Dr. Judson Brewer - Neuroscientist, Addiction Psychiatrist & Bestselling Author | The Science of Habits

Just because we can think our way through things that that's going to change behavior, that that is so far from the neuroscience, it's not even fun. Dr. Judson Brewer, an American psychiatrist, neuroscientist, and expert in mindfulness. Abid is basically something that we do automatically, and habits are set up so that we can learn things and then have the energy the next day to not have to relearn that and learn something new. With over 25 years of research, Dr. Brewer has developed groundbreaking digital therapeutic programs for treating anxiety, overeating, and addiction. Been people see very clearly that something is not rewarding. It makes it much easier to stop doing the behavior. He's also the founder of Dr. Judd and the Director of Research and Innovation at Brown University's Mindfulness Center. In this episode, we'll explore how his innovative research has transformed the way we think about habit change, mindfulness, and mental health. Get ready for a fascinating conversation that could reshape your understanding of wellness. From a neuroscience perspective, nobody has found a pathway, a mechanism, a brain region, brain network, involved in well power. Don't take yourself too seriously, which goes to the self-judgmental piece. That's really important. Welcome to Success Story. I'm your host, Scott Clary. The Success Story podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast network. I am a huge fan of HubSpot because they support entrepreneurs. A lot of entrepreneurs, founders, executives, listen to this show, and for entrepreneurs that are trying to build, I have a question for you. Does it feel like your teams are getting pulled in a million different directions? When everyone's digging in on different projects with different platforms and different places, it can be tough to stay focused on a common goal, and that throws a wrench into things. That's why HubSpot brings everything your team needs into one easy to use and easy to love customer platform. With it, they have everything they need to scale the business at their fingertips. So your marketers can write blog posts in a snap with AI and build better leads with in-depth campaigns, sales can build connections and close deals faster with tracking tools. And real-time performance insights and service can get a hand from AI-powered chat bots for better support and more five-star reviews. And everyone can deliver killer results and grow revenue faster than ever before. Because when your teams work better, your business grows faster. Visit HubSpot.com to get started for free today. Judd, I'm super excited that you're here today. I'm very excited to jump into both your books, all your life's work. We're going to get, we're going to go into everything. I want to kick this off with just an observation that I made when I was sort of doing my research and prepping a little bit. So your TED Talk on Breaking Habit has been viewed over 19 million times. What do you think resonates so strongly with people about your particular approach to habit change? That's a good question. So based on feedback that I've gotten, you know, people randomly find my email address and send me an email and say, hey, I quit smoking after I watch your TED Talk or whatever, I think it's two things. One is simplicity and another is, you know, is really about the non-will-powered based approach, which is the dominant paradigm. Everybody's tried willpower, you know, forever and it still hasn't worked. So taking a paradoxical approach that is more playful than worse based, I think has been the thing that is differentiated and I'll say, but it doesn't show up in my talks. You know, all of this is based on the science that my lab's been doing for 20 years. So as a clinician, I'm not going to put anything out there that it's woo-woo or just like, I think this is a good idea or I'm trying to sell some product. This is really about helping people. Why do you think, I mean, so that you've put your life into this work so you understand it intimately. What do you think there is such an incorrect leading paradigm about habit formation? Or willpower rather, excuse me yet. Yeah, I can give you some, how about some baseless speculation, some BS? Because who knows historically where this started? You can look, you know, in ancient Greece, there was a relief that was, you know, that was carved into the path and on that depicted a horse and a rider to pick. There was really highlighting this struggle between our passions and reason. And reason is the rider, you know, not nearly as strong as the horse. And so, you know, you can look at ancient Greece, you can, you can blame the cart, you know, who, you know, got us into this whole thinking thing and thinking that because we can think that we're suddenly in control, you know, and divorced from our bodies, which is pretty interesting. We can even come back to that because that is a major issue with willpower where, you know, we think that just because we can think our way through things that that's going to change behavior, but that is so far from the neuroscience, it's not even funny. So honestly, I think that people like to think that they can be in control. And so we tell ourselves this story that I can be in control and willpower as part of that story. And so it's so facto, you know, if I'm in control, I can tell myself to do things. Therefore, I should be able to tell myself to change whatever the behavior is that I want to change. And obviously that doesn't work out so well. I mean, so you're your background. It's in a psychiatry and neuroscience. And I'm curious. I mean, you focus on so many things over your career, just like playing off that point that you just made about, we think we're in control and we're really not wide because there's a lot of lessons your book, the hunger habit and you focus on eating and you focus on applying that particular thesis to eating. Why are there so many lessons just in that particular activity of eating, of gaining weight, of feeling out of control? It seems like to be this little petri dish that we can learn from that can affect almost every other habit that we have in our life. Yes. What was it reminds me of this quote from Ted Lasso where Danny the football player says, football is life, you know, and I think of it this way, eating is life. And it literally is more so than some people really believe that football is life. And I can't argue with them. And I will say that eating literally is life. We have to eat to survive. And so from you can look at it from this entire spectrum of survival, all the way to comfort, to habits, to addiction, and you can place eating anywhere along that spectrum very easily. And all along the spectrum, for a lot of people, it is all along that spectrum. So, you know, it just encompasses so many aspects of life from survival to habits. And actually I wanted to describe. So for people listening, what is the actual clinical definition of a habit? Because I think that setting the baselines people understand what we're actually speaking about, because I think people also, I mean, I don't want to jump too deep in before they even understand how you understand a habit. Yeah. I'll actually give you a two-fer. Let's define habit and let's define addiction as well, so that we can differentiate those two. So habit is basically something that we do automatically. You know, that's a simple operational definition that generally holds pretty well. And habits are set up so that we can learn things and then have the energy the next day to not have to relearn that and learn something new. So most habits are extremely helpful, and it's an efficiency process for our brain. You know, imagine waking up every morning and having to relearn everything from walking to making breakfast. You know, it would be exhausted before we had even relearned how to make coffee. So that's, you know, habit is automatic behavior, something that we see a queue and that queues this process, this automated process to just do the thing. In contrast, addiction, I think of habit along a spectrum and at the far end of that spectrum is addiction. And the definition of addiction I learned in residency was continued use despite adverse consequences. And the reason I bring that forward as well is that often people think and they describe their addictions in terms of a habit on and the habit of smoking in the habit of overeating or whatever. But if you look at that definition, continue to spite adverse consequences, we can see how, you know, they're the obvious ones like smoking, which aren't helpful for survival. But then the ones that are not so obvious where it overlaps between the survival mechanisms like eating, we all have to eat to survive. And doing that same behavior despite adverse consequences where we, for example, overeating and clinical obesity has been linked to anti-survival, you know, a lot of a lot of negative health consequences from not being an ideal weight. So that's how I think of habit and then that's how I think of its relationship. We can be in a habit of doing something where we're continuing to do it despite adverse consequences. So addiction, it can even fall into that addiction spectrum as well. Does that make sense? It does. And it's very interesting because something seemed to be more black and white. So I think that most people in 2024 would agree that smoking is more of an addiction than a habit. But I'm curious about food in particular. And maybe we can just extrapolate to other habits that maybe turn into addictions. And what is that bridge that we cross when we're not aware? Because I think that's where people predominantly get into trouble. I don't think people wake up and are like, hey, I want to be clinically obese or just out of shape or or eat more than I really need. Like people don't go in to life thinking that. But that's the output after 5, 10 years. So how does that happen in the brain? We turn a habit into an addiction. Yes. Well, let's, well, let's use eating as an example. Our brains learn to do behaviors based on how rewarding they are. And often we'll set up these habits early in life. So for example, if we were five years old and we go to a birthday party, our parents aren't sending us to that birthday party saying, why don't you go and get some nutritious food at this. You know, this is going to substitute for lunch. You know, they're sending us probably trying to have us eat some a healthy meal before we go. So we don't over indulge on the cake and ice cream. But the point there is that we're already starting to learn to associate ice cream cake, you know, things like that with celebrations with connection with people and all that. And you can see as we go through life, we start to learn to eat in the absence of hunger. So we set up these habitual behaviors, you know, celebrations that we're we're over indulging in ways that are not aligned with our physiology, our brain and our body aren't saying, hey, you know, you're hungry. Go eat that cake, typically not right at an office party or whatever. It's like, oh, here's a celebration. Here's some cake. It looks good. And so we just go into the habit mode of eating. So these habits get set up in the way that we are we're doing the thing because it's now associated not with a survival strategy. Like I need calories now, but with something else. And if that's something else is rewarding, we're going to keep doing it to the point where it is habitual. So with eating, it could be celebrations. It could also be consolations where we learn, you know, we're bored one day and we go into that we're rummaging around the kitchen just looking for something we eat, you know, and that boredom gap is filled with some typically some type of a comfort food. And so we learn, oh, if I'm bored, if I'm sad, if I'm mad, if I'm lonely, all these things, we learn that food becomes this consolation mechanism that can make us feel less bad. And it's rewarding enough that it gets set up as a habit. So we've got these two reinforcement learning processes. One is called positive reinforcement where it's all the celebratory stuff. It's like, oh, you know, just at a good meal, go have some dessert. And the other is this negative reinforcement loop where it says, oh, you feel bad, make yourself feel better. And this is just using food as an example, almost every habit falls into the same category where if we're continuing the pleasant, the behavior gets reinforced through positive reinforcement. If we're making the unpleasant go away or avoiding it, we're reinforcing that habit through negative reinforcement. And this, you know, honestly, this process, not that sea slugs eat birthday cake, but this has been shown, you know, Air Kendall got the Nobel Prize back in the year 2000 showing that this is a very evolutionarily conservative process all the way back to the most basic of nervous systems. Well, because I think I mean, there's again, your work helps a wide spectrum of people, but I think that the people that I really want to tap into, especially with the audience listens to this show, people that overwork and get addicted to work. And then it actually has a verse impacts even though it starts off as just a very a very healthy habit, right? You're motivated. You're putting in the hours, you're waking up every morning and you're going to the office or you're building your thing. But then there's like you just mentioned, people lose track of that habit turning into some some addiction. And I think that's really where a lot of people look back and they're like, shit, what have I become? And that's really that's really a scary, it's a very scary space and a very scary place to find yourself in. And I want to we'll talk about sort of how to overcome that. But I still want to stick on hunger and food and eating because you speak about hedonic hunger. And I want to speak about that. I want to understand it and how it relates to emotional eating because that's a very big. So this is if we're looking at the spectrum of or the sort of the journey of the person that has all these reinforcement mechanisms that eventually turn into an addiction, where does hedonic hunger fit into that journey? Yeah, that's a great question. So scientists, we scientists, I'll let you in on the secret. We make up new terms so that we can sound smart. Okay. So relatively recently, a scientist came up with a term called hedonic hunger, which interestingly is a misnomer. So hedonic is about, you know, emotion, basically pleasure. Yeah, pleasure. Right. And so we're eating, it's a misnomer because it's about emotional eating. And so it's not about hunger itself. It's not physiologic hunger. That's called homeostatic hunger. But this hedonic hunger basically relates to what you're talking about, which is we're eating due to an emotion, whether it's a positive emotion or a negative emotion, rather than direct physiologic hunger itself. And that's where these habits come into play because then it bypasses our physiologic mechanisms that are putting on the brakes and saying, Hey, you're not actually hungry. Why are you putting stuff in your in your mouth? Hey, guys, Scott here. I just wanted to take a quick moment to say a heartfelt thanks to every single one of you six years of this show. And it's really all because of you. Your listens, your support, your shares, it will keep this thing going. When I started, I had no idea how big this would get, how many lives we touch, the stories we share, the lessons that we learned together, it's truly humbling. And I believe that we're building something really special here, a community where no one has to reinvent the wheel. We're all in this together learning and growing. And here's my ask, if you love this show, it's made a difference for you, please share it with somebody who needs it. Hella friend, host on social, whatever works, it's the best way to keep this thing going strong, bring on even better guests and share more life, changing wisdom. And you can find us on all the spots. So you can go to successstorypodcast.com if you like listening to podcasts, if you like video, you can go to YouTube, it's youtube.com slash c slash Scott Declary or the newsletter newsletter dot Scott Declary.com just spread the word. I'm eternally grateful for each and every one of you. Let's keep learning. Let's keep growing and let's keep making this world a little bit better together. All right, let's get back to the show. And that's I mean, so that turns into the emotional eating. So help me understand, help me understand what is the, what is this strategy to start to reverse this process? Once you've developed this edition and we'll use food as an example, but then I know you work with you work with Olympic athletes, you work with business leaders, so I want to start to unpack other addictions. I want to even understand what an Olympic athlete is addicted to. Or what a business leader is addicted to. I can speak from experience is probably working too much and and maybe, you know, I see a lot of people that have been very successful. They have broken in families and divorces and I think that's probably the end result of addiction, but you tell me. So how do we start to reverse, you know, this, this progression into addition? What we found over the last couple of decades and it, and it spans every habit and addiction that we've studied. So we've studied alcohol, cocaine, you know, smoking, eating, anxiety, all of these. And the basic, there seems to be a, you can break it down into three steps. The first is just understanding how habits form. If we don't know how our mind works, there's no way that we can work with it. And so that's the first, the simplest and the most basic piece to start with. So, you know, you can break it down to, you know, what's the behavior and what's the result of the behavior. We can also map out what's queuing the behavior, what's triggering it. But that's actually the least important part of the equation. So that's the first step is just recognizing that we're doing something and that it is a habit. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. So with eating, it's not the, you know, we're eating because we're hungry. That's not a habit. That's helpful. But it's that we're reaching for food when we're bored, lonely, sad, celebrating, you know, as we talked about earlier, often because of emotions, we're emotionally eating rather than eating because we're at a caloric deficit. So being able to recognize the behavior then helps us shift into this second step, which really highlights the how our brains learn to differentiate behaviors, which is all about how rewarding a behavior is. So I have people start paying attention to the results of the behavior. And it's interesting. This goes all the way back to ancient Buddhist psychology where they talk about cause and effect. If you look at modern psychology, this is really about reinforcement learning, which highlights that if a behavior, a cause, is rewarding effect, we're going to keep doing it. If it's not rewarding, we're going to stop doing it. So the key here with a habit is we've already established a reward value of a behavior to the point where it's automatic. And so we're not even paying attention to the how rewarding it is. So for example, if we have learned to overeat or stress eat a long time ago, we're just going to do that automatically. And we're not going to be asking ourselves, hey, what am I getting from this? So that's really what the second step is all about is asking this simple question, what am I getting from this? For example, my lab did a study within app that we'd felt called E right now where we help people pay attention to the results of eating. And we found that within 10 to 15 times of somebody paying attention when they're overeating, for example, that reward value dropped below zero, meaning that they were updating the reward value to the present day. Like, what are they getting from overeating? Typically, it doesn't feel good. They feel bloated. They feel lethargic. They feel guilty. All these things that are not rewarding, they're anti rewarding. You can think of it as punishing is not the best term for it, but is psychologist like to use that term? So there when people see very clearly that something is not rewarding, it makes it much easier to stop doing the behavior. Ancient Buddhist psychologists describe this as disenchantment. We become disenchanted with a behavior. So it's actually pretty straightforward and you can we could talk, you know, if you want, we can talk for a long time about the brain mechanisms, but that's not actually as pragmatically important as understanding the psychological process, which is, you know, asking ourselves this question, what am I getting from this behavior? So if it's overeating, asking, what am I getting when I over you? How's it feel in my body and letting our body tell us the answer, which typically is, this doesn't feel very good. And that's enough. It typically pretty quickly to start shifting that behavior. Well, I would assume that this problem is compounded twofold. So obviously food is much more addictive than it used to be because everything, every, you know, every food manufacturer optimizes just for consumption. But the second thing is we multitask and we're so distracted when we're eating now. We're just, we're watching TV. We have, you know, TV laptop, phone right in front of it. Like we're so not paying attention to what's going on. So I actually thought it was really interesting. So your eat right now plan is the only mindfulness-driven behavior change curriculum that's approved by the CDC. Is that correct? Yes. So it has a diabetes prevention program. Yeah. That's fantastic. What's the, what sets it apart from everything else that people are trying? Because you're not the first person to try and solve this problem. But if you are the only person that's been for one particular use case, at least, approved by the CDC, you're doing something right, which is scary because there's a lot of other people trying to solve this problem. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I don't want to scare people. But the, you know, I'll say that for humans, change is scary. And for Institution, especially governmental institutions, change can change can be scary. They're not exempt from that human tendency. So the diabetes prevention program was based on research that was done 40 years ago now, maybe even longer, that was largely based on willpower, where, you know, it was based on calorie restriction exercise, the typical things that I learned at medical school, the typical things that nutritionists tell their patients, which is, you know, eat the salad, not the cake, you know, get your steps in types of things. So we can tell ourselves to do these things. And if we can stick to that program, people lose weight and it prevents diabetes. So there's a lot of evidence suggesting that that works. The, the asterisk, besides that is that most people and stick to that willpower based thing. So the, the typical diabetes prevention program, you know, has, you know, has been updated over the years, where they'll include some new information, but largely is based on the foundation of this willpower based approach. Where we're different is that it's basically what a, what we just talked about, which is we focus on helping people identify forming habits. And it's funny, as we were going through the process, we were, let's just say back and forth a lot in dialogue with the CDC around how, you know, the evidence behind what we were doing and how, you know, the science supported it. And then the next CDC recommend update for the diabetes prevention program happened to include teaching people about habit loops. You know, the, what is the flatteries, the, the highest form of flattery's imitation or whatever. So correct. It's nice to see that there's recognition that the curricula can be updated. Right. But the, the differentiator really was where we are focusing on not helping people develop more willpower, but really using this neuroscience based approach, which is leveraging the strength of our brain, which is reinforcement learning, right. We're going to learn through reinforcement in something that we all have that doesn't take willpower is awareness. And so we emphasize curiosity quite a bit in the program. Yeah. I want to, so there's a lot of time back there. The first thing I want to just touch on is so the second, this is the second time you brought up willpower. Obviously, you know, if you've listened to this so far, you understand the willpower is not the best mechanism to, to change a habit or to change a behavior. But maybe, I mean, you study this, go, go a step further, a step deeper why scientifically or biologically or what's the mechanism as to why willpower is so ineffective. To put it bluntly, from a neuroscience perspective, nobody has found a pathway, a mechanism, a, you know, a brain region, a brain network involved in willpower. Nobody's found one. So there's this, this story that humans have willpower. But if you really take an agnostic approach and ask as a neuroscientist, like, where's willpower? Is there true evidence for it? There is none. Which is a bitter pill for a lot of people to swallow, you know, because but I've got it. There must be. Yeah. So in a lot of that goes back to control that feeling of control. And so, and even philosophers agree with that, you know, they'll talk about the illusion of control being part of the, you know, the matrix of human life. But it's not about true control. And I don't, we don't need to get into free will debates here. That's been debated for thousands of years. I'm not going to wait into that. But pragmatically speaking, from a neuroscience standpoint, it, the reward-based learning or the reinforcement learning mechanisms are very clearly mapped out down to the neural circuit. And even, you know, you can, you can get to the neural neural level, right? You can look at the neurotransmitters. And you can map out the whole process. You can knock out specific genes or pathways and show that it affects them. So there's, there's, there are causal mechanisms that have been shown that this is how habits form and also how you can change habits. No width of willpower in that. It's so interesting. When you, when you look at, you work with a whole bunch of, like I mentioned before, Olympic athletes, business leaders. So what's the work that you do with this particular segment? These, these kinds of high performing individuals. What are they addicted to? What are the habits? They have to form, have to break. Where does this, where does this, where does your work with this framework sort of fit into that subset of society? Well, everybody's individual. And I would say, there can be general categories that I've seen with, however you want to categorize Olympic athletes or high performing business individuals. And a lot of it, you know, boils down, basically down to the behaviors that have been reinforced. And so for some people, whether it's an Olympic athlete or a CEO, it's about that, that reward that has come in the past from overworking, let's say, or, you know, performing at a very high level, where somebody performs at a very high level, they get all sorts of rewards, whether it's, you know, praise, whether it's a promotion, whether it's a gold medal, or whatnot. And those things can become literally the goal where people are then driven. I want to get more of that type of thing. And so it becomes a compulsion. It can become an addiction for some people where, you know, they're, they're doing the behaviors to try to get that, quote unquote, reward or the medal, despite adverse consequences. So, and then there are all sorts of sub routines or subhabits that come along with that, including, you know, shame, guilt, imposter syndrome, you know, you name it and somebody has it. And you know, as you were mentioning earlier this, this overworking phenomena, maybe we could just use that as a concrete example if that's helpful. I just want to take a second to thank the sponsor of today's episode HubSpot. Now, HubSpot has an incredible podcast network. Success stories part of it. And if you like success story, you're going to love other podcasts in their network. One of my favorites is iDigress is hosted by Troy Sandage, which Troy does exceptionally well is in under 30 minutes. He helps eliminate complexity, complications, confusion in your business. He talks about frameworks, strategies that really work to help you achieve scalable and sustainable success. So, you need to go listen to iDigress, one of the most useful podcasts for entrepreneurs and founders, part of the HubSpot podcast network, wherever you get your podcasts. Yeah, definitely because I think that that's an issue with me. That's an issue with a lot of, I mean, I'm not an Olympic athlete, but I'm assuming that the .001% of entrepreneurs have a very similar psychological profile to the .001% of high performance athletes. Yeah, yeah. So, if you don't mind, let's just do this in real time. If you want to kind of personify that overachieving entrepreneur, we can just, I'll just ask you a couple of questions and it might go for how this works. Sometimes I'll even start with, so typically a patient will come to me and say, I have a problem with this. So, let's say that you've come to me and said, you know, I have a problem. I'm overworking and I might ask the question, well, why don't you work even more? How would you answer that question? I would answer it. I don't think there's any more hours in a day. That's the honest answer. And I think that so as a patient, I'll give you my specific situation. Yeah, I have a girlfriend soon to be fiance and wife don't have kids yet. We're in a season in our lives where we're both really okay with spending, you know, basically 24, 7, 365 working and building. And it's probably been like that for the past. I mean, I'm 34 now, so it's been like that for the past eight to 10 years or just nonstop. Like, on vacation, you work nonstop. Now, I keep telling myself that to win at the game of business or entrepreneurship, there has to be seasons of, of unbalanced, right? There's seasons of giving it your all and that's really what it requires to build anything meaningful. But, you know, when I have kids and I want kids and she wants kids and I don't want to be, the life that I live today is not the life that I want to live when I have kids. So I'm, it's, it's concerning. And I can tell myself that I'm going to shut off in three years or whatever, but there's no, there's no proof that I can do that because I've been doing life this way for so long. Yeah. So what happens when you try to cut back on, on that amount of work, anxiety that I'm, that I'm missing out? Yeah. Yeah. So you can see right there and that's a great example that's very common where when we're in the habit of doing x, y, z, and you know, we're living that story of like, this is what I need to do to succeed. We, we cut back whether it's like, I want to spend more time with my girlfriend or I just, you know, I'm feeling burnt out or whatever, we start to cut back and immediately this anxiety kicks in and says, Hey, but you need to be doing this or you're not going to succeed or whatever story we tell ourselves. And so that, that trigger says, Hey, keep doing the thing. And so often we'll just, we'll be like, wow, that doesn't feel very good. I'm going to keep doing the thing because it's actually helping me succeed. So that's a great example of how we can get stuck in these overworking habit loops simply from the feeling of anxiety or it could even be, wow, this is different. I should be working. Often people tell themselves, oh, I, you know, what I should be doing something right now as compared to the best thing that I can be doing, which is probably taking a break. Okay. So we, we lived that, that habit loop enough that that's all that we know that's literally the definition of a habit and goes back to this idea that our brains don't like change. And so the habits over, overworking as soon as we deviate from that habit, our brain's going to say, what's wrong? Go back and go back into that habit. And then we feel better. The irony is we feel better because we felt worse by not doing the thing. Well, this is, this is actually, this is like, this actually dovetails into your second. Your, your previous work, which is unwinding anxiety, which is literally the situation that I'm in right now. It's interesting because right now it serves me. So right now there is no immediate or at least perceived immediate negative because this is, it's sort of aligning with my personal North Star. And if I have kids, then all of a sudden, okay, will you tell me? So when I have kids, is it as easy as understanding my new North Star is now my family and not work? Is that is that the first step? Like what's the steps that I would have to take? And should I take steps now to start the process or should I take steps when I have to, when I have to, not when it's just a nicety? Well, I think both can be true. So here, you know, the more we understand how our minds work, the more we're going to be able to flex down the road and not be stuck in these rigid habit loops. The other piece is the more we understand what is important to us in life and what truly brings, you know, their quote-unquote happiness. The more that will help us have that be the North Star that guides us as compared to the Hedonic treadmill, which everybody agrees is not a happiness, but yet everybody doesn't seem to still be on. They're like, yeah, this is not happiness and they're still running along, you know, like you need to go faster. But you just said, and they're like, yeah, I know. I don't know how to get off it, but it's it's terrible. So here, you know, what was the that Conan the barbarian quote way back from the movie where you were the guy asked Conan like, what's meaning, you know, what's what's the meaning of life? And he's like vanquishing your enemies and hearing the lamentation of the women and the children or something like that. And the reason I bring that word is that, you know, if we're not careful about looking at what's truly rewarding for us, we're going to get stuck in that and following that false North Star. And then be way off somewhere, you know, this word pricey's come in. We're like, where did I get to this desolate, terrible place, you know? And we don't we have no idea how we got there because we haven't been able to follow the process of how our mind works, where it's just been led by all these hedonic things. So that's why I say both can be true. If we can understand what that what the North stars that we're following right now and see if it is a true North star, that will help us now and also will help us be able to be more flexible in the future so that when there is a new, you know, there's a new reward value like, you know, family life kids or, you know, some shift in our in our personal life, we can say, you know, oh, yeah, that's better than vanquishing my enemies. Yeah, that makes, no, that makes a lot of sense. And even I'm curious, maybe you've touched on this just when we first started chatting, but is there, um, is there like, uh, an an internal test that we can do to understand if a behavior is, uh, is an addition versus the habit? That's a great question. In shorts? Yes. They can get more nuance, but let's start with the short answer, which is, well, let me ask you, when you feel anxious, if you had to put it in the category of feeling more closed or contracted versus open and expanded, which category would you put it in? Which bucket would you put it in? Clothes are open, contracted or expanded. I'm not sure. I'm maybe define them a little bit better and that I can, I can give you an answer. It is not a podcast or strategy. This is really me, yeah. Well, and, and that's fine. And I'm also purposefully trying to get you not to think too much about it, but, uh, we'll hit to the situation. So I'm, I feel, I think, I think without you explaining it, I feel closed and contracted because I feel like, um, it's not, it's, there's different types of anxiety. So the open anxiety is actually when I'm working, and I'm trying to figure out what are the urgent, important tasks based on sort of the, that just very brief description. What are the urgent, important tasks that I want to take on in my life? And then I get anxiety because of, of overwhelm of opportunity. The other version is when I'm not working, I'm not doing anything. So I feel like life is closing in. And if I don't, if I don't get back to work, then it's, it's silly, but I, you know, because obviously life is not going to be over, but I feel like I'm not going to get to the goals that I want. And I'm not taking action to even sort of put a chip in those massive goals that I have for myself. Yeah, absolutely. And that latter is very consistent with what I see clinically around what clinical anxiety is, you know, it tends to be that worry that, oh, no, if I don't do this or I don't go back to work, you know, life is going to end. I don't answer an email on the, on a vacation or a holiday, right? Or it will be in the end of the world. So we can look at that. Oh, no, category. And you can even look at this in terms of addiction when we are truly addicted to something, whether it's checking our email or our social media feed, when we haven't done it long enough, that urge to check builds up and says, oh, no, I need to do the thing, right? And so there's a shared quality even between anxiety and addiction. And I see this clinically all the time where that feeling of restless contraction, you, somebody could be describing that and it could be anxiety or it could be a craving or it could be both at the same time. And often they, they overlap. So the reason I say that is that that can be a marker that can help us differentiate whether we're caught in this urge to do something, right? And addiction's about, you know, being at a deficit of not having, you know, getting something to make ourselves feel better, scratching an itch, think of it that way. Whereas the opposite of that, an open expanded feeling. So think of when somebody's in flow or when somebody is really, really connected with somebody else deep in conversation where they're just, there's this mind meld and they're just really riffing off of each other. There's this, it's the opposite where they're feeling open and expanded. And so those two can be guideposts in terms of our directional indicators for when we're moving in the direction of addiction, that contraction versus moving in the direction of flow, which is expansion. And if you look at flow, we've even stumbled upon this in some of our neuroimaging work where people, you know, there's a, there's a brain network that gets really quiet. This ironically a brain network involved in anxiety, as well as addiction, as well as self reference, right? Because when we're worried about ourselves, we feel contracted. And when we, when we lose a sense of self, which is part of the definition of flow, we are very open and expanded. So those can be markers, a simple experiential markers of, you know, or at least directional markers of whether we're moving in the direction of addiction versus, you know, versus flow. Amazing. I, I think that I want to make sure that I touch on this. I want to talk, I want to speak about curiosity because I think that's sort of another, another component to this that you, you speak on quite often. But you mentioned, I've heard you say this before, curiosity feels better than anxiety. So maybe just highlight what is curiosity. Why do you even reference it in the same line as anxiety? Is it a negative? Is it a, is it a positive? Like, how does it play into any of this? Well, first I want to differentiate because often people don't know that there are two types of curiosity. So just to be very clear, there are two types of curiosity. There's one type in particular that I'm talking about that I think of as a superpower. So just to, just to define these two quickly, there's a type called deprivation curiosity, which is as it sounds like when we're deprived of information, we have this urge to go get that information. So that has the same quality of anxiety. I don't know. I don't know. I need to get that information. Same quality of addiction. Oh, no, I need to get the thing. I need to get the information. I'm not talking about deprivation curiosity. When I speak of curiosity, I'm talking about the other type of curiosity, which is interest curiosity. And so you can think of anxiety as the, oh, no. And you can think of interest curiosity as the, oh, that joy of discovery. And the two feel like polar opposites, right? I don't know if you can feel this in your own experience where, you know, that feeling of that worry of anxiety that closed down contraction. And then when you're totally fascinated by something or the far end of curiosity is awe, when you're in awe of something like out in niche, that's a thousand percent. Yes. Yeah. Such a very relatable. Yeah. Yeah. And that's why I talk about the two as opposites because we can actually use curiosity to help counteract anxiety. And we've even seen this clinically. When clinical study in a randomized control trial, we got 67% reduction in these clinical anxiety scores in people with generalized anxiety disorder. This was that I wrote about in my own learning anxiety book. But we, we had an app called unwinding anxiety where people can literally learn about this and use curiosity to counteract their anxiety. And it seems to work pretty well. So all of these, so now we have, we have addiction, we have anxiety, we have curiosity, we all have them playing with each other. And eventually, I mean, these are, so now you have, I want you to sort of map out all these different, these, these, these feelings, these emotions, how they sort of interplay with each other because there's a lot here. But I think it's not as complex as somebody who's listening, saying, okay, so now I have to figure out, does it make me anxious? Is it an addiction? Is it a habit? What should I be curious about? And I'm curious because I'm curious because obviously these all sort of form around one central thesis that I think is sort of your life's work. Yes. Yes. And that central and relatively simple thesis is really, you know, if we look at things to the lens of habit formation, right? Because most of life is habits. And we understand that the simple principle of if we do a behavior and it's rewarding, we're going to keep doing it. If we do it and stop rewarding, we're going to stop doing it. So that's the one piece of information people need to remember is to keep in mind. And then they just apply that to their life. They can look at a behavior that they're doing and they can ask themselves, what am I getting from this? And importantly, it's about getting curious and feeling into their body to see, is it, does it lead to a feeling of contraction? Does it lead to a feeling of expansion? And when it's so, let me ask you, which one feels better? Expansion or contraction? Expansion. Yeah. Yeah. So that's wired into our brains. The reward value of expansion is higher than the reward value of contraction. The reason I highlight that is that we are naturally going to move toward expansion if we see the contraction is painful. So when we ask the question, what am I getting from this? And now we feel into the pain of the habit suddenly it brings how rewarding it is or how unrewarding it is into our direct experience. So it's no longer habitual. That helps to reset its reward value. And then we can start moving in the direction of expansion. And this is where curiosity explicitly comes in. So if it's anxiety, we can go, oh, no, and we can worry or we can ask, what am I getting from worrying? Oh, it just makes me more anxious. And then we can go, oh, what happens when I bring curiosity to the feeling of anxiety? Oh, I can notice that it's physical sensations. It's thoughts. And if I just give those thoughts space, if I give those sensations space, they'll come and go on their own. If I just use the curiosity to stay with them. So that's, you know, that's the 20 years of our work in the nutshell. No, it's very good because I think that I think that people really lack the ability to articulate how to get out of these really for lack of better term shitty situations that they find themselves in. And this is really the framework to go through it. So if you wanted to, you know, sort of set people on the right path. So somebody has an addiction that they want to break. What would be sort of the first, because I know there's so many frameworks that you've developed. And I know there's like a rain technique. I don't know if that's a great technique that you could use or if there's others. But what's a, yeah, you're shaking your head. It's completely applicable. I'm ignorant here. But what would be the best way to get somebody on the right path? Well, actually, maybe we can just start with the rain techniques. I think that ties into curiosity, but then maybe a more applicable one to get started. It does. Well, I shake my head because rain is an example of a number of different techniques that people can use. And so I would, you know, sometimes people are going to jump right to like, what do I need to do? Tell me what I yes, you and I'll do it, which falls into the will powered, you know, or control trap. And that's the only reason I'm shaking my head. We've, we've good data showing that the rain technique is helpful. And in the, what I'll say is, so just to explain what it is, it's an acronym for recognize, allow, investigate, and note. That's our AIN. And that, what that does is it operationalizes curiosity. So we've got recognized that we're going to have it, Luke. Right. So what's the behavior that I'm doing? If we can't recognize it, we can't step out of it. The A is for allow. So often will resist what's happening. And if we resist it or run away from it, we can't change it. So that's, that's actually a critical piece is to invite it in. The I for investigations, really about inviting in that curiosity. Oh, you know, what does this feel like in my body? And then the noting is to help us stay moment to moment with those physical sensations. And the thoughts and the emotions to see that we don't have to do anything to make them go away. They'll come and go on their own. So that, that's a practice that we can bring in, but we don't start there. We've got to start with recognizing, you know, it's like, oh, I am in a habit, Luke. Right. And also as a second step, if we can't see how unrewarding the old habit is, the rain technique is going to feel like it's extra work as early. I got to do this to change this as compared to, oh, I'm going to bring this in because I see that this other, the old way that I've been doing things is not very rewarding. So we've got to go through that process of disenchantment first, which is often in process that people don't want to go through because they'd rather just jump to the answer. Just don't do it to do that. Yeah. Well, what I'm, what I'm telling you to try is to see why you keep doing the thing. And if you don't become disenchanted with it, it's going to be really hard to change. When they become disenchanted, the rain practices, all these other curiosity practices, that's where they, they're going to work the best. So then I guess the, the question the follow-up is, what's the best way to become disenchanted with a particular thing? It's curiosity. What's the, what, you mentioned the curiosity sweet spot? What's that? Well, that's really where we're, we're practicing tuning into our body and getting really curious about what is happening in our body. The way I think of this is that our feeling body is much stronger and wiser than our thinking brain. So the sweet spot is really finding what our true experience is instead of getting stuck in our thinking brain. Okay. What would be one, I mean, you've mentioned willpower is a sort of like a commonly held thing that is radically incorrect when it comes to solving any of the problems in our lives. What would one other sort of commonly held belief be that you wish you could just sort of shake people and be like, this is not something that you should believe? Yeah. It's such great questions. The thing I would bring in here and this is, is parallel and a compliment to the willpower, you know, curiosity beats willpower is about self-judgment. So so many people have been conditioned to believe that they've got to beat themselves up, be tough on themselves, you know, and that's how they're going to succeed. And it's, it's very similar to the willpower story. In fact, it weighs us down. So here I would invite people to explore, what do they get from beating themselves up? Typically, it's just anxiety and more, you know, guilt or feeling of shame. And what do they get from being kind to themselves? So that's the, that's the other thing I would bring in because that will help augment the curiosity as a superpower. I love that. Okay. If people want to connect with you, I feel like we could talk for a long time but we're going to keep it, we're going to, we're going to, we're going to hold here and then we'll do a part two whenever you write your next book or whenever you want to come back, come back on because this has been amazing. Where do you want to send people? I mean, both of your books are available everywhere. People can buy books, but outside of that website, social, all that. Yeah, I think clearing out is my website is just drjud.com. I'm also on Instagram at drperiodjud. So those are the places that people can hit me up, but that a bunch of free resources on the website. And also I mentioned some of the apps that are available. Those are, there's, you know, the research and the, the links to the apps is on the website as well. So drjud.com is probably the best place to go. Perfect. Okay. That'll go in the show notes. Last question just to take this home. Obviously, you've had an incredible career now. It's time for you to do some, some introspection and some, some self-awareness as you've gone through your career and you sort of excelled in all these different fields. I like pulling this one piece out. What would be something that you tell your 20 year old self? A great question. I mean, I don't want to sound like a broken record, but I would say be curious. Although my 20 year old self was was relatively curious. So maybe that's a cop out answer. What else would I say? I don't take yourself too seriously, which goes to the self-judgmental piece. Like that's really important. you