<p><em>New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.</em></p> <p><em>---</em></p> <p>It's so easy, especially these days, to numb out. To get bored. To move through life on autopilot. There is even a scientific term for this: habituation.</p> <p>Today we're talking to a researcher who co-authored a new book about the neuroscience of habit and how to wake up again. To make things exciting. Or as she says, to "re-sparkle". </p> <p>Tali Sharot is a professor of cognitive neuroscience at University College London and MIT. She's written several books including The Optimism Bias and The Influential Mind. Her latest, co-written with Cass Sunstein, is called <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Look-Again-Power-Noticing-Always/dp/1668008203" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em>Look Again: The Power of Noticing What Was Always There</em></a><em>. </em></p> <p><br /></p> <p><strong>In this episode we talk about:</strong></p> <ul> <li>What habituation is and what's going on in the brain when it happens</li> <li>How it negatively impacts the joy we feel in life – and inversely – how it can make us stop noticing the bad stuff</li> <li>Key strategies for disrupting habituation and introducing change and variety into your life</li> <li>The interesting relationship between creativity and people who habituate slowly</li> <li>How habituation impacts our relationships</li> <li>Why it's important to break up the good experiences, but swallow the bad whole.</li> <li>How to wake up from a "technologically induced coma"</li> <li>How people emotionally habituate to dishonesty and lying</li> <li>And lastly, we talk about the dangers of habituating to a slow, incremental rise in tyranny – and how dis-habituation entrepreneurs can help</li> </ul> <p><br /></p> <p><strong>Related Episodes:</strong></p> <p><a href="https://www.happierapp.com/podcast/tph/katy-milkman-345" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#345 How to Change Your Habits | Katy Milkman</a></p> <p><a href="https://www.happierapp.com/podcast/tph/michael-norton" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">How Turning Habits Into Rituals Can Help You At Home, At Work, And When You're Anxious | Michael Norton</a></p> <p><a href="https://www.happierapp.com/courses/habits" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Making and Breaking Habits, Sanely | Kelly McGonigal</a></p> <p><br /></p> <p><strong>Sign up for Dan's weekly newsletter</strong> <a href="https://bit.ly/3QtGRqJ" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><strong>here</strong></a></p> <p><strong>Follow Dan on social:</strong> <a href="https://bit.ly/3tGigG5" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><strong>Instagram</strong></a><strong>,</strong> <a href="https://bit.ly/3FOA84J" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><strong>TikTok</strong></a></p> <p><strong>Ten Percent Happier online</strong> <a href="https://bit.ly/46TZglY" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><strong>bookstore</strong></a></p> <p><strong>Subscribe to our</strong> <a href="https://bit.ly/3FybRzD" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><strong>YouTube Channel</strong></a></p> <p><strong>Our favorite playlists on:</strong> <a href="https://spoti.fi/3Qa8kMT" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><strong>Anxiety</strong></a><strong>,</strong> <a href="https://spoti.fi/3MjtMxF" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><strong>Sleep</strong></a><strong>,</strong> <a href="https://spoti.fi/3QvyA5J" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><strong>Relationships</strong></a><strong>,</strong> <a href="https://spoti.fi/3QxZASc" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><strong>Most Popular Episodes</strong></a></p> <p><br /></p> <p><strong>Full Shownotes:</strong> <a href="https://happierapp.com/podcast/tph/tali-sharot-828" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://happierapp.com/podcast/tph/tali-sharot-828</a></p> <p><br /></p>
Actionable Insights
1. Conduct Life Experiments
To discover what truly benefits or harms your well-being, actively experiment with different behaviors and routines in your life, measuring their impact to find optimal strategies.
2. Introduce Variety and Diversify
To dishabituate and see things anew, introduce variety into your life through small changes like taking different routes to work, learning new skills, or taking courses outside your expertise.
3. Break Up Good Experiences
To sustain pleasure, break up enjoyable activities (like listening to a favorite song or binge-watching a show) with short interruptions, as this dishabituates and re-sparks joy.
4. Imagine Life Without Positives
To re-sparkle daily life and appreciate what you have, vividly imagine your life without your job, home, or loved ones, then open your eyes to see them anew.
5. Swallow Bad Experiences Whole
For unpleasant but necessary tasks (e.g., chores, taxes), tackle them in one continuous block without breaks, allowing habituation to reduce the negative feeling over time.
To improve well-being and reduce anxiety, take regular breaks from social media to assess its impact, as studies show people feel happier and less depressed when they disengage.
7. Monitor Social Media Content
Pay attention to the type of content you consume on social media, as engaging with negative information can worsen your mood and mental health symptoms.
8. Introduce Breaks/Variety in Relationships
To enhance attraction and re-sparkle relationships, take short breaks from your partner (e.g., an evening away) and introduce variety by engaging in new activities or seeing them in new situations.
9. Change Work Environment for Creativity
To boost creativity and problem-solving, change your physical work environment frequently, even by moving to a different room or taking a walk, as new inputs dishabituate your brain.
10. Notice Small Lies to Prevent Escalation
To prevent dishonesty from escalating, pay attention to and address even small lies or digressions, as emotional habituation can make it easier to lie more over time.
11. Call Out Children’s Small Lies
To prevent children from developing a habit of lying, call out even their small fibs, as ignoring them can lead to an escalation of dishonesty over time.
12. Have More Shorter Vacations
To maximize joy from vacations, take more frequent, shorter trips instead of long ones, as the initial hours of a vacation are the happiest before habituation sets in.
13. Be a Dishabituation Entrepreneur
To combat societal maladies and slow-escalating negative trends, strive to be a ‘dishabituation entrepreneur’ by observing unseen issues and alerting others to make them visible and drive change.
14. Use Data to Expose Bias
To dishabituate others to systemic biases (e.g., gender imbalance in conference speakers), collect and present clear data comparing observed ratios to actual field demographics, naming those responsible to foster accountability.