Speaker 1: That's really what it's about, is what I'm doing causing suffering.
Speaker 1: And if it's not causing suffering, then it may not
Speaker 1: be worth judging yourself for right.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers
Speaker 2: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes
Speaker 2: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think,
Speaker 2: ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts
Speaker 2: don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 2: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 2: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 2: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 2: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 2: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 2: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 2: how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 2: Our guest on this episode is doctor Judson Brewer, also
Speaker 2: known as doctor Judd. He's an American psychiatrist, neuroscientist, and author.
Speaker 2: He studies the neural mechanisms of mindfulness and has translated
Speaker 2: research findings into programs to treat addictions. Judd also founded
Speaker 2: an app based digital therapeutic treatment program for anxiety, overeating,
Speaker 2: and smoking. He's Director of Research and Innovation at Brown
Speaker 2: University's Mindfulness Center and Associate professor in Behavioral and Social
Speaker 2: Scientists in the Brown School of Public Health and in
Speaker 2: psychiatry at Brown's Warren Albert Medical School. Today, doctor Judd
Speaker 2: and Eric discuss his book The Hunger Habit, Why We
Speaker 2: Eat when We're not Hungry and How to Stop.
Speaker 3: Hi, jud Welcome to the show.
Speaker 4: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 3: I think this is your third or fourth time on
Speaker 3: the show, so I am always happy when we get
Speaker 3: a chance to talk. And we're going to be discussing
Speaker 3: a new book you have called The Hunger Habit, Why
Speaker 3: we Eat when We're not hungry and how to stop?
Speaker 3: And this seems to be a topic of perennial interest
Speaker 3: among people because I think in our modern world, right,
Speaker 3: it's really really easy to overeat, Right, we have a
Speaker 3: problem of abundance, not scarcity anymore. Right, Yes, absolutely, So
Speaker 3: we'll get into that in a second, but before we do,
Speaker 3: let's start like we always do with the parable. In
Speaker 3: the parable, there's a grandparent talking with their grandchild and
Speaker 3: they say, in life, there are two wolves inside of
Speaker 3: us that are always a battle. One is a good wolf,
Speaker 3: which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and
Speaker 3: the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like
Speaker 3: greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and
Speaker 3: they think about it for a second. They look up
Speaker 3: at their grandparent and they say, well, which one wins?
Speaker 3: And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd
Speaker 3: like to start off by asking you what that parable
Speaker 3: means to you in your life and in the work
Speaker 3: that you do well.
Speaker 1: To me, in a nutshell, it's about whatever we put
Speaker 1: energy into and that energy is going to grow wherever
Speaker 1: we're directing it. And so in my personal life, if
Speaker 1: I feed, you know, greed, for example, it's going to grow.
Speaker 1: If I feed kindness, that's going to grow. And I
Speaker 1: see that in my own life. And this is directly
Speaker 1: relevant to basically all the work I do as an
Speaker 1: addiction psychiatrist and a researcher as well, because the idea
Speaker 1: is to help people feed habits that are going to
Speaker 1: be helpful for them and for others as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I want to start with your book with
Speaker 3: a statement that you make at some juncture, and I
Speaker 3: don't quite know where you make it, but to me
Speaker 3: it sort of summarizes the whole approach of the book,
Speaker 3: which is, you say, when it comes to changing habits,
Speaker 3: whether letting go of old ones or developing new ones,
Speaker 3: it follows one path in one path only changing reward value.
Speaker 3: So say more about what do you mean by changing
Speaker 3: reward value and why do you see this as the
Speaker 3: primary way to intervene in habit change.
Speaker 1: So to me, the dominant paradigm for the last century,
Speaker 1: if not hundreds of years, has been this idea around
Speaker 1: willpower and self control. You know, there's a relief carved
Speaker 1: into the Parthenon in Athens, I think in Greece that
Speaker 1: depicts a rider and a horse, and the horses the passions,
Speaker 1: the rider's reason, and the idea is that there's this
Speaker 1: age old debate about, you know, how do we control
Speaker 1: our passions? Can we basically think our way out of problems?
Speaker 1: And that is still the dominant paradigm when it comes
Speaker 1: to changing eating habits today. It's all about, you know,
Speaker 1: use your willpower. It's a great marketing and retention strategy
Speaker 1: for companies because they can tell people, you know, use
Speaker 1: our die and it's your fault if you fail. So
Speaker 1: that sets people up to feel like there's something wrong
Speaker 1: with them and also unfortunately gives them the wrong impression
Speaker 1: that they need more willpower in whoever it is that
Speaker 1: telling them, you know, whatever, the diet jejoor is is
Speaker 1: correct from a neuroscience standpoint, I don't know how else
Speaker 1: to put this, but willpower is not even part of
Speaker 1: the equation. And so I mean, I'm not kidding like
Speaker 1: when we run our analyses for behavior change, and it's
Speaker 1: not just us. These are formulae that have been tried
Speaker 1: and true. Back to the nineteen seventies. There are two
Speaker 1: researchers named Riskerla and Wagner who came up with this
Speaker 1: basic formula and it's still used today. So this is
Speaker 1: a non controversial, very good model that has a lot
Speaker 1: of explanatory power for how habit forms and how habit changes.
Speaker 1: And it has nothing to do with willpower, So what
Speaker 1: does it have to do with It has everything to
Speaker 1: do with reward value. And so that's why I say
Speaker 1: that's so critical because from a neuroscience standpoint it's pretty clear,
Speaker 1: But more importantly, as a clinician and from a pragmatic standpoint,
Speaker 1: we can actually watch that behavior change through targeting reward value.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. Listener,
Speaker 3: while you were listening to that, what resonated with you?
Speaker 3: What one thing to feed your good Wolf comes to mind?
Speaker 3: If the thing that came to your mind was more
Speaker 3: time for stillness, or you've tried meditation before and you
Speaker 3: really haven't liked it, then I want to give you
Speaker 3: a quick tip that might make it better for you.
Speaker 3: And it's simply to stop expecting that you're not going
Speaker 3: to have thoughts. Nearly everyone has this expectation that they're
Speaker 3: going to sit down and meditate and they're going to
Speaker 3: stop having thoughts. And when they stop having thoughts, that
Speaker 3: means they're doing it well. But no one does that,
Speaker 3: and so we end up feeling like we're failing all
Speaker 3: of the time. Every three seconds, fail again and failed again.
Speaker 3: We develop a relationship with meditation that is aversive. So
Speaker 3: if you want to stop dreading meditation and actually find
Speaker 3: it relaxing, check out my free meditation guide at Goodwolf
Speaker 3: dot me slash Calm. In it, I walk you through
Speaker 3: my process to engage with meditation in a new way,
Speaker 3: and a lot of people have found it really helpful,
Speaker 3: that's goodwolf dot me slash calm. And so when we
Speaker 3: say reward value right, we're basically talking about our brain's
Speaker 3: way of ranking how enjoyable or unenjoyable something is, yes, right.
Speaker 3: Reward values the fancy way of saying essentially that yes, yeah.
Speaker 1: So what would a simple example be if I slam
Speaker 1: my hand in the door, low reward value, higher reward value,
Speaker 1: not slamming my hand in the door. And the same
Speaker 1: is true for food. In fact, we have a lot
Speaker 1: of evolutionary mechanisms built in so that we'll actually have
Speaker 1: natural preferences for calorie dense foods. For example, so if
Speaker 1: if we eat some broccoli versus some chocolate cake, our
Speaker 1: brain is very very likely to prefer the chocolate cake
Speaker 1: just because it's saying, hey, there are a lot of
Speaker 1: calories here, you know, let's pack those in. And the
Speaker 1: idea is that our body is constantly preparing for famine,
Speaker 1: and so it wants to pack the calories in. In fact,
Speaker 1: opulence was a sign of prosperity back in the day.
Speaker 3: And so the idea then is that if I can
Speaker 3: train my brain or reteach it so that it begins
Speaker 3: to count the full cost of the negative behaviors that
Speaker 3: I engage in, I will naturally seek them less.
Speaker 1: Yes, And I would say the brain will train itself
Speaker 1: even if we help orient it in the right direction.
Speaker 3: One of the things that I know about people who
Speaker 3: have dealt with food issues, so to speak, right is
Speaker 3: that they're very aware on some level of the costs.
Speaker 3: They're very aware of the fact that they don't feel
Speaker 3: good about it, that they often feel worse afterwards, and
Speaker 3: that's not changing their behavior. Is it because they're not
Speaker 3: accurately connecting all the dots in a systematic way? Would
Speaker 3: you say that's the primary thing that's kind of missing.
Speaker 1: There generally speaking?
Speaker 4: Yes.
Speaker 1: And what I see the most is that people get
Speaker 1: stuck in this, you know, trying to think their way
Speaker 1: out of the problem, so they think, you know, it's
Speaker 1: back to the willpower piece. But on top of that,
Speaker 1: they also get stuck in these self judgmental habit loops
Speaker 1: where they're judging themselves and they think that the judgment
Speaker 1: is going to kind of give them a swift kick
Speaker 1: in the pants and that's going to actually help them
Speaker 1: change behavior as well. It's what they're feeding. They're feeding
Speaker 1: energy to you know these thinking processes, and they're feeding
Speaker 1: energy into judging themselves rather than taking that energy and
Speaker 1: putting it in a place that's actually going to affect
Speaker 1: behavior change, which is in the feeling body.
Speaker 3: Right, Because it does seem I got this idea from you,
Speaker 3: but I think I've also heard it other places and
Speaker 3: in different ways. Right, that judgment, in many cases stops
Speaker 3: our ability to learn. Right, we're so wrapped up in
Speaker 3: shame and judgment that we're not actually able to use
Speaker 3: the parts of our brain that learn well, and so
Speaker 3: thus we're not actually learning. And that's what we're trying
Speaker 3: to do here, right, We're trying to teach the brain
Speaker 3: that it's value judgments far as whether this is a
Speaker 3: good behavior that I should keep doing or behavior I
Speaker 3: should do less of those aren't getting updated.
Speaker 1: Yes, And I think the way you said it is
Speaker 1: perfect where it's we get wrapped up, Because when we
Speaker 1: get wrapped up in judgment or shame or blame or
Speaker 1: whatever or guilt, those all feel closed down, they feel contracted.
Speaker 1: And I like the language that Carol Dwakius is here.
Speaker 1: She talks about fixed versus growth mindset. And so when
Speaker 1: we're judging ourselves we're in a fixed mindset, and we're
Speaker 1: not actually in the arena of learning, which is a
Speaker 1: growth mindset. We're in the opposite so here it prevents
Speaker 1: us from actually opening and growing from our experiences.
Speaker 3: It makes me think of I don't know if you're
Speaker 3: familiar with her work, Mayasavolitz, who's written about addiction, and
Speaker 3: you know, she brings forward a theory of addiction that
Speaker 3: aligns with what you're saying here, which is that essentially
Speaker 3: many people think of it almost as a learning disorder,
Speaker 3: meaning that for the average person, right as they go
Speaker 3: along and their experiences of negative consequences from alcohol or
Speaker 3: drugs start to grow, they naturally do less of it.
Speaker 3: But for the addict that learning doesn't seem to take place.
Speaker 3: Right It just seems as if the previous reward value
Speaker 3: of drugs equals good, regardless of what's happened since, remains
Speaker 3: almost locked in place. And that makes me think a
Speaker 3: little bit of a phrase from twelve step programs, you
Speaker 3: know where I got sober, And it was basically the
Speaker 3: idea that you know, we're unable with sufficient force to
Speaker 3: bring to mind the humiliation and suffering of even a
Speaker 3: week or a month ago, Yes, And I think what
Speaker 3: your book does is lay out sort of almost a
Speaker 3: learning plan for the brain so that it can start
Speaker 3: to update these reward values, to update these senses of
Speaker 3: what is working for us and what isn't in a
Speaker 3: way that is more effective than maybe randomly hoping that
Speaker 3: eventually it happens.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, And the idea there is it starts with learning.
Speaker 1: If we don't know how our brain works, how can
Speaker 1: we possibly learn to work with it? And so the
Speaker 1: plan starts with like, here's how your brain works, and
Speaker 1: learn how your brain works. And it's not like you
Speaker 1: have to learn it down to every single neural sinopse,
Speaker 1: but we can learn some of the basic principles pretty quickly.
Speaker 3: Excellent, So let's let's go into that in just a second.
Speaker 3: But let's for a moment talk about something you say
Speaker 3: early on in the book, and you say, though the
Speaker 3: wires connecting their brains to their stomachs have been crossed
Speaker 3: with their emotional wiring. You're describing people who are having problems,
Speaker 3: you know, maybe eating more than they want, and worse,
Speaker 3: they seem to be walking around much of the time
Speaker 3: with their brains disconnected from their bodies.
Speaker 4: Say more about that yes.
Speaker 1: So we have this very basic survival mechanism that is
Speaker 1: about hunger. It's called homeostatic hunger. And so if we
Speaker 1: are low end calories of our stomach's empty, our brain says, hey,
Speaker 1: do something about this, you know, and we are motivated
Speaker 1: to get some food you know that's been at play,
Speaker 1: that's evolutionarily conserved all the way back to the sea
Speaker 1: slug you know. So this is a very well known process,
Speaker 1: and the process itself at a high level is called positive.
Speaker 4: And negative reinforcement.
Speaker 1: And the way it works is that our ancient ancestors
Speaker 1: who didn't have refrigerators, didn't have live in abundance, had
Speaker 1: to remember where food is. And the way to remember
Speaker 1: that is to learn where food sources were. And so
Speaker 1: they would be out foraging, they'd find the food, and
Speaker 1: then their stomach would send this dopamine signal back to
Speaker 1: their brain and say, hey, here's the food.
Speaker 4: Remember where it is.
Speaker 1: And it's called positive reinforcement. Same would be true for
Speaker 1: you know, if they see, you know, where all the
Speaker 1: tigers hang out, and they said, okay, let's avoid that area,
Speaker 1: and they would learn, you know, okay that area is,
Speaker 1: you know, don't go there. Unless you want to become
Speaker 1: lunch and that's called negative reinforcement. The crossing of the
Speaker 1: wires comes when that mechanism is still at play. But
Speaker 1: we learned to eat food not because we're hungry, but
Speaker 1: because of a mood. And so, you know, for example,
Speaker 1: how many times have we gone to birthday parties as
Speaker 1: kids and our parents, you know, they're like, okay, why
Speaker 1: don't you not eat breakfast and lunch so you'll be
Speaker 1: starving for the cake and the ice cream. You know,
Speaker 1: probably the opposite where they're like, let you know, let's
Speaker 1: give them a healthy meal so that they'll eat less
Speaker 1: of the sugar. But then you know, kids start to
Speaker 1: eat ice cream and cake because they're having fun, and
Speaker 1: ice cream and cake taste good, and so they learn
Speaker 1: to eat because of the celebration.
Speaker 4: And then on top of.
Speaker 1: This, we learn to eat when we're sad or bored
Speaker 1: or lonely or frustrated or angry or all these things.
Speaker 1: And so this food mood relationship starts to shift for
Speaker 1: a lot of people. This is where these unhealthy habits
Speaker 1: come in from. You know, like eating when we're actually hungry,
Speaker 1: that homeostatic hunger to eating, you know, when we're not hungry,
Speaker 1: but because of any sort of emotion that we might have.
Speaker 1: That is so common now that there's a term that's
Speaker 1: actually a misnomer, but it was designed specifically to help
Speaker 1: researchers study this phenomenon. It's called hedonic hunger. So in
Speaker 1: contrast to homeostatic hunger, which is, you know, getting us
Speaker 1: back in balance, handenic hunger just means we're eating out
Speaker 1: of emotion, you know, that mood food relationship, and that's
Speaker 1: where the wires get crossed.
Speaker 3: Okay, so up till now, we've sort of laid out
Speaker 3: that there's this mismatch happening, that we are beginning to
Speaker 3: eat for reasons beyond just hunger, and that our reward
Speaker 3: values are not updating. So let's talk about a piece
Speaker 3: of chocolate cake, right, because a piece of chocolate cake
Speaker 3: for different people is going to be different things. Right.
Speaker 3: It's probably going to be delicious for most people, right.
Speaker 3: I Mean there's some people that don't like it, but
Speaker 3: I don't even let them listen to the show. So
Speaker 3: assuming that now I'm kidding, but assuming that a piece
Speaker 3: of chocolate cake is fairly delicious, right, and it's going
Speaker 3: to be delicious partially for the reasons you laid out before,
Speaker 3: meaning that our bodies are sort of wired up to
Speaker 3: want that sugar and fat. So where does this go
Speaker 3: from and in what cases do you start to think
Speaker 3: about this starts to become problematic versus sort of a
Speaker 3: default human behavior of enjoying sweet and fat.
Speaker 1: Really good question, and I don't know if there's a
Speaker 1: clear line, So I think we can start at the
Speaker 1: far end. Simple definition of addiction that I learned in
Speaker 1: residency was continued to use despite adverse consequences. There's a
Speaker 1: controversial topic around can people be addicted to food? A
Speaker 1: lot of people are arguing, well, if you look at
Speaker 1: this simple definition of addiction, you know, if somebody is
Speaker 1: eating and their adverse consequences, that would fall into the definition.
Speaker 1: So on one end of the spectrum, when people are
Speaker 1: consuming food not because they're hungry, but because of a
Speaker 1: mood or any other reason and it's causing adverse consequences,
Speaker 1: you could say, okay, that falls into the category far
Speaker 1: into the spectrum where there's addiction. And then you know,
Speaker 1: in the grayer zone is when people are you know,
Speaker 1: just they might pick up a piece of candy or
Speaker 1: something because it looks good, but they're not particularly hungry.
Speaker 1: But they stop at one piece, whereas somebody else, you know,
Speaker 1: they see a bull of M and m's or something
Speaker 1: like that, and they're going to eat the whole thing.
Speaker 4: Yep.
Speaker 1: I talk in the hunger habit about my own gummy
Speaker 1: worm addiction, where I was literally eating entire bags.
Speaker 4: Of gummy worms, you know, in one sitting.
Speaker 3: So some of this really is partially our own feeling
Speaker 3: about how problematic it is, right. I mean, again, on
Speaker 3: the extreme ends of things, right, it becomes fairly obvious.
Speaker 3: You know. We might all say, you know, a heroin
Speaker 3: attic like me that has hepatitis c in, weighs one
Speaker 3: hundred pounds, right, and keeps doing drugs even though he's
Speaker 3: looking at going to jail for a long time. That's
Speaker 3: pretty easy to just be like, Yep, that's clear, clearly problematic, right,
Speaker 3: you know, but you get in to that middle ground, right.
Speaker 3: I had a conversation. I was talking with my doctor
Speaker 3: this morning, and he practices in a relatively affluent area,
Speaker 3: and he was saying, you know, he's like, I have
Speaker 3: conversations all day long, day after day about people and
Speaker 3: their alcohol use, right, and these are people who are
Speaker 3: fully functioning people. Right, They're not going to necessarily fit
Speaker 3: lots of definitions of alcoholism. And again, I know that
Speaker 3: the scientific community is moving even away from that as
Speaker 3: a way of defining the problem. But these are the
Speaker 3: people that are going to be in the middle area, right.
Speaker 3: Their consequences, their adverse effects are going to be a
Speaker 3: little bit more mild. They're going to probably be if
Speaker 3: they're physical. They're a little bit further down the road.
Speaker 3: And I often find this to be the really tough
Speaker 3: place for people because I know a lot of people
Speaker 3: who have stayed in a relationship to substances alcohol or
Speaker 3: marijuana as an example, in this middle ground for a
Speaker 3: long long time time because the adverse effects don't ever
Speaker 3: seem to get bad enough for them to really go
Speaker 3: about making a change. So it seems like some of
Speaker 3: this is by nature self diagnosed, right.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, And I think there are ways that we can
Speaker 1: put our thumb on the scale a little bit.
Speaker 4: And so you're.
Speaker 1: Highlighting, you know, there are all these these memes around.
Speaker 1: You know, you have to get rock bottom for whatever
Speaker 1: it is, you know, whether it's alcohol or social media, yep,
Speaker 1: to become disenchanted and that is true for a lot
Speaker 1: of people, and for a lot of people, you know,
Speaker 1: for example, I think of cigarettes is the slow burn,
Speaker 1: because you know, somebody can smoke cigarettes for twenty or
Speaker 1: thirty years and not get lung cancer or not get
Speaker 1: emphysema for all that period of time. That's a really
Speaker 1: unfortunate rock bottom to hit. And at that point it's
Speaker 1: too late. You can't really reverse emphysema or in lung
Speaker 1: cancer is really tough to treat. So here that is
Speaker 1: very challenging for people where they see, you know, and
Speaker 1: you can think of cigarettes and alcohol as things that
Speaker 1: aren't critical for survival certainly, you know, cigarettes are the
Speaker 1: easiest ones to look at because some people are like
Speaker 1: I need a drink to be able to function socially.
Speaker 1: So food, on the other hand, is even more challenging
Speaker 1: because we all have to eat to survive. Yes, and
Speaker 1: we can come back to this if you want, But
Speaker 1: it gets really interesting where, you know, does everybody have
Speaker 1: to hit rock bottom, because somebody might never hit rock bottom,
Speaker 1: if you know, if they're at an unhealthy weight but
Speaker 1: not a terribly unhealthy weight. You know, it's kind of
Speaker 1: like where somebody smoke cigarettes but they haven't quite gotten
Speaker 1: emphysima yet. So we can put our thumb on the
Speaker 1: scale a little bit there and actually help people, you know,
Speaker 1: double click on what they're eating habits are now, and
Speaker 1: it can actually help to accelerate the process of change.
Speaker 3: Say more about that, what sort of things might you
Speaker 3: focus on? I mean, the one that comes to mind
Speaker 3: for me is sometimes the worst part part of these
Speaker 3: behaviors is how they make us feel about ourselves, about
Speaker 3: our own self efficacy. That that's one very clear, sort
Speaker 3: of internally definable thing. What are some of the things
Speaker 3: that we might do that help people see it a
Speaker 3: little more clearly.
Speaker 1: Well, a lot of it starts with helping us step
Speaker 1: back from you know, trying to think our way out
Speaker 1: of the problem and feel our way into our experience.
Speaker 1: So if we feel our way into our experience. Let's
Speaker 1: use overeating as an example. When I have somebody really
Speaker 1: recall the last time they overeate. You know, often for
Speaker 1: people the easiest scenarios or holiday meals, you know, there's
Speaker 1: been a lot of abundance and they've often you know,
Speaker 1: had some alcohol, which will you know, make it easier
Speaker 1: to be disinhibited. Then they just overeat nobody's come back
Speaker 1: and said, Wow, it felt great to overeat. You know,
Speaker 1: it's usually oh I felt so terrible and then that
Speaker 1: was just physically, and then on top of it, they
Speaker 1: feel guilty and all of that. Yes, so we've actually
Speaker 1: developed what I call a disenchantment database already, most of us,
Speaker 1: for most of our lives, we've been collecting this information.
Speaker 1: And it's a gold mine where we can look back
Speaker 1: on those experiences and ask, you know, how did that go?
Speaker 1: You know, like not in an intellectual way, but in
Speaker 1: a feeling way, like how did I actually feel after
Speaker 1: I overindulged? And we can feel into that, and that
Speaker 1: helps us become disenchanted with doing the behavior, because our
Speaker 1: brains are really set up to predict future outcomes based
Speaker 1: on past experience. And so if we imagine, you know,
Speaker 1: we're at the next holiday meal and we imagine, okay,
Speaker 1: what's it going to be like when I do this,
Speaker 1: We're we're calling our previous experiences, and if we can
Speaker 1: recall what it was like and we're like, oh, that
Speaker 1: didn't feel so good, we're suddenly more motivated to not
Speaker 1: repeat that behavior because we are disenchanted with it and
Speaker 1: all of that comes from just a recollection of what
Speaker 1: happened in the past.
Speaker 3: So when you use the phrase disenchantment, you're basically meaning
Speaker 3: I start to see the not good sides of this behavior.
Speaker 3: In essence, right, I'm beginning to update my reward value
Speaker 3: and say, oh, this actually isn't quite as wonderful as
Speaker 3: it seems, because I have my own personal data that
Speaker 3: says when this is done, I really feel lousy. That's
Speaker 3: kind of what you mean by disenchantment, absolutely, And so
Speaker 3: you know, I think this gets to the question I
Speaker 3: sort of asked earlier and sort of keep sort of circling,
Speaker 3: and you even say it yourself. You said, it's very
Speaker 3: easy for our brains to forget what it feels like
Speaker 3: to overeat discounting that for the remembrance of positive things past, right,
Speaker 3: it tasted so good, right, And so it does seem
Speaker 3: that for some reason our brains have a difficult time
Speaker 3: building that disenchantment up, or for some reason we tend
Speaker 3: to focus more on the positive and don't remember what
Speaker 3: comes a little further down the road. So what are
Speaker 3: some of the tools you recommend for starting to build
Speaker 3: up this disenchantment, right, Because in essence, that's sort of
Speaker 3: what we're saying, right, If you become disenchanted with the behavior,
Speaker 3: if you actually fully see that and you update your
Speaker 3: perceptions of good versus bad on this as a behavior.
Speaker 3: I don't mean morally, I mean in your own experience, right,
Speaker 3: you will naturally cease to do less of it. So,
Speaker 3: you know, how do we start to connect the dots?
Speaker 3: You know, as we said earlier, that most people have
Speaker 3: some degree of disenchantment with these things, but that disenchantment
Speaker 3: hasn't gotten to the point that it's turned into real
Speaker 3: change yet. So what are some of the ways we
Speaker 3: connect that dots or help grow that disenchantment.
Speaker 1: One of the key areas that I have people focus
Speaker 1: on is just really feeling into their experience and keeping
Speaker 1: it simple, because often people they'll get stuck in their
Speaker 1: heads and that isn't where the behavior change happens. So
Speaker 1: I have them really just focus on if you just overeate,
Speaker 1: for example, what does it feel like if you overate yesterday?
Speaker 1: Can you recall what that felt like? And the more
Speaker 1: we can recall that and keep that memory fresh, the
Speaker 1: simpler it's going to be, because we're not going to
Speaker 1: be focusing on You know, there are lots of ways
Speaker 1: that our brains will try to distract us. For example,
Speaker 1: where they'll say, oh, remember, it was such a good time.
Speaker 1: You know, there were all these people there, or you
Speaker 1: had a great conversation, or this or that. All of
Speaker 1: those can be true, and you know, it's not like
Speaker 1: it changes that information, but we're focusing on the wrong
Speaker 1: thing because our brain's like, no, it was a good time,
Speaker 1: you had a good time. Maybe we did have a
Speaker 1: good time. How good of a time did our body have?
Speaker 1: And so we just really focus there and it's kind
Speaker 1: of asking the body, hey, how'd that go for you?
Speaker 1: Was it as good as I remember? And then the
Speaker 1: body says, you know, actually I felt like crap. So
Speaker 1: we can remember that when we zoom in and focus
Speaker 1: on those details.
Speaker 3: All right, now, let's pause for a quick Goodwolf reminder,
Speaker 3: and this one is on meditation. If while you're meditating
Speaker 3: your mind wanders, you probably, like most people, treat that
Speaker 3: as a moment of failure, like, ugh, my mind wandered again.
Speaker 3: But let's flip that and instead treat that as a
Speaker 3: moment of celebration, because in that moment, your mind actually
Speaker 3: woke up and you were mindful of the fact that
Speaker 3: your mind wandered. So it's a win. So if we
Speaker 3: can flip that right on its head and say, oh,
Speaker 3: good job, brain, we actually make it more likely that
Speaker 3: a our brain is going to do it more often
Speaker 3: because we're training it, and b that we're going to
Speaker 3: enjoy it more. And specifically, it's about how to make
Speaker 3: you not dread meditation so much and actually find it relaxing.
Speaker 3: Check out my free meditation guide at Goodwolf dot me
Speaker 3: slash Calm. I was thinking about this idea through the
Speaker 3: lens of twelve step programs because I often spend a
Speaker 3: lot of time thinking about, like, what is about twelve
Speaker 3: step programs that when they do work, they do work right,
Speaker 3: And there's lots of data out there about how effective they.
Speaker 4: Are or aren't.
Speaker 3: But you know, you can walk into a room anywhere
Speaker 3: in America and find millions of people who have gotten
Speaker 3: sober as a result of them. So they worked to
Speaker 3: some degree, and it's what worked for me. And I
Speaker 3: looked at it and I thought, you know, in some ways,
Speaker 3: the fact that we sit there and tell each other's
Speaker 3: stories about what it was like and how difficult it
Speaker 3: was is almost a to use your terminology an ongoing
Speaker 3: disenchantment discussion. It's a way in which we are sort
Speaker 3: of helping each other update our disenchantment. You're helping me
Speaker 3: remember my own disenchantment.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, And I think that's where community can be very,
Speaker 1: very helpful, where we're not only helping provide the environment
Speaker 1: for somebody to do that recollection out loud, but we're
Speaker 1: bearing witness yep.
Speaker 3: So we reflect on our bodies, and that being one way,
Speaker 3: I mean that makes sense to me. I mean I
Speaker 3: like sweets, right, so I will tend towards perhaps eating
Speaker 3: sweets a little more often than would be ideal. Perhaps,
Speaker 3: But what I have internalized is I deeply hate how
Speaker 3: it feels when I've eaten too much, Like, for whatever reason,
Speaker 3: for me, it's a very visceral, deeply unpleasant and uncomfortable experience.
Speaker 3: And so that's actually one I don't do that often
Speaker 3: because for whatever reason, somehow in my mind that learning
Speaker 3: linked up and I was like, that is an awful,
Speaker 3: truly to me, for whatever reason, one of my least
Speaker 3: favorite feelings. You know, In some way it seems like
Speaker 3: I was able to tune into that aspect of my body.
Speaker 1: And that's a beautiful example of the simplicity of this
Speaker 1: process of change, where tuning into our bodies, you know,
Speaker 1: this very wise body is going to be on stronger
Speaker 1: than our thinking brain. And that's that's really I'm not
Speaker 1: saying it's easy, but it is simple because it's as
Speaker 1: simple as tuning in like you're describing.
Speaker 3: So in addition to sort of as you're saying, pay
Speaker 3: more attention to our body, you have another line you say,
Speaker 3: which is awareness is everything when it comes to behavior change.
Speaker 3: You let that sink in. Awareness is everything when it
Speaker 3: comes to behavior change. So what we're trying to do
Speaker 3: then is tune into our experience of eating in this case,
Speaker 3: and you've got something called the craving tool, which is
Speaker 3: I think, another way of sort of connecting these dots.
Speaker 3: Do you want to walk us through what that is
Speaker 3: and what the core questions are in the craving tool?
Speaker 1: Sure, So the craving tool is really there as an
Speaker 1: awareness tool to help us see very and feel more importantly,
Speaker 1: feel very clearly what the results of our eating behaviors are.
Speaker 1: So you know, there are two ways that we can
Speaker 1: approach it, depending on how we eat. One is if
Speaker 1: we're eating food that's you know, that's not very healthy.
Speaker 1: For example, for me, it was gummy worms. Or if
Speaker 1: we're eating an amount of food that's you know, it's
Speaker 1: like overeating or over consuming, or eating when we're not
Speaker 1: hungry or both. For me, it was over consuming gummy worms.
Speaker 1: Then we can start to pay attention to the process,
Speaker 1: and so we keep it pretty simple, where it's just
Speaker 1: having people pay attention as they eat whatever the food is,
Speaker 1: and so paying careful attention to what it tastes like,
Speaker 1: what it feels like in their stomach, and then also
Speaker 1: importantly paying attention to the emotions afterwards. You know, for me,
Speaker 1: when I eat a bunch of sugar, I tend to
Speaker 1: get a sugar rush and a crash, and I can
Speaker 1: be pretty moody afterwards. So being able to really see
Speaker 1: clearly what the results of the eating behavior are, those
Speaker 1: results help us develop that disenchantment database.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: That's what the craving tool is really for, is to
Speaker 1: help us really connect the dots between whatever the behavior
Speaker 1: is and whatever the result is with.
Speaker 3: You and your gummy worms, right, was that primarily what
Speaker 3: you noticed was the sugar crash was primarily the thing
Speaker 3: that you felt into and made you realize that this
Speaker 3: behavior wasn't one you want to continue engaging or are
Speaker 3: there are other elements of it that you were able
Speaker 3: to key into.
Speaker 1: There was so much there, you know, where I would
Speaker 1: feel this urge, this out of control urge to consume,
Speaker 1: and then I would basically eat them as fast as
Speaker 1: I could and eat all of them so they'd be
Speaker 1: out of the apartment, and then, you know, and then
Speaker 1: sleep really poorly and feel bad about doing it and
Speaker 1: feel bad about being out of control, and then you know,
Speaker 1: wake up the next day a little bit relieved because
Speaker 1: I didn't have gummy worms in the house that day until.
Speaker 4: Until I got some more. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So there was a lot there to pay attention to,
Speaker 1: including just how good did they taste themselves? You know,
Speaker 1: when I started paying careful attention, I realized that for me,
Speaker 1: gummy worms were kind of this sickly I best described
Speaker 1: them as like this petroleum product.
Speaker 4: It was just like this off suite.
Speaker 1: Where my brain's like, I want more, but it just
Speaker 1: doesn't taste right, and it's kind of I can't remember
Speaker 1: the last time I had a gummy worm, because it's
Speaker 1: been years now, but I can still remember what my
Speaker 1: body's reaction was was.
Speaker 4: Like, eugh, this just does not taste very good.
Speaker 3: And do you think that all those things started to
Speaker 3: influence your perception of the taste. Did you start to
Speaker 3: actually pay closer attention to what they tasted like? I mean,
Speaker 3: you know, I guess I'm kind of curious whether your
Speaker 3: taste shifted as the rest of your consciousness shifted, or
Speaker 3: whether you simply hadn't been paying enough attention to the
Speaker 3: taste to begin with.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a good question. It's certainly the latter, where
Speaker 1: I hadn't been paying enough attention to what it tasted
Speaker 1: like in the first place. And I think maybe my
Speaker 1: taste shifted a little bit as I started paying attention.
Speaker 1: As a kid, it was like anything sugary tasted good.
Speaker 1: But I could probably eat sugar, you know, breakfast, lunch,
Speaker 1: and dinner and still function just fine. I can't do
Speaker 1: that anymore, and so there are many more consequences that
Speaker 1: come from an all sugar diet now than when I.
Speaker 4: Was a kid.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's interesting. I think that's a sobering thing that
Speaker 3: happens to many of us, right, with many different things.
Speaker 3: Is you know, what used to be somewhat consequence free
Speaker 3: as children or as young people just isn't anymore. And again,
Speaker 3: so there's an example of needing to update our reward values, right,
Speaker 3: because suddenly these things have a downside that certainly I
Speaker 3: couldn't sense before when I was younger. Absolutely, there's something
Speaker 3: else that you discuss while you're discussing the craving tool
Speaker 3: that I thought was really interesting. And the second question
Speaker 3: in there is how content do I feel? Right, you
Speaker 3: talk about the fact that you know, on one hand,
Speaker 3: we could use the word, you know, satisfied, how satisfied
Speaker 3: do I feel? But you say that satisfied and content
Speaker 3: might seem like the same thing, but they're not right.
Speaker 3: And that asking people that question very specifically as to
Speaker 3: whether they were content versus satisfied actually really helped to
Speaker 3: get clearer on disenchantment. Say more about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So when my lab studied this, we were really
Speaker 1: looking for the language that was going to capture the
Speaker 1: right experience, and what we found was a lot of
Speaker 1: people will say, oh, yeah, I felt satisfied after that meal,
Speaker 1: you know, because there was something satisfying about, you know,
Speaker 1: eating when you're hungry. And when we double clicked on
Speaker 1: that and ask people, well, how content do you feel?
Speaker 1: That helped to bring out of the noise of satisfaction.
Speaker 1: When somebody had overeaten, for example, you know, their body
Speaker 1: just didn't feel that good, they didn't feel that content.
Speaker 1: So the contentment gets into this embodied experience more than
Speaker 1: satisfied does satisfied. You know, we probably had a lot
Speaker 1: of people still stuck in their heads. Does that make sense?
Speaker 3: It does. The other thing that I think contentment does
Speaker 3: is it to me, it brings together both the physical
Speaker 3: elements of how I feel after I ate, but also
Speaker 3: the emotional elements, right, and it points me towards aiming
Speaker 3: for a better experience, right, an experience that's better than
Speaker 3: just satisfied.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: To me, it intuitively makes sense. I was fascinated to
Speaker 3: see that, you know, your lab had figured that out.
Speaker 3: And that's one of the things that I love about
Speaker 3: reading your work is all of this stuff. You guys
Speaker 3: have a fair amount of data supporting that these things work.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it'd be hard for me to write a book
Speaker 1: and feel comfortable about writing that book if I didn't
Speaker 1: have actual research behind it. And by research I mean
Speaker 1: like not just reading the Internet or reading other people's work,
Speaker 1: but actually doing the research myself. So I feel pretty confident,
Speaker 1: you know, because I've seen this in my clinic, and
Speaker 1: so i can write about those stories, and I've also
Speaker 1: seen it in my research, and I can write about
Speaker 1: you know, our peer reviewed research studies.
Speaker 3: We jumped over this earlier a little bit, we sort
Speaker 3: of alluded to it, but I'd like to kind of
Speaker 3: go back and hit it a little bit more directly.
Speaker 3: Right in an earlier process in this overall thing, right
Speaker 3: is you call it mapping your food habit loops, right,
Speaker 3: and you really talk about getting clear on three things,
Speaker 3: the why, what, and how? So say more about what
Speaker 3: each of those are and what this mapping looks like.
Speaker 1: Yes, so the mapping helps us start to see what's
Speaker 1: driving the eating behavior. So that's the why why am
Speaker 1: I reaching for food? The what? What am I reaching for?
Speaker 4: You know? Is it?
Speaker 1: You know, like why am I eating? Am I hungry?
Speaker 4: Or am I bored?
Speaker 1: Lonely, sad, angry, frustrated, whatever. If we're eating because of
Speaker 1: an emotion, we tend to reach for comfort food, right,
Speaker 1: That's where that term comes from. And so you know,
Speaker 1: these hyper palatable, hyper processed foods are these things that
Speaker 1: kind of give us that. You know, it's the modern
Speaker 1: day soma if you think of the eldest Huxley, this
Speaker 1: pill that people take that just gets them to you know,
Speaker 1: numb out. Basically, food is like that for a lot
Speaker 1: of people. I've had patients describe, you know, eating to
Speaker 1: numb themselves. And so you know, what am I reaching
Speaker 1: for is the type of food or amount of food
Speaker 1: even and then the why, what and how how am
Speaker 1: I eating? Am I eating just to shove it down?
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 1: For me it was the cumming worms. But I've seen
Speaker 1: this so many times where people are just eating as
Speaker 1: quickly as they can because they're trying to make that
Speaker 1: unpleasant feeling go away. They're trying to get that numbing
Speaker 1: to take effect as quickly as possible as compared to
Speaker 1: haying attention as they eat.
Speaker 4: So that's the why, what, and how?
Speaker 3: Yeah, you mentioned in the book this idea of eating mindfully.
Speaker 3: I love that you make a little joke about it, right,
Speaker 3: because those of us who have been exposed to mindful
Speaker 3: eating have sometimes been exposed to it in ways that
Speaker 3: seem extraordinarily tedious and silly. I think you joke about
Speaker 3: like mindful eating doesn't mean like spending ten minutes to
Speaker 3: get to know a raisin, right, which most of us
Speaker 3: don't have time for. But something you said that really
Speaker 3: struck me was that mindful eating doesn't mean I have
Speaker 3: to eat slower. It means I have to be aware
Speaker 3: of how I'm eating. And that struck me as a
Speaker 3: lot more of an approachable way to get to it, right,
Speaker 3: So say more about that.
Speaker 1: Yes, a lot of us don't have the luxury of
Speaker 1: eating a raisin slowly for ten minutes, right, So here
Speaker 1: we can embody the principle and understand the concepts and
Speaker 1: then use those concepts to develop wisdom through our own experience.
Speaker 1: And so, you know, if somebody only has ten minutes
Speaker 1: to eat a meal, well, they can pay attention as
Speaker 1: they eat that meal. It's compared to you know, scrolling
Speaker 1: through their social media on their phone or doing something
Speaker 1: or reading a book or doing something else. They can
Speaker 1: also pay attention to the amount of the food that
Speaker 1: they eat. They can pay attention to the results of
Speaker 1: you know, if they eat you know, crappy food versus
Speaker 1: you know, mentally processed types of foods. So we can
Speaker 1: pay attention to a lot of different aspects of food.
Speaker 1: But it doesn't take a lot long time to do that.
Speaker 1: That's the basic principle there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think many of us may not have the
Speaker 3: luxury of spending ten minutes on a raisin, nor the desire, right,
Speaker 3: you know. I always go back and forth with this
Speaker 3: in my mind because I seem to have a little
Speaker 3: routine worked out for myself. It is often I have
Speaker 3: breakfast while I read something I enjoy, and the part
Speaker 3: of me that's trained in mindfulness and meditation says, well,
Speaker 3: that's that's a bad idea. You shouldn't be doing that,
Speaker 3: and yet it seems to be something I so genuinely
Speaker 3: kind of enjoy and the fact that, like, you know,
Speaker 3: I know what my breakfast is, and it is what
Speaker 3: it is. It doesn't change. But I've just kind of
Speaker 3: been like, you know, a lot of different things to
Speaker 3: worry about in life for me, this one I'm going
Speaker 3: to just choose to say, eh, this one's okay.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well you're highlighting something important, which is it's not
Speaker 1: about you know, looking at this and giving ourselves rules
Speaker 1: like I have to eat everything and mindfully, you know,
Speaker 1: and not do anything else. You're highlighting I know, the
Speaker 1: amount of food and the type of food that brings
Speaker 1: me nourishment. I'm assuming you're not just eating a bowl
Speaker 1: of fruit lips or something.
Speaker 4: O the sugar, that's right.
Speaker 1: What was the Calvin and Hobbs that Calvin always had
Speaker 1: sugar coated chocolate bombs or chocolate coated sugar bombs or
Speaker 1: something like that.
Speaker 3: They'd always have ones where like after you to eat
Speaker 3: it is like teeth would be battering.
Speaker 4: Yeah. That was such a great cartoon.
Speaker 3: I use it in my habits that matter course as
Speaker 3: a teaching tool because there's so much brilliant wisdom in
Speaker 3: Calvin and Hobbes.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. Yeah, so that's it in Nutell. You know, you're
Speaker 1: not eating the sugar coated chocolate bombs for breakfast. And
Speaker 1: so if you have a ritual that you really enjoy
Speaker 1: and it's not causing suffering, you know, that's really what
Speaker 1: it's about, is what I'm doing causing suffering. And if
Speaker 1: it's not causing suffering, then it may not be worth
Speaker 1: judging yourself for right or saying oh I should be
Speaker 1: just reading this book or eating my you know, my breakfast. Yeah, good,
Speaker 1: good enough.
Speaker 3: Good enough.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: We've kept most of our focus to this idea of
Speaker 3: learning to update our value rewards hierarchy.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: But there are some other things, particularly as we get
Speaker 3: later into the book, that you talk about, and you know,
Speaker 3: one of them is learning to deal with when we
Speaker 3: face setbacks.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: I think this shows up in a chapter under you know,
Speaker 3: looking back to move forward. But you know, when I've
Speaker 3: coached people on behavior change, right, one of the things
Speaker 3: I always say is, there are inevitably going to be
Speaker 3: times that we don't do or do the behavior that
Speaker 3: we're trying not to do. Like, it's largely inevitable, it's
Speaker 3: totally normal, Right, It's going to happen, and if we
Speaker 3: don't realize that, we're likely to end up with you know,
Speaker 3: I think you call it the fuckets often right in
Speaker 3: this book, right, which is where we make a small
Speaker 3: mistake and we throw everything away. But the other thing
Speaker 3: I was really struck by in your book is how
Speaker 3: powerful retrospectives, how powerful looking back on what can I learn? Right?
Speaker 3: I always count to people like what can we learn?
Speaker 3: But the thing that you said that I thought was
Speaker 3: really interesting was that we can actually use the retrospective
Speaker 3: as a way of updating our values hierarchies, right, we
Speaker 3: can look back even if we don't catch it in
Speaker 3: the moment, and still go back. And I thought that
Speaker 3: was a really interesting framework that sort of shows us
Speaker 3: even when we quote unquote make a mistake and I'm
Speaker 3: not even sure I love that phrasing, but that there's
Speaker 3: always ways to profit from that.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, there are a couple of things here. One is
Speaker 1: that often when we're in the middle of it, when
Speaker 1: we're in the middle of the dust storm, we can't
Speaker 1: see and we can't see clearly, so it can be
Speaker 1: really challenging to learn from an.
Speaker 4: Experience when we're caught in the middle of it.
Speaker 1: When the dust settles, we can look back and we
Speaker 1: can see all of the damage that's been done, for example,
Speaker 1: so that it's much easier to see, oh, yeah, that
Speaker 1: was problematic, that didn't go so well. And it also
Speaker 1: gives us the opportunity to be at a palm or
Speaker 1: safer place to look back as well, where we've developed
Speaker 1: some balance and equanimity, and we can lean into that
Speaker 1: and say, oh, Okay, that didn't go so well. What
Speaker 1: can I learn from this? And I would argue that
Speaker 1: we could we could actually take a radical view here
Speaker 1: and say there is no such thing as a setback.
Speaker 1: I'll say that again, there's no such thing as a
Speaker 1: setback if we're learning from that. Why am I saying that?
Speaker 1: Because often we learn more from when things haven't gone
Speaker 1: well than when they have gone well. And so if
Speaker 1: we're open to the learning, then is it a setback
Speaker 1: while we've learned And maybe we've learned more from that
Speaker 1: quote unquote setback than if we hadn't had it. So
Speaker 1: here we can approach everything in life from this growth mindset.
Speaker 1: I guess where we're learning from, whether things go sideways
Speaker 1: or go forward. And with the retrospectives, we've probably had
Speaker 1: a lot of times where things have gone sideways or
Speaker 1: backwards where we haven't actually mined the gold from that,
Speaker 1: where we haven't looked back and said, you know, what
Speaker 1: exactly were the consequences of that?
Speaker 4: How well did that go?
Speaker 1: So we've got this gold mine where we don't have
Speaker 1: to go back and repeat all of these experiences. We
Speaker 1: can simply go back and recall them and ask, you know,
Speaker 1: if we can really feel into the experience, that's the
Speaker 1: key piece. Once we can truly feel into that, that's
Speaker 1: when we know we can mind that gold.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I love that idea that there's you know,
Speaker 3: no such thing as a setback, right, And I think
Speaker 3: part of the reason that that is so important, and
Speaker 3: it gets to something we talked about earlier, and you
Speaker 3: actually talk about in some chapters that are even a
Speaker 3: little bit later than this, is getting back to how
Speaker 3: we relate to our experience and how we relate to ourselves, right,
Speaker 3: And normally our looking back, right is just chastisement of ourselves.
Speaker 3: It's just judgment of ourselves. It's just self loathing of ourselves,
Speaker 3: which means that we're actually not really learning from it, right.
Speaker 3: And so the beauty of being able to approach it
Speaker 3: as a learning is that often that can be the
Speaker 3: way that we can set aside, you know, the self
Speaker 3: loathing and the chastisement and vice versa. Right, they sort
Speaker 3: of feed each other, you know, you talk about kindness
Speaker 3: and curiosity, right, And I think your work, Carol Dweck's work,
Speaker 3: Kristin Neff's w work have all you know, driven home
Speaker 3: for me a like it's just better to be in
Speaker 3: a brain that is kind to itself, Like that's just
Speaker 3: a better experience. But really how critical that actually is
Speaker 3: in getting better and improving.
Speaker 1: Yes and kindness can be seen in the same way
Speaker 1: that we've been talking about changing eating habits. We can
Speaker 1: look at our old habits of self judgment, of guilt,
Speaker 1: of shame, of whatever, and see where they fall on
Speaker 1: that reward hierarchy relative to kindness. You know, to our brain,
Speaker 1: it's a no brainer. Kindness wins every time. So we
Speaker 1: can imply the same principles that we've been talking about
Speaker 1: eating to kindness and fostering that as a healthy habit
Speaker 1: as well.
Speaker 3: So this idea of looking back reminds me of a
Speaker 3: quote I love from He was a leadership writer arre
Speaker 3: in Venice, but he says, true understanding comes from reflecting
Speaker 3: on your experience. I love that is how we actually
Speaker 3: get de or understanding, And you know, I think that
Speaker 3: it's one of the things I encourage people a lot, Like,
Speaker 3: you know, listening to a show like this is like
Speaker 3: really valuable, But what's more valuable is to actually stop
Speaker 3: and go, well, how is what I just heard actually
Speaker 3: apply to my life? Like, let me think very directly
Speaker 3: about like what did doctor Judd talk about? How does
Speaker 3: that apply to me in my life? Versus just sort
Speaker 3: of hearing it?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love that because that reminds me of this
Speaker 1: idea of concepts in the service of wisdom. So you
Speaker 1: and I can talk about these concepts and we can
Speaker 1: talk about, you know, how people's lives might have been changed,
Speaker 1: but ultimately somebody listening, their life isn't going to change
Speaker 1: until they put these concepts into practice and through their
Speaker 1: own direct experience. That's how they're going to develop wisdom.
Speaker 1: That's the only way we can develop wisdom is through
Speaker 1: our own experience.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's talk about something else that comes up in
Speaker 3: a couple points in the book, but you hit on
Speaker 3: it a little bit more directly near the end of
Speaker 3: the book, which is the idea of a bitigger better offer.
Speaker 3: Talk to me about what a bigger better offer means
Speaker 3: to you and how it applies to what we've been
Speaker 3: talking about.
Speaker 1: Yes, so this is the same concept as the reward hierarchy.
Speaker 1: And so we can look at old habits like overeating
Speaker 1: or eating junk food. You know, it's the gummy worm,
Speaker 1: whatever our gummy worm habit is, and we can become
Speaker 1: disenchanted with that just by paying attention, like, oh, gummy
Speaker 1: worms don't taste that that good to me. We can
Speaker 1: also apply the same thing when we compare gummy worms
Speaker 1: to other food. So, you know, for me, it was
Speaker 1: not only discovering that gummy worms don't taste very good,
Speaker 1: but then my brain said, well, give.
Speaker 4: Me something better.
Speaker 1: So way high on the bigger better offer hierarchy is blueberries.
Speaker 1: You know, I absolutely adore blueberries, and I just realized
Speaker 1: recently that they actually provide this intermittent reinforcement because you
Speaker 1: never know just how sweet and next one is going
Speaker 1: to be. You know, like one could be slightly more
Speaker 1: tart and the next one could be a slightly sweeter,
Speaker 1: one could be a slightly you know, pop in your
Speaker 1: mouth a little bit more juicier versus the next one.
Speaker 1: And so it's like, if we're paying attention, it's a
Speaker 1: lottery in our mouth. Yeah, every time, you know, and
Speaker 1: to me, number you play.
Speaker 3: When intermittent rewards those are those are pretty sticky?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: So are you eating your blueberries one at a time?
Speaker 4: Generally?
Speaker 1: Yeah, if I'm starving, I maybe a couple at a time,
Speaker 1: but the best reward comes from eating them one at
Speaker 1: a time.
Speaker 3: Speaking of my chocolate frosted sugar bombs, as part of
Speaker 3: my breakfast, I put I put my blueberries in with those,
Speaker 3: so it's maybe why I'm not getting the individual blueberry flavor.
Speaker 4: So I love it. I love it.
Speaker 1: But that's the principle, is you know, using the same
Speaker 1: awareness that we're using to become disenchanted with the old
Speaker 1: habits to build these new ones. You know, whether it's
Speaker 1: the habit of kindness, whether it's the habit of curiosity,
Speaker 1: or whether it's finding our blueberry equivalent.
Speaker 3: That's great. So listener and thinking about all of that
Speaker 3: and the other great wisdom from today's episode. If you
Speaker 3: are going to isolate just one top insight or thing
Speaker 3: to do that you're taking away, what would it be.
Speaker 3: Remember that, little by little, a little becomes a lot.
Speaker 3: And a habit for me that has accrude and benefit
Speaker 3: over time is meditation. However, one of the things that
Speaker 3: gets in our way of building a steady meditation practice
Speaker 3: is that very striving.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: Of course, we're doing it because we want certain benefits,
Speaker 3: but in the moment of actually meditating, we need to
Speaker 3: let striving go and focus on just being there and
Speaker 3: experiencing it no matter what's happening. It becomes not enjoyable
Speaker 3: because I'm trying to make something happen some special moment.
Speaker 3: We want to let go of that. So if you
Speaker 3: want to stop dreading meditation and actually find it enjoyable,
Speaker 3: check out my free meditation guide at Goodwolf dot me
Speaker 3: slash calm. So we're nearing the end of our time here.
Speaker 3: Is there anything that you feel like is really important
Speaker 3: to this book and to these ideas that we have
Speaker 3: completely missed. Is there anything you would like to leave
Speaker 3: us with that you feel like is really important that
Speaker 3: we either completely missed or didn't cover sufficiently.
Speaker 1: The one thing I would say, because you know, the
Speaker 1: two key principles here are curiosity and kindness, and so
Speaker 1: we I think we've covered kindness pretty well, but I
Speaker 1: just want to just add one.
Speaker 4: Piece around curiosity.
Speaker 1: I think we've covered it as well to some degree,
Speaker 1: but just a pragmatic element that I've often found helpful,
Speaker 1: which is in a nutshell, when somebody judges themselves, you know,
Speaker 1: like oh I shouldn't eat that, or oh I ate
Speaker 1: too much, or oh I can't believe I did that. Again,
Speaker 1: there's that closing down quality of their experience that oh,
Speaker 1: oh no, and we can recognize that oh and that
Speaker 1: oh actually is that awakening of curiosity, And so maybe
Speaker 1: just to leave us with something very pragmatic, which is,
Speaker 1: we can awaken curiosity anytime we've got an oh no,
Speaker 1: we can use that as our curiosity bell and go
Speaker 1: oh there's oh no. So that I found very simple,
Speaker 1: very pragmatic, and a great way to awaken you know,
Speaker 1: this superpower of curiosity?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it reminds me of an idea that's
Speaker 3: been on my mind a lot lately. And I interviewed
Speaker 3: I don't know if you know him, Aj Jacobs. He's
Speaker 3: a writer. He's written a bunch of best selling books
Speaker 3: where he sort of does like hilarious experiments on himself,
Speaker 3: like The Year of Living Biblically, or he wrote a
Speaker 3: book recently about puzzles, and you know, I had him
Speaker 3: on the show because I wanted to talk to him.
Speaker 3: I was like, wow, are we going to even make
Speaker 3: a show out of puzzles?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 3: But the guy's brilliant enough, I thought. But the core
Speaker 3: idea that resonated and still sticks with me, and it's
Speaker 3: exactly what you just said, is that the minute we
Speaker 3: start reframing I mean a problem as a puzzle, it
Speaker 3: changes our whole.
Speaker 4: View of it.
Speaker 3: Right, And for you the oh no is the oh,
Speaker 3: there's a problem, but the curiosity is turning it into
Speaker 3: a puzzle. Like I love that you know so well.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much, Jud, I always love talking with you.
Speaker 3: I thought this book was excellent. I think it's going
Speaker 3: to be a big help to a lot of people.
Speaker 3: We have links in the show notes where people can
Speaker 3: get access to the book and to your app and
Speaker 3: all the great things you have going on around this.
Speaker 3: You and I are going to continue in the post
Speaker 3: show conversation where we are going to attempt to use
Speaker 3: your framework here to help me with my intermintent problem
Speaker 3: of playing solitaire when I should be writing. Okay, so
Speaker 3: we're going to see if these concepts actually work in
Speaker 3: the post show conversation. So, listeners, if you'd like access
Speaker 3: to that and all sorts of other great things and
Speaker 3: ad free episodes, all that One Youfeed dot net slash
Speaker 3: join you can become part of our community, and we
Speaker 3: also have monthly community meetings now, so we hope to
Speaker 3: see you there. Jud Thank you so much, my pleasure.
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