If you’re a human being, your life will be held together by a collection of habits that you’ve picked up over the years. These habits can be useful or not so useful. Eventually the not so useful habits add up and can undermine both our mental and physical health.
Judson Brewer, a leading psychiatrist who studies relationship between mindfulness and addiction, claims that practicing mindfulness could be a simple way for us to break bad habits. It can be hard to know how to let go of unhealthy habits like smoking or overeating, as cravings can lead to automatic behaviours that we can feel controlled by.
In his recent TED talk, Brewer discusses the vicious cycle of “Trigger-Behavior-Reward” in bad habits. He also explains how the tactic of mindfulness can help us control that urge to light up another cigarette or gobble down that extra slice of cake.
Check out the video below: