brainwiring

Today we’re sharing the latest episode of Modern Love, a podcast about the complicated love lives of real people, from The New York Times.

Anna Martin, host of the show, spoke to David Finch, who wrote three Modern Love essays about how hard he had worked to be a good husband to his wife, Kristen. As a man with autism who married a neurotypical woman, Dave found it challenging to navigate being a partner and a father. Eventually, he started keeping a list of “best practices” to cover every situation that might come up in daily life – a method that worked so well he wrote a best-selling book on it.

But almost 11 years into his marriage, Kristen said she wanted to be “unmarried.” Dave was totally thrown off. He didn’t know what that meant, or if he could do it. But he wasn’t going to lose Kristen, so he had to give it a try.

For more episodes of Modern Love, search for the show wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes drop Wednesdays. 

Join me today to gain a deeper understanding of what is going on in your brain right now. This first step is crucial to changing the state of panic that you might be experiencing. I’ll also be highlighting how the news and social media can feed into the frenzy that your mind is going through.

Get full show notes and more information here: https://unfuckyourbrain.com/pandemic-peace-1

YOUR EGO NEEDS FEEDING. We all have addictions. Some of us know exactly what habits we need to break. Others don’t even realize we’re addicted to unhealthy patterns. Whether it’s smoking, relationships, or simply being addicted to ourselves, we could all benefit from mapping out our habits to begin to understand them. It’s important to foster our curiosity. If we can learn to investigate our minds the way we investigated our environment as children, we can begin to understand ourselves.  Sometimes it’s our ego that we continue to feed. Other times it’s a false sense of reward we think we’re receiving from an old habit. Through mindfulness, we can learn to experience our habits as they are and not as we remember them. When we do this, we can begin breaking even our most challenging addictions. On today’s episode of The School of Greatness, we discuss optimizing habits, breaking addictions, and transforming your life with one of the kindest addiction psychiatrists and mindfulness experts that I have ever met: Dr. Jud Brewer. Dr. Jud Brewer is the Director of Research and Innovation at the Mindfulness Center and associate professor in psychiatry at the School of Medicine at Brown University, as well as a research affiliate at MIT. As an addiction psychiatrist and internationally known expert in mindfulness training for treating addictions, Dr. Jud has developed and tested novel mindfulness programs for habit change, including both in-person and app-based treatments for smoking, and emotional eating and anxiety. So get ready to learn how mindfulness can free you from addiction on Episode 878.
Some Questions I Ask:
What was the hardest addiction for you to overcome? (11:05)
What is the first thing people can do to self-assess themselves? (21:45)
What are the 5 or 6 common addictions that most people have? (22:30)
Are meditation and mindfulness the solution to everything? (36:00)
Are there any addictions that you have not been able to overcome? (46:55)
What’s the difference between a habit and an addiction? (50:00)
Is mental illness something that can be cured? (54:30)
What is the difference between mindfulness and overthinking? (57:50)
In This Episode You Will Learn:
About the ego and how many people are addicted to themselves (13:25) 
How mapping out your habit loops can help you understand the truth about your experiences. (21:00)
The power of curiosity (20:00) 
About reward-based learning (26:30) 
The science behind reward-based learning and how it helps us understand changing behavior (31:30) 
How to hack cravings with curiosity (34:30) 
How Dr. Jud’s apps help you map out your habits and start your habit-breaking journey (42:00)
About positive habits and when they become problematic (45:00) 
About the two types of curiosity (52:00) 
Why we continue to struggle so much when the answers are often right in front of us (59:00) 
The science behind the effect of true generosity, kindness, and connection on our habits (1:07:00)
Plus much more...
If you enjoyed this episode, check out the video, show notes and more at http://www.lewishowes.com/878 and follow at instagram.com/lewishowes