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: Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is
Speaker 3: doctor Amishi Jah, a professor of psychology at the University
Speaker 3: of Miami. She serves as the Director of Contemplative Neuroscience
Speaker 3: for the Mindfulness Research and Practice Initiative, which she co
Speaker 3: founded in twenty ten. Doctor Jaw's work has been featured
Speaker 3: at NATO, the World Economic Forum, and the Pentagon, and
Speaker 3: she's been covered in The New York Times, NPR, Time, Forbes,
Speaker 3: and more. On this episode, Eric and Doctor Jaw discuss
Speaker 3: her new book, Peak Mind, Find Your Focus, Own your Attention,
Speaker 3: invest twelve minutes a Day.
Speaker 4: Hi, Amishi, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: So great to be here.
Speaker 5: I'm really excited to have you on. We're going to
Speaker 5: be discussing your new book, Peak Mind, Find your Focus,
Speaker 5: Own your Attention and invests twelve minutes a day.
Speaker 4: So we'll get into that in a minute, but.
Speaker 5: We'll start like we always do with the parable. In
Speaker 5: the Parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild
Speaker 5: and they say, in life, there are two wolves inside
Speaker 5: of us that are always at battle.
Speaker 4: One is a good wolf.
Speaker 5: Which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and
Speaker 5: the other's a bad wolf, which represents things like greed
Speaker 5: and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and thinks
Speaker 5: about it for a second, looks up at their grandparents, says, well,
Speaker 5: which one wins, and the grandparent says, the one you feed,
Speaker 5: So i'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 5: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 5: 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 5: Yep, I agree totally, and attention is a big subject
Speaker 5: in the.
Speaker 2: Work that I do.
Speaker 5: I've got a program called Spiritual Habits, and attention is
Speaker 5: one of the core principles there. Because you quote William
Speaker 5: James in your book, there's another statement that I don't
Speaker 5: think you quoted in the book, although it's possible I
Speaker 5: missed it, which is my experience is what I agree
Speaker 5: to attend to. Fundamental attention really does describe I wouldn't
Speaker 5: say it's the only thing, but it is a big
Speaker 5: factor in the type of life we experience.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, I mean It's funny William James, the father of
Speaker 1: the field that I'm a member of psychology, but sometimes
Speaker 1: I think he's like an alien from the future because
Speaker 1: he had so much right about his wisdom and insight
Speaker 1: into things, and couldn't agree more with your kind of
Speaker 1: take on that whole thing, which is the centrality of
Speaker 1: our conscious experience, is tie to the conduit for what
Speaker 1: becomes prominent in our minds, which is atension itself.
Speaker 5: Wow, that's really powerful. Now, I'd like to turn this
Speaker 5: to our listeners. What part of that message struck a
Speaker 5: chord with you as you think about nourishing your good wolf,
Speaker 5: What specific ideas or actions come to mind for me
Speaker 5: this month? It's relationships. Relationships are the cornerstone of our
Speaker 5: well being. When they thrive, we flourish, and when they struggle,
Speaker 5: we suffer. Many of us face relationship challenges, feeling lost
Speaker 5: and frustrated, but there is hope. Strong relationships aren't just
Speaker 5: about fate. They're built on learnable skills. By developing these abilities,
Speaker 5: you can transform your connections and in turn, your life.
Speaker 5: So relationships are this month's theme and our weekly bite
Speaker 5: of wisdom for a wiser, happier you. Newsletter, and I'd
Speaker 5: love to send them your way. Each week, we send
Speaker 5: a menu of a few small exercises you can put
Speaker 5: in practice to feed your good wolf, along with the
Speaker 5: reflection and a related podcast episode on the topic. At
Speaker 5: the end of this episode, I will be giving you
Speaker 5: a tip from this week's newsletter. But in the meantime,
Speaker 5: if you'd like to join thousands of others who are
Speaker 5: already benefiting from these tips, go to Goodwolf dot me
Speaker 5: slash relationships. That's Goodwolf dot me slash relationships. So where
Speaker 5: I'd like to start is with the title of the book,
Speaker 5: Peak Mind. You say, a peak mind is a mind
Speaker 5: that doesn't privilege thinking and doing over being. It masters
Speaker 5: both modes of attention. So say a little bit more
Speaker 5: about that, because a lot of the book is sort
Speaker 5: of talking about people who are in, for lack of
Speaker 5: a better word, mission critical type situations, you know, people
Speaker 5: who are trying to perform better in given circumstances. So
Speaker 5: there's a fair amount of the book that's devoted in
Speaker 5: that direction. But this statement really is speaking to something
Speaker 5: 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 they're
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 attentions role as serving action and if we
Speaker 1: can't pay attention, the chances of acting appropriately are going
Speaker 1: to not be there. But what I'm trying to highlight,
Speaker 1: which is part of the broader mission of a lot
Speaker 1: of contemplative practices and wisdom traditions, is that there is
Speaker 1: another way we can use our attention, use our mind
Speaker 1: and their aspects of even what sort of traditional attentional
Speaker 1: models within modern cognitive neuroscience described that can be amplified
Speaker 1: but aren't currently amplified. So the being mode from my
Speaker 1: point of view, is taking an observational stance, being receptive
Speaker 1: to what's occurring, so that in between the action there
Speaker 1: is reflection. And without that reflection, the chances to ensure
Speaker 1: that the action is appropriate are lessened because sometimes you
Speaker 1: can know sort of a ballistic orientation like this is
Speaker 1: what we're doing, or the training that you have may
Speaker 1: may guide you to say this is what you do,
Speaker 1: but is it the right thing to do? How are
Speaker 1: you going to know unless you actually look at the
Speaker 1: circumstances and you know a lot of times these tactical
Speaker 1: professionals or mission oriented folks talk about situational awareness as
Speaker 1: you've got to know what's going on around you. But
Speaker 1: what I'm highlighting with that statement of being mode, not
Speaker 1: just doing mode, is that part of the situation is
Speaker 1: what is occurring in your own mind, the set points
Speaker 1: you have, the expectations and stories and assumptions that you have,
Speaker 1: and the being mode allows you to take stock of
Speaker 1: what is present without taking any action in that moment,
Speaker 1: just allowing that to exist and percolating in it. And
Speaker 1: I think it's highly undervalued, especially for a lot of
Speaker 1: the kinds of professionals that we end up working with.
Speaker 1: So as a new or novel aspect of what they
Speaker 1: might consider doing, which is being. Yeah, and I put
Speaker 1: that in quotes because you put people can't see me,
Speaker 1: so you know, in some sense the being new type
Speaker 1: of doing if you want to approach it in that way.
Speaker 5: You also say, a peak mind and this, to quote
Speaker 5: William James again which I had not seen this quote before,
Speaker 5: and I love A peak mind balances the flights and
Speaker 5: the perchings. He says, like a bird's life, the stream
Speaker 5: of consciousness seems to be made up of an alternation
Speaker 5: of flights and perchings. Say a little bit more about that.
Speaker 5: That's very poetic language, I think to speak to some
Speaker 5: 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: it's you know, sort of the important aspects of what
Speaker 1: wisdom is is both reflection and action.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that quote made me think of We interviewed a
Speaker 5: gentleman I don't know, and I'm going to get your
Speaker 5: opinion on this in a second. We interviewed a gentleman
Speaker 5: a while back by the name of Ian McGilchrist. He
Speaker 5: wrote a book called The Master in his Emissary and
Speaker 5: it's talking about right brain and left brain, and I'd
Speaker 5: like to get your opinion on that in a second.
Speaker 4: But one of the things he said was, and when
Speaker 4: he was.
Speaker 5: Talking about how the right brain and the left brain work,
Speaker 5: is that the right brain is more the perching. It's
Speaker 5: watching everything that's happening, it's seeing the context, it's you know,
Speaker 5: and the left brain is more the flight or he
Speaker 5: talked about like a bird pecking food out of a
Speaker 5: series of stones. I'm curious in the work that you've done,
Speaker 5: has right brain left brain shown up at all. I'm
Speaker 5: just kind of curious your thought on that theory. I
Speaker 5: don't want to spend a lot of time there, but
Speaker 5: I can't help but ask.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, I don't know that book, and I
Speaker 1: don't know Ian at all, and I don't know how
Speaker 1: literally was being or what research was looking to. But
Speaker 1: frankly from sort of a modern neuroscience perspective, the notion
Speaker 1: of right brain left brain allowing for complex function to
Speaker 1: happen in a hemispherically specified manner has been debunked. All
Speaker 1: complex functions, whether it's a broad observational stance or an
Speaker 1: action oriented focusing, will involve ordination between the entirety of
Speaker 1: the brain and particular both hemispheres. But I appreciate the
Speaker 1: concept of these are distinct from each other, and I
Speaker 1: would not describe them as based on hemispheres. I describe
Speaker 1: them based on mental modes. And when we think about
Speaker 1: a mode in the mind, it's essentially a configuration of
Speaker 1: whatever brain networks are involved in a particular process being
Speaker 1: more dominant versus a different set of brain networks. So
Speaker 1: definitely it's the case that and you know, I describe
Speaker 1: it in some sense as two aspects of attention. And
Speaker 1: you know this notion of a flashlight meaning focusing, narrowing
Speaker 1: selecting versus a floodlight broad receptive not biasing some information
Speaker 1: over other information, And those are two different modes, and
Speaker 1: typically you cannot be in both modes simultaneously and we
Speaker 1: know this right. If you're sitting there and reading a
Speaker 1: deeply entrenched in a good novel or a good book,
Speaker 1: any kind of a good book could be peak mind.
Speaker 1: So if you're entrenched in reading a good book, somebody
Speaker 1: walks in the room and says something to you, you're like,
Speaker 1: huh what, You have no idea? It was said not
Speaker 1: because you lost the capacity to comprehend language, but because
Speaker 1: your focus was so narrowed that the input coming in
Speaker 1: in your broad receptive stance was not quite up to
Speaker 1: stenough to be able to break down the sounds into language.
Speaker 1: From the brain science point of view, we know that
Speaker 1: a lot of these aspects of attention are mutually inhibitory.
Speaker 1: When one network is active, the other one will be suppressed.
Speaker 1: So I again would say that do not get too
Speaker 1: literal with regard to the hemisphere that is involved when
Speaker 1: but the modal aspects the mind being in different modes
Speaker 1: is certainly very very important.
Speaker 5: You mentioned the two different modes in your book, you
Speaker 5: actually have three modes. You're a little bit like the
Speaker 5: Buddha in that you're a list maker. There's lots of
Speaker 5: lists of three in this book. I'm sure someone has
Speaker 5: pointed that out before, but I actually like it as
Speaker 5: a way of organizing.
Speaker 4: It helps.
Speaker 5: But so you talked about two of the sort of
Speaker 5: quote unquote subsystems that work together, right, the flashlight, which
Speaker 5: is we're narrowed in we're focused to talk about the floodlight,
Speaker 5: which is a more broad and open And then the
Speaker 5: third mode that you talk about is the juggler. Say
Speaker 5: a little bit 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. But it is the result of, we think,
Speaker 1: at least kind of going back in time, a big
Speaker 1: problem that the brain had, which is that everything could
Speaker 1: not be processed. The brain just lacked the computational power
Speaker 1: to do that. So if you didn't prioritize some stuff
Speaker 1: over other stuff, there was no way you were going
Speaker 1: to be able to make sense of the world around
Speaker 1: you or even what's occurring within your mind. So just
Speaker 1: to keep that in mind as the anchor prioritize some
Speaker 1: information over other information. Now, the flashlight, you'd say, is
Speaker 1: prioritizing some content over other content. So wherever you direct
Speaker 1: that flashlight is going to be the privileged content. But
Speaker 1: it's directed towards something, some object, and that object can
Speaker 1: be something in the external environment or an object in
Speaker 1: the mind like a thought or a memory. When we
Speaker 1: go to the floodlight, we're talking about prioritizing and not
Speaker 1: so much based on the content, because you're not supposed
Speaker 1: to really advantage one thing over another. It's about being
Speaker 1: this broad receptive stance, but it is privileging something and
Speaker 1: that is the moment now, so you know, formally, this
Speaker 1: floodlight system is called the alerting system, and you're not
Speaker 1: being alert to something in the past or the future,
Speaker 1: but right in this moment, so privileging the present moment.
Speaker 1: And then, as you mentioned, the third system formally called
Speaker 1: executive functioning that I describe it as a juggler for
Speaker 1: shorthand is really regarding prioritizing based on our goals. So
Speaker 1: these are internally held goals, intentions, plans, whatever it is
Speaker 1: you want to call it. That is guiding the way
Speaker 1: we're going to interact with our own mind and our environment,
Speaker 1: you know, just like a juggler, you've got to do
Speaker 1: this with sort of a multiplicity in mind. You usually
Speaker 1: don't have one goal. So in this moment, my goal
Speaker 1: is to have a fruitful conversation with you. But my
Speaker 1: goal is also to publish the papers that I'm publishing,
Speaker 1: and to be in a responsible citizen, and to enjoy
Speaker 1: my life and my family. Those goals don't go away.
Speaker 1: But obviously I'm not actively to all of those simultaneously.
Speaker 1: So I'm kind of keeping all the balls in the
Speaker 1: air and ensuring that every action that I undertake aligns
Speaker 1: with my goals. And when the juggler is not functioning
Speaker 1: so well, balls drop, we forget the goal. We don't
Speaker 1: inhibit irrelevant information, and this could be a micro goal. Right,
Speaker 1: So I want to have a conversation with you, that's
Speaker 1: my goal. But my phone buzzes and then I go
Speaker 1: and start reading my text messages in the middle of
Speaker 1: this conversation. Why did I do that? Well, I fail
Speaker 1: to hold the goal and then control my behavior aligned
Speaker 1: with it. So I think that maybe helps frame it
Speaker 1: more broadly, that all of it falls underneath at tension
Speaker 1: because it all has to do with prioritizing some information
Speaker 1: or other information. It's just the nature of what that
Speaker 1: information is differs.
Speaker 5: Is the executive function, or the juggler as we would
Speaker 5: call it, the part that is choosing where to point
Speaker 5: the flashlight. Yes, I think attention is very interesting because
Speaker 5: it's similar to the breath. It's something that happens automatically
Speaker 5: and is also controllable.
Speaker 1: Correct.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, if someone lit a firecracker off behind
Speaker 5: my head right now, like my attention is going there,
Speaker 5: there's nothing I'm going to going to do about that, right.
Speaker 5: But beyond that is that the juggler that's sort of
Speaker 5: trying to say, let me align my attention with my
Speaker 5: to use a different word for what you were talking about,
Speaker 5: my intentions that the things that matter to me. Is
Speaker 5: that kind of falling into the juggler's role.
Speaker 1: Correct, 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, yes juggler, Right, It's like, why would it
Speaker 1: be that a firecracker would pull your attention because your
Speaker 1: survival may depend on it. Right. So essentially, these, you know,
Speaker 1: are things that are salient, that are novel, that are
Speaker 1: fear inducing or threatening, that are self related, are all
Speaker 1: sort of privileged into the way that our brain functions.
Speaker 1: We don't have to try to make it that way,
Speaker 1: it just is sort of by default built in.
Speaker 5: Right, you say the three main factors that determine, you know,
Speaker 5: how this attention gets deployed. Is familiarity, something that's new.
Speaker 5: I'm going to give more attention to salience, right, how
Speaker 5: important it is to me. And then finally, our own goal,
Speaker 5: our own attention. And so attention is sort of being,
Speaker 5: as you said, pulled by those things. And one of
Speaker 5: the things that you say early on that I really
Speaker 5: liked was that there's nothing wrong with our attention. We
Speaker 5: talk a lot about having attention problems these days, you know,
Speaker 5: a crisis of attention, but you say, our attention is
Speaker 5: working just fine. To say a little bit more about.
Speaker 1: That, Yeah, that's the kind of ironic part of this moment.
Speaker 1: People feel a sense of struggle and overwhelm or crisis,
Speaker 1: and they want to blame their brain instead of the
Speaker 1: circumstances in some sense. So let's just talk about social
Speaker 1: media or technology kind of more broadly. The fact that
Speaker 1: there are algorithms that can be built around our willingness
Speaker 1: to continue engaging with particular pieces of software or websites,
Speaker 1: et cetera tells us that our attention is working completely
Speaker 1: in a regular, typical, predictable fashion. And you already mentioned
Speaker 1: that three biggies that might get us familiarity in salience
Speaker 1: for sure, at goals also, but when you can finally
Speaker 1: tune the familiar because you're being exposed to it over
Speaker 1: and over again, or you can finally tune the saliens
Speaker 1: because it's so self related, or you can ensure that
Speaker 1: the goals are kind of kept in the front of
Speaker 1: your mind. You know, like at some point you looked
Speaker 1: at you know I talk about in the book, like
Speaker 1: I was looking for this frying pan, like a pot
Speaker 1: or pan, and then I kept seeing pans all over
Speaker 1: the place because it was being forced onto me, like
Speaker 1: you look for pan, you must be interested in this.
Speaker 1: So all of a sudden, now the goal that I
Speaker 1: had once is now kept at the front of my mind.
Speaker 1: It's like, oh, I did want to get that pan.
Speaker 1: It's like reminding you of goals. So attention is doing
Speaker 1: what it does, but the circumstances are now aligning to
Speaker 1: tune up and really maximize engagement for the benefit of
Speaker 1: usually selling us a product, mining our attention to be
Speaker 1: exposed to potentially buying a product. Right, So it's totally
Speaker 1: driven by this whole structure. I just wanted to caution
Speaker 1: people that first of all, don't take it in. It's
Speaker 1: not like there's something wrong with you if you see
Speaker 1: your name and you want to click on it. 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 very,
Speaker 1: very smart algorithms that are tuning up to you and
Speaker 1: a team of engineers that are programming it. So if
Speaker 1: we're going to take on this challenge, it cannot just
Speaker 1: be like, oh, my mind will not click on that bright, yellow,
Speaker 1: shiny thing that's saying click here.
Speaker 5: Unlikely, you say you can't win that fight. Instead, cultivate
Speaker 5: the capacity and skill to position in your mind so
Speaker 5: you don't have to fight. Say a little bit more
Speaker 5: about that, because I think that's a really important point,
Speaker 5: is that if our goal is to bring our attention
Speaker 5: back to our own control in the things that matter
Speaker 5: to us, it does feel like it's a fight. And
Speaker 5: like you, I tend to believe it's a fight we're
Speaker 5: set up to.
Speaker 4: 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
Speaker 1: are and I'm not checking in with where I am
Speaker 1: relative 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 5: I want to push on that a little bit and
Speaker 5: explore it a little further, because I think it's really
Speaker 5: important I love the way you said in the book
Speaker 5: we lack internal cues about where our attention is moment
Speaker 5: to moment in the spiritual It's program. What I say is,
Speaker 5: you know, if we're trying to live a life, and
Speaker 5: basically I would say we'd be living a life more
Speaker 5: based on principles that matter to us, right, living more
Speaker 5: by that goal orientation, and the goal may just be
Speaker 5: to be kinder, right, So I think forgetting is the
Speaker 5: biggest problem. Your book advocates training, you know, twelve minutes
Speaker 5: in the morning with a couple different approaches, and we
Speaker 5: can talk about what some of those are. I'm curious, though,
Speaker 5: do you have suggestions on how else maybe during the
Speaker 5: day to get a little bit more of this, because
Speaker 5: I do agree that a focused training period like you're
Speaker 5: describing does help, and I know myself and a lot
Speaker 5: of people who do have mourning mindfulness practice that we
Speaker 5: can still get pretty lost all day long and lose
Speaker 5: track of any of those internal cues. So do you
Speaker 5: have some ideas about how to weave those into more
Speaker 5: of the moments 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, yes, than other things.
Speaker 1: And that also that twelve minutes is not, in my view,
Speaker 1: the culmination or the be all end all.
Speaker 5: It's the starter minimum effective dose.
Speaker 1: That's the minimum effective dose, thank you, yes, And so
Speaker 1: I just want to mention that because people can 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 1: But your point still holds. The reason we do the
Speaker 1: formal minutes of day of mindfulness practice is so that
Speaker 1: the mental mode of mindfulness, which I describe as paying
Speaker 1: attention to our present moment experience without conceptually elaborating or
Speaker 1: emotionally reacting. We want to bring about more of that
Speaker 1: mode throughout the day because that is going to be
Speaker 1: the mode that allows us to connect with what's happening
Speaker 1: in the moment and monitor the contents of our mind
Speaker 1: as well as obviously taking stock of what's happening around
Speaker 1: us practicing so that we can just say we got
Speaker 1: it off. There are to do list we're practicing to
Speaker 1: elicit the more prevalence of that mode. But you're right,
Speaker 1: there are ways in which we can advantage curing ourselves
Speaker 1: to do that. So some of the things that we do,
Speaker 1: I'll just give you an sample from some of the
Speaker 1: research studies that we do, because we tell people what
Speaker 1: I just described to you, that we were doing this
Speaker 1: so that we're more mindful throughout the day, not just
Speaker 1: that we're Olympic level breath followers. I mean, who cares, right,
Speaker 1: But how do you do that? So, for example, one
Speaker 1: of the practices that we give is it's you know,
Speaker 1: these are all part of sort of the canon of
Speaker 1: what's currently offered in the world of mindfulness training, and
Speaker 1: thankfully that that world is growing and more available to people.
Speaker 1: But something called the stop practice is a good one,
Speaker 1: and I recommend that people do this, and they use
Speaker 1: the queue of being stopped, meaning you're stopped at a elevator,
Speaker 1: you're stopped at a stop sign, you're stopped at a crosswalk,
Speaker 1: any you're waiting in line, anytime you stop and you
Speaker 1: notice the body is stationary, typically what happens in that
Speaker 1: moment pull out your phone, start doing stuff. No use
Speaker 1: that as a moment to do this practice. And the
Speaker 1: practice is a mini mindfulness practice. So stop as an
Speaker 1: acronym for stop. You're already stopped. Take a breath, and
Speaker 1: that's just aware of one conscious breath, like you're just
Speaker 1: you're not manipulating the breath or trying to take it
Speaker 1: more deeply, just like we've been breathing this whole time,
Speaker 1: but taking stock of it observe. So after that breath,
Speaker 1: you're still kind of in that kind of mode of
Speaker 1: observing what's occurring right now, and then proceed. And you know,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you that one of the papers that we're
Speaker 1: working on right now is a project we did in
Speaker 1: basic combat training with close to two thousand soldiers where
Speaker 1: they did this stop practice. They did a formal mindful
Speaker 1: less practice like we assigned and that I describe in
Speaker 1: the book, but then we asked them to stop practice
Speaker 1: and we found benefited all kinds of things, their sense
Speaker 1: of team cohesion, their ability to check out if the
Speaker 1: body was experiencing pain to determine if they needed to
Speaker 1: take action. You know, like for example, people talk about
Speaker 1: just fracturing their feet and legs and bones because they're
Speaker 1: so negligent of taking stock of the body. But if
Speaker 1: you're stopped in all these times and you're just checking
Speaker 1: out what's going on, and we actually guide them. Week
Speaker 1: one is the breath, then it may be the environment,
Speaker 1: then it's 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 chuse people
Speaker 1: into that mindful mode repeatedly in multiple times a day.
Speaker 1: So that's one one thing that you could try.
Speaker 4: I think that's great.
Speaker 5: You know, I'm often thinking about triggers, like what you
Speaker 5: use the word q Q or trigger? How can we remember?
Speaker 5: And that's a good one. I mean I've talked about
Speaker 5: and heard about sort of like if you're stopped at
Speaker 5: a traffic light, but I love the idea of like
Speaker 5: 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? Am I defaulting?
Speaker 4: Yep?
Speaker 5: There are so many places I could take this, but
Speaker 5: we're a little bit time limited, so I'm going to
Speaker 5: pivot to this place because it's something I definitely want
Speaker 5: to talk with you about, and I think it's important
Speaker 5: to reiterate sort of what you said that the research
Speaker 5: you're focused on is about improving attention. But you talk
Speaker 5: about attention, you say there are three major forces that
Speaker 5: degrade our attention, stress, poor mood, and threat. But it
Speaker 5: also sounds like early on you say that if we're
Speaker 5: feeling cognitive fog might be depleted attention. If we're feeling
Speaker 5: anxious or worried, it could be hijacked attention. If we
Speaker 5: can't focus, it might be fragmented attention. So not only
Speaker 5: are some of those things causes of degraded attention, but
Speaker 5: it sounds like degraded attention is also the cause of
Speaker 5: some of those things, right. It seems like it's a
Speaker 5: bi directional relationship. Would that be absolutely yeah, absolutely, Okay.
Speaker 5: So given that whether most people who are not tactical
Speaker 5: professionals are going to say, you know what, I want
Speaker 5: better quality of life, right, I want to be a
Speaker 5: little bit happier. I want to spend less time ruminating
Speaker 5: and regretting. I want to be more present of the
Speaker 5: people I love, et cetera, et cetera. So, given that
Speaker 5: this is what boys a long setup for a question,
Speaker 5: isn't it. But I'm going somewhere here.
Speaker 1: I trust you.
Speaker 5: You talk about some strategies that people use for some
Speaker 5: of these things, like think positive, focus on the good,
Speaker 5: do something relaxing, suppress upsetting thoughts. We've got these series
Speaker 5: of strategies that I'm going to just put them under
Speaker 5: a bucket. I've heard you use this bucket before, and
Speaker 5: tell me if you agree reframing. They are sort of
Speaker 5: reframing our experience. And then you used a term maybe
Speaker 5: it was in the book and I missed it, but
Speaker 5: I heard it on another podcast. You said, well, there's
Speaker 5: reframing and then there's deframing. And I loved that idea.
Speaker 5: I was wondering if you could say a little bit
Speaker 5: more about those two. And then I want to talk
Speaker 5: a little bit about when might it be appropriate to
Speaker 5: do one versus the other, depending on what we're trying
Speaker 5: 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 life. Mind, it's still using attention in that
Speaker 1: focused way, that narrowed way, that action oriented way. In
Speaker 1: some sense, deframing is saying get back into that perchings
Speaker 1: or being mode. Sure, it's like we're taking a look
Speaker 1: at the structure that we're within. You know, a framework
Speaker 1: is an interesting thing. Reframing is almost like you're ignoring
Speaker 1: the framework and you're just filling it with new stuff.
Speaker 1: Like you know, it's an apartment building and you're just
Speaker 1: going to bring a new furniture. The apartment building still
Speaker 1: stands with the way it is, or even let's say
Speaker 1: a particular room still has a sofa and a chair
Speaker 1: and a table, but they're different they're a different kind
Speaker 1: of sofa, you know, a more fluffy one, or a
Speaker 1: genuine leather whatever it is that you want that you
Speaker 1: think is an improvement over the prior set of things,
Speaker 1: but the framework is the same. What I'm saying with
Speaker 1: deframing is first step is essentially be aware that you
Speaker 1: are within a framework. You are within a story, You're
Speaker 1: within a set of contingencies and conditions, and you're acting
Speaker 1: within that. So if we can just even look around
Speaker 1: and say, oh, wow, look at that, I have take
Speaker 1: by default that there should be a couch and a
Speaker 1: chair and a table in this room. Do I have
Speaker 1: to like? That's the first step of deframing. And you
Speaker 1: can build back the same sort of components if you'd like,
Speaker 1: but at least you're doing it with a will and
Speaker 1: with knowledge that I'm going to put everything back in
Speaker 1: a way that I'd like, or maybe I'm going to
Speaker 1: tear the whole thing down and build it up differently.
Speaker 1: So I just think most of us don't understand that
Speaker 1: this 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 breath,
Speaker 1: awareness practice, or what I call the finder flashlight practice.
Speaker 1: Noticing that the mind has wandered away from the goal
Speaker 1: is in little tiny moment of oh, I wasn't in
Speaker 1: that framework anymore, and you know, moving towards something like
Speaker 1: an open monitoring practice, we're really just kind of disregarding
Speaker 1: all of that, all the stories and concepts, and trying
Speaker 1: to kind of be in the raw, moment to moment
Speaker 1: flow of our conscious experience. It's also a way to
Speaker 1: practice deframing. So I think that once we understand why
Speaker 1: we're intending to do it, and I think that there's
Speaker 1: a very important reason to intend to do it, is
Speaker 1: that sometimes frameworks are wrong, stories are wrong. More fundamentally,
Speaker 1: to get at what you're saying regarding you know, spiritual
Speaker 1: practice and spiritual life, replacing the couch is not going
Speaker 1: to make you happier. It's going to mean you have
Speaker 1: a different couch. You know. That's sort of the deeper
Speaker 1: issue is that maybe you want to take a look
Speaker 1: at the assumptions you're holding of what it means to
Speaker 1: be able to achieve the happiness you're seeking.
Speaker 5: So deframing in this sense, would we say it's similar
Speaker 5: to the acceptance and commitment therapy term of diffusing, and
Speaker 5: it's a way of sort of stepping back out of
Speaker 5: thought right and trying to observe that all these thoughts
Speaker 5: are happening, is that the essence of it, it's at.
Speaker 1: The essence diffusion, decentering, becoming meta aware, all of that.
Speaker 1: And it does require stepping outside of what's occurring, at
Speaker 1: least from the conceptual terrain, or getting more embodied in
Speaker 1: our sensory experience so we're not stuck in the concepts
Speaker 1: that are driving whatever is going on in our mind
Speaker 1: in that moment.
Speaker 5: One of the things you say with things like thinking positive,
Speaker 5: focusing on the good, suppressing upsetting thoughts, that the problem
Speaker 5: with a lot of those is that they do require
Speaker 5: attentional resources to implement. They use up attention instead of
Speaker 5: strengthening it. You call them failed strategies because while we
Speaker 5: try to use them to solve our attention problems, they
Speaker 5: 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 thoughts, 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, it can really make things
Speaker 1: more problematic for people because they somehow think they're so
Speaker 1: host 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 5: How do we get to the point where are deframing diffusion?
Speaker 5: Mindfulness practices don't feel effortful in the same way because
Speaker 5: it feels like for me to sit down and follow
Speaker 5: the breath and keep bringing my attention back to it
Speaker 5: and then back to it is also an intentional drain.
Speaker 5: But your study 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. It's sort of like that idea, and I
Speaker 1: think that there are many ways in which you can
Speaker 1: practice so that it feels less draining in some sense,
Speaker 1: easing up, you know, not having that ah, that kind
Speaker 1: of conflict that a lot of people can experience in practice,
Speaker 1: and a lot of that I think is optional. I
Speaker 1: don't think you need to feel like a failure because
Speaker 1: your mind wandered. But people think somehow that if my
Speaker 1: goal is to pay attention to my breath, my mind
Speaker 1: should not wander. And what I'm saying is the goal
Speaker 1: is to pay attention to your breath, the mind will wander, right,
Speaker 1: And actually remember that the moment you realize that your
Speaker 1: mind is wandered is a win.
Speaker 2: 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, oh,
Speaker 1: got it? Know where I'm off. I've got to get back.
Speaker 1: So even the way we orient to the practice at
Speaker 1: this more micro level can reduce that sense of dread
Speaker 1: and effort. Yeah, but to kind of more broadly understand
Speaker 1: that something that feels effortful can still be building resources
Speaker 1: instead of depleting them.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 5: I think what you said there is so important. I'm
Speaker 5: kind of curious does everybody naturally default to that sort
Speaker 5: of natural like, oh, my mind's wandering, so I'm failing.
Speaker 5: It just seems inherent with everybody I've ever talked to
Speaker 5: who's taken up a practice like this. Do you come
Speaker 5: across people that don't orient that way or is it
Speaker 5: just sort of natural to us to be told if
Speaker 5: your job is to do this task and you just
Speaker 5: see that you're not doing that task, you just go, oh,
Speaker 5: I'm not good at this.
Speaker 1: Okay. I think it's even more fundamental than that. I
Speaker 1: think that this experience, this is what's kind of interesting.
Speaker 1: Why are conflict states and negative emotion? Why do they
Speaker 1: co occur? Right? So, anytime you have a mismatch between
Speaker 1: what you would like to have happened and what happens,
Speaker 1: there can be a slight dysphoria associated with it. That's
Speaker 1: kind of interesting. So why is that? And people have
Speaker 1: looked at this in cognitive neuroscience studies where sometimes you'll
Speaker 1: just look to see if you impose a negative emotion
Speaker 1: on somebody what happens to their cognitive control, And what
Speaker 1: you find is that sometimes the next thing that occurs,
Speaker 1: they're better at it. It's like that negativity can actually
Speaker 1: require us to bring more of our cognitive resources to
Speaker 1: solve the problem. So I think the yoking of conflict
Speaker 1: and what we call upregulation of cognitive control go hand
Speaker 1: in hand. It's the signal that says, do something differently,
Speaker 1: expend more mental effort to do this, bring more resources
Speaker 1: to bear. Even experiencing conflict is not a problem. But
Speaker 1: to realize that the conflict does not mean to translate
Speaker 1: into the elaborated notion that I'm a complete failure and
Speaker 1: is never going to work out. That's the mind doing
Speaker 1: something else. I think that it's really interesting when you
Speaker 1: especially when you talk to sort of long term practitioners,
Speaker 1: that conflict is seen with a neutrality that most of
Speaker 1: us don't. Yeah, right, when there's a mismatch, it's like,
Speaker 1: that's data, that's not I suck. And I think that
Speaker 1: getting to that point, and especially you know, within all
Speaker 1: of these kind of elite settings, I think people are
Speaker 1: trying to understand that that if I add the layer
Speaker 1: of a conceptual story on top of the experience of conflict,
Speaker 1: it will slow me down in course correcting what the
Speaker 1: conflict signal is conveying.
Speaker 5: Right right, Yeah, And I just think it's so important
Speaker 5: to work on not developing that aversive relationship with practice
Speaker 5: because a lot of people, I think, do it's that
Speaker 5: I'm failing at this, I can't do this, I'm not
Speaker 5: 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 talk about this too, it's like you're going
Speaker 1: to focus, you're going to notice your mind wandering, and
Speaker 1: then you're going to redirect back. But sometimes I will
Speaker 1: guide people to just hang out in the moment that
Speaker 1: they notice the mind has wandered away and really kind
Speaker 1: of get granular with that. What occurred first? What is
Speaker 1: the first thing that happened. Usually we're having conflict, negative emotion.
Speaker 1: I suck the fast track. So what if it's that
Speaker 1: whatever that visceral or you know, feeling tone is of
Speaker 1: the mismatch, See if you can get more precise on that,
Speaker 1: get cued into that mismatch feeling, and see if you
Speaker 1: can kind of paint the elaboration that follows. And you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of expert practitioners will talk about it. It's
Speaker 1: like I remember talking about two ricard once, you know,
Speaker 1: an adept practitioner of a Buddhist monk, and he said it,
Speaker 1: and I thought it was so beautiful. It's like it's
Speaker 1: not it's not a storm. It's like I see slight
Speaker 1: undulations on the ripples of the pond, you know, whatever
Speaker 1: it is. It's like, that would be awesome if the
Speaker 1: if the slight movement of the water, you know, the
Speaker 1: tranquility of the mind is disturbed and you can say, ah, back.
Speaker 4: On track, totally, totally, yeah.
Speaker 5: And I just wonder how much new practitioners have that
Speaker 5: 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
Speaker 1: bird er and you know, terrible circumstances, there's violence. What
Speaker 1: if you could actually grab a hold of the earliest
Speaker 1: moment that you whatever that the initial inclination that I'm
Speaker 1: going to have that feeling, and we know what that is.
Speaker 1: I mean, I would call it. And as I noticed
Speaker 1: in my own practice when I was very early stages,
Speaker 1: it's like if there was a ballistic reactivity, I wasn't
Speaker 1: going to catch it. You know, if my kid did
Speaker 1: something and I was going to shout, I was probably
Speaker 1: still going 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 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Well, you quote lou Read at one point in the
Speaker 5: book and said, between thought and expression lies a lifetime.
Speaker 5: I love anytime the velvet Underground shows up in a book.
Speaker 5: Between thought and expression lies lifetime reminds me of the
Speaker 5: Victor Frankel quota between stimulus and response, Right, And I've
Speaker 5: said that I think sometimes the most practical thing a
Speaker 5: long history of different types of meditation practices given me.
Speaker 5: I think the most practical thing is that space between
Speaker 5: stimulus and response seems.
Speaker 4: A little bit bigger. There's a little.
Speaker 5: Bit more moment to be like, oh hang on, you know,
Speaker 5: listeners couldn't see that, but I sort of started to
Speaker 5: rise up in like a outrage and but you know,
Speaker 5: don't get all the way there, you know, and to
Speaker 5: your point, then yes, also learning to walk it back faster.
Speaker 5: And I love the idea that you just said about
Speaker 5: noticing that moment when your mind is wandered and really
Speaker 5: noticing what happens there. Because in Buddhism they talk about
Speaker 5: the five skandas. I don't know if you're familiar with
Speaker 5: the five skandas, but it's describing a little bit of
Speaker 5: the way that we put together the sense of a self.
Speaker 5: There's some initial like Verdanna, like the very first thing,
Speaker 5: but they make a distinction between perception, like the raw
Speaker 5: sense data, and then all the layers that start getting
Speaker 5: added on top of that, right from positive negative to
Speaker 5: the stories we might tell. You know, advanced practitioners say
Speaker 5: you can actually start to notice those extraordinarily fine increments.
Speaker 5: Right for most of us, it's just like that, that
Speaker 5: whole process happens like that, But there is a way of.
Speaker 4: Breaking that down. I guess my question to you would be,
Speaker 4: what have.
Speaker 5: You seen looking at the way our brains process data
Speaker 5: that might shed light on that or confirm that that's
Speaker 5: kind of what happens. And do you see people being
Speaker 5: able to interrupt that pattern kind of the snap I
Speaker 5: just did you see people being able to interrupt it
Speaker 5: or break it down?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I think the way that we look
Speaker 1: at it in my lab, and there's so many different
Speaker 1: people that are looking at this kind of thing, we
Speaker 1: can start to see even things like mind wandering. Let's
Speaker 1: not even talk about sort of emotionally laden stuff. We
Speaker 1: obviously mind wandering has that propensity. But what we know
Speaker 1: is that when people mind wander, for example, if we
Speaker 1: just had them do a simple task where they're just
Speaker 1: pressing a button every time they see a digit on
Speaker 1: this screen, we know that the response times are going
Speaker 1: to become more and more variable when they are mind wandering.
Speaker 1: In fact, that's the clue that they're mind wandering, because
Speaker 1: usually a few seconds later they'll miss something or they'll
Speaker 1: make an error of the report back. Yeah, my mind
Speaker 1: was wandering so close in time to When we see
Speaker 1: a lot of variability, you see the costs of that
Speaker 1: variability on the consequential actions that need to be performed.
Speaker 1: And so what we know with mindfulness training is that
Speaker 1: there's a reduction in that variability and the performance is
Speaker 1: is less prone to making errors like that and people
Speaker 1: report mind wandering less, So I think that that's a
Speaker 1: movement or that's an insight that says, yes, the more
Speaker 1: you're able to monitor moment by moment what's going on
Speaker 1: and you train your mind to do that through something
Speaker 1: like a breath awareness practice and the whole suite of
Speaker 1: practices now that I go into in the book, the
Speaker 1: more chances that you're going to be able to course
Speaker 1: correct more quickly. And so even the windows that's the
Speaker 1: kind of thing we're looking at now, it's like the
Speaker 1: windows of variability. Can those shrink? Or what we know
Speaker 1: from for example, the work that one of the post
Speaker 1: docs in my lab, Tony Zenesco's doing, is we're looking
Speaker 1: at what we call micro states. So these are essentially
Speaker 1: sort of the units of our configuration of the brain,
Speaker 1: if you will, in a moment, and typically it can
Speaker 1: break these down into like thirty milliseconds, there's small micro
Speaker 1: micro kind of stability of the mind in these tiny windows.
Speaker 1: And what we know, for example, is that micros tend
Speaker 1: to be temporarily contingent, so the micro state you are
Speaker 1: in in one moment is likely to produce the next
Speaker 1: micro state, and we know what the micro states, at
Speaker 1: least the signature of what it looks like when people
Speaker 1: are completely off task or their mind is not on
Speaker 1: the thing they're trying to do, or they're highly variable.
Speaker 1: So if you're in a highly variable kind of state,
Speaker 1: the next moment is likely to be highly variable. The
Speaker 1: question now is with practitioners, can you see that the
Speaker 1: return back to a state of focus is more likely?
Speaker 1: So the contemporal contingencies are actually being broken. And you know,
Speaker 1: in some sense it sounds, I mean, I'm going to
Speaker 1: leap down a lot. But if the mind is built
Speaker 1: for this kind of temporal contingency, which I think is
Speaker 1: definitely aligned with a lot of Buddhist thought on you know,
Speaker 1: sort of the contingent nature of reality, if you can
Speaker 1: train the mind to be less contingent so that there
Speaker 1: is kind of infinite potentiality from one moment to the
Speaker 1: next in the way that you can configure the brain,
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.
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Speaker 5: Join us in fostering stronger relationships at Goodwolf dot me
Speaker 5: slash relationships. It's funny I had up at the top
Speaker 5: of my note one of my favorite quotes by an
Speaker 5: old zen maaster Dogan, who said enlightenment is intimacy with
Speaker 5: all things, and I had that there because I think
Speaker 5: that speaks to attention. Intimacy is achieved by paying close
Speaker 5: attention to things. And what Dogan is saying is if
Speaker 5: we are truly that present, like you said, and that
Speaker 5: our micro states are not as conditioned to remain on
Speaker 5: the same thing. To your point, you're starting to get
Speaker 5: towards something that looks more like enlightenment, which I think
Speaker 5: is fascinating.
Speaker 1: Which is so interesting, right because in some sense there's
Speaker 1: enlightenment than there's psychosis. When things aren't going to contin
Speaker 1: it matter, so you've got to figure out the qualities
Speaker 1: that make it productive and warranted and worthy. And that's
Speaker 1: where all of the other positive qualities and having an
Speaker 1: ethical orientation toward our existence can come into play totally.
Speaker 5: Well, I mean, she thank you so much for coming on.
Speaker 5: I really enjoyed the book. It's a great look into
Speaker 5: the neuroscience of attention. I read a lot of books
Speaker 5: about mindfulness it's my job, and yours stood out. I
Speaker 5: just found some of the ways you really dove into
Speaker 5: what's happening to be truly fascinating, and we touched on
Speaker 5: a fraction of them. It's a wonderful read and thank
Speaker 5: you so much for coming on.
Speaker 1: Oh this is so much fun. Thank you for the
Speaker 1: great conversation.
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