10% Happier with Dan Harris9 Sep 2024

Modern Life Numbs You. Here's The Neuroscience Of Waking Up | Tali Sharot

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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.

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".

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 Look Again: The Power of Noticing What Was Always There.

In this episode we talk about:

What habituation is and what's going on in the brain when it happens
How it negatively impacts the joy we feel in life – and inversely – how it can make us stop noticing the bad stuff
Key strategies for disrupting habituation and introducing change and variety into your life
The interesting relationship between creativity and people who habituate slowly
How habituation impacts our relationships
Why it's important to break up the good experiences, but swallow the bad whole.
How to wake up from a "technologically induced coma"
How people emotionally habituate to dishonesty and lying
And lastly, we talk about the dangers of habituating to a slow, incremental rise in tyranny – and how dis-habituation entrepreneurs can help

Related Episodes:

#345 How to Change Your Habits | Katy Milkman

How Turning Habits Into Rituals Can Help You At Home, At Work, And When You're Anxious | Michael Norton

Making and Breaking Habits, Sanely | Kelly McGonigal

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