Buddhist Neuroscientist On: How To Quit Bad Habits And Why You’re Not Keeping Your Resolutions | Dr. Judson Brewer
10% Happier with Dan Harris
10% Media, LLC
4.6 • 12.2K Ratings
🗓️ 27 January 2025
⏱️ 82 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
How to use your innate mindfulness to turn the volume down, or even uproot, your everyday addictions.
Dr. Judson Brewer is the Director of Research and Innovation at the Mindfulness Center and professor in Behavioral and Social Sciences and Psychiatry at the Schools of Public Health & Medicine at Brown University. He is the author of several books, including The Craving Mind, Unwinding Anxiety, and The Hunger Habit.
This episode is part of our monthlong Do Life Better series.
We talk about:
- Jud’s definition of addiction
- The difference between the scientific view and the Buddhist view on addiction
- The buddhist concept of Dependent origination
- Dopamine and dopamine fasting
- A three gear plan for sticking to your resolutions
- Judson’s disenchantment with the term “mindfulness”
- What we need to know about willpower
- The two types of stress – and its impact on our behavior
- What makes us resilient – and why it matters
- How community plays a role in making habit changes
- And finally, a friendly debate on whether there is such a thing as healthy anger?
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- The Science of Why You Eat When You're Not Hungry–And How to Stop | Judson Brewer
- Modern Life Is Making You Sick, but It Doesn't Have To | Gabor Maté
- Why We're All Suffering from Racial Trauma (Even White People) -- and How to Handle It | Resmaa Menakem
- I Just Went Through A Career Earthquake: This Is What's Next.
- How to Break Your Anxiety Habit | Judson Brewer
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to 10% happier early and ad-free right now. |
| 0:04.7 | Join Wondery Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts. |
| 0:14.1 | It's the 10% Happier podcast. |
| 0:16.7 | I'm Dan Harris. |
| 0:54.9 | Hello, gang. How we doing? Today we're going to talk about how to use your innate mindfulness, the mindfulness we all have, even if we feel like we're mostly mindless, but we all have the capacity to be mindful. We're going to talk about how to use your innate mindfulness to turn the volume down or even uproot your everyday addictions. Let me just say a quick word about the word addiction. Often that word is used to refer to full-blown addiction, something many of us, |
| 0:59.0 | myself included, have struggled with. But in this episode, my guest and I are going to use the word addiction in a much broader sense. We all have craving minds. We're all addicted to |
| 1:03.4 | something. Our phones, shopping, food, wordle, whatever. So we're going to dedicate this whole week |
| 1:08.4 | on the show to managing the addictive tendency of your mind. |
| 1:12.5 | As you've heard me say, many times during this first month of 2025, we are taking on some of the biggest and most popular resolutions and tackling them TPH style. |
| 1:24.6 | We've covered fitness and finances and now it's bad habits or addictions, which I know is a big issue for many of you, hence the popularity of dry January, etc. |
| 1:34.0 | Coming up on Wednesday, I'll be talking to a Buddhist nun who goes by the name Sister D about how an ancient eight-part list can help us move out of addiction. |
| 1:43.1 | Today, though, it's my old friend Dr. Judson |
| 1:45.1 | Brewer. This is Judd's sixth appearance on the show, which may be a record. Judd, if you've |
| 1:50.1 | never heard of him, is the director of research and innovation at the Mindfulness Center and |
| 1:55.0 | Professor in Behavioral and Social Sciences and Psychiatry at the Schools of Public Health |
| 1:59.7 | and Medicine at Brown University. He is also the |
| 2:02.9 | author of several books, including the craving mind, unwinding anxiety, and the hunger habit. In this |
| 2:08.8 | conversation, we talk about Judd's definition of addiction, the difference between the scientific |
| 2:12.9 | view and the Buddhist view on addiction, the Buddhist concept of dependent origination and why that's so |
| 2:18.8 | important in this context. Dopamine and dopamine fasting, which have become du rigour recently, |
| 2:24.9 | Judd has his take on that. Judd's disenchantment with the term mindfulness, what we all need to |
| 2:30.3 | know about willpower, the two types of stress and the impact on our behavior from both |
... |
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