When I was first learning to meditate- the instruction was simply pay attention to my
breath and when my mind wandered, to bring it back.
The instruction was simple enough but I was missing something really important.
So why is it so hard to pay attention?
It turns out that we're fighting one of the most evolutionarily conserved learning processes
currently known in science.
This reward-based learning process is positive and negative reinforcement, and basically
goes like this: we see food that looks good- calories!
Survival!
We eat the food, we taste it, it tastes good.
Our bodies send a signal to our brain that says remember what you're eating and where
you found it.
Find food, eat food, repeat.
Trigger, behaviour, reward.
Well after a while our creative brains say: "You know, next time you feel bad, why don't
you try eating something good...
So you'll feel better?"
Same process, just a different trigger.
Maybe in our teenage years, and we see those rebel kids outside smoking- Hey!
I wanna be cool!
So we start smoking.
See cool, smoke to be cool, feel good.
Now with these same brain processes we have gone from learning to survive to literally
killing ourselves with these habits.
In the lab we studied whether mindfulness training could help people quit smoking.
Now with mindfulness training, we worked on being curious.
What?
Yea we said "go ahead and smoke, just be really curious about what it's like when you do."
and what did they notice?
Well here's an example from one of our smokers.
She said "Mindful smoking: smells like stinky cheese, and tastes like chemicals" What she
discovered just by being curiously aware when she smoked was that smoking tastes like shit.
She started to become disenchanted with her behaviour.
The prefrontal cortex understands that we shouldn't smoke.
And it tries its hardest to help us change our behaviour.
Unfortunately this is also the first part of our brain that goes offline when we get
stressed out.
Now, when the prefrontal cortex goes offline, we fall back into our old habits.
Which is why this disenchantment is so important.
Seeing what we get from our habits helps us understand them in a deeper level.
But over time as we learn to see more and more clearly the results of our actions, we
let go of old habits and form new ones.
Mindfulness is just about being really interested and getting close and personal with what's
actually happening in our bodies and minds from moment to moment.
And this willingness to turn toward our experience is supported by curiosity which is naturally
rewarding.
It feels good.
We start to notice the cravings are simply made up of body sensations, there's tightness,
there's tension, there's restlessness, and that these body sensations come and go.
This might sound too simplistic to affect behaviour but in one study we mindfulness
training was twice as good as gold standard therapy at helping people quit smoking.
So It actually works.
So if you don't smoke or stress eat, maybe the next time you feel this urge to check
your email when you're bored or you're trying to distract yourself from work, see if you
can just be curiously aware of what's happening in your body and mind at that moment.
Notice the urge, get curious, feel the joy of letting go, and repeat.
Thank you.