Anxiety is born when our PFCs (prefrontal cortex) don’t have enough information to accurately predict the future.

Notice how fear itself does not equal anxiety. Fear is an adaptive learning mechanism that helps us survive. Anxiety, on the other hand, is maladaptive; our thinking and planning brain spins out of control when it doesn’t have enough information.

States such as meanness, stress, anxiety, and craving not only feel worse (i.e., are less rewarding) than kindness, wonder, joy, and curiosity, but they also feel more closed down while the others feel more open and even expansive.

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Anti-Habit Strategies:

• Anti-Habit Strategy 1: Willpower
• Anti-Habit Strategy 2: Substitution
• Anti-Habit Strategy 3: Prime Your Environment
• Anti-Habit Strategy 4: Mindfulness

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Triggers:

• Craving Habit Loop Trigger: See cake Behavior: Eat cake Result: Feel good.
• Rumination Habit Loop Trigger: Feel low in energy Behavior: Think about how down you feel, how you will never get anything done, etc. Result: Feel (more) depressed.
• Anxious Worry Habit Loop Trigger: Look at unfinished to-do list Behavior: Worry about not getting it done Result: Feel anxious.

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Mindfulness Awareness Benefits:

• It helps you update the reward value of your old behaviors.
• This practice is internally based (i.e., you don’t have to head for the store or order more on Amazon when you run low)
• It’s a great improvement over being stuck on that hamster wheel of a habit loop.
• Mindful awareness doesn’t change the strength of one’s desire, nor does it increase the strength of one’s willpower. Instead, it modifies the relationship between the two.

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