Speaker 1: Experiencing conflict is not a problem, but to realize that
Speaker 1: the conflict does not mean to translate into the elaborated
Speaker 1: notion that I'm a complete failure and it is never
Speaker 1: going to work out. That's the mind doing something else.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers
Speaker 2: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes
Speaker 2: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 2: think ring true. And yet for many of us, our
Speaker 2: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 2: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 2: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 2: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 2: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 2: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 2: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 2: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf.
Speaker 3: Most of us live in doing mode, solving, planning, fixing,
Speaker 3: But what if the real key to clarity isn't doing more,
Speaker 3: but knowing when to be. This is a lesson I
Speaker 3: can certainly learn. Doctor Amishi Jaw calls this peak mind
Speaker 3: one that doesn't just chase focus, but knows when to
Speaker 3: step back, observe, and reset. It's not about forcing your attention,
Speaker 3: it's about understanding how to work with it. In this episode,
Speaker 3: we explore why true mental mastery isn't about more effort,
Speaker 3: but about balancing focus with awareness and how getting this
Speaker 3: right can change everything. I'm Eric Zimmer and this is
Speaker 3: the one you feed. Hi, Amishi, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 4: So great to be here.
Speaker 3: I'm really excited to have you on. We're going to
Speaker 3: be discussing your new book, Peak Mind, Find your Focus,
Speaker 3: own your attention, invest twelve minutes a day. So we'll
Speaker 3: get into that in a minute. But we'll start like
Speaker 3: we always do with the Parable. In the Parable, there's
Speaker 3: a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild and they say,
Speaker 3: in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
Speaker 3: are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which
Speaker 3: represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the
Speaker 3: other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed
Speaker 3: and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and thinks
Speaker 3: about it for a second, looks up at their grandparents, says, well,
Speaker 3: which one wins, and the grandparent says the one you feed.
Speaker 3: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 3: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 3: the work that you do.
Speaker 1: Oh, it's such a great parable, and I'd love that
Speaker 1: it's really so central to what you talk about on
Speaker 1: this podcast because it so much relates to what I
Speaker 1: think about and the work that I do in my lab,
Speaker 1: because it frankly is about attention, and what you feed
Speaker 1: in my mind, reflects what you pay attention to what
Speaker 1: you value. So to me, it's entirely describing the power
Speaker 1: of attention and the vulnerability of mind when we do
Speaker 1: not attend to things that serve us best.
Speaker 3: Yep, I agree totally, and attention is a big subject
Speaker 3: in the work that I do. I've got a program
Speaker 3: called Spiritual Habits, and attention is one of the core
Speaker 3: principles there. Because you quote William James in your book,
Speaker 3: there's another statement that I don't think you quoted in
Speaker 3: the book, although it's possible I missed it, which is
Speaker 3: my experience is what I agree to attend to. Fundamental
Speaker 3: attention really does describe I wouldn't say it's the only thing,
Speaker 3: but it is a big factor in the type of
Speaker 3: life we experience.
Speaker 4: Absolutely.
Speaker 1: I mean it's funny William James, the father of the
Speaker 1: field that I'm a member of psychology, but sometimes I
Speaker 1: think he's like an alien from the future because he
Speaker 1: had so much right about his wisdom and insight into things,
Speaker 1: and couldn't agree more with your kind of take on
Speaker 1: that whole thing, which is the centrality of our conscious experience,
Speaker 1: is tied to the conduit for what becomes prominent in
Speaker 1: our minds attention itself.
Speaker 3: So where I'd like to start is with the title
Speaker 3: of the book, Peak Mind. You say, a peak mind
Speaker 3: is a mind that doesn't privilege thinking and doing over being.
Speaker 3: It masters both modes of attention. So say a little
Speaker 3: bit more about that, because a lot of the book
Speaker 3: is sort of talking about people who are, in, for
Speaker 3: lack of a better word, mission critical type situations, you know,
Speaker 3: people who are trying to perform better in given circumstances.
Speaker 3: So there's a fair amount of the book that's devoted
Speaker 3: in that direction. But this statement really is speaking to
Speaker 3: something more broadly than how I perform. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, And part of the reason I wanted to make
Speaker 1: sure I made that distinction between thinking and doing is
Speaker 1: exactly because of the populations that make gravitate toward this
Speaker 1: book and toward the kind of projects that we do
Speaker 1: in the research we conduct, which are as you call
Speaker 1: a mission critical kind of folks, but also sometimes there
Speaker 1: referred to as tactical professionals. There is a task at hand,
Speaker 1: and we need to accomplish it, and there is a
Speaker 1: more successful and less successful way to accomplish it, and
Speaker 1: action is what it's all about. And frankly, in my
Speaker 1: entire field, in the field of attention research, from the
Speaker 1: sort of traditional point of view, that is essentially what
Speaker 1: we see attention's role as serving action, and if we
Speaker 1: can't pay attention, the chances of acting appropriately are going.
Speaker 4: To not be there.
Speaker 1: But what I'm trying to highlight, which is part of
Speaker 1: the broader mission of a lot of contemplative practices and
Speaker 1: wisdom traditions, is that there is another way we can
Speaker 1: use our attention, use our mind, and their aspects of
Speaker 1: even what sort of traditional attentional models within modern cognitive
Speaker 1: neuroscience described that can be amplified but aren't currently amplified.
Speaker 1: So the being mode from my point of view, is
Speaker 1: taking an observational stance, being receptive to what's occurring, so
Speaker 1: that in between the action there is reflection, and without
Speaker 1: that reflection, the chances to ensure that the action is
Speaker 1: appropriate are lessened because sometimes you can know sort of
Speaker 1: a ballistic orientation like this is what we're doing, or
Speaker 1: the training that you have may may guide you to
Speaker 1: say this is what you do, but is it the
Speaker 1: right thing to do? How are you going to know
Speaker 1: unless you actually look at the circumstances and you know
Speaker 1: a lot of times these tactical professionals or mission oriented
Speaker 1: folks talk about situational awareness as you've got to know
Speaker 1: what's going on around you. But what I'm highlighting with
Speaker 1: that statement of being mode, not just doing mode, is
Speaker 1: that part of the situation is what is occurring in
Speaker 1: your own mind, the set points you have, the expectations
Speaker 1: and stories and assumptions that you have, and the being
Speaker 1: mode allows you to take stock of what is present
Speaker 1: without taking any action in that moment, just allowing that
Speaker 1: to exist and percolating in it. And I think it's
Speaker 1: highly undervalued, especially for a lot of the kinds of
Speaker 1: professionals that we end up working with. So it's a
Speaker 1: new or novel aspect of what they might consider doing,
Speaker 1: which is being. Yeah, and I put that in quotes
Speaker 1: because you people can't see me. You know, in some sense,
Speaker 1: the being new type of doing, if you want to
Speaker 1: approach it in that way.
Speaker 3: You also say a peak mind and this to quote
Speaker 3: William James again which I had not seen this quote before,
Speaker 3: and I love a peak mind balances the flights and
Speaker 3: the perchings. He says, like a bird's life. The stream
Speaker 3: of consciousness seems to be made up of an alternation
Speaker 3: of flights and perchings. Say a little bit more about that.
Speaker 3: That's very poetic language, I think to speak to some
Speaker 3: concepts that you've certainly backed up with neuroscience.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think it touches on what you were
Speaker 1: asking me about a moment ago, right. The flights in
Speaker 1: some sense is the doing and the perching is the being.
Speaker 1: And that this can be broken down in sort of
Speaker 1: the micro level. So even if we're in the middle
Speaker 1: of executing a complex task, to not forget that the
Speaker 1: flights are going to be much more successful if the
Speaker 1: perchings are actually taking place, and it's that dance. It's
Speaker 1: you know, sort of the important aspects of what wisdom is.
Speaker 1: This is both reflection and action.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that quote made me think of we interviewed a gentleman.
Speaker 3: I don't know, and I'm going to get your opinion
Speaker 3: on this in a second. We interviewed a gentleman a
Speaker 3: while back by the name of Ian McGilchrist. He wrote
Speaker 3: a book called The Master and his Emissary and it's
Speaker 3: talking about right brain and left brain. And I'd like
Speaker 3: to get your opinion on that in a second. But
Speaker 3: one of the things he said was, and when he
Speaker 3: was talking about how the right brain and the left
Speaker 3: brain work, is that the right brain is more the perching,
Speaker 3: it's watching everything that's happening, it's seeing the context, it's
Speaker 3: you know, and the left brain is more the flight
Speaker 3: or he talked about like a bird pecking food out
Speaker 3: of a series of stones. I'm curious in the work
Speaker 3: that you've done, has right brain left brain shown up
Speaker 3: at all. I'm just kind of curious your thought on
Speaker 3: that theory. I don't want to spend a lot of
Speaker 3: time there, but I can't help but ask.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know that book, and I don't
Speaker 1: know Ian at all, and I don't know how literally
Speaker 1: was being or what researcher was looking to. But frankly
Speaker 1: from sort of a modern neuroscience perspective, the notion of
Speaker 1: right brain left brain allowing for complex function to happen
Speaker 1: in a hemispherically specified manner has been debunked. All complex functions,
Speaker 1: whether it's a broad observational stance or an action oriented focusing,
Speaker 1: will involve ordination between the entirety of the brain and
Speaker 1: particular both hemispheres. But I appreciate the concept of these
Speaker 1: are distinct from each other, and I would not describe
Speaker 1: them as based on hemispheres. I describe them based on
Speaker 1: mental modes. And when we think about a mode in
Speaker 1: the mind, it's essentially a configuration of whatever brain networks
Speaker 1: are involved in a particular process being more prominent versus
Speaker 1: a different set of brain networks. So definitely it's the
Speaker 1: case that I describe it in some sense as two
Speaker 1: aspects of attention. And you know this notion of a
Speaker 1: flashlight meaning focusing, narrowing, selecting versus a floodlight broad receptive
Speaker 1: not biasing some information over other information. And those are
Speaker 1: two different modes, and typically you cannot be in both
Speaker 1: modes simultaneously. And we know this right if you're sitting
Speaker 1: there and reading a deeply entrenched in a good novel
Speaker 1: or a good book, any kindit with good book could
Speaker 1: be big mind. So if you're entrenched in reading a
Speaker 1: good book, somebody walks in the room and says something
Speaker 1: to you, you're like, huh what. You have no idea
Speaker 1: what was said. Not because you lost the capacity to
Speaker 1: comprehend language, but because your focus was so narrowed that
Speaker 1: the input coming in in your broad receptive stance was
Speaker 1: not quite up to snuff to be able to break
Speaker 1: down the sounds into language. From the brand science point
Speaker 1: of view, we know that a lot of these aspects
Speaker 1: of attention are mutually inhibitory. When one network is active,
Speaker 1: the other one will be suppressed. So I again would
Speaker 1: say that do not get too literal with regard to
Speaker 1: the hemisphere that it's involved in. But the modal aspects
Speaker 1: the mind being in different modes is certainly very very important.
Speaker 3: You mentioned the two different modes in your book, you
Speaker 3: actually have three modes. You're a little bit like the
Speaker 3: Buddha in that you're a list maker. There's lots of
Speaker 3: lists of three in this book. I'm sure someone has
Speaker 3: pointed that out before, but I actually like it as
Speaker 3: a way of organizing. It helps. But so you talked
Speaker 3: about two of the sort of quote unquote subsystems that
Speaker 3: work together, right, the flashlight, which is we're narrowed in
Speaker 3: we're focused to talk about the floodlight, which is a
Speaker 3: more broad and open and then the third mode that
Speaker 3: you talk about is the juggler. Say a little bit
Speaker 3: more about what the juggler is.
Speaker 1: Sure, sure, all three of these are really, as you said,
Speaker 1: subsystems of attention. And in the broadest sense we can
Speaker 1: say this mental capacity of paying attention is really just
Speaker 1: about prioritizing some information over other information. It's thankfully an
Speaker 1: evolutionary inheritance we get to enjoy, even though it has
Speaker 1: its own consequences.
Speaker 4: But it is the result.
Speaker 1: Of, we think, at least kind of going back in time,
Speaker 1: a big problem that the brain had, which is that
Speaker 1: everything could not be processed. The brain just lacked the
Speaker 1: computational power to do that. So if you didn't prioritize
Speaker 1: some stuff over other stuff, there was no way you
Speaker 1: were going to be able to make sense of the
Speaker 1: world around you or even what's occurring within your mind.
Speaker 1: So just to keep that in mind, is the anchor
Speaker 1: prioritize some information over other information. Now, the flashlight, you'd say,
Speaker 1: is prioritizing some content over other content. So wherever you
Speaker 1: direct that flashlight is going to be the privileged content.
Speaker 1: But it's it's directed towards something, some object, and that
Speaker 1: object can be something in the external environment or an
Speaker 1: object in the mind like a thought or a memory.
Speaker 4: When we go to the.
Speaker 1: Floodlight, we're talking about prioritizing and not so much based
Speaker 1: on the content, because you're not supposed to really advantage
Speaker 1: one thing over another. It's about being this broad receptive stance,
Speaker 1: but it is privileging something and that is the moment now,
Speaker 1: so you know, formally, this flood light system is called
Speaker 1: the alerting system, and you're not being alert to something
Speaker 1: in the past or the future, but right in this moment,
Speaker 1: so privileging the present moment. And then, as you mentioned,
Speaker 1: the third system formally called executive functioning that I describe
Speaker 1: it as a juggler for shorthand is really regarding prioritizing
Speaker 1: based on our goals. So these are internally held goals, intentions, plans,
Speaker 1: whatever it is you want to call it. That is
Speaker 1: guiding the way we're going to interact with our own
Speaker 1: mind and our environment. You know, just like a juggler,
Speaker 1: you've got to do this with sort of a multiplicity
Speaker 1: in mind. You usually don't have one goal. So in
Speaker 1: this moment, my goal is to have a fruitful conversation
Speaker 1: with you. But my goal is also to publish the
Speaker 1: papers that I'm publishing, and to be in a responsible citizen,
Speaker 1: and to enjoy my life and my family. Those goals
Speaker 1: don't go away. But obviously I'm not actively doing all
Speaker 1: of those simultaneously. So I'm kind of keeping all the
Speaker 1: balls in the air and ensuring that every action that
Speaker 1: I undertake aligns with my goals. And when the juggler
Speaker 1: is not functioning so well, balls drop, we forget the goal,
Speaker 1: we don't inhibit irrelevant information. And this could be a
Speaker 1: micro goal, right, So I want to have a conversation
Speaker 1: with you, that's my goal. My phone buzzes, and then
Speaker 1: I go and start reading my text messages in the
Speaker 1: middle of this conversation. Why did I do that? Well,
Speaker 1: I fail to hold the goal and then control my behavior.
Speaker 4: Aligned with it.
Speaker 1: So I think that maybe helps frame it more broadly,
Speaker 1: that all of it falls underneath attension, because it all
Speaker 1: has to do with prioritizing some information or other information.
Speaker 4: It's just the nature of what that information is differs.
Speaker 3: Is the executive function, or the juggler as we would
Speaker 3: call it, the part that is choosing where to point
Speaker 3: the flashlight. Yes, I think attention is very interesting because
Speaker 3: it's similar to the breath. It's something that happens automatically
Speaker 3: and is also controllable.
Speaker 4: Correct.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, so if someone lit a firecracker off
Speaker 3: behind my head right now, like my attention is going there,
Speaker 3: there's nothing I'm going to going to do about that, right.
Speaker 3: But beyond that is that the juggler that's sort of
Speaker 3: trying to say, let me align my attention with my
Speaker 3: to use a different word for what you were talking about,
Speaker 3: my intentions, the things that matter to me. Is that
Speaker 3: kind of falling into the juggler's role, correct.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Executive control is the thing that guides goals. Now,
Speaker 1: the goal could be pay attention to what's happening right now,
Speaker 1: don't privilege any content over other content. So you're driving
Speaker 1: down the road and you see, you know, big flashing
Speaker 1: yellow light like maybe by a construction site, and the
Speaker 1: juggler would say, probably best to check out what's going
Speaker 1: on right now, and it essentially calls upon that particular
Speaker 1: floodlight orientation or mental mode to be in, or it
Speaker 1: could be get narrow and focused right now so you
Speaker 1: can actually understand this conversation or read this sentence or
Speaker 1: whatever it is. Get focused and directed. But there's always
Speaker 1: the kind of push and pull of what the juggler
Speaker 1: intends to do, and then other stuff that may derail
Speaker 1: what's going on. And you know, in some sense, the
Speaker 1: flashlight is a great example of that, where you've already
Speaker 1: said it. You can direct it willfully, but it can
Speaker 1: get yanked. And what it gets yanked by is also
Speaker 1: very interesting because in some sense it's like the baked
Speaker 1: into us.
Speaker 4: Yes juggler.
Speaker 1: Right, It's like, why would it be that a firecracker
Speaker 1: would pull your.
Speaker 4: Attention because your survival may depend on it.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: So essentially, these, you know, are things that are salient,
Speaker 1: that are novel, that are fear inducing or threatening, that
Speaker 1: are self related, are all sort of privileged into the
Speaker 1: way that our brain functions. We don't have to try
Speaker 1: to make it that way, it just is sort of
Speaker 1: by default built in.
Speaker 3: Right, you say, the three main factors that determine how
Speaker 3: this attention gets deployed. Is familiarity something that's new. I'm
Speaker 3: going to give more attention to salience, right, how important
Speaker 3: it is to me. And then finally, our own goal,
Speaker 3: our own attention. And so attention is sort of being,
Speaker 3: as you said, pulled by those things. And one of
Speaker 3: the things that you say early on that I really
Speaker 3: liked was that there's nothing wrong with our attention. We
Speaker 3: talk a lot about having attention problems these days, you know,
Speaker 3: a crisis of attention, but you say, our attention is
Speaker 3: working just fine. To say a little bit more about that, Yeah.
Speaker 1: That's the kind of ironic part of this moment. People
Speaker 1: feel a sense of struggle and overwhelm or crisis, and
Speaker 1: they want to blame their brain instead of the circumstances
Speaker 1: in some sense. So let's just talk about social media
Speaker 1: or technology kind of more broadly. The fact that there
Speaker 1: are algorithms that can be built around our willingness to
Speaker 1: continue engaging with particular pieces of software or websites, et
Speaker 1: cetera tells us that our attention is working completely in
Speaker 1: a regular, typical, predictable fashion. And you already mentioned the
Speaker 1: three biggies that might get us familiarity in salience for
Speaker 1: sure at goals also, but when you can finally tune
Speaker 1: the familiar because you're being exposed to it over and
Speaker 1: over again, or you can finally tune the salience because
Speaker 1: it's so self related, or you can ensure that the
Speaker 1: goals are kind of kept to the front of your mind,
Speaker 1: you know, like at some point you look, you know
Speaker 1: I talk about in the book like I was looking
Speaker 1: for this frying pan, like a pot or pan, and
Speaker 1: then I kept seeing pans all over the place because
Speaker 1: it was being forced onto me, like you look for
Speaker 1: a pan, you must be interested in this. So all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, now the goal that I had once
Speaker 1: is now kept at the front of my mind. It's like, ohyah,
Speaker 1: I did want to get that pan. It's like reminding
Speaker 1: you of goals. So attention is doing what it does,
Speaker 1: but the circumstances are now aligning to tune up and
Speaker 1: really maximize engagement for the benefit of usually selling us
Speaker 1: a product, mining our attention to be exposed to potentially
Speaker 1: buying a product. Right, So it's totally driven by this
Speaker 1: whole structure. I just wanted to caution people that, first
Speaker 1: of all, don't take it in like it's not like
Speaker 1: there's something wrong with you if you see your name
Speaker 1: and you want to click on it. That is. That's
Speaker 1: the reason that your name and face are on every
Speaker 1: social media app is because that's the first step into
Speaker 1: hooking you in. And frankly, the other piece is that
Speaker 1: you can't really fight against it because you're going to
Speaker 1: lose because you're not just dealing with your own kind
Speaker 1: of orientation towards social media content, but you're dealing with
Speaker 1: very very smart algorithms that are tuning up to you
Speaker 1: and a team of engineers that are programming it. So
Speaker 1: if we're going to take on this challenge, it cannot
Speaker 1: just be like, oh, my mind will not click on
Speaker 1: that bright, yellow, shiny thing that's saying click here.
Speaker 3: Unlikely, you say you can't win that fight. Instead, cultivate
Speaker 3: the capacity and skill to position in your mind so
Speaker 3: you don't have to fight. Say a little bit more
Speaker 3: about that, because I think that's a really important point,
Speaker 3: is that if our goal is to bring our attention
Speaker 3: back to our own control the things that matter to us,
Speaker 3: it does feel like it's a fight. And like you,
Speaker 3: I tend to believe it's a fight. We're set up
Speaker 3: to sort of lose.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the way not to fight is to, at the
Speaker 1: most fundamental level, pay attention to our attention, to know
Speaker 1: where our mind is. Then there's more sense of agency,
Speaker 1: just like anything else. Like I could have the most
Speaker 1: elaborate plans, but if I don't know what the plans are,
Speaker 1: and I'm not checking in with where I am relative
Speaker 1: to those plans, I'll never be able to execute them.
Speaker 1: But what we lack typically is that checking in component,
Speaker 1: or what we'd call monitoring. Right, we're not monitoring ourselves
Speaker 1: and we're not another kind of technical term meta aware.
Speaker 1: We're not aware of the contents and processes in our
Speaker 1: mind at play in any given moment, and we can
Speaker 1: cultivate the ability to be better at that. And that's
Speaker 1: where mindfulness meditation can really be helpful, because it is
Speaker 1: a way in which we are better able to know
Speaker 1: our mind, not just in general, like I tend to
Speaker 1: be this way or that, but in this moment what
Speaker 1: is occurring within me and around me, so more fully
Speaker 1: situationally aware.
Speaker 3: I want to push on that a little bit and
Speaker 3: explore it a little further because I think it's really important.
Speaker 3: I love the way you said in the book we
Speaker 3: lack internal cues about where our attention is moment to moment.
Speaker 3: In the Spiritual Habits program, what I say is, you know,
Speaker 3: if we're trying to live a life, and basically I
Speaker 3: would say we'd be living a life more based on
Speaker 3: principles that matter to us, right, living more by that
Speaker 3: goal orientation, and the goal may just be to be kinder, right,
Speaker 3: So I think forgetting is the biggest problem. Your book
Speaker 3: advocates training, you know, twelve minutes in the morning with
Speaker 3: a couple different approaches, and we can talk about what
Speaker 3: some of those are. I'm curious, though, do you have
Speaker 3: suggestions on how else, maybe during the day to get
Speaker 3: a little bit more of this because I do agree
Speaker 3: that a focused training period like you're describing does help,
Speaker 3: and I know myself and a lot of people who
Speaker 3: do have mourning mindfulness pe that we can still get
Speaker 3: pretty lost all day long and lose track of any
Speaker 3: of those internal cues. So do you have some ideas
Speaker 3: about how to weave those into more of the moments
Speaker 3: we have?
Speaker 1: Absolutely, And first of all, i'd say that just to
Speaker 1: be clear about the prescription, you know, it comes out
Speaker 1: of over a decade and a half of research and
Speaker 1: the goal of that research is not how to maximize
Speaker 1: your spiritual fulfillment or life, but what is the minimum
Speaker 1: effective dose to protect attention in high stress circumstances. So
Speaker 1: it's a very different goal, yes, than other things. And
Speaker 1: that also that twelve minutes is not in my view,
Speaker 1: the culmination or the be all end all.
Speaker 3: It's the starter minimum effective dose.
Speaker 1: It's the minimum effective dose, thank you, yes, And so
Speaker 1: I just want to mention that because people could say
Speaker 1: twelve minutes, why am I going to accomplish in twelve
Speaker 1: minutes a day? But it actually we found is beneficial.
Speaker 1: The other thing is that I don't say when to
Speaker 1: do it, so do it whenever you're going to do it.
Speaker 4: But your point still holds.
Speaker 1: The reason we do the formal minutes of day of
Speaker 1: mindfulness practice is so that the mental mode of mindfulness,
Speaker 1: which I describe as paying attention to our present moment
Speaker 1: experience without conceptually elaborating or emotionally reacting. We want to
Speaker 1: bring about more of that mode throughout the day because
Speaker 1: that is going to be the mode that allows us
Speaker 1: to connect with what's happening in the moment and monitor
Speaker 1: the contents of our mind as well. As obviously taking
Speaker 1: stock of what's happening around us practicing so that we
Speaker 1: can just say we got it off. There are to
Speaker 1: do list we're practicing to elicit the more prevalence of
Speaker 1: that mode. But you're right, there are ways in which
Speaker 1: we can advantage curing ourselves to do that. So some
Speaker 1: of the things that we do, I'll just give you
Speaker 1: an example from some of the research studies that we do,
Speaker 1: because we tell people what I just described to you,
Speaker 1: that we're doing this so that we're more mindful throughout
Speaker 1: the day, not just that we're Olympic level breath followers.
Speaker 4: I mean, who cares, right, But how do you do that?
Speaker 1: So, for example, one of the practices that we give
Speaker 1: is it's you know, these are all part of sort
Speaker 1: of the canon of what's currently offered in the world
Speaker 1: of mindful training, and thankfully that that world is growing
Speaker 1: and more available to people. But something called the stop
Speaker 1: practice is a good one, and I recommend that people
Speaker 1: do this, and they use the queue of being stopped,
Speaker 1: meaning you're stopped at a elevator, you're stopped at a
Speaker 1: stop sign, you're stopped at a crosswalk.
Speaker 4: An you're waiting in line.
Speaker 1: Anytime you stop and you notice the body is stationary.
Speaker 1: Typically what happens in that moment pull out your phone,
Speaker 1: start doing stuff. No use that as a moment to
Speaker 1: do this practice. And the practice is a mini mindfulness practice.
Speaker 1: So stop as an acronym for stop. You're already stopped.
Speaker 1: Take a breath, and that's just aware of one conscious breath,
Speaker 1: like you're just you're not manipulating the breath or trying
Speaker 1: to take it more deeply, just like we've been breathing
Speaker 1: this whole time, but taking stock of it observe. So
Speaker 1: after that breath, you're still kind of in that kind
Speaker 1: of mode of observing what's occurring right now.
Speaker 4: And then proceed.
Speaker 1: And you know, I'll tell you that one of the
Speaker 1: papers that we're working on right now is a project
Speaker 1: we did in basic combat training with close to two
Speaker 1: thousand soldiers where they they did this stop practice. They
Speaker 1: did a formal mindfulness practice like we assigned and that
Speaker 1: I describe in the book, but then we asked them
Speaker 1: to stop practice and we found benefited all kinds of things,
Speaker 1: their sense of team cohesion, their ability to check out
Speaker 1: if the body was experiencing pain, to determine if they
Speaker 1: needed to take action. You know, like for example, people
Speaker 1: talk about just fracturing their feet and legs and bones
Speaker 1: because they're so negligent of taking stock of the body.
Speaker 1: But if you're stopped in all these times and you're
Speaker 1: just checking out what's going on, and we actually guide them.
Speaker 1: Week one is the breath, then it may be the environment,
Speaker 1: then its aspects the body, then it's people in your team.
Speaker 1: So it kind of follows different components of what the
Speaker 1: target of what you take stock of in that observe
Speaker 1: moment is can really make a difference and cues people
Speaker 1: into that mindful mode repeatedly and multiple times a day.
Speaker 1: So that's one one thing that you could try.
Speaker 3: I think that's great. You know, I'm often thinking about triggers,
Speaker 3: like what you use the word q Q or trigger,
Speaker 3: like how can we remember? And that's a I mean
Speaker 3: I've talked about and heard about sort of like if
Speaker 3: you're stopped at a traffic light, but I love the
Speaker 3: idea of like stopped in any circumstance. That's a great one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And you know, now I'm telling people more like
Speaker 1: if you feel the urge to pull out your phone,
Speaker 1: that's a moment to practice stop. Yeah, because that's giving
Speaker 1: you a sense of like something's going on that makes
Speaker 1: you feel capable of doing that, and maybe think, is
Speaker 1: that what I want to be doing? Now?
Speaker 4: Am I defaulting?
Speaker 3: Yep? Before we dive back into the conversation, let me
Speaker 3: ask you something. What's one thing that has been holding
Speaker 3: you back lately? You know that it's there, You've tried
Speaker 3: to push past it, but somehow it keeps getting in
Speaker 3: the way. You're not alone in this, and I've identified
Speaker 3: six major saboteurs of self control, things like autopilot behavior,
Speaker 3: self doubt, emotional escapism that quietly derail our best intentions.
Speaker 3: But here's the good news. You can outsmart them. And
Speaker 3: I've put together a free guide to help you spot
Speaker 3: these hidden obstacles and give you simple, actionable strategies that
Speaker 3: you can use to regain control. Download the free guide
Speaker 3: now at oneufeed dot net slash ebook and take the
Speaker 3: first step towards getting back on track. There are so
Speaker 3: many places I could take this, but we're a little
Speaker 3: bit time limited, so I'm gonna pivot to this place
Speaker 3: because it's something I definitely want to talk with you about,
Speaker 3: and I think it's important to reiterate sort of what
Speaker 3: you said that the research you're focused on is about
Speaker 3: improving attention. But you talk about attention, you say there
Speaker 3: are three major forces that degrade our attention, stress, poor mood,
Speaker 3: and threat. But it also sounds like early on you
Speaker 3: say that if we're feeling cognitive fog might be depleted attention.
Speaker 3: If we're feeling anxious or worried, it could be hijacked attention.
Speaker 3: If we can't focus, it might be fragmented attention. So
Speaker 3: not only are some of those things causes of degraded attention,
Speaker 3: but it sounds like degraded attention is also the cause
Speaker 3: of some of those things. Right, it seems like it's
Speaker 3: a bidirectional relationship.
Speaker 4: Would that be absolutely? Yeah? Absolutely okay.
Speaker 3: So given that whether most people who are not tactical
Speaker 3: professionals are going to say, you know what, I want
Speaker 3: better quality of life, right, I want to be a
Speaker 3: little bit happier. I want to spend less time ruminating
Speaker 3: and regretting. I want to be more present of the
Speaker 3: people I love, et cetera, et cetera. So given that
Speaker 3: this is what boys a long setup for a question,
Speaker 3: isn't it. But I'm going somewhere here.
Speaker 4: I trust you.
Speaker 3: You talk about some strategies that people use for some
Speaker 3: of these things, like think positive, focus on the good,
Speaker 3: do something relaxing, suppress upsetting thoughts. We've got these series
Speaker 3: of strategies that I'm going to just put them under
Speaker 3: a bucket. I've heard you use this bucket before, and
Speaker 3: tell me if you agree. Reframing. They are sort of
Speaker 3: reframing our experience. And then you used a term. Maybe
Speaker 3: it was in the book and I missed it, but
Speaker 3: I heard it on another podcast. You said, well, there's
Speaker 3: reframing and then there's deframing, and I loved that idea.
Speaker 3: I was wondering if you could say a little bit
Speaker 3: more about those two, and then I want to talk
Speaker 3: a little bit about when might it be appropriate to
Speaker 3: do one versus the other, depending on what we're trying
Speaker 3: to accomplish.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, reframing, I think you've laid out very very
Speaker 1: clearly already that essentially it's a replacing of one kind
Speaker 1: of mental content with other mental content, and that can
Speaker 1: happen through even paying attention differently. So we're still using
Speaker 1: our attention, but now I'm going to highlight different aspects
Speaker 1: of my experience to put different content at the center
Speaker 1: of my mind. It's still using attention in that focused way,
Speaker 1: that narrowed way, that action oriented way. In some sense,
Speaker 1: deframing is saying get back into that perchings or being mode.
Speaker 4: Sure.
Speaker 1: It's like we're taking a look at the structure that
Speaker 1: we're within. You know, a framework is an interesting thing.
Speaker 1: Reframing is almost like you're ignoring the framework and you're
Speaker 1: just filling it with new stuff. Like you know, it's
Speaker 1: an apartment building and you're just going to bring a
Speaker 1: new furniture. The apartment building still stands with the way
Speaker 1: it is, or even let's say a particular room still
Speaker 1: has a sofa and a chair, a table, but they're different.
Speaker 1: They're a different kind of sofa, you know, a more
Speaker 1: fluffy one or a genuine leave whatever it is that
Speaker 1: you want that you think is an improvement over the
Speaker 1: prior set of things, but the framework is the same.
Speaker 1: What I'm saying with deframing is first step is essentially
Speaker 1: be aware that you are within a framework, you are
Speaker 1: within a story, You're within a set of contingencies and conditions,
Speaker 1: and you're acting within that. So if we can just
Speaker 1: even look around and say, oh wow, look at that,
Speaker 1: I have take by default that there.
Speaker 4: Should be a couch and a chair and a table
Speaker 4: in this room. Do I have to? Like?
Speaker 1: That's the first step of deframing. And you can build
Speaker 1: back the same sort of components if you'd like, but
Speaker 1: at least you're doing it with a will and with
Speaker 1: knowledge that I'm going to put everything back in a
Speaker 1: way that I'd like, or maybe I'm going to tear
Speaker 1: the whole thing down and build it up differently. So
Speaker 1: I just think most of us don't understand that this
Speaker 1: is within our capacity to do. It seems too hard.
Speaker 1: But when you understand with mindfulness practice, for example, that
Speaker 1: every time even we do something as simple as a
Speaker 1: breath awareness practice or what I call the find your
Speaker 1: Flashlight practice, noticing that the mind has wandered away from
Speaker 1: the goal is in little tiny moment of oh, I
Speaker 1: wasn't in that framework anymore, and you know, moving towards
Speaker 1: something like an open monitoring practice, we're really just kind
Speaker 1: of disregarding all of that, all the stories and concepts,
Speaker 1: and just trying to kind of be in the raw,
Speaker 1: moment to moment flow of our conscious experience. It's also
Speaker 1: a way to practice deframing. So I think that once
Speaker 1: we understand why we're intending to do it, and I
Speaker 1: think that there's a very important reason to intend to
Speaker 1: do it, is that sometimes frameworks are wrong, stories are wrong.
Speaker 1: More fundamentally, to get at what you're saying regarding you know,
Speaker 1: spiritual practice and a spiritual life, replacing the couch is
Speaker 1: not going to make you happier. It's going to mean
Speaker 1: you have a different couch, you know. That's sort of
Speaker 1: the deeper issue is that maybe you want to take
Speaker 1: a look at the assumptions or of what it means
Speaker 1: to be able to achieve the happiness you're seeking.
Speaker 3: So deframing in this sense, would we say it's similar
Speaker 3: to the acceptance and commitment therapy term of diffusing, and
Speaker 3: it's a way of sort of stepping back out of
Speaker 3: thought right and trying to observe that all these thoughts
Speaker 3: are happening. Is that the essence of.
Speaker 1: It's at the essence diffusion, decentering, becoming meta aware all
Speaker 1: of that, and it does require stepping outside of what's occurring,
Speaker 1: at least from the conceptual terrain or getting more embodied
Speaker 1: in our sensory experience so we're not stuck in the
Speaker 1: concepts that are driving whatever is going on in our
Speaker 1: mind in that moment.
Speaker 3: One of the things you say with things like thinking positive,
Speaker 3: focusing on the good, suppressing upsetting thoughts, that the problem
Speaker 3: with a lot of those is that they do require
Speaker 3: attentional resources to implement. They use up attention instead of
Speaker 3: strengthening it. You call them failed strategies because while we
Speaker 3: try to use them to solve our attention problems, they
Speaker 3: degrade attention even further. Say a little bit more about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is where it comes down to the
Speaker 1: context that I'm talking about now, positive psychology, gratitude, journaling,
Speaker 1: a lot of things that fall within the umbrella of
Speaker 1: positive psychology powerful things to do. There is a really
Speaker 1: strong evidence base that this is a helpful thing to do.
Speaker 1: But I'm specifically talking about people under high stress circumstances,
Speaker 1: protracted periods of demand. Like, for example, if you think
Speaker 1: about a critical care nurse over the course of this pandemic,
Speaker 1: the notion of saying think positive, you know, like think
Speaker 1: positive thought that doesn't even make sense. It's like, I've
Speaker 1: gone through what I'm seeing and the level of demand
Speaker 1: that I'm facing and utilizing my attention. I can't even
Speaker 1: take a breath to do that, and I think trying
Speaker 1: to do that is where it becomes a failed strategy.
Speaker 1: You're pushing against and utilizing fuel that you don't have
Speaker 1: to expend. You don't have it in your gas tank,
Speaker 1: you can't use it. Yes, yes, it can really make
Speaker 1: things more problematic for people because they somehow think they're
Speaker 1: supposed to be able to do that. And what I
Speaker 1: wanted more fundamentally for people to understand is that that
Speaker 1: is not a cost free thing to do. It's not
Speaker 1: like the default of your mind is to have positive
Speaker 1: thoughts and you are going in the wrong direction to
Speaker 1: have negative thoughts. It's that when things are occurring and
Speaker 1: the mind is filled with negative thoughts, it will take
Speaker 1: attentional resources to cognitively reframe, and that will be requiring
Speaker 1: you to have those resources available.
Speaker 3: How do we get to the point where are deframing diffusion?
Speaker 3: Mindfulness practices don't feel effortful in the same way because
Speaker 3: it feels like for me to sit down and follow
Speaker 3: the breath and keep bringing my attention back to it
Speaker 3: and back to it is also an intentional drain. But
Speaker 3: your studies seem to indicate that's not really the case.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the studies certainly indicate that what we're doing is
Speaker 1: bolstering core intentional resources and working memory resources. It can
Speaker 1: feel like it's difficult, it can feel like it's difficult,
Speaker 1: but that doesn't mean that it's actually draining attention in
Speaker 1: the same way that a very intense her body workout
Speaker 1: can feel tiring, but you are actually working toward growing
Speaker 1: your muscles.
Speaker 4: It's sort of like that idea.
Speaker 1: And I think that there are many ways in which
Speaker 1: you can practice so that it feels less draining in
Speaker 1: some sense, easing up, you know, not having that oh,
Speaker 1: that kind of conflict that a lot of people can
Speaker 1: experience in practice, and a lot of that I think
Speaker 1: is optional. I don't think you need to feel like
Speaker 1: a failure because you're mind wandered. But people think somehow
Speaker 1: that if my goal is to pay attention to my breath,
Speaker 1: my mind should not wander. And what I'm saying is
Speaker 1: the goal is to pay attention to your breath, the
Speaker 1: mind will wander, right, and actually remember that the moment
Speaker 1: you realize that your mind is wandered is a win, yes,
Speaker 1: And then so instead of feeling that conflict and that
Speaker 1: effort and that drudge of like, oh god, my brain
Speaker 1: is even staying stable. What's wrong with me? It's like,
Speaker 1: h got it. I know where I'm off. I've got
Speaker 1: to get back. So even the way we orient to
Speaker 1: the practice at this more micro level can reduce that
Speaker 1: sense of dread and effort. Yeah, but to kind of
Speaker 1: more broadly understand that something that feels effortful can still
Speaker 1: be building resources instead of depleting them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love that. I think what you said there
Speaker 3: is so important. I'm kind of curious. Does everybody naturally
Speaker 3: default to that sort of natural like, oh, my mind's wandering,
Speaker 3: so I'm failing. It just seems inherent with everybody I've
Speaker 3: ever talked to who's taken up a practice like this.
Speaker 3: Do you come across people that don't orient that way?
Speaker 3: Or is it just sort of natural to us to
Speaker 3: be told if your job is to do this task
Speaker 3: and you just see that you're not doing that task,
Speaker 3: you just go, oh, I'm not good at this.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 1: I think it's even more fundamental than that. I think
Speaker 1: that this experience. This is what's kind of interesting. Why
Speaker 1: are conflict states and negative emotion? Why do they co occur?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 1: So, anytime you have a mismatch between what you would
Speaker 1: like to have happened and what happens. There can be
Speaker 1: a slight dysphoria associated with it. That's kind of interesting,
Speaker 1: So why is that? And people have looked at this
Speaker 1: in cognitive neuroscience studies where sometimes you just look to
Speaker 1: see if you impose a negative emotion on somebody, what
Speaker 1: happens to their cognitive control, And what you find is
Speaker 1: that sometimes the next thing that occurs, they're.
Speaker 4: Better at it.
Speaker 1: It's like that negativity can actually require us to bring
Speaker 1: more of our cognitive resources to solve the problem. So
Speaker 1: I think the yoking of conflict and what we call
Speaker 1: upregulation of cognitive control go hand in hand. It's the
Speaker 1: signal that says do something differently, expend more mental effort
Speaker 1: to do this, bring more resources to bear. Even experiencing
Speaker 1: conflict is not a problem. But to realize that the
Speaker 1: conflict does not mean to translate into the elaborated notion
Speaker 1: that I'm a complete failure and it is never going
Speaker 1: to work out. That's the mind doing something else. I
Speaker 1: think that it's really interesting when you, especially when you
Speaker 1: talk to sort of long term practitioners, that conflict is
Speaker 1: seen with a neutrality that most of us don't. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: when there's a mismatch, it's like that's data, that's not
Speaker 1: I've suck. And I think that getting to that point,
Speaker 1: and especially you know, within all of these kind of
Speaker 1: elite settings, I think people are trying to understand that
Speaker 1: that if I add the layer of a conceptual story
Speaker 1: on top of the experience of conflict, it will slow
Speaker 1: me down in course correcting what the conflict signal is conveying.
Speaker 3: Right right, Yeah, And I just think it's so important
Speaker 3: to work on not developing that aversive relationship with practice
Speaker 3: because a lot of people, I think, do it's that
Speaker 3: I'm failing at this, I can't do this, I'm not
Speaker 3: any good at this. And I love that.
Speaker 1: I would even encourage people to just really break down
Speaker 1: the experience, like usually in our mindfulness practice and you know,
Speaker 1: and I have to talk about this too, it's like
Speaker 1: you're going to focus, you're going to notice your mind wandering,
Speaker 1: and then you're going to redirect back. But sometimes I
Speaker 1: will guide people to just hang out in the moment
Speaker 1: that they notice the mind has wandered away and really
Speaker 1: kind of get granular with that. What occurred first? What
Speaker 1: is the first thing that happened. Usually we're having conflict,
Speaker 1: negative emotion, I suck the fast track. So what if
Speaker 1: it's that whatever that visceral or you know, feeling tone
Speaker 1: is of the mismatch. See if you can get more
Speaker 1: precise on that, get cued into that mismatch feeling, and
Speaker 1: see if you can kind of paint the elaboration that follows.
Speaker 1: And you know, a lot of expert practitioners will talk
Speaker 1: about it's like I remember talking to two recard ones,
Speaker 1: you know, an adept practitioner, a buist monk, and he
Speaker 1: said it, and I thought it was so beautiful. It's like,
Speaker 1: it's not it's not a storm. It's like I see
Speaker 1: slight undulations on the ripples of the pond, you know,
Speaker 1: whatever it is. It's like, that would be awesome if
Speaker 1: the if the slight movement of the water, you know,
Speaker 1: the tranquility of the mind is disturbed and you can say, oh, back.
Speaker 3: On track, totally, totally yeah. And I just wonder how
Speaker 3: much new practitioners have that ability to be that granular.
Speaker 1: I think that it's at least what we can do
Speaker 1: is say, observe it, see if you can track it,
Speaker 1: and it's almost like what I would say to people
Speaker 1: even when I think I do talk about this in
Speaker 1: the book, Like if you've ever had experienced or seen
Speaker 1: somebody experience a road rage, somebody gets cut off and
Speaker 1: the next thing you know, somebody's flipping somebody else the bird,
Speaker 1: or and you know, terrible circumstances, there's violence. What if
Speaker 1: you could actually grab a hold of the earliest moment
Speaker 1: that you whatever, that the initial inclination that I'm going
Speaker 1: to have that.
Speaker 4: Feeling and we know what that is.
Speaker 1: And I was called well, as I noticed in my
Speaker 1: own practice when I was very early stages, it's like
Speaker 1: if there was a ballistic reactivity, I wasn't going to
Speaker 1: catch it. You know, if my kid did something and
Speaker 1: I was going to shout, I was probably still going
Speaker 1: to shout, but I would apologize more quickly, yes, like, oh,
Speaker 1: I didn't want to have that strong of a reaction
Speaker 1: and I'm sorry. Yeah, because even though I feel what
Speaker 1: happened was not okay, you didn't need that extra stuff
Speaker 1: that just happened. So you know, I don't know if
Speaker 1: that gets it what you're talking about, but that feels
Speaker 1: like part of the journey of what this is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, you quote Lou Read at one point in
Speaker 3: the book and said, between thought and expression lies a lifetime.
Speaker 3: I love anytime the velvet underground shows up in a book.
Speaker 3: Between thought and expression lies lifetime reminds me of the
Speaker 3: Victor Frankel quote of between stimulus and response, right, And
Speaker 3: I've said that I think sometimes the most practical thing
Speaker 3: a long history of different types of meditation practices given me.
Speaker 3: I think the most practical thing is that space between
Speaker 3: stimulus and response seems a little bit bigger. There's a
Speaker 3: little bit more moment to be like, ah, hang on,
Speaker 3: you know, listeners couldn't see that, but I sort of
Speaker 3: started to rise up in like a outrage. And but
Speaker 3: you know, don't get all the way there, you know.
Speaker 3: And to your point, then, yes, also learning to walk
Speaker 3: it back faster. And I love the idea that you
Speaker 3: just said about noticing that moment when your mind is
Speaker 3: wandered and really noticing what happens there. Because in Buddhism
Speaker 3: they talk about the five skandas. I don't know if
Speaker 3: you're familiar with the five skandas, but it's describing a
Speaker 3: little bit of the way that we put together the
Speaker 3: sense of a self there's some initial like Verdanna, like
Speaker 3: the very first thing, but they make a distinction between
Speaker 3: perception like the raw sense data, and then all the
Speaker 3: layers that start getting added on top of that, right
Speaker 3: from positive negative to the stories we might tell. You know,
Speaker 3: advanced practitioners say, you can actually start to notice the
Speaker 3: those extraordinarily fine increments. Right for most of us, it's
Speaker 3: just like that. That whole process happens like that, But
Speaker 3: there is a way of breaking that down. I guess
Speaker 3: my question to you would be, what have you seen
Speaker 3: looking at the way our brains process data that might
Speaker 3: shed light on that or confirm that that's kind of
Speaker 3: what happens. And do you see people being able to
Speaker 3: interrupt that pattern kind of the snap I just did
Speaker 3: you see people being able to interrupt it or break
Speaker 3: it down?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean I think the way that we look at
Speaker 1: it in my lab, there's so many different people that
Speaker 1: are looking at this kind of thing. We can start
Speaker 1: to see even things like mind wandering. Let's not even
Speaker 1: talk about sort of emotionally laden stuff. Obviously mind wandering
Speaker 1: has that propensity, But what we know is that when
Speaker 1: people mind wander, for example, if we just had them
Speaker 1: do a simple task where they're just pressing a button
Speaker 1: every time they see a digit on the screen. We
Speaker 1: know that the response times are going to become more
Speaker 1: and more variable when they are mind wandering. In fact,
Speaker 1: that's the clue that their mind wandering, because usually a
Speaker 1: few seconds later they'll miss something or they'll make an error.
Speaker 1: The report back, yeah, my mind was wandering so close
Speaker 1: in time to When we see a lot of variability,
Speaker 1: you see the costs of that variability on the consequential
Speaker 1: actions that need to be performed. And so what we
Speaker 1: know with mindfulness training is that there's a reduction in
Speaker 1: that variability and the performance is less prone to making
Speaker 1: errors like that, and people report mind wandering less. So
Speaker 1: I think that that's a movement or that's an insight
Speaker 1: that says, Yes, the more you're able to monitor moment
Speaker 1: by moment what's going on and you train your mind
Speaker 1: to do that through something like a breath awareness practice
Speaker 1: and the whole suite of practices now that I go
Speaker 1: into in the book, the more chances that you're going
Speaker 1: to be able to course correct more quickly. And so
Speaker 1: even the windows that's the kind of thing we're looking
Speaker 1: at now. It's like the windows of variability, can those
Speaker 1: shrink or what we know from for example, the work
Speaker 1: that one of the the post docs in my lab,
Speaker 1: Tony Zenesco's doing, is we're looking at what we call
Speaker 1: micro states. So these are essentially sort of the units
Speaker 1: of our configuration of the brain, if you will, in
Speaker 1: a moment, and typically it can break these down into
Speaker 1: like thirty milliseconds, there's small micro microd of stability of
Speaker 1: the mind in these tiny windows. And what we know,
Speaker 1: for example, is that micro states tend to be temporarily contingent,
Speaker 1: so the micro state you are in in one moment
Speaker 1: is likely to produce the next micro state. And we
Speaker 1: know what the micro states at least the signature of
Speaker 1: what it looks like when people are completely off task
Speaker 1: or their mind is not on the thing they're trying
Speaker 1: to do, or they're highly variable. So if you're in
Speaker 1: a highly variable kind of state, the next moment is
Speaker 1: likely to be highly variable. The question now is with practitioners,
Speaker 1: can you see that the return back to a state
Speaker 1: of focus is more likely? So the contemporal contingencies are
Speaker 1: actually being it's broken, and you know, in some sense
Speaker 1: it sounds I mean, I'm going to leap down a lot.
Speaker 1: But if the mind is built for this kind of
Speaker 1: temporal contingency, which I think is definitely aligned with a
Speaker 1: lot of Buddhist thought on you know, sort of the
Speaker 1: contingent nature of reality. If you can train the mind
Speaker 1: to be less contingent so that there is kind of
Speaker 1: infinite potentiality from one moment to the next in the
Speaker 1: way that you can configure the brain, right, what are
Speaker 1: the benefits of that? And maybe that's what we mean
Speaker 1: when we say even the term enlightenment is a non
Speaker 1: contingent mind.
Speaker 3: Before we wrap up, I want you to think about this.
Speaker 3: Have you ever ended the day feeling like your choices
Speaker 3: didn't quite match the person you wanted to be? Maybe
Speaker 3: it was autopilot mode or self doubt that made it
Speaker 3: harder to stick to your goals. And that's exactly why
Speaker 3: I created The Six Saboteurs of Self Control. It's a
Speaker 3: free guide to help you recognize the hidden patterns that
Speaker 3: hold you back and give you simple effect of strategies
Speaker 3: to break through them. If you're ready to take back
Speaker 3: control and start making lasting changes, download your copy now
Speaker 3: at oneufeed dot net. Slash ebook. Let's make those shifts
Speaker 3: happen starting today one you feed dot net slash ebook.
Speaker 3: It's funny. I had up at the top of my
Speaker 3: note one of my favorite quotes by an old zenmaster Dogan,
Speaker 3: who said enlightenment is intimacy with all things. And I
Speaker 3: had that there because I think that speaks to attention.
Speaker 3: Intimacy is achieved by paying close attention to things. And
Speaker 3: what Dogan is saying is if we are truly that present,
Speaker 3: like you said, and that our micro states are not
Speaker 3: as conditioned to remain on the same thing. To your point,
Speaker 3: you're starting to get towards something that looks more like enlightenment,
Speaker 3: which I think is fascinating.
Speaker 1: Which is so interesting, right because in some sense there's
Speaker 1: enlightenment in there's psychosis when things aren't a contingent matter.
Speaker 1: So got to figure out the qualities that make it
Speaker 1: productive and warranted and worthy, and that's where all of
Speaker 1: the other positive qualities and having an ethical orientation toward
Speaker 1: our existence can come into play.
Speaker 3: Totally. Well, I mean, she thank you so much for
Speaker 3: coming on. I really enjoyed the book. It's a great
Speaker 3: look into the neuroscience of attention. I read a lot
Speaker 3: of books about mindfulness this is my job, and yours
Speaker 3: stood out. I just found some of the ways you
Speaker 3: really dove into what's happening to be truly fascinating, and
Speaker 3: we touched on a fraction of them. It's a wonderful read.
Speaker 3: And thank you so much for coming on.
Speaker 4: Oh this is so much fun. Thank you for the
Speaker 4: great conversation.
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