we'll hit to the situation. So I'm, I feel, I think, I think without you
• 37:40
  explaining it, I feel closed and contracted because I feel like, um, it's not, it's,
• 37:49
  there's different types of anxiety. So the open anxiety is actually when I'm working,
• 37:54
  and I'm trying to figure out what are the urgent, important tasks based on sort of the,
• 37:58
  that just very brief description. What are the urgent, important tasks that I want to take on
• 38:02
  in my life? And then I get anxiety because of, of overwhelm of opportunity. The other version
• 38:08
  is when I'm not working, I'm not doing anything. So I feel like life is closing in. And if I don't,
• 38:16
  if I don't get back to work, then it's, it's silly, but I, you know, because obviously life is
• 38:22
  not going to be over, but I feel like I'm not going to get to the goals that I want. And I'm not
• 38:26
  taking action to even sort of put a chip in those massive goals that I have for myself. Yeah,
• 38:32
  absolutely. And that latter is very consistent with what I see clinically around what clinical
• 38:38
  anxiety is, you know, it tends to be that worry that, oh, no, if I don't do this or I don't go
• 38:44
  back to work, you know, life is going to end. I don't answer an email on the, on a vacation or
• 38:48
  a holiday, right? Or it will be in the end of the world. So we can look at that. Oh, no,
• 38:54
  category. And you can even look at this in terms of addiction when we are truly addicted to
• 38:58
  something, whether it's checking our email or our social media feed, when we haven't done it
• 39:05
  long enough, that urge to check builds up and says, oh, no, I need to do the thing, right? And so
• 39:12
  there's a shared quality even between anxiety and addiction. And I see this clinically all the time
• 39:18
  where that feeling of restless contraction, you, somebody could be describing that and it could
• 39:25
  be anxiety or it could be a craving or it could be both at the same time. And often they, they
• 39:30
  overlap. So the reason I say that is that that can be a marker that can help us differentiate
• 39:38
  whether we're caught in this urge to do something, right? And addiction's about, you know,
• 39:44
  being at a deficit of not having, you know, getting something to make ourselves feel better,
• 39:49
  scratching an itch, think of it that way. Whereas the opposite of that, an open expanded feeling.
• 39:55
  So think of when somebody's in flow or when somebody is really, really connected with somebody
• 40:02
  else deep in conversation where they're just, there's this mind meld and they're just really
• 40:07
  riffing off of each other. There's this, it's the opposite where they're feeling open and expanded.
• 40:13
  And so those two can be guideposts in terms of our directional indicators for when we're moving
• 40:20
  in the direction of addiction, that contraction versus moving in the direction of flow, which is
• 40:26
  expansion. And if you look at flow, we've even stumbled upon this in some of our neuroimaging work
• 40:32
  where people, you know, there's a, there's a brain network that gets really quiet. This ironically
• 40:38
  a brain network involved in anxiety, as well as addiction, as well as self reference, right? Because
• 40:43
  when we're worried about ourselves, we feel contracted. And when we, when we lose a sense of self,
• 40:50
  which is part of the definition of flow, we are very open and expanded. So those can be markers,
• 40:56
  a simple experiential markers of, you know, or at least directional markers of whether we're
• 41:01
  moving in the direction of addiction versus, you know, versus flow. Amazing. I, I think that I
• 41:09
  want to make sure that I touch on this. I want to talk, I want to speak about curiosity because
• 41:14
  I think that's sort of another, another component to this that you, you speak on quite often.
• 41:19
  But you mentioned, I've heard you say this before, curiosity feels better than anxiety. So maybe
• 41:28
  just highlight what is curiosity. Why do you even reference it in the same line as anxiety? Is
• 41:35
  it a negative? Is it a, is it a positive? Like, how does it play into any of this?
• 41:41
  Well, first I want to differentiate because often people don't know that there are two types of
• 41:46
  curiosity. So just to be very clear, there are two types of curiosity. There's one type in
• 41:52
  particular that I'm talking about that I think of as a superpower. So just to, just to define these
• 41:57
  two quickly, there's a type called deprivation curiosity, which is as it sounds like when we're
• 42:02
  deprived of information, we have this urge to go get that information. So that has the same
• 42:07
  quality of anxiety. I don't know. I don't know. I need to get that information. Same quality of
• 42:12
  addiction. Oh, no, I need to get the thing. I need to get the information. I'm not talking about
• 42:17
  deprivation curiosity. When I speak of curiosity, I'm talking about the other type of curiosity,
• 42:22
  which is interest curiosity. And so you can think of anxiety as the, oh, no. And you can think
• 42:28
  of interest curiosity as the, oh, that joy of discovery. And the two feel like polar opposites,
• 42:37
  right? I don't know if you can feel this in your own experience where, you know, that feeling of
• 42:43
  that worry of anxiety that closed down contraction. And then when you're totally fascinated by
• 42:48
  something or the far end of curiosity is awe, when you're in awe of something like out in
• 42:53
  niche, that's a thousand percent. Yes. Yeah. Such a very relatable. Yeah. Yeah. And that's why I talk
• 43:00
  about the two as opposites because we can actually use curiosity to help counteract anxiety.
• 43:06
  And we've even seen this clinically. When clinical study in a randomized
• 43:09
  control trial, we got 67% reduction in these clinical anxiety scores in people with
• 43:15
  generalized anxiety disorder. This was that I wrote about in my own learning anxiety book. But we,
• 43:21
  we had an app called unwinding anxiety where people can literally learn about this and use curiosity
• 43:26
  to counteract their anxiety. And it seems to work pretty well. So all of these, so now we have,
• 43:31
  we have addiction, we have anxiety, we have curiosity, we all have them playing with each other.
• 43:38
  And eventually, I mean, these are, so now you have, I want you to sort of map out all these
• 43:45
  different, these, these, these feelings, these emotions, how they sort of interplay with each other
• 43:51
  because there's a lot here. But I think it's not as complex as somebody who's listening, saying,
• 43:55
  okay, so now I have to figure out, does it make me anxious? Is it an addiction? Is it a habit?
• 44:01
  What should I be curious about? And I'm curious because I'm curious because obviously these all sort of
• 44:07
  form around one central thesis that I think is sort of your life's work.
• 44:11
  Yes. Yes. And that central and relatively simple thesis is really, you know, if we
• 44:21
  look at things to the lens of habit formation, right? Because most of life is habits. And we
• 44:26
  understand that the simple principle of if we do a behavior and it's rewarding, we're going to keep
• 44:31
  doing it. If we do it and stop rewarding, we're going to stop doing it. So that's the one piece of
• 44:36
  information people need to remember is to keep in mind. And then they just apply that to their life.
• 44:42
  They can look at a behavior that they're doing and they can ask themselves, what am I getting from
• 44:47
  this? And importantly, it's about getting curious and feeling into their body to see, is it,
• 44:53
  does it lead to a feeling of contraction? Does it lead to a feeling of expansion? And when it's
• 45:00
  so, let me ask you, which one feels better? Expansion or contraction? Expansion. Yeah. Yeah.
• 45:05
  So that's wired into our brains. The reward value of expansion is higher than the reward value of
• 45:11
  contraction. The reason I highlight that is that we are naturally going to move toward expansion
• 45:16
  if we see the contraction is painful. So when we ask the question, what am I getting from this?
• 45:21
  And now we feel into the pain of the habit suddenly it brings how rewarding it is or how unrewarding
• 45:27
  it is into our direct experience. So it's no longer habitual. That helps to reset its reward
• 45:34
  value. And then we can start moving in the direction of expansion. And this is where curiosity
• 45:39
  explicitly comes in. So if it's anxiety, we can go, oh, no, and we can worry or we can ask,
• 45:46
  what am I getting from worrying? Oh, it just makes me more anxious. And then we can go, oh,
• 45:50
  what happens when I bring curiosity to the feeling of anxiety? Oh, I can notice that it's
• 45:57
  physical sensations. It's thoughts. And if I just give those thoughts space, if I give those
• 46:02
  sensations space, they'll come and go on their own. If I just use the curiosity to stay with them.
• 46:08
  So that's, you know, that's the 20 years of our work in the nutshell.
• 46:14
  No, it's very good because I think that I think that people really lack the ability to articulate
• 46:20
  how to get out of these really for lack of better term shitty situations that they find themselves
• 46:25
  in. And this is really the framework to go through it. So if you wanted to, you know,
• 46:32
  sort of set people on the right path. So somebody has an addiction that they want to break.
• 46:38
  What would be sort of the first, because I know there's so many frameworks that you've developed.
• 46:43
  And I know there's like a rain technique. I don't know if that's a great technique that you could
• 46:47
  use or if there's others. But what's a, yeah, you're shaking your head. It's completely applicable.
• 46:52
  I'm ignorant here. But what would be the best way to get somebody on the right path?
• 46:57
  Well, actually, maybe we can just start with the rain techniques. I think that ties into curiosity,
• 47:00
  but then maybe a more applicable one to get started. It does. Well, I shake my head because
• 47:06
  rain is an example of a number of different techniques that people can use. And so I would,
• 47:11
  you know, sometimes people are going to jump right to like, what do I need to do? Tell me what I
• 47:16
  yes, you and I'll do it, which falls into the will powered, you know, or control trap.
• 47:21
  And that's the only reason I'm shaking my head. We've, we've good data showing that the rain
• 47:24
  technique is helpful. And in the, what I'll say is, so just to explain what it is, it's an acronym
• 47:32
  for recognize, allow, investigate, and note. That's our AIN. And that, what that does is it
• 47:40
  operationalizes curiosity. So we've got recognized that we're going to have it, Luke.
• 47:45
  Right. So what's the behavior that I'm doing? If we can't recognize it, we can't step out of it.
• 47:50
  The A is for allow. So often will resist what's happening. And if we resist it or run away from it,
• 47:55
  we can't change it. So that's, that's actually a critical piece is to invite it in. The I for
• 48:01
  investigations, really about inviting in that curiosity. Oh, you know, what does this feel like in
• 48:06
  my body? And then the noting is to help us stay moment to moment with those physical sensations.
• 48:12
  And the thoughts and the emotions to see that we don't have to do anything to make them go away.
• 48:18
  They'll come and go on their own. So that, that's a practice that we can bring in, but we don't
• 48:24
  start there. We've got to start with recognizing, you know, it's like, oh, I am in a habit, Luke.
• 48:30
  Right. And also as a second step, if we can't see how unrewarding the old habit is,
• 48:37
  the rain technique is going to feel like it's extra work as early. I got to do this to change
• 48:42
  this as compared to, oh, I'm going to bring this in because I see that this other, the old
• 48:48
  way that I've been doing things is not very rewarding. So we've got to go through that process
• 48:53
  of disenchantment first, which is often in process that people don't want to go through because
• 48:58
  they'd rather just jump to the answer. Just don't do it to do that. Yeah. Well, what I'm,
• 49:04
  what I'm telling you to try is to see why you keep doing the thing. And if you don't become
• 49:09
  disenchanted with it, it's going to be really hard to change. When they become disenchanted,
• 49:14
  the rain practices, all these other curiosity practices, that's where they, they're going to work
• 49:19
  the best. So then I guess the, the question the follow-up is, what's the best way to become
• 49:26
  disenchanted with a particular thing? It's curiosity. What's the, what, you mentioned the curiosity
• 49:35
  sweet spot? What's that? Well, that's really where we're, we're practicing tuning into our body
• 49:44
  and getting really curious about what is happening in our body. The way I think of this is
• 49:50
  that our feeling body is much stronger and wiser than our thinking brain. So the sweet spot
• 49:57
  is really finding what our true experience is instead of getting stuck in our thinking brain.
• 50:05
  Okay. What would be one, I mean, you've mentioned willpower is a sort of like a commonly held
• 50:13
  thing that is radically incorrect when it comes to solving any of the problems in our lives.
• 50:17
  What would one other sort of commonly held belief be that you wish you could just
• 50:24
  sort of shake people and be like, this is not something that you should believe?
• 50:28
  Yeah. It's such great questions. The thing I would bring in here and this is, is parallel
• 50:34
  and a compliment to the willpower, you know, curiosity beats willpower is about self-judgment. So
• 50:43
  so many people have been conditioned to believe that they've got to beat themselves up, be tough on
• 50:49
  themselves, you know, and that's how they're going to succeed. And it's, it's very similar to
• 50:58
  the willpower story. In fact, it weighs us down. So here I would invite people to explore,
• 51:04
  what do they get from beating themselves up? Typically, it's just anxiety and more, you know, guilt or
• 51:11
  feeling of shame. And what do they get from being kind to themselves? So that's the, that's the
• 51:18
  other thing I would bring in because that will help augment the curiosity as a superpower.
• 51:25
  I love that. Okay. If people want to connect with you, I feel like we could talk for a long time
• 51:29
  but we're going to keep it, we're going to, we're going to, we're going to hold here and then we'll
• 51:32
  do a part two whenever you write your next book or whenever you want to come back, come back on
• 51:37
  because this has been amazing. Where do you want to send people? I mean, both of your books are
• 51:43
  available everywhere. People can buy books, but outside of that website, social, all that.
• 51:47
  Yeah, I think clearing out is my website is just drjud.com. I'm also on Instagram at drperiodjud.
• 51:59
  So those are the places that people can hit me up, but that a bunch of free resources on the website.
• 52:03
  And also I mentioned some of the apps that are available. Those are, there's, you know, the research
• 52:09
  and the, the links to the apps is on the website as well. So drjud.com is probably the best place
• 52:14
  to go. Perfect. Okay. That'll go in the show notes. Last question just to take this home.
• 52:19
  Obviously, you've had an incredible career now. It's time for you to do some, some introspection
• 52:24
  and some, some self-awareness as you've gone through your career and you sort of excelled in all
• 52:28
  these different fields. I like pulling this one piece out. What would be something that you tell
• 52:33
  your 20 year old self? A great question. I mean, I don't want to sound like a broken record,
• 52:40
  but I would say be curious. Although my 20 year old self was was relatively curious. So maybe
• 52:49
  that's a cop out answer. What else would I say? I don't take yourself too seriously,
• 52:56
  which goes to the self-judgmental piece. Like that's really important.
• 53:10
  you