In this week’s Ed Tech Fitness Challenge newsletter I included the video of a TED Talk given by Dr. Judson Brewer. His talk is titled A Simple Way to Break a Bad Habit.

My big take-away from Dr. Brewer’s talk was the idea of thinking about why we engage in a bad habit while we’re doing as a means to breaking that habit. For example, my bad habit is eating potato and tortilla chips when I’m stressed out. Brewer’s suggestion is to think about why I’m doing that when I do it and I’ll be less likely to do it again. I actually watched this talk back in January and started to employ that technique of using mindfulness to break my stress-snacking habit. It has worked…most of the time. I’ve lost over 30 pounds this year. I’m now using that strategy to curtail my Facebook habit too.

Applications for Education
The concepts and examples that Brewer shares in the talk are ones that high school students can relate to. For that reason, with the exception of one “PG word” in the talk, you could use this video to create a mindfulness lesson in a high school classroom.