Hacking Your Brain’s “Reward System” to Change Habits

why does your brain prefer cake to broccoli this seems like a simple solution cake tastes better but it's not as simple as you might think and the real answer gives us insights into why we act certain ways and how to break bad habits ready to dive in let's start with why and how our brains form habits why is simple habits free up our brain to learn new things think about it if every day you woke up in the morning and had to relearn how to walk put your clothes on tie your shoes make coffee cook food and eat you'd be exhausted before you even finished breakfast habits help us learn something once and then we can automatically act that behavior out without thinking simple right so how our habits form notice how every single action you take doesn't become a habit your brain has to choose what to lay down as a habit and what not to do again how do we do this we've learned a habit based on how rewarding the behavior is this is called reward based learning and it has three components a trigger a behavior and a reward let's say you see your shoelace is untied that's the trigger tie your shoes that's the behavior and then don't trip when you walk that's the reward the more rewarding a behavior is the stronger the hell in fact our brain is set up a hierarchy of behaviors based on their reward value the behavior with the bigger reward is the one we act out this goes all the way back to our caveman brains that are set up to help us get the most calories we can so we can survive for example sugar and fat have lots of calories so when we eat cake part of our brain thinks calories survival so we start to prefer cake over broccoli our brains remember which foods are more rewarding which is why our parents never serve to dessert at the same time as dinner given a choice we'd fill up on cake before we ate our vegetables but it's not just calories that count our brains all so learn the reward value of people of places and things for example think back to all of the birthday parties you went to as a kid your brain combines all of that information the taste of the cake as well as all the fun you had with your friends the presents and the ice cream of course all of this information goes into a single composite reward value and this reward value gets reinforced with each party we go to when you're a grown-up you see a piece of cake you don't have to relearn what cake tastes like or remember any of the fun from the times you ate it the Association learned as a kid kicks in you just know that eating cake makes you feel good and it triggers that automatic and habitual response to eat it think of learning a habit as set-and-forget set the reward value and forget about the details this is also why it's so hard to break bad habits if you're trying to cut down on automatically eating every piece of cake you see what is the standard advice that you get well use your willpower and just don't eat it think of all the calories and what think your way out of eating this might work sometimes but more often than not in the long run it fails why that's not how our brains work to change a behavior you can't just focus on the behavior itself you have to address the felt experience of the rewards of the behavior if it were as easy as thinking our way out of a behavior we just tell ourselves to stop smoking stop eating cake stop yelling and our kids when we're stressed or whatever and it would work but it doesn't the only sustainable way to change a habit is to update its reward value that's why it's called reward based learning after all so how do we update reward values and break that habits one simple ingredient awareness to change a habit our brains need new information so they can see that whatever the value that they had learned in the past is outdated by paying attention to the results of the behavior the present moment we can jolt our brain out of habit autopilot and see and feel exactly how rewarding for unrewarding it is for us right now this new information resets the reward value on that old habit and moves better behaviors into automatic mode here's an example in our craving equip program we don't tell users to force themselves to stop smoking or that smoking is bad for them they already know this instead we teach people to pay attention when they smoke most people start smoking when they are a teenager so they've laid down a strong reward value for cigarettes being young and cool at school rebelling against their parents all of that we have them pay attention when they smoke so they can see how rewarding smoking is for them right now what do they notice after doing this exercise someone in our program commented smells like stinky cheese and tastes like chemicals yuck did you notice how this person paid attention they weren't thinking Oh smoking's bad for me they brought awareness to their experience of smoking as they were doing it noticing the smell and tasting the chemicals in cigarettes yea smoking tastes like crap when we actually pay attention this kind of awareness helps us reset the reward value in our brain which in turn helps us break that habit can awareness really help us change deeply ingrained habits we wondered the same thing so we actually did the scientific studies to see for ourselves in our eat right now program where people use an app based mindfulness training to learn to pay attention when eating we built in a craving tool to measure exactly how rewarding certain eating behaviors are the craving tool has them pay careful attention as they overeat or eat a certain type of food so that their brain can accurately update the reward value we have found that it takes as few as 10 times of using the craving tool for people to update the reward value of their habitual behaviors and change their habits in one study of our eat right now program we saw a 40 percent reduction in craving related eating just think about this for a moment this is Hugh these studies show that people are no longer habitually reacting to their triggers they don't have to force themselves to stop they can move beyond willpower how are they doing this they're leveraging their brain strength the very same processes that set up their old habitual behaviors to break free from them now that you know how your brain actually works it's time to update your approach to changing habits quit relying on willpower and go to the source reward value and don't forget a little awareness goes a long way [Music]

Channel: DrJud

Views: 192,291

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Id: WQ40hNdZmfQ

Length: 7min 36sec (456 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 18 2020