In today’s productivity blog, we’ll delve into the idea of trying something new, with a specific focus on being curious and mindful of our bad habits.
According to TED speaker and psychiatrist Judson Brewer, habit formations follow a reward-based learning process: “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.”
Brewer continues by sharing that while at one point these brain processes had helped humans survive, humans have also created unhealthy dependencies on them. Furthermore, trying to unlearn bad habits by doing the extreme opposites (e.g., forcing oneself to quit smoking) may not always be successful long-term solutions. Instead, Brewer suggests we become curious and mindful about how our senses understand our habits.
In the context of being a sales professional, we may have learned some bad habits from our earlier days of training. Perhaps we cut corners, rather than commit to the due diligence needed to research a prospect. Or perhaps we procrastinate and wind up presenting with sloppy, rushed slides. If we follow Brewer’s encouragement, a more productive response might be to look at what we get from our habits as we commit them. By doing so, we actively understand them on a deeper level, thus becoming disenchanted with how they had worked for us in the past, which sets the stage for eventually letting them go to make room for new, smarter habits.
For Brewer’s full TED talk, watch it here.
Here’s a summary from TED:
“Can we break bad habits by being more curious about them? Psychiatrist Judson Brewer studies the relationship between mindfulness and addiction — from smoking to overeating to all those other things we do even though we know they're bad for us. Learn more about the mechanism of habit development and discover a simple but profound tactic that might help you beat your next urge to smoke, snack, or check a text while driving.”
