when i was first learning to meditate, the instruction was to simplypay attention to my breath, and when my mind wandered,to bring it back. sounded simple enough. yet i'd sit on these silent retreats, sweating through t-shirtsin the middle of winter. i'd take naps every chance i gotbecause it was really hard work. actually, it was exhausting. the instruction was simple enough
but i was missing somethingreally important. so why is it so hard to pay attention? well, studies show that even when we're reallytrying to pay attention to something -- like maybe this talk -- at some point, about half of uswill drift off into a daydream, or have this urgeto check our twitter feed. so what's going on here?
it turns out that we're fighting oneof the most evolutionarily-conserved learning processescurrently known in science, one that's conserved back to the most basicnervous systems known to man. this reward-based learning process is called positiveand negative reinforcement, and basically goes like this. we see some food that looks good, our brain says, "calories! ... survival!"
we eat the food, we taste it -- it tastes good. and especially with sugar, our bodies send a signalto our brain that says, "remember what you're eatingand where you found it." we lay down this context-dependent memory and learn to repeat the process next time. see food, eat food, feel good,
repeat. trigger, behavior, reward. simple, right? well, after a while,our creative brains say, "you know what? you can use this for morethan just remembering where food is. you know, next time you feel bad, why don't you try eatingsomething good so you'll feel better?" we thank our brains for the great idea,
try this and quickly learn that if we eat chocolate or ice creamwhen we're mad or sad, we feel better. same process, just a different trigger. instead of this hunger signalcoming from our stomach, this emotional signal -- feeling sad -- triggers that urge to eat. maybe in our teenage years,
we were a nerd at school, and we see those rebel kidsoutside smoking and we think, "hey, i want to be cool." so we start smoking. the marlboro man wasn't a dork,and that was no accident. see cool, smoke to be cool, feel good. repeat. and each time we do this,
we learn to repeat the process and it becomes a habit. so later, feeling stressed out triggersthat urge to smoke a cigarette or to eat something sweet. now, with these same brain processes, we've gone from learning to survive to literally killing ourselveswith these habits. obesity and smoking
are among the leading preventable causesof morbidity and mortality in the world. so back to my breath. what if instead of fighting our brains, or trying to force ourselvesto pay attention, we instead tapped into this natural,reward-based learning process ... but added a twist? what if instead we just got really curious about what was happeningin our momentary experience? i'll give you an example.
in my lab, we studied whether mindfulness trainingcould help people quit smoking. now, just like trying to force myselfto pay attention to my breath, they could try to forcethemselves to quit smoking. and the majority of themhad tried this before and failed -- on average, six times. now, with mindfulness training, we dropped the bit about forcingand instead focused on being curious. in fact, we even told them to smoke.
what? yeah, we said, "go ahead and smoke, just be really curiousabout what it's like when you do." and what did they notice? well here's an examplefrom one of our smokers. she said, "mindful smoking: smells like stinky cheese and tastes like chemicals, yuck!" now, she knew, cognitivelythat smoking was bad for her,
that's why she joined our program. what she discovered just by beingcuriously aware when she smoked was that smoking tastes like shit. (laughter) now, she moved from knowledge to wisdom. she moved from knowing in her headthat smoking was bad for her to knowing it in her bones, and the spell of smoking was broken. she started to becomedisenchanted with her behavior.
now, the prefrontal cortex, that youngest part of our brainfrom an evolutionary perspective, it understands on an intellectual levelthat we shouldn't smoke. and it tries its hardestto help us change our behavior, to help us stop smoking, to help us stop eating that second,that third, that fourth cookie. we call this cognitive control. we're using cognitionto control our behavior. unfortunately,
this is also the first part of our brain that goes offlinewhen we get stressed out, which isn't that helpful. now, we can all relate to thisin our own experience. we're much more likely to do thingslike yell at our spouse or kids when we're stressed out or tired, even though we knowit's not going to be helpful. we just can't help ourselves. when the prefrontal cortex goes offline,
we fall back into our old habits, which is why this disenchantmentis so important. seeing what we get from our habits helps us understand themat a deeper level -- to know it in our bones so we don't have to forceourselves to hold back or restrain ourselves from behavior. we're just less interestedin doing it in the first place. and this is what mindfulness is all about:
seeing really clearly what we getwhen we get caught up in our behaviors, becoming disenchanted on a visceral level and from this disenchanted stance,naturally letting go. this isn't to say that, poof,magically we quit smoking. but over time, as we learnto see more and more clearly the results of our actions, we let go of old habits and form new ones. the paradox here is that mindfulness is justabout being really interested
in getting close and personal with what's actually happeningin our bodies and minds from moment to moment. this willingnessto turn toward our experience rather than trying to make unpleasantcravings go away as quickly as possible. and this willingnessto turn toward our experience is supported by curiosity, which is naturally rewarding. what does curiosity feel like?
it feels good. and what happens when we get curious? we start to notice that cravingsare simply made up of body sensations -- oh, there's tightness, there's tension, there's restlessness -- and that these bodysensations come and go. these are bite-size pieces of experiences that we can manage from moment to moment rather than getting clobberedby this huge, scary craving
that we choke on. in other words, when we get curious, we step out of our old,fear-based, reactive habit patterns, and we step into being. we become this inner scientist where we're eagerly awaitingthat next data point. now, this might soundtoo simplistic to affect behavior. but in one study,we found that mindfulness training was twice as good as gold standard therapyat helping people quit smoking.
so it actually works. and when we studiedthe brains of experienced meditators, we found that parts of a neural networkof self-referential processing called the default mode network were at play. now, one current hypothesisis that a region of this network, called the posterior cingulate cortex, is activated not necessarilyby craving itself but when we get caught up in it,when we get sucked in,
and it takes us for a ride. in contrast, when we let go -- step out of the process just by being curiously awareof what's happening -- this same brain region quiets down. now we're testing app and online-basedmindfulness training programs that target these core mechanisms and, ironically, use the same technologythat's driving us to distraction to help us step outof our unhealthy habit patterns
of smoking, of stress eatingand other addictive behaviors. now, remember that bitabout context-dependent memory? we can deliver these toolsto peoples' fingertips in the contexts that matter most. so we can help them tap into their inherent capacityto be curiously aware right when that urge to smokeor stress eat or whatever arises. so if you don't smoke or stress eat, maybe the next time you feel this urgeto check your email when you're bored,
or you're trying to distractyourself from work, or maybe to compulsively respondto that text message when you're driving, see if you can tap intothis natural capacity, just be curiously aware of what's happening in your bodyand mind in that moment. it will just be another chance to perpetuate one of our endlessand exhaustive habit loops ... or step out of it. instead of see text message,compulsively text back,
feel a little bit better -- notice the urge, get curious, feel the joy of letting go and repeat. thank you. (applause)
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