Attention and mindfulness

I feel so excited that the idea of mindfulness actually works when I try to accomplish something difficult to me. I really want to share my experience with you!

Several months ago, I watched a TED talk where Judson Brewer describes how we could take advantage of mindfulness to break a bad habit as a very simple way. At that time, I did not believe it at all. It was no way, I thought, that we could just be curious to get rid of our long-standing bad habits. Until I took this class NRE 560 and I learned attention. One day, this video just occurred in my mind. So I just found it online and watched it again. This time, I try to use what I learned about attention to understand this talk. Surprisingly, I started to interpret it in my own way.

I really recommend that you can take a look at this video. It basically says that our brain learning process is reward-based and it goes like trigger, behavior and reward. Trigger can be feeling stressed. Then we take actions such as smoking a cigarette or eating something sweet. We get reward by feel good. This process repeats again and again. Once we touch the trigger, then we cannot control the urge to take the same unhealthy action. But here mindfulness comes. Instead of paying attention to abandoning the behavior and fighting this natural and evolutionarily-conserved reward-based learning process, we can just get curious about what is happening in our momentary experience. Curiosity also makes people feel good. When this reward-based process repeats more, people can see the results of bad habits more clearly. So it is much easier and even natural that people would let go of old habits and form new ones.

When I try to understand this process, I use the concept of DAF (Directed Attention Fatigue). When we force attention not to take the action associated with the trigger, trying to get out of the reward-based process, we demand large amount of directed attention. If the trigger always exists, then sooner or later, we would experience the fatigue of self-control. That is why it is so hard to change our bad habits. We just do not have enough directed attention resources to fight against this natural reward-based process. But if we get curious about what is actually happening, we are more likely to be attracted by this soft fascination. It turns out we do not need to take effort to do this because we now use voluntary attention. We may invest directed attention to get curious. But once we get there, the following happens naturally. At the same time, it is a reward-based process, which means our brain would like to let it happen again and again. Now it is easy for us to see the results of bad habits and let go.

After totally understanding this theory following my own logic, I tried this method to form good habits. I always know exercise is very good for our health but I just really hate to do any anaerobic exercise. So these days instead of trying to forcing myself to finish planned exercise, I just paid attention to my body. I was curious which part of my body benefited from each of the movements. Believe or not, instead of feeling pain all over the body, I could tell which muscle is trembling. That drove me excited. I became more and more focused to discover. Although just several days, I experienced the fascination of exercise. Next time, I may try this method to see if I can build up another good habit or abandon a bad habit.

Source:

Judson Brewer. (2015). A simple way to break a bad habit. TEDMED 2015