Sounded simple enough. YetI'd sit on these silent retreats, sweating through T-shirts in the middleof winter. I'd take naps every chance I got because it was really hardwork. Actually, it was exhausting. The instruction was simpleenough but I was missing something really important.

So why is it so hard to payattention? Well, studies show that even when we're really trying topay attention to something -- like maybe this talk -- at somepoint, about half of us will drift off into a daydream, or have thisurge to check our Twitter feed.

So what's going on here? Itturns out that we're fighting one of the most evolutionarily-conserved learningprocesses currently known in science, one that's conserved back tothe most basic nervous systems known to man.

This reward-based learningprocess is called positive and negative reinforcement, and basicallygoes like this. We see some food that looks good, our brain says,"Calories! ... Survival!" We eat the food, we taste it-- it tastes good. And especially with sugar, our bodies send asignal to our brain that says, "Remember what you're eating and whereyou found it." We lay down this context-dependent memory andlearn to repeat the process next time. See food, eat food, feelgood, repeat. Trigger, behavior, reward.

Simple, right? Well, after awhile, our creative brains say, "You know what? You can use thisfor more than just remembering where food is. You know, next time you feelbad, why don't you try eating something good so you'll feelbetter?" We thank our brains for the great idea, try this andquickly learn that if we eat chocolate or ice cream when we're mad or sad, wefeel better.

Same process, just adifferent trigger. Instead of this hunger signal coming from ourstomach, this emotional signal -- feeling sad -- triggers that urgeto eat.

Maybe in our teenageyears, we were a nerd at school, and we see those rebel kids outsidesmoking and we think, "Hey, I want to be cool." So we startsmoking. The Marlboro Man wasn't a dork, and that was noaccident. See cool, smoke to be cool, feel good.Repeat. Trigger, behavior, reward. And each time we do this, welearn to repeat the process and it becomes a habit. Solater, feeling stressed out triggers that urge to smoke acigarette or to eat something sweet.

Now, with these same brainprocesses, we've gone from learning to survive to literally killingourselves with these habits. Obesity and smoking are among theleading preventable causes of morbidity and mortality in the world.

So back to my breath. Whatif instead of fighting our brains, or trying to force ourselves to payattention, we instead tapped into this natural, reward-based learning process... but added a twist? What if instead we just got reallycurious about what was happening in our momentary experience?

I'll give you an example. Inmy lab, we studied whether mindfulness training could help people quit smoking. Now,just like trying to force myself to pay attention to my breath, they couldtry to force themselves to quit smoking. And the majority of them hadtried this before and failed -- on average, six times.

Now, with mindfulnesstraining, we dropped the bit about forcing and instead focused on beingcurious. In fact, we even told them to smoke. What? Yeah, we said,"Go ahead and smoke, just be really curious about what it's like whenyou do."

And what did theynotice? Well here's an example from one of our smokers. She said,"Mindful smoking: smells like stinky cheese and tastes likechemicals, YUCK!" Now, she knew, cognitively that smoking wasbad for her, that's why she joined our program. What she discoveredjust by being curiously aware when she smoked was that smoking tastes likeshit.

Now, she moved from knowledge towisdom. She moved from knowing in her head that smoking was bad forher to knowing it in her bones, and the spell of smoking wasbroken. She started to become disenchanted with her behavior.

Now, the prefrontalcortex, that youngest part of our brain from an evolutionaryperspective, it understands on an intellectual level that we shouldn'tsmoke. And it tries it's hardest to help us change our behavior, tohelp us stop smoking, to help us stop eating that second, that third, thatfourth cookie. We call this cognitive control. We're using cognition tocontrol our behavior. Unfortunately, this is also the first part ofour brain that goes offline when we get stressed out, which isn't thathelpful.

Now, we can all relate to this inour own experience. We're much more likely to do things like yell at ourspouse or kids when we're stressed out or tired, even though we knowit's not going to be helpful. We just can't help ourselves.

When the prefrontal cortex goesoffline, we fall back into our old habits, which is why thisdisenchantment is so important. Seeing what we get from ourhabits helps us understand them at a deeper level -- to know it inour bones so we don't have to force ourselves to hold back orrestrain ourselves from behavior. We're just less interested in doing itin the first place.

And this is what mindfulness isall about: Seeing really clearly what we get when we get caught up in ourbehaviors, becoming disenchanted on a visceral level and from thisdisenchanted stance, naturally letting go.

This isn't to say that, poof,magically we quit smoking. But over time, as we learn to see more and moreclearly the results of our actions, we let go of old habits and formnew ones.

The paradox here is thatmindfulness is just about being really interested in getting close andpersonal with what's actually happening in our bodies and minds frommoment to moment. This willingness to turn toward ourexperience rather than trying to make unpleasant cravings go away asquickly as possible. And this willingness to turn toward our experience issupported by curiosity, which is naturally rewarding.

What does curiosity feellike? It feels good. And what happens when we get curious? We startto notice that cravings are simply made up of body sensations -- oh,there's tightness, there's tension, there's restlessness -- and thatthese body sensations come and go. These are bite-size pieces ofexperiences that we can manage from moment to moment rather than gettingclobbered by this huge, scary craving that we choke on.

In other words, when we getcurious, we step out of our old, fear-based, reactive habitpatterns, and we step into being. We become this innerscientist where we're eagerly awaiting that next data point.

Now, this might sound toosimplistic to affect behavior. But in one study, we found that mindfulnesstraining was twice as good as gold standard therapy at helping people quitsmoking. So it actually works.

And when we studied the brains ofexperienced meditators, we found that parts of a neural network ofself-referential processing called the default mode network were atplay. Now, one current hypothesis is that a region of thisnetwork, called the posterior cingulate cortex, is activated notnecessarily by craving itself but when we get caught up in it, when we getsucked in, and it takes us for a ride.

In contrast, when we let go-- step out of the process just by being curiously aware of what'shappening -- this same brain region quiets down.

Now we're testing app andonline-based mindfulness training programs that target these coremechanisms and, ironically, use the same technology that's driving us todistraction to help us step out of our unhealthy habit patterns of smoking,of stress eating and other addictive behaviors.

Now, remember that bit aboutcontext-dependent memory? We can deliver these tools to peoples'fingertips in the contexts that matter most. So we can helpthem tap into their inherent capacity to be curiously aware rightwhen that urge to smoke or stress eat or whatever arises.

So if you don't smoke or stresseat, maybe the next time you feel this urge to check your email whenyou're bored, or you're trying to distract yourself from work, ormaybe to compulsively respond to that text message when you'redriving, see if you can tap into this natural capacity, just becuriously aware of what's happening in your body and mind in thatmoment. It will just be another chance to perpetuate one of ourendless and exhaustive habit loops ... or step out of it.

Instead of see text message,compulsively text back, feel a little bit better -- notice theurge, get curious, feel the joy of letting go and repeat.

Thank you.