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  • When I was first learning to meditate, the instruction was to 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 called positive and negative

  • reinforcement, and basically goes like this: we see some 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. See food, eat food, feel good, 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, we think, "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 focused on being curious. What?

  • Yeah 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 found that 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 in that moment. Notice the urge, get curious,

  • feel the joy of letting go, and repeat. Thank you.

When I was first learning to meditate, the instruction was to simply

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