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

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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